Page 16 of Dancing With Redemption

8

Roxie

Roxie was cold. Shivering so badly she couldn’t stop it cold. The kind of cold that could kill. She turned to the wall, hoping her body would reflect heat off the wall and back into her body, but the cold wall just seemed to absorb what little heat she put off. Fear of dying was front and center in her mind.

“Get up, move around, get your blood circulating, girl,” Roxie said to herself, and stood up in the dark room. She wouldn’t knock anything over but the bucket, she’d learned that from her earlier search of the room, so she began to pace, walking as fast as she could back and forth, at the very end of the thick chain.

She walked, and walked, and then walked some more, despite how tired she was. Every time she stopped walking, she felt the cold air on her face and started to move again. Her worry was what would happen when she stopped. She’d built up a fine sheen of sweat on her skin, which was probably enough to make her even colder when she stopped.

And there would come a point when she’d have to stop. She couldn’t walk in the small room forever. Her legs would give out, even if she tried to stay on her feet. There was a possibility that Lincoln would be looking for her, but it wasn’t certain. Maybe he’d assumed she’d disappeared on him again, like she had all those years ago? He’d taken over the care of their daughter, she had no other real ties, it would be perfectly sane for him to think she’d suddenly decided to leave it all behind and start a new life. Again.

But, June would know something was wrong, right? Roxie had told her she’d talk with her later. And Dr. Bennet would know too. He’d planned to meet with Roxie at some point that day. When Roxie didn’t show, there’d be two people who knew that something wasn’t right. Wouldn’t there?

She could only hope someone would catch on to the fact that she was missing, and wish she’d worn an entire snowsuit out that morning. She’d give anything to have some of those little sachets that heated up, tucked into her coat pockets to keep her freezing fingers warm. They were probably horrible for the environment, but she’d love to have an entire box of them right now and some tape to plaster them over every inch of her skin.

Roxie slapped her hands against her arms, trying to get the blood flowing in them again. The cold was getting worse, but there was nothing she could do to help herself. Those two assholes had left her here to die, she knew that now. They weren’t coming back for her and this would be the place where she died. Every time she got the urge to sit down, Roxie reminded herself of that.

Once you sit down, you die.

She tried to remember warm days on the beach, hot nights with Lincoln in Cambodia, not for the steamy parts, but for the sweaty, burning heat she’d felt. Maybe if she remembered how hot she’d been, she’d warm up a little bit. Blood rushed to her cheeks, but little else happened.

“Come on, Rox, keep moving.” She got on her own case, there was nobody else to do it for her. That had often been the case in her life, though. She’d had to take care of her own problems for so long, it was kind of hard to remember a time when she didn’t have to be the grownup. Sure, her parents had taken care of stuff for her before they died, but she’d lived enough for three lifetimes since that day.

Now she was in the deepest shit of her life, and she was once again alone.

Roxie stopped pacing, staring around the dark room, straining to penetrate the darkness with eyes that weren’t up to the job. She needed night vision, but that wasn’t something most humans were born with. Taking a deep breath, she walked back to the bolt in the wall. She’d tried to loosen it up dozens of times, but nothing made the bolt budge. There was no way she’d manage to get it out of the wall, even when she’d tried to use the chain as a lever, the stupid thing hadn’t moved.

“Fuck me,” Roxie moaned, going back to her march.

She’d tried to figure out if there was a way to release the padlock that held the chain together at her waist, but there was nothing she could push into the lock. She’d tried to push the chain down her hips, or over her boobs, but she’d only managed to bruise herself doing that. Still, a few bruises or a broken bone here and there might be worth it, if they got her out of the chain and out of that room.

She’d already felt around in her pockets, only to realize the men must have removed the phone June gave her. She was lucky they’d left her with her clothes and her coat, men with eyes that dead could have done far worse to her. That wasn’t worth thinking about, she reminded herself, and went back to pacing.

Her legs finally started to cramp after an hour of pacing, or what felt like an hour, and Roxie dropped to the floor in agony. Her left leg was cramping so bad she was almost screaming in agony. She pointed her toes back at her chest, a trick she’d learned from another dancer long ago, shrieking as the pain increased, but then it started to fade away. A dull ache remained in her calf, a pain that wouldn’t go, no matter how much she stretched the leg.

She’d had to deal with cramps very often when she first started dancing as a child. She hadn’t learned the toe trick until she became a stripper. Back then, she’d been getting a lot of leg cramps, probably from dehydration, but on the advice of the same dancer, she’d started to eat a banana every day, for the potassium. It was time to start eating bananas again, something she’d forgotten about in all of the turmoil lately.

She hadn’t expected the past year to go quite as it had. Well, things had initially gone south when Elmo’s burned down. There’d been enough good things in her life, at that point, to make up for the bad that came along after, but the good things had slowly petered out. Lincoln came back into her life, which had seemed bad, then good, then the most wonderful thing to happen to her. He’d been kidnapped by her dickhead ex-boyfriend, which had been one of the lowest points of her life, but they’d managed to get through that with Lincoln coming out alive.

Now she was the one in harm’s way. But had she ever really not been in danger? Between Nathan and the boogeymen from her past, it felt like she’d always had a cloud hanging over her head. Nathan had brought more danger into her life when he’d become involved with some kind of gangsters he owed money to, then he’d developed a drug problem. She’d needed that like she needed a hole in the head.

And the men from that night? The night her parents died.

Was that what this was about? She’d known there was some kind of danger in coming back to New York, to this part of New York, at least. There’d never been any answers, was that because the danger hadn’t ended when her parents died?

If they thought she knew something besides who the men were–well, she didn’t know their names, but she knew their faces–they were mistaken. There was no way she could identify them, unless the cops showed her pictures and asked if this was the men she’d seen beating up her father, and at the property the night of the fire. So was there really any need for all of this?

Unless this was some new threat, she decided, folding her arms around her chest to try to hold in her body heat. Could this be something to do with Lincoln and his business? Was there some enemy out there who wanted to get back at him, make him try to give up on something he was doing?

No, she’d been kidnapped in her old hometown. This had to have something to do with her old life, her old name. Which only strengthened her stance that her parents were murdered, despite what the police around here wanted her to believe. Were those police in on it perhaps? It wasn’t a new idea, it was one she’d circled around before, but she didn’t want to think they were dirty cops. She could handle inept policemen, but bad cops?

Lily’s face popped into her mind and Roxie sighed with a sniffle. Tears wouldn’t help anything, but Roxie’s baby girl might be what got her through this. Lily was conceived the night Roxie’s parents died, that was reason enough to keep her, to give birth to her. From the very first ultrasound picture, Roxie had loved her daughter.

She’d had to live like she didn’t have a child and that had hurt her a lot over the years, but she’d done what she thought was best for her daughter. Roxie’s life hadn’t been easy, even when she was flush with cash. Living with Aunt Katie had given Lily some stability, a kind of safety that Roxie couldn’t provide her with.

Roxie remembered the day Lily was born like it had only been hours ago. Lily’s face had been smooshed up, and she’d had a shock of black hair that made Roxie giggle. Aunt Katie had been there, helping Roxie to change the baby, showing her how to hold her and feed her. Everything Roxie had needed to know or needed to have done, Aunt Katie had been there for her. And the first picture taken of Roxie and Lily together had been taken by that same woman.

Those two people were all the family she had, and she’d do her best to stay alive for them.