As I locked my apartment’s door behind me and started running, I ruminated on the dream. I didn’t need a psychoanalyst to tell me what it meant. A feeling of loss, a hand reaching for me, surrounded by white? What other kind of dream could I expect right after losing my grandmother, my last remaining relative on the face of this whole freaking planet?

Shit.

My throat tightened, and I ran faster, pushing my body so hard that I had no time or energy for tears. Grammy may not have left me much – a little money to see me through the rest of my linguistics PhD program at the University of Toronto. But she did leave one giant, old-lady shaped hole, right in the centre of my chest. It had been two weeks since her heart attack, and it was still hard to breathe without her.

Stop.

These thoughts were not helping.

She’d be telling you, right now, to stop the belly-aching and to put your big girl panties on.

After losing her husband decades ago, and her only child, my mother, when I was a baby, she’d dealt with more than her fair share of pain and had come through it stronger than ever. I only hoped I had a fraction of her grit.

I slowed my pace, yanking my phone and earbuds from the pocket of my leggings, shoving the cord into the sound jack and pushing play on one of my Spotify playlists. If I couldn’t outrun grief, I could drown it out in the dulcet tones of Lorde and Lady Gaga.

But those earbuds turned out to be my undoing. Lodged firmly in my ears, music pumping, I didn’t hear them coming. I didn’t stand a fucking chance.

Because before I knew what was happening, I was grabbed from behind, yanked right off my feet, and thrown into the back of a van. It happened so fast I didn’t have half a thought in my head of screaming or defending myself. Those instincts kicked in late – far too late. After the doors to the back of the windowless van had been shut behind me and the vehicle started to move.

Oh, fuck no.

This was why Grammy was always harping on me not to listen to music during runs. Because I’d end up in a real-life version of Taken. Only I didn’t have a Liam Neeson-esque dad ready to save me. I only had... Well... Me.

After taking a moment to get used to the jostling movement of the van, I quickly sat up, bracing my hands on the floor and swinging my head around the dark space. It was like some kind of cargo van – an empty cube with nothing in it. Nothing but me, anyway. There was almost no light, and my breath came in ragged gasps as I willed my eyes to adjust to the darkness. My heart was about to break right out of my poor ribs, and my hands were slick with sweat. Panic threatened to overwhelm me. I’m just a PhD student, for God’s sake. I am not equipped to handle this.

But no. No, that wasn’t true.

The sudden denial, the flood of strength, didn’t come from me. It came from Grammy. She’d always told me I could do anything. That I was smart and worthy and strong. And my Grammy never told a lie.

Think, Cece, think.

My eyes were somewhat adjusted to things, now, though there wasn’t much to see. The back of the van was walled off from the driver’s compartment, so I couldn’t see the motherfuckers who were driving this thing. There was no way to get to them. My only other option was to try to escape. I hadn’t been tied up, thankfully. At least, not yet.

Well, that’s a grim thought.

The van swerved around a corner, tossing me into the metal side, and my shoulder screamed in pain.

“Oh, come on!” I hissed, trying to breathe through the pain. I steadied myself, holding myself against the wall in case we swerved again, gingerly pressing my fingers against my arm and rotating it.

Not broken. But I’m going to have a hell of a bruise.

Crawling along the floor, I found my way to the back doors of the van, feeling along their metal surface. There didn’t seem to be any way to open them from the inside. But there was no way I was going to let that stop me from trying. I had a sinking feeling that I did not want to get to whatever destination was in store for me.

I snorted at myself. I didn’t want to find out where the pedo van that I had been tossed into was going to take me? No shit, Sherlock.

“Alright,” I said out loud to myself, voice shaking. “If I can’t open the doors with a handle, I guess I have to try to ram them open somehow.”

But the only thing available to ram anything with was my own body.

So the question becomes, do I use my good shoulder and potentially screw up both sides of my body? Or use the already sore one?

Neither option was particularly palatable. But I had to do something. The pain in my left shoulder had faded to a dull throb, and I didn’t really want that sensation radiating from both sides of my body.

Messed up shoulder it is, then.

I got shakily to my feet, widening my stance to try to stay stable as we continued driving wherever the hell it was we were going. I took a few clumsy steps back.

Here goes nothing.

I launched forward towards the doors, the side of my body colliding with the metal in a vicious crash. Pain exploded in my shoulder, radiating down my arm, and I collapsed to the floor, my breath half-knocked out me.

Blinking back tears, I was readying myself to stand and try again, and again, to try as many times as it would take, when words echoed somewhere above me, booming in the small space.

“Don’t do that,” a bored-sounding male voice commanded from what sounded to be right above me.

I flinched, then squinted upwards and finally saw it. A black square in the upper corner of the van. A speaker, and, next to it, what looked to be a small camera. I flipped what I assumed to be the camera the bird, then quickly lowered my hand, thinking better of it. Probably didn’t want to piss these guys off any more than was necessary.

“Where are you taking me?” I shouted towards the speaker and camera, trying to will my voice to sound steadier than I felt.

No answer.

“God damn it.”

I stood again, cradling my aching arm.

“Tell me where you’re taking me. Or I’m going to keep ramming up against that door.”

It wasn’t a great plan. But it was all I had.

There was still no answer.

Fine. Have it your way.

I turned, despite the screaming of my shoulder, getting ready to launch myself at the door once more, when the van suddenly screeched to a stop, sending me flying to the floor in a heap. Before I could right myself, the doors were yanked open. Instinctively, I crab-crawled backwards, cornering myself against the front wall of the vehicle. A man, dressed all in black, jumped into the van and grabbed me, wrestling me beneath him as I screamed, spat, and kicked.

I’m not going to die in the back of this fucking van. Not today.

I managed to get my knee up, ramming it between the man’s legs as hard as I could. He gave a choked-sounding grunt, and I took advantage of the moment of surprise, wriggling out from under him and scrabbling for the open doors. I was so close. So close to being able to jump right out those doors -

- when a hand closed around my ankle, yanking me back. My arms slid out from under me as I was pulled, my chin colliding painfully with the metal floor, rattling my teeth.

“No, no, no,” I said, over and over again. It was like that was the only word left in my brain.

A second man appeared at the back of the van, jumping inside.

“Jesus, Hanson, can’t even keep a 25-year-old grad student under control?”

“Shut the fuck up and just give her the damn shot,” the man holding me growled as I fought to pull my wrists from his iron grip.

Shot? Did one of them have a gun?

The thought renewed my strength and I fought as hard as I could, with everything I had left, my teeth sinking into the first man’s forearm.