Never Safe ✔︎

Chapter Three

Once the man is done opening the cage, he comes towards us.

"Here" the man says as he sets down the tray and goes to take the empty one. He grabs the tray and walks towards the cage entrance where the lock is.

"Wait, we need to go to the bathroom" I say while trying to sound nice.

The man grunts angrily but turns back to us. When he gets to Ari, he roughly grabs her and pulls her to her feet, which is nearly impossible because of how short the chains are. He grabs a key from his pocket and puts it in a hole in the cuff of the chain. Soon the left cuff Ari was wearing fell to the ground. Next the man works on the right cuff, which falls soon after. I stand up so he can work on mine, but he just grabs Ari and walks towards the door.

"Wait, what about me?" I ask confused. He looks at me and laughs, I am so confused as to why.

"Do you think I would be stupid enough to unchain both of you at the same time?" the man says cynically. Ari looks at me with wide eyes. I just shake my head and mouth for her not to do anything. She nods her head in understanding as the man grabs her arm and roughly pulls her out the door. I sit back down on the floor, uncomfortable from standing in that awkward position for longer than necessary. I think about how bad our plan went and how we need to come up with a new one later. I wait for Ari wondering why she's taking more than two minutes. I look in front of me and see that he didn't lock the cage, but there is no way I can get out of these cuffs. At least I know that our escape needs to happen when we are out of our cuffs, or when one person can open the other persons with the man's key. I need to really take in my surroundings when it's my turn for the bathroom. After about five more minutes Ari finally comes back with the man. He still has his hand on her arm roughly. They come to where I am, and the man chains Ari back up before he comes to me. I stand up quickly before he can pull me up like he did with Ari. He quickly unchains me and grabs me like he did with Ari. As we walk out the door, I look at Ari who is still sitting on the dirty ground. I follow him out the door and I can't say I'm surprised by what I'm seeing. The house looks to be a small farmhouse that needs a lot of work done on it still. It looks like nobody has lived here in years. As he pulls me to the bathroom, I see two men at a card table in the middle of what was supposed to be a living room, on their phones oblivious to what was going on around them. I could immediately tell that the man who kept coming down to us is the man in charge. The man continues to lead me to the bathroom that is worse than any public restroom I've ever seen. I go in and shut the door, and try to think of something I can do, so the next time we go to the bathroom we can escape. I remember I had my phone in my pocket at the mall, so I quickly check my pockets. I feel nothing and I sigh in frustration. I look around and see nothing of importance, such as a window or tool I can use as a weapon. I use the bathroom since I desperately had to go. I make sure not to flush in case my kidnappers hear it and know I'm finished. I quickly wash my hands and turn to the little mirror to assess my appearance. I first notice my hair that is all ratted and matted together. I comb through it many times and that helps immensely. Next, I notice the bruise on my face from where I was slapped. There's not much I can do about it at this point. Lastly, I look at my clothes which are a mess. I brush all of the food that's smashed into my hoodie and run it under water from the sink to clean it up as much as I can. After I fixed myself as much as I could and moved on to snooping around the small bathroom. I turn to look under the sink in the little cabinet and am met with only toilet paper. I sigh and close the cabinet, that was the only spot where anything would be hidden. I realize that our best option for a plan is to take time to formulate one. The less thought out it is, the more flawed it will be. I flush the toilet and slowly open the door to see the scar faced man staring at me. He grabs my wrist and slowly drags me back down the stairs to the room I have been forced to call home for the time being. Ari is just sitting there looking helplessly at me and that's when I realize how bad of a situation, we are actually in. The man chains me back up and shuts the cage locking it. He leaves and once again it's just me and Ari left until supper.

"Wynter?" Ari asks looking at me.

"Yeah?"

"Do you think we will beokay?" she asks near tears. "Honestly" she adds.

"Honestly? Yes, or else they wouldn't feed us or have kept us alive this long." I reply.

"True, what do you think they want?"

"It's probably ransom, about money. You know how rich dad is because he's a politician."

"Hopefully, but why wouldn't they have already done it?" Ari questions.

"I'm guessing they need to come up with a plan on what to do" I say trying to calm Ari down. I would assume that it won't be much longer, but with the two men on their phones, it might take longer. I made sure not to tell Ari that because it might freak her out. The only way those stupid men were able to kidnap us is because we ditched Jace and Tyler. I now regret ditching them to shop since they would have been able to beat them up easily. Where they were trained, they learned how to fight, and Tyler and Jace practice every morning together in our home gym. I wished I had learned how to fight when they wanted me to.

"Let's just eat" I say looking at Ari.

I see they brought us the same food as before. I'm guessing they bought it at a store, or else they would have had to make it, which I highly doubt. We dig into the food and it's old and cold, but better than nothing. We both finish the food fast and are glad that this time they brought a water bottle for us to share. We agree to split it in half, and I offer to go first. I drink maybe ¼ of it and give the rest to Ari.

"You need to drink half" Ari says trying to hand the water back to me.

"I'm done, if I drink anymore, I'm going to puke up everything and then I'm really going to be thirsty" I say stubbornly while lying. Honestly, more water sounds so good, but I know Ari is really thirsty. She takes the water and starts to drink it. Within seconds Ari has drank the whole water bottle and sighs contently with a smile. I would do anything for her, she is like a sister to me.

"What time is it?" Ari asks.

"12:25" I say. "We need to come up with a well thought out plan."

"For sure, we have to make sure there aren't any flaws, but why don't we just wait for your dad to pay the ransom?"

"True, but if we escape before the ransom then we can go home early" I reply. Another reason is because we don't know for sure that it's ransom, but I'm not telling Ari that.

"First things first, we need to do it tonight, when the other two men are sleeping, and we get a head start. We don't know how far we are from home." I say. Ari nods her head and agrees with me. "We should wait until it's about 11:00 P.M. and then when scar faced man comes to get us to go to the bathroom. You wait until he unlocks your chains and talk to him while I use the supper pan and smack him in the head. When he falls, you grab the key and unlock my cuffs. We need to chain him up and gag him, so the others don't wake up to his screaming. We can use my hoodie, and then we'll sneak upstairs. We need to make sure to be quiet as we leave, to avoid any problems. We then find out where we are and ask to borrow a phone, then we'll call dad. Where he will pick us up" I say proudly. If we execute this right, we might be able to make it work.

"How are you such a genius?" Ari says while smiling. I can tell that she is encouraged by the plan. By the time we explain everything and get it figured out, it's 2:00 and we once again are bored. We talk more about our future and the plans we have.

At about 3:25 the door opens, and all three men come in and open the cage door.

"Don't talk unless we tell you to" the scar faced man says rudely as he pulls out a knife. Ari scoots back towards the wall and I scoot towards her. The man pulls something out of his pocket, and I see that it was my phone. And that's when I realized what was happening, they were going to make the ransom call on my phone. That's actually really smart, because now my dad won't have the kidnapper's number. Now, if the ransom is before nightfall than we shouldn't try anything, but if it's after tonight, then we need to make sure we escape. I look at Ari and mouth 'ransom' to her. I see her relax slightly and nod her head. The shortest man, whom I've rarely seen, unlocks the cage door and comes closer. The short man and the other man, who don't do anything, come up to me and Ari. They cover our mouths with their dirty hands and wait as scar faced man comes over. He dials a number on my phone and soon someone answers.