Dark Abyss by Kaitlyn O'Connor (classic novels for teens .txt) 📕

her inner strength, though, she hadn’t managed to block out the many things disturbing her for more than a handful of minutes at the time since the night she’d met Miles Cavendish.

She couldn’t even sleep! If she managed to beat her thoughts back during the day enough to go through the motions of carrying on her research, at night when she lay down total chaos erupted in her mind. Random thoughts seemed to pelt her and lead her in first one direction and then another in an endless round of tug-of-war—everywhere except to composure and sleep.

Releasing a pent up breath of annoyance, Anna threw her covers off and rolled out of her bed. Food, she decided, would help her achieve her goal—sleep. She needed to find something pleasurable enough to keep her focus and filled with enough drugging elements to knock her out. High fat, she decided as she made her way down the hall toward the kitchen. Milk had sleep inducing properties.

Moving to the cooling unit, she opened the door and stood staring a little blankly at the nearly empty interior, wondering when she’d last ordered a grocery delivery. Of course, she never ordered much. For one thing, food was rationed. For another, it was damned expensive and she had to keep costs down and focus her spending on her project.

Which her ‘father’ had been paying for all along!

Squeezing her eyes closed, she forced the thought to the back of her mind. She tried. When that didn’t work, she started humming a tune, forcing her mind to focus on the tune rather than the thoughts battering to get inside.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t really think of any damned songs except the childhood songs her mother had taught her and they were too simple to help her keep focused. “Old MacDonald had a farm ….”

She picked up the container of milk and examined the expiration date. “Had sour milk because his cow had expired ….” She opened it and sniffed just to be sure. “Oh my god! I could make cheese with that! Ok, milk’s out. Fattening, fattening ….”

The take out boxes were empty, she discovered, wondering why she’d emptied them and left them inside the unit. “Old MacDonald had a farm, e-eye, e-eye, O!” she sang, pitching the containers over her shoulder in the general direction of the trash bin.

“And on that farm he had wrinkly tomatoes and withered lettuce, something unidentifiable and a black, hairy moldy thing! E-eye, e-eye … fuck!”

Slamming the door of the unit, she turned to head to her cabinets to check those for something that might appeal to her. It took her eyes a few moments to adjust from the brightness of the cooler to the darkness of the kitchen, several critical moments for her eyes to discern that there was a big, black, impenetrable shadow between her and her objective. The split second she realized that the dark shape was roughly the size and shape of a very large man, she screamed.

Something brushed her arm—a hand—and she screamed again, whirling to flee.

She slammed into the wall before she’d taken more than two leaps of fright. Stunned by the impact and the discovery that the wall was a lot closer than it should have been, the man she’d slammed into had coiled his arms around her before she’d gathered her wits.

Screaming again, she dropped all of her weight against his arms and slithered halfway through the lose coil before he realized what she was doing and tightened his arms, pinning her face against something soft and squishy. It hardened while she was huffing and puffing out muffled screams against it, flailing her arms and legs wildly and gyrating her body to try to get loose.

“Grab her god damn it!” the man above her bellowed.

She sensed the presence of a second man and then a third as they surrounded her moments before she felt them grabbing at her. The man holding her head released her abruptly. For a handful of seconds, she managed to keep her arms free. She surged upward when the man holding her let go. Someone grabbed her around the hips. She slapped at his head and shoulders, heaving against him to try to break his hold and then someone grabbed her from behind, manacling her arms to her sides. A hand nearly as big as her face clamped over her mouth and nose. A fresh wave of panic swept over her when she sucked in her breath and found her mouth and nose passages blocked by the hand. She sank her teeth into the heel of the hand over her mouth and sucked in a sharp breath when he yanked his hand back with a hiss of pain.

“Don’t cover my face! I can’t breathe!” she exclaimed in a frantic gasp, twisting her head back and forth to prevent the man from covering her face again.

He hesitated.

“Gag her,” the man in front of her said grimly. “She’ll start screaming again the moment we get her out of the house.

“I won’t!” Anna said pleadingly. “I swear! What do you want? What are you doing in my house?”

“Your father,” the man who’d spoken before growled angrily. “You’re going to lead us to him.”

Shock went through her. She stilled, but her mind was churning. Miles Cavendish? She hadn’t even accepted that he actually was her father and now, within the space of a week, she’d met a man claiming to be the man she’d thought long dead and a dangerous gang of men wanting to get to him through her?

“I’ll take you to him!” she volunteered. “I know where he is!”

“Just like that?”

Anna nodded vigorously, ignoring the twinge of guilt that stung her. Why should she die for a