Locked In: No Way Out Series - Book One

by Ryan, Shari J.

  Snatcher's harrowing laughter bellows as Sin's shadow grows larger, covering more of the light. "Why don't you join her in there if you care so much?" Snatcher waves his arm toward me as his laughter continues to echo inside of the shed and my head.

  "You don't know what you're doing. Don't you hear that?" Sin asks him. "This roof is coming off today. She'll die in here." I close my eyes to listen for whatever he's talking about, but I only hear the slight howls of wind in the distance.

  "That tornado ain't touching us," Snatcher growls.

  Tornado? Here? They come here? There hasn't been one in the three years I've been here, and we didn't have tornadoes where I lived—warnings sometimes, but never anything too bad. We would get hit with bad thunderstorms and hurricane winds from the coast, but other than that, the weather was never a concern.

  "You see that?" Sin says, pointing off into the distance.

  "She's fine," Snatcher grunts. "Now, get back to work. That wood ain't chopping itself."

  Snatcher pulls the door shut, locking me back in, locking themselves back out. Sounds of wrestling and thumps against the door make me jump back a couple of feet. The clatter of their groans and enraged words clash against the sound of the growing wind. The roof is going to get torn off, Sin said.

  I drop down in the corner beside the hole in the wall, tucking my knees into my chest and wrapping my arms tightly around myself. I wish I didn't still feel the fear. Out of everything I can't feel any more, fear is the one thing I wish I could forget.

  As whistles of wind seep in through the cracks on both sides of me, I peek out through the hole, scared of what I might see. I should be scared. Ghostly dark clouds are kissing the sprigs of grass in the distance, confirming Sin's assumptions.

  I turn around and look in each corner of the empty shed, wondering which corner might be safest. But I don't think anywhere in here is safe. Pulling myself up off the ground, I run to the door and press on it slightly, checking to see if Snatcher had time to seal the lock before their scuffle began. I wonder if they're even still out there.

  The door gives way a couple of inches, enough space to see the two of them grappling on the ground—Sin getting in most of the punches. Snatcher looks like he's giving up or becoming too weak to fight back, and I can only hope that to be the case. Sin's shirt is torn nearly in half, exposing his back and the muscles that contract and relax every time he moves. I've never seen muscles so defined and large.

  "You caused this," Sin grunts. The veins on his forehead are thick and red, and sweat is dripping down his face. "I was put into that nut house because of you. You killed her. You did."

  "Don't be a fool, son. Everyone knows you did it."

  Killed who?

  Sin's fist pounds directly into Snatcher's cheek bone, which seems to knock him unconscious, but Sin doesn't seem to care as he stands up and pushes his fingers through his dark, thick hair. He spits blood and gives Snatcher another kick to the side. "Shithead," he seethes.

  Should I… My pulse races with hope as I press the door open a few more inches, causing a moaning sound within the hinge. Sin's focus meets mine, but I can only look at him for so long as the dull, grey light in the sky nearly blinds me. I haven't been in the presence of this much brightness in three years, and it's completely overwhelming and painful.

  Another hard gust of wind takes me by surprise and pushes the door and me backwards, sealing me inside once more. No. No. No. I quickly regain my balance and press into the door again, this time falling directly into Sin's arms.

  Warmth. So much warmth.

  "Let's go," he says gruffly. I'm free. Am I free? The soft dirt tickles the bottom of my feet as Sin pulls me away from the shed. The wind, while harsh and angry, feels amazing on my face, and the way the material of my shirt brushes up against my bare flesh makes me smile. I don't fight against the force Sin is using to drag me away, but maybe I should. And maybe I should focus on the black clouds threatening to swallow us whole, but I don't want to.

  "Where are we going?" I ask, breathlessly.

  "The basement." There's a basement? We continue running until my legs give out, which doesn't take too long. I don't have enough strength or muscle to carry me far.

  "I can't—" I wheeze heavily, falling to my knees, wincing from the small pebbles and soft dirt that press into my skin. "I can't run."

  He scoops me up in his arms and throws me over his shoulder as if I were nothing more than a bag of sand. We move quickly through the rocky terrain and across a dirt road until we reach a slight hill, which reveals a large house with old brown-shingled siding and several broken windows. "The basement is in there?"

  He doesn't respond, but his speed picks up until we arrive in front of two metal doors protruding from the ground. As he places me down on my feet so he can fuss with the locks, I notice a patch of green grass off to the left of me. I need to feel it. Reaching my foot over, I sweep my toes over the blades, remembering the sensation, relishing it.

  "Come on," he says. I turn my attention to the open doors that lead to a set of deteriorating cement stairs. With Sin's hand gripping my forearm, I'm tugged down the steps, tripping myself several times before reaching the bottom. "Stay here."

  He hits a switch, illuminating the daunting stone walls around us and runs back up the steps to seal the doors, locking them with a metal bar from the inside. "What about your dad?" I ask.

  He hops down the stairs and steps directly in front of me, showing me how much larger he is than I am. "He can rot out there."

  "Oh," I say. I think that would be okay.

  As I study his face, I see the wounds left behind from his brawl, and I reach up and touch the side of his cheekbone. "You're bleeding." His skin is so rough that each follicle of facial hair pricks my skin like tiny needles. I don't flinch from the pain, but he flinches from my touch.

  I ball my hands together against my chest, looking around the basement for something to help with his bleeding. Behind him, I spot a rag and reach over to retrieve it. Without thinking, I bring it up to his face. "Here," I say, holding the material down over the wound as I apply pressure. It's what the nurse in mom would have told me to do. His eye twitches as I press a little firmer. "I'm sorry."

  He nods his head and wraps his hand around mine, pulling it away from his face. "Don't be," he snaps. His edginess frightens me a bit, but not enough to make me back away. Something about him makes me want to stay right where I am.

  As I continue dabbing at the wound, cleaning up the excess blood, a thousand questions flood my mind. But the only thing I really want to know is, "Have you been here this whole time? All three years?"

  Again, he nods. "No. I was locked up, and I just came back home last week after being gone for four years."

  "Were you alone, deprived, and tortured too?" Doesn't sound as brutal when I say it out loud.

  "Yes, but not like you." The tips of his fingers feather softly across my cheek, making me want to lean into his touch—a touch—and beg for more. Why is he touching me like this? "After being held in solitary confinement for so long, a soft, gentle sensation feels foreign. So foreign, it can be unbearably painful." He's right. Aching chills shoot down the lower half of my back, but I won't complain. "Fulfilling hunger after starvation can make a person sick." He removes his fingers from my cheek and in turn, presses his thumb against my bottom lip. I think I want to taste the salt on his skin because I can't remember what salt tastes like. But his thumb moves away quickly and the look in his eyes darkens with anger, or hunger, or maybe I don't know what the look is. "But the scariest observation I've come across…" Both of his hands cup around my cheeks with a slight roughness as he forces me to look up at him. "Is that the aftershock of a storm can be worse than the storm itself."

  5

  Chapter Five

  REESE

  The light is gone. There are no cracks or holes in these walls—only darkness. The howls from the wind are also gone—there is no sound at all, actually. Sin sai
d we need to wait before opening the door, and I don't know why. "The worst of the storm must be over," I say into the darkness. "Don't you think?" I'd like to leave this basement now. That's what I think.

  Silence.

  He was standing beside me when the power went off, but he's not here now. I drop down to my knees, feeling around in front and behind me. I'm not familiar with this basement, and I don't know how large it is, so I haven't gone far. "Don't move," he finally says.

  I stand back up, walking toward his voice, ignoring his demand. "Don't tell me what to do," I say quietly. Maybe I should be afraid of him. I'm not.

  His hand catches my arm, and he squeezes tightly. A little too tightly. "I told you not to move." His touch and words make me freeze in place. Maybe I am a little afraid.

  When his hand releases my arm, I take a couple of steps back, feeling the edge of the steps at my calves. I need to get out of here. I take slow, careful steps backwards—up the stairs until I run my hand over the metal bar on the door. I press on the edge, trying to push it to the side. Freedom feels almost close enough to touch; yet the feeling in my gut tells me I'm nowhere near escaping this nightmare. Mom always said, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree." She was talking about my similarities to Dad, but I think I might be able to say the same about Sin and his father.

  As the metal bar unhinges a smidge, I'm grabbed, dragged down the steps and pinned up against a wall. "Don't leave me," he says, breathing heavily against my lips.

  His hands are heavy, pressed against my shoulders and the uneven stones on the wall behind me are knifing into my skin. "You're hurting me," I utter.

  He immediately releases the pressure and rests his hands over me gently instead. "Why were you locked up?" I ask, wishing I could see his face, the look in his eyes, anything that might be an indication of who he is, who he was.

  "Why were you locked up?" he retorts.

  "I don't know." I wish I knew. I think. Or, maybe not.

  "I know why we were both locked up," he says.

  My heart flutters and a squeezing pain bites around my gut. I clench my hands tightly, unsure if I'm capable of learning the reason for my three-year imprisonment. "But you won't tell me, will you?" I ask. That would be too easy after all of this time.

  Sin's hand finds my face, and his thumb grazes back and forth from my ear to the corner of my eye. "It was my fault," he says gently. "I shouldn't have agreed to help my father."

  "Help him do what?" I ask. "What did you do?"

  "Reese," he whispers. "Do you remember me?" The question completely alarms me, makes my head hurt, and my body ache even more. Remember him. Where would I have seen him? I close my eyes, suddenly needing more darkness than what is already around me to recollect the memory of him. Remember him. Remember him. I went to an all-girls school. I had two friends who lived on the same street as I did, and I played soccer, but that was with all girls too. I have never met a man like him.

  "No, I don't remember you. Should I?" I know I would remember him if I had known him. I wouldn't have forgotten his face. Those eyes. Although I suppose people can change in three years, as I imagine I have.

  "You remember me," he begins. "You were standing in front of me when both of our lives changed. You looked right at my face. Your eyes were wide like you had seen a ghost. You hugged yourself tightly as someone dragged me away, and you followed me halfway down the hall until you were called back. You told the nurses not to hurt me. Don't you remember?"

  Despite the barrage of memories flooding through my fragile mind, I have forgotten how to breathe in the past fifteen seconds. It's as if a vacuum has sucked all of the wind out of me, and it's because I do remember. The lost young man being taken away against his will is one of the last memories I have before I was taken. I had forgotten that day entirely, partially because Snatcher knocked me out shortly after, and partly because I didn't want to remember anything leading up to the moment I was attacked. Now, I'm trying to remember everything, though.

  With little flashes of memories from that day, I remember thinking Sin must have been only a couple of years older than I was. His hair was everywhere—a complete mess, and his eyes were sad and scared. I was scared for him, and yet, I didn't even know him or why he was there. They had him in a blue hospital gown with cuffs around his wrists. Those cuffs were tight—I recall studying the red rings around his wrists as they dragged him down the hall, wondering how much it must have hurt. They wouldn't even let him talk. They wouldn't hear me out either, but it was because I was a no one and shouldn't have been there in the first place. I only wanted to know what he did to make people so angry with him. I wanted to know why he was being dragged off against his will and where they were taking him. Those were questions I never got to ask. "I do remember you."

  "Okay. Do you know what I was blamed for?" he asks, backing away, leaving me to feel lost again in the thick opaqueness of this room.

  "No," I tell him, looking in every direction for a hint of where he might be. It's useless, though.

  "Good," he whispers into my ear, startling me.

  "I need some light. I just need a little light. Panic has been bubbling in my belly for what seems like an hour and I can't—I can't deal without the light."

  "He might be out there, Reese. Leaving is not a good idea."

  "We should at least try. He might not be out there," I argue. "Are we in his basement? He could easily find us down here, couldn't he?"

  "This is not his basement. He won't find us down here," he says firmly.

  "I want to leave," I tell him again.

  "No. No. No!" he shouts. "We need to stay here. We need to wait."

  My breaths fall shorter, heavier, harder. I feel like the walls are caving in on me, and the ceiling is falling, falling, falling. I imagine deadly dagger-like spikes in the wall growing closer, threatening to end my fears and struggles. Musty air saturates my lungs, and I wheeze through each breath. Screaming is hard, but I manage wispy cries that reach a soft peak before silent air continues to steal all of my sound. I pull at my hair and scrape my nails against my neck. I need the light. I need light. I need air. "I need—please. Please. Please," I cry senseless, useless words. "Help. Help."

  Sin's arms reach around me, embracing me. My head his against his chest and I can hear his erratic heartbeat—like the thundering sound of an earthquake. He squeezes me tighter, and I ignore the pain. His hand grips around the back of my neck and the side of his face brushes against mine—his razor-blade hairs scratching at my skin. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry," he breathes into my ear. "Forgive me. Please. I need you to forgive me. That's all I need. Then you can go." The warmth of his body allows the images of the closing walls to blur within my mind. I should want him to let go, but I need the comfort.

  "Forgive you for what?"

  He releases me, and again, he's gone, but this time I hear metal clanking. It's the door—he's opening the door and letting in the light. I just need a little light, and I'll be okay. I'll be okay. The door parts with a crack, but the light doesn't leak in. Where is the light? I clamber up the steps, using my hands and feet, finding Sin's legs at the top of the stairs. "Where is the light?"

  "It's night."

  "But there should be a moon, stars, something. Right?" I peek out through the crack just enough to see that there are no stars and no moon. Just low bearing clouds and rain locking in the darkness of the night's sky.

  "We'll leave in the morning. He could be out there."

  "Leave to go where?" I ask.

  "I don't know, but I can't be found, Reese. You have to understand something; I can't take the chance on someone seeing me." He closes the door in front of us, locking it back up with the metal rod. "Maybe you should go yourself."

  "Right now? You'll let me out?" I ask.

  "Yes, but you should understand that my father might be right outside, and I won't be able to control what he does to you." I sit down by Sin's feet, resting my elbows on my knees and holding my head in my hands.
I could go, but I'd be alone in the dark. Alone and in the dark. I nod my head, knowing he can't see, but I'm admitting to myself that I'm safer here with Sin in the dark than I am outside in the dark where Snatcher could find me.

  "Are you going to hurt me?" I ask.

  His hand is around my elbow, and he pulls me up to my feet. "I already have hurt you. Don't you understand this?"

  "No, I don't."

  "You should think wisely about your decision. And you should know that I lived in the psych ward of a hospital for the past several years, sometimes spending days surrounded by padded walls while suffocated in a straightjacket."

  "Before that, who were you? You know, we were both someone before we were taken. Right?" There is a pause within his words and I don't know if he's thinking of what to say or expects me to go first. I suppose it would be easier if I started. "As for me: I was a bookworm who loved sitting outdoors on our front porch with a book until the sun set each night. I also loved to visit the sick children at the hospital and play with them when they were well enough to play. And sometimes I babysat for our neighbors' twins. Then on Sundays, I would volunteer to help watch the town's babies during church. I tried to do as much good as I could, and I wasn't supposed to be taken or tortured for three years. That's not what's supposed to happen to good people."

  He's breathing heavily beside me as his feet shuffle against the concrete. "I worked for my father," he says. "We'd cut firewood for the town."

  "What else?"

  "There is nothing else. I cut wood, I ate my meals, I went to bed, and I'd do it all over again the next day."

  "No school?" I ask.

  "I'd go sometimes, but my father didn't seem to think I needed an education to cut wood."

  "Well, what about your mother. What does she do?" I assume his parents aren't together, but nothing would shock me now, especially since I didn't know Sin existed—or rather, was Snatcher's son until a week ago.