One Night More by Clara Bayard

Chapter One
    When I was a kid, seven or eight maybe, I got stepped on in one of those ball pit things. I was dazed and buried in the brightly colored mire within seconds. I struggled to make my way back to the surface, but the balls were a strange combination of soft and hard, slick and heavy. It seemed like hours before my head popped up just in time to get yelled at for being "out of sight" of my parents.
    Waking up fighting the effects of being drugged, in the trunk of a car was a bizarrely similar feeling.
    It was an odd memory to call up, but it helped keep the wave of panic about to crash over me at bay, at least for a moment.
    It took a few minutes for me to clear the drug-induced fog in my brain and remember what happened. The last thing I remembered was laughing as Sam left my apartment to get some food and drifting off to sleep.
    But somehow I ended up in the tiny space, jostled by every bump in the road; my well-padded body no help on the crappy city streets. Straining my eyes to see in the blackness that was only pierced by a sickly yellow light of indeterminate source.
    A brief memory flashed. Standing in my bathrobe looking at a masked face. My hand flew reflexively to the back of my neck, a tiny spot of soreness where the needle had jabbed into me.
    Right. I'd been abducted. That was bad. Very bad. Need to not focus on it right now bad. But Sam would save me, right? My hero, my cop, my lover. Except by the time he got back to my apartment I'd have been long gone. I doubted the men who took me left a polite note of explanation with phone numbers and addresses.
    I prodded at the walls of the trunk, trying to find a weapon or an escape plan or anything to keep me from falling apart completely. As long as I was trying, looking, everything could be fine.
    A wrenching sob threatened to burst from my mouth but I choked it down, knowing once I started I would never stop.
    I took five deep breaths and then went back to my exploring. I cursed as my fingernail snagged in a corner, pulling a string and a bit of carpet with it as I yanked it back. I sucked on the sore tip and froze as the car slowed down. I could hear traffic all around, but no voices or animals. It occurred to me that we hadn't stopped moving once since I woke up. Which meant we had to be on a road with no traffic lights. Highway, or at least one of the parkways that led out of the center of the city. I shifted over to press my ear against the back of the trunk. As the car sped up and performed a series of twisty maneuvers, I decided we were definitely on the parkway. That was good news. It meant I wasn't too far from home.
    I used to know this road like the back of my hand. Every Sunday afternoon headed up to brunch. We'd laugh about our hangovers and tease each other about how bad the food would be. On those days everything seemed perfect. I'd thought our whole lives would continue like that, and he – no . I couldn't think about him. Not the time or the place for that.
    Anger at myself fueled me and I searched my mind for a solution. I'd seen a story on the local news once about a girl who was kidnapped and stuffed in the trunk of a car too. She managed to disable a brake light and got the car pulled over. But I didn't even know where the brake lights were; let alone how to sabotage them.
    I fumbled at where I thought the latch for the trunk would be, but there was nothing to hold onto. If I'd had a screwdriver or something maybe, but with bare hands and no light it was impossible, and my abductors hadn't been thoughtful enough to leave me a toolkit, either.
    As my bruised finger hit the metal an idea came to me. I felt for the uneven carpet in the corner and found it. I pulled at it slowly, struggling to get enough leverage with my arms wedged beside me. Being a big girl in a compact trunk didn't leave a lot of space to move my long limbs.
    My broken nail throbbed but I pushed ahead, shoving everything except the careful yanking out of my mind. The