It took him ten minutes before he reached the car that stood with its headlights blazing. He yelled out a couple of times before the three men hiding inside revealed themselves, the drift of the hissed exchange between them suggesting to Zain that his ability to speak English without an accent made him friend not foe in their eyes.
Having halted the garbled explanations they all started to share, he demanded they speak one at a time and he listened, struggling to hold his tongue as he heard them describe what was a list of ineptitude that was in his mind approaching criminal, but there was a limit to his restraint.
‘You had a woman with you, out here?’ He could not hide his contempt.
‘We didn’t plan to get stranded, mate,’ the older man, who was nursing a black eye, said defensively. ‘And we told Abby to hide inside the cab when that mob drove up, but when they started laying into Rob,’ he nodded towards the taller man and Zain noticed the wound on his hairline that was still seeping blood, ‘she jumped out and laid into the guy with—’
‘It was her bag. She hit him with it.’
‘And then they hit her back.’
‘Was she conscious when they took her?’
It was the oldest man who responded to the terse question. ‘I’m not sure but she didn’t move when they chucked her in the back.’
The youngest, who looked little more than a boy to Zain’s eyes, began to weep. ‘What will they do to her... Abby, what will they do to Abby?’ he wailed.
The older man laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘She’ll be all right, son. You know Abby—she’s tough, and she can talk her way out of anything. She’ll be all right, won’t she?’ he repeated, throwing a look of appeal at Zain.
Zain saw no need to wrap up the truth. ‘They’ll keep her alive until they’ve assessed whether she’s worth money.’ It had been two years since the last border raids from Nezen. His father’s defence minister, Said, would be alarmed when he heard about this new incursion by the criminal gangs who lived in the foothills.
The brutal pronouncement drew a strangled sob from the boy.
* * *
What happens if I die here—who will pay off Nana and Pops’s debts? You’re not going to die, Abby. Think!
She lifted her chin and blinked, flinching as the yelling men riding up and down on camels fired off another volley of bullets into the air.
She’d lost consciousness when they’d thrown her in the truck and when she’d come to she’d had a sack over her head—a situation that had escalated her fear and sense of disorientation to another frantic level. What time was it? Where was she and what was going to happen next?
She still didn’t know the answer to either question and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know any longer.
She stiffened, her nostrils flaring in distaste as one of the men grabbed her hair in his filthy hand and tugged her towards him to leer in her face. She stared stonily ahead, only breathing again once he had let her go and moved away.
Ignoring the panic she could feel lapping at the edge of her resolve, she lifted her chin. Think, Abby. Think.
The effort to make her brain work felt like trying to run in sand, an apt analogy considering that the gritty stuff coated everything.
She clenched her jaw and ignored the pain in her cheek from where one of her captors had casually backhanded her when she’d tried to stop them beating Rob. She had to work out what she was going to do and how much time she had lost while she was blacked out. It seemed like another lifetime that the jeeps loaded with men wielding guns had surrounded their broken-down four-wheel-drive but it couldn’t have been that long ago.
It was still dark but the surrounding area was lit up not just by a massive bonfire, which was throwing out enough heat to slick her body in sweat, but also by the headlights of upwards of twenty or so cars and trucks parked haphazardly, enclosing the dusty area on three sides.
She pulled surreptitiously on the rope around her wrists but they held tight. Though her feet were unbounded and she was tempted to run, she doubted she’d get far. It would take only seconds for the half a dozen whooping men who rode back and forth on camels to catch her.
And where would she go?
There were no women.
Abby had never felt more isolated and afraid in her life. She had never known it was possible to feel this scared, but, though initially the fear had made her brain freeze, it began to work with feverish speed and clarity as one of the men who had dumped her down came across and said something in a harsh voice.
She shook her head to indicate she didn’t understand but he shouted again, and then when she didn’t react he bent forward and dragged her to her feet, pushing her forward until they reached an area where a dozen or so of the men were gathered in a half-circle.
When she pulled away from the group the man towing her pushed her hard in the small of her back and produced a long, curved, wicked-looking dagger. Expecting the worst, she fought against tears as he pulled her arms. Then the tears fell—partly in relief and partly in pain—as he sliced through the cord that held her hands behind her back.
She was rubbing her aching wrists when he began to speak, addressing the men gathered around and pointing at her. Someone shouted something and he grabbed her hair, holding it up to the firelight and drawing a gasp from the men with greedy eyes all fixed on her.
She cringed inwardly, her skin crawling at the touch of the eyes moving over her body. Desperately conscious of her bare legs, she wanted to pretend this wasn’t really happening to her, but it was. The sense of helplessness boiled over as she stood, hands clenched stiffly at her sides, shaking from a combination of gut-clenching fear and anger.
The man beside her spoke again, and as other yells echoed in answer she realised what was happening—she was being auctioned off to the highest bidder.
Outrage and horror clenched in her as she began to shake her head, trying to yell out and tell them that they couldn’t do this. But the words shrivelled in her throat, her vocal cords literally paralysed with fear.
She closed her eyes to shut out the nightmare of the leering faces, opening them in shock when the man beside her tore open her blouse to the sound of applause from the watching men as it gaped, revealing her bra.
Anger pierced the veil of fear and spurred Abby into retaliatory action. She didn’t pause to consider the consequences of her actions, she just lifted a clenched fist and swung. The man moved at the last moment but she caught his shoulder with a hard blow that drew a grunt of pain from him.
Someone laughed and the initial look of open-mouthed shock on his face morphed into something much uglier. There was no point running. There was nowhere to run to. The determination not to show her fear was suddenly stronger than the fear itself and Abby lifted her chin, clinging to her pride as she drew the tattered shreds of her shirt tightly around her against the imminent threat. The man advanced towards her, snarling angry words she didn’t understand, not that a dictionary was needed when his intent was pretty clear.
He lifted a hand to strike her when suddenly he froze. Everyone did, as a horse with a robed rider galloped full pelt into the semicircle, causing chaos as the men threw themselves to one side to avoid the slashing hooves. Just when it seemed as if man and horse were about to gallop straight into the flames of the bonfire, the horse stopped dead.
The rider, having achieved the sort of theatre-hushed entrance that film directors would have traded a row of awards for, calmly looked around, taking his time and not seeming to be bothered by the guns aimed