“Help!” screamed Maggie. “Somebody help me! Please! Help!”
One of her captors—Big Joe’s men—guffawed. “No one cares. Not here.”
No matter how hard she tried, Maggie couldn’t break free of their iron grips. Her hands went numb from how tightly they squeezed her arms, and her neck was sore from thrashing, but she wouldn’t stop trying. She couldn’t stop trying to escape.
They carried her out the back—her head clipped the door frame on the way past—and down a narrow and winding alley to a small house nestled in behind some bigger structures. Up creaking wooden stairs, and straight through a back door. She tried to scream, just before they disappeared inside, but the men knew what she’d try, and one put a grimy hand over her mouth to keep her quiet.
Someone further off said something, and one of her captors answered in clipped French. They paused there, just inside the house, waiting for a reply that came with a resigned sigh and unhappy tone. The one holding her mouth shut grunted, pulled the door closed behind them, and they started down a flight of stairs—a tight fit for all of them, which she bore the brunt of. At the end of it, they entered a frosty, barren room lit by a trio of candles, with a dirt floor dug beneath the house itself.
She was deposited in a chair, and then as quickly as the men had grabbed her, they disappeared into the faded margins. She was alone in the middle of the room, a narrow table before her, and across from that, a chair. Nothing was keeping her here, except for the unspoken threat of terminal violence if she stepped out of line.