The car shook as they drove up the dirt road up to the next farm on their list. For a school project they were conducting some user research about irrigation systems and getting some firsthand interviews with people who actually used these things on a regular basis. Now they were hitting their third and last farm of the day, a farm owned by John Bellamy. They hadn’t been able to get a response when they called into the farm, but one of their classmates knew him and said he would tell John that they were coming. Pulling up outside the farmhouse, the three girls got out of the car. Fiona would have joined them but she was stuck in another group project meeting, leaving the other three to do the grunt work of going and getting information from farms. Lily wore her patent Doc Martens, black pants, a black tank top and a denim jacket over top to ward off the early fall chill. Joyce wore a tan leather jacket over a white shirt, ripped jeans, and black high top Converse on her feet, while Emily got out of the driver seat in red Hunter rain boots, jeans, and a thick black turtleneck sweater. Armed with a tablet with their questions and to write down the answers, Joyce knocked on the door of the farmhouse.

After about 30 seconds the door opened and a gruff looking older man with an imposing physique stood in the doorway. “What do you want?”

The girls were a bit taken aback. “Mr. John Bellamy? I’m Emily, this is Joyce and Lily. We’re doing some research for a project related to farm irrigation systems and hoped you would be willing to answer some questions? Nick said he would be letting you know we were coming.”

“He did.” The man said stiffly. “I said no, so not sure why you girls still turned up today, I’m not interested in whatever project you are working on and don’t have time to deal with it today. So pack on up and get out of here.”

He turned around and went back inside, shutting the door. “Well, he was cheerful.” Joyce grumbled. “Guess we aren’t getting anything out of him.”

Walking back to the car, they passed a pile of junk and something caused Joyce to stop in her tracks. Getting looks from the other two, she walked cautiously towards the pile before gingerly picking up a half buried license plate and brushing off the right side of it. “Hey, this is Jasmine’s license plate I’m pretty sure!”

Jasmine was one of their friends who’s car had been stolen last week while parking at a friend’s apartment. Police didn’t have any leads on it but it was one of several stolen vehicle crimes reported around the university over the past month. While Joyce was brushing off the license plate, Lily looked out across the farmland and noticed a few men unloading stuff out of a truck near one of the barns. “Hey…” She started, tapping Emily on the shoulder. “Does that look suspicious to you at all?”

They were too far away to actually see what the men were unloading, but the men seemed to be in a rush to get whatever it was inside the barn. “I would say suspicious.”

“We should check it out.” Joyce said, a steely undertone in her voice. “If these guys are behind the stolen cars we could get a bunch of them back!”

Lily and Emily weren’t too sure about this but a few minutes later, they were parked down the road standing on the edge of the field that made up a bunch of Farmer John’s property. Joyce immediately ducked into the tall plants and disappeared from view. “You know what they say.” Emily said with a sigh. “Good friends never let their friends do stupid stuff alone.”

Lily sighed. “I hate how you’re right.” She muttered before following both girls through the field towards the barn.

With the height of the plants in the field, the girls managed to get pretty close to the barn before the field gave way to open ground. One of the barn doors had been partially open, which made Lily think someone was going to come back soon and they should probably leave before they get caught. “Let’s go take a look and see what the men were doing.” Joyce said. “I feel like we’re going to find something very interesting.”

“Can we just take pictures quickly and leave?” Emily pleaded. “I don’t like being here, especially after we were explicitly told to get off of the property.”

Lily couldn’t agree more. “Weren’t you the one to say that we wouldn’t let Joyce do the stupid thing alone?”

“Well, we’re here aren’t we?” She pointed out. “Now let’s go.”

Inside the barn they found a number of things that were most likely stolen. Some TVs, electronics, and other items were piled against one wall, two cars with no license plates took up space in the middle of the barn. Farm equipment dominated half of the barn, which they expected to find in a barn but based on rumours, it was possible those were stolen too. The girl’s crouched down behind some hay bales and surveyed the barn.

Joyce’s eyes stopped on the cars before shooting up and darting towards them. “This is it, this one is Jasmine’s!”

Lily and Emily were more cautious, watching their friend rush to the cars and Lily definitely had a bad feeling about this. “Joyce!” Lily hissed. “We should leave and call the police, we’re technically trespassing!”

“You got that right missy!”

Lily and Emily both shrieked as they were grabbed from behind by two large men who easily hauled the smaller girls to their feet and twisted their arms behind their backs. Two more men appeared from behind machinery and closed in on Joyce, who looked at the men, then at her whimpering friends helpless in the grip of more men and gave herself up. Seized by her upper arms, Joyce was frogmarched over to her friends, shooting them an apologetic look as Farmer John appeared with his arms crossed. “What do we do with them, boss?” One of the men asked.

John looked at the girls. “Stupid girls don’t know when to mind their own business. But they’ve seen too much. Lock them up with the bunnies, we’ll deal with them when we move the stuff tonight.

- - -

Farmer John hadn’t been lying when he said they were going to be locked up with the bunnies. Lily, Joyce, and Emily all found themselves shoved into the bunny hutch that they had seen behind the barn that held all the equipment and horses that they had seen. There were in fact bunnies, about a dozen of them who had run out of the hutch into the outer pen areas when the girls had been brought in and they remained outside, likely scared of the girls that now occupied their home.

Lily groaned, flexing her bound legs which caused the patent material of her boots to emit a loud squeak. To render the girls helpless, two of the thugs had brought out rolls of duct tape and had been very liberal in their application. They’d been marched over to the bunny hutch, where they’d been forced to kneel just outside of the pen. Hands wrenched behind them, the men went to work wrapping their crossed wrists with plenty of duct tape. The sound of tape coming off the roll sent shivers down her spine as Lily watched them wrap more tape above and below her breasts and then around her waist to pin her arms against her back. Her jacket offered protection from the sticky tape but then they moved down to her legs, where she was bound at the thighs, knees, and ankles. Tired by then of the girls’ protests, wads of cloth (which Lily was still unsure about their cleanliness) had been shoved into their mouths and multiple wraps of tape resulted in a severe gag that kept the girls’ protests now to mere whimpers.

Satisfied the girls were not going anywhere, they’d been carried inside of the hutch and left there as the door was locked. With the holes for the rabbits far too small for the girls to escape from, they were essentially caged. They’d been left alone at least an hour ago and despite the squirms and struggles, the girls had made no progress against their bonds.

Lily couldn’t believe this had happened to her again. Duct tape was one of her most hated binding tools, having been ambushed alone at home by a burglar a couple months ago and left taped up for her parents to find. Now on a research attempt, they’d stumbled into some criminal operation and now she was bound and gagged again with her friends. Joyce looked the most angry about the situation and had spent the most energy struggling so far. Lily didn’t blame her, after the humiliation of having her shirt and bra cut open when their party had been interrupted by a man who had bound and gagged all the girls in the apartment, she had a special hatred for being placed into a vulnerable position like this. Emily meanwhile had worked her way over to Lily and had patiently been attempting to pick at the tape around Lily’s wrists with her long nails. Unfortunately, she’d made very little progress so far.

Joyce rolled over and looked at her friends, a guilty look visible on the part of her face not covered in silver tape and she issued a muffled apology before going back to trying to scrape the tape against the edge of a two by four that was on the floor of the hutch. If they did somehow get free of the duct tape, there was a chance the girls could just ram their way through the wall of the hutch and sprint for freedom. The other chance of freedom that they had was Fiona. Based on Lily’s estimation, they were at least half an hour late for meeting back at campus with the fourth member of their group. If they were lucky, Fiona would’ve noticed by now, maybe been able to contact the authorities. She glanced at her friends and let out another muffled whine and squirmed again in frustration. If Fiona didn’t find them, who knew what would happen to them when Farmer John’s business partners got ahold of the three girls. In the distance, they heard vehicles coming up the road of the farm and all three girls’ heads shot up. Maybe rescue was coming after all…