Page 86 of Forever Found

“I…I’ll look. I’ll be quick,” Libby gasped, and then she was running from the room, dropping her bright pink, sparkly purse to the ground near the door. The poor girl was little more than a kid and she had been dragged into the depraved, sick mess her father had orchestrated. Her life would never be the same again after discovering this about her father and I knew it, but I had to be selfish. It had been two years of torture, abuse, and terror. I couldn’t not take my chance to escape.

Libby returned moments later with a huge pair of bolt cutters in her hand. Her eyes were red and she was gasping for breath as tears poured down her face, but she simply swiped them away with the sleeve of her thin jacket and looked to me.

“Will these work?” she asked, and I nodded eagerly, holding up my wrist so the padlock that closed the metal cuff around my skin was visible. Libby stepped forwards and I helped her to position the cutters in the right place, then she cut. Once the first was open, the other three went fast, then I was finally free.

Libby held out her hand and I shakily rose to my feet and stepped from the blood stained cage and rose to my full height, wincing at the pain that stabbed from the cuts on my back. My wrists and ankles were raw from the cuffs too, and standing actually hurt after being curled in the cage for so many hours, but I didn’t have time to waste. I had to get us both out of the house before Hilton came back. I wasn’t leaving Libby to face his wrath now she knew what he was. She’d have to come with me. I needed to get to the police and tell them everything. The thought terrified me, but not more than the idea of ever going back in that cage.

Libby dropped my hand and ran to her large purse in the corner. She pulled out a t-shirt and a pair of spandex shorts and handed them to me.

“Sorry. I wore them for practice this morning, so they’re not clean, but it’s all I have,” she told me. I didn’t waste any time as I pulled on the shorts, then the t-shirt, not even taking the time to notice the condition of them. It was just a relief to have clothes.

“Thank you,” I told her as I pulled the t-shirt down over my back, the fabric feeling like barbed metal against my open cuts.“Come on! We have to get out of this house before he comes back,” I added as I grabbed her hand and started to run out of the door of that tiny cell and entered a cold, dark hallway.

“This way,” Libby whispered as she moved in front of me and pulled me to another door. When we walked through it I found myself in the larger space of the basement. The door that Libby closed behind us was actually a shelf filled with tools and boxes of junk you’d expect to find in a garage. It opened like a door and behind it was the secret space I had been hidden in.

Libby and I ran hand in hand through the basement and up the long narrow staircase that opened up into the modern, bright kitchen above. The sun shone brightly in the windows and I had to cover my eyes, not accustomed to the brightness. The last time I had seen the sun had been before I was sold to Hilton. Any time I had been moved, or Hilton dragged me to one of his sick parties, it had been at night, in the darkness and shadows.

I kept a hand over the top of my eyes to try and shield them as I worked to keep up with Libby as she pulled me behind her. I was weak – having not eaten for days – and my body was bruised and uncooperative, not to mention the pain, but my adrenaline pushed me to keep moving.

We were an arm’s length from the front door when the tell-tale beep of an access panel had us both freeze in place.

“Fuck. He’s back,” Libby hissed, then she wrenched me back the way we came, running through a luxurious lounge, and right through to the adjoining room which was obviously Hilton’s office. She pulled me behind the desk and I crouched down to hide beside her. She opened the top drawer of the desk on the left side and I watched on with shock, and relief as she pulled a small handgun from the drawer and set it in her lap.

“It’s loaded. I almost shot myself with it when I was a kid. He always keeps it in his desk,” she whispered so quietly I barely heard her.

“Hello?” Hilton called. “You here Libby?”

“Shit!” she hissed. “I disarmed the security alarm. I’m the only other person who has the code.”

“Libby?”

“Stay down,” she whispered to me, then she stood, holding the gun in her left hand, her finger over the trigger as she put it behind her back and called out, “In here, dad.”

My body shook so hard I was sure Hilton would hear me as his heavy foot steps pounded on the hardwood floors, coming closer.

“Ah, there you are. What are you doing here?” he asked, sounding instantly suspicious.

“Looking for you,” Libby told him, but I could hear the tremble in her words, so I was sure he could too.

“Well, obviously I wasn’t expecting you. You haven’t answered my calls for months now. Have you come to apologize?” Hilton asked.

“I have nothing to apologize for and you know it,” Libby snapped angrily.

“Then we have nothing to talk about. You should leave. I have a meeting I need to be at shortly.” Hilton was close now, likely just on the other side of the desk to where I cowered. I was terrified for both Libby and I.

“A meeting? Really?” Libby questioned angrily. “You sure you don’t mean you want to get down to your sick cell in the basement, to hurt that poor, innocent woman down there, some more?”

“You’ve been snooping, Libby. You know how I feel about that,” Hilton scolded, his voice taking that cold tone I knew intimately. Libby cried out as she was wrenched from where she had been stood close beside me, and I leapt up, ready to help her.

By the time I was up, Libby was pulling the gun from her back, her father holding her by her other arm, his hand poised to slap her. He saw the gun coming to point at him, and reached for it. I didn’t even think as I ran around the other side of the desk and came up behind him. I grabbed the arm of the hand he now had around the gun and pulled it hard, forcing him to release his grip as he struggled to get free of my hold. He turned to look at me in shock, as Libby managed to lift the gun and fired one single, deafening shot. Blood exploded over the both of us, then Hilton dropped to the ground with a loud thump.

“Oh God! Oh God!” Libby gasped as she slammed her blood covered hands to her face to cover her eyes, the gun still clutched in her hand.

I looked down to where Hilton was slumped on the ground, blood pouring from a large chest wound and soaking into the sickly buttercup yellow shirt he wore. His eyes were open and lifeless, and it was blatantly obvious he was dead.

“Libby,” I gasped as I reached for the gun she held in her hand. “Y-you have to run…leave. No one c-can know you were here,” I told her shakily. She had saved me. I wouldn’t allow her toruin her life further by being arrested for killing this worthless monster.

“No. What about you?” she sniffled as she moved her hands and looked at me with so much fear.