Prologue Nothing could cut the heat of the jungle. The fan overhead turned, but sweat still ran down her forehead. She would have wiped it away, but the fuckers had tied her hands to the bedpost the night before. Poor little kidnappers couldn’t handle one small escape attempt without getting pissy. Too bad she’d only managed to cut one of them before they had captured her again. Alea closed her eyes. Sunset had shadowed the little room with increasing darkness. They would be back, and she wasn’t sure she could handle another night of watching her abductors use the other women they had caged with her. They were all in school, the pigs had told her. They were supposed to learn what a woman’s real place was. Before she’d been taken and sent to this hell, she’d been a graduate student at New York University, studying international politics. Now she was majoring in misery, forced to watch her fellow abductees endure all kinds of sexual deviancy from men who abused them. From the room beside her, she could hear the high-pitched whimper of a woman in pain and the staccato thud of a headboard hitting the wall. Alea shut her eyes, wishing she could close her ears to block out the sound. When would this nightmare end? The days were bleeding together. She was losing track of time—and her grip