She stood there staring and tried to decide what to do. Close it off? Extend the glass to the floor? Add a secret panel? Replace it with bulletproof glass?
Closing it off was an issue, mostly because of the fluid dynamics to the pool. It would be a major redo to pipe around a solid wall. Of course, if it was a mesh wall, it would stop most anyone, and the water flow would be fine.
A mesh wall? How would she even make it secure? A padlock, she supposed. She was already tired of this nonsense. Surely there was a better way. Which type of war was she preparing for? Defend her home, or abandon it? Maybe she should just find Chance and attack him right now.
Both? Or all three. And Lucas. What was she supposed to do with him? Was he going to fight, or run? She realized it was time to make go bags. Weapons and clothing and wigs and whatever else they needed. Go bags. That was hardly all she needed to prepare. She grabbed her leather notebook and sat with her feet dangling in the water, writing lists for war. Chance was coming. He was going to break in and kill them. That was all Jaspierre could think about. That dog might not have been Chance, but the next person to break in would be Chance.
Lucas flicked on the lights and stared at the massive control room. He sat down in her chair and slid around, running his fingers on each button and latch. Oh, and the sword. He wondered which lever it was. He tugged on one and it didn’t budge. For all he knew, every knob was both a switch and a weapon. He looked for the button she had told him about. It was a black square button in the lower right console. When it was clicked on, it would turn red. Then all he would have to do was put his hand on the heat sensor. Red meant the heat sensors were active, and ready. So he clicked the square black button and it did, in fact, turn red. Now came the hard part.
Finding the sensor.
If he pressed his hand on the wrong spot, a different panel altogether would open. He needed the dumbwaiter. He had seen it so many times before. He would recognize the box, she promised. The wall was so seamless and smooth, he couldn’t imagine he would find it. He went to the observation deck above the three rooms. It was such a strange thing to see Russell curled up on Lucas’s own bed down there. Russell sat, as he had once sat, staring at his fingers, wondering how long he would be allowed to keep them. He was obviously in rough shape; pale and miserable. Lucas was watching his own captivity.
Lucas pressed his hand on the wall to the left of the window panel. Nothing happened. He rubbed his hands together and pressed a little lower. She had said that his hand would have to be motionless. He had to find the sensor and hold steady, or it wouldn’t budge. Lucas had always thought it was fingerprint-activated, or perhaps even DNA-activated. It seemed funny to him it was simply a trick.
He pressed his hand into the wall again, a little higher. He waited, and wondered if he was even close. A half second before he moved, the door slid open. Without question, he knew it was the dumbwaiter. Fuck you was written in dried blood. Lucas found it surprising. Did Russell not understand his food was coming through here? Or that pissing off Jasp might mean his starvation? Russell seemed so angry. Lucas never had anger. He hated being in captivity, but most of the time, he agreed he deserved it. He did deserve it; he pressed that gas pedal and smashed her only friend. It started because he did it on purpose. He was a monster; he deserved no better than to lose ten years of his life in a prison.
Then there was that kitten. After his first murder, he took her tiny kitten and held it hostage and allowed it to have its furry little head cut from the tiny little innocent body. Accidental beheading. After all these years, Lucas still deserved anything he got. He was worse than her. She only seemed to kill when rage struck her, not because she could. He hadn’t even been angry. Rainbow, Katie, and that tiny kitten were all his fault.
She was as much a victim as he was. Sure, she didn’t let him out of the room, but she also didn’t hurt him, starve him, or torture him. Even the loss of his toes was his fault.
He shook off the memory and stared down at Russell. He was climbing out of the bed and backwards crab crawling, his left arm uselessly in his lap, over to the little dumbwaiter. Russell was different from him. It was obvious Russell had rage. He wanted to hurt her, not apologize. He would hurt her if he had the Chance. This thought bothered Lucas so much.
He didn’t speak to Russell, and he went back up to see what Jaspierre was working on. She was in the middle of writing in her notebook. He kissed her sweetly and asked her to come to bed. They went upstairs and took sweet solace in each other’s sweet arms.
Lucas had made a mistake, though, as the black square button was still red.
Chapter 14
Russell miserably sat with his finished plate. The little panel with the food inside snapped shut as he had pulled the plate out. He looked around his prison. He was sitting next to where the dumbwaiter existed, though now it was a smooth wall. Shoving the bed closer to the food wall seemed like an excellent idea.
He stared at the smooth wall. There had to be a door. He saw blood smears on the wall. That must have been where he woke up with his toes missing. It was directly below the windows at the top where silhouettes sometimes appeared. At the moment, there was nobody.
He didn’t know if he would ever be able to open it, but today seemed like a good day to try. The wallet, keys, panties, and the metal ring he tied around his waist and tucked in his pants. His feet hurt terribly, but he didn’t feel like his spirit was as broken. He was gonna get out and make her pay. Hurt her if he got the Chance. What kind of maniacal monster goes on a date with you, just to lock you up and cut off your toes! If only he’d listened to his dad, he could be coated in oil, working on cars instead of bagging groceries and meeting psychopaths.
He crab-crawled backwards, his left arm uselessly in his lap, to the wall under the windows. If only he could walk without that horrible burning pain running up through his body. He inched a little closer and rested, sitting with his back against the wall. Russell ran his right hand across the cold, smooth wall. Like glass almost. He pressed his feet tightly to the floor and slid his back up the wall. His weight on his feet, he paused, his hands spread out pressed against the wall. His left arm ached at the effort and it complained.
He stood there, panting for a few minutes. Then, he turned around. He let his bodyweight be held by his feet as he balanced himself with his fingertips against the wall. The pain wasn’t so bad when he managed to keep everything next to his empty toe sockets off the floor, and all his weight off his left arm. He shuffled to the side gingerly. Exploring turned into a little walking lesson. He hit the wall on the right, and instead of turning down the next wall, he carefully spun around and went back.
He lost his balance on the way back and yelped as pain crashed into his brain with such force that he lost his breath. His face pressed into the wall as he sobbed. Frozen in pain and sobbing with the agony, he didn’t notice the door slid open. The pain was so intense, and the door was so quiet. He could now leave his room.
As the tears subsided, he opened his eyes. And then, he saw it. Freedom. He had no idea why the door had opened. He didn’t care either, and he went into the hall. He hobbled and skip hopped as he tried to hurry without smashing his tender feet. In the hallway, he saw a smooth white walls, and a metal, spiral staircase leading to a solid wall.
He glanced around. There were probably lots of doors, hidden like his was. But the one at the top of the staircase seemed to be the most important. Up there was where the windows were. That was where she was. That was how she looked down on him. He painfully tried to climb the steps. He climbed one agonizing step at a time, pressing much of his weight into the railing with his right arm. His left arm clutched tightly to his chest; it was aching louder.
After a long while, he made it up the steps. He leaned against the door and listened. Nothing, no sounds. He waited, his ear pressed up close. His body ached, so he shifted to another spot, pressing his hand into the wall for balance. He heard nothing.
Helpless. He co
uldn’t knock. She might hear him. He couldn’t open the door; he couldn’t even see the door. Frozen.
But he’d listen. Someone would come, someone like Lucas, and let him slip by. Adjusting himself against the wall, he listened. He continued for an hour and a half. Pressing his ear, shifting his weight, listening intently, and shifting his arms as they ached. He held his breath, eyes shut. It almost sounded like…
The door slid away and he fell into the room. He fell hard and instinctively tried to catch himself with his arms. His left arm smashed into the floor and it burst open. All ten stubby sores slammed into the polished floor. He crammed his hand into his mouth and stifled his scream. Wheezing from the uncontrollable pain he curled into a ball. Blood gushed from his ruined arm. He took a deep breath, and tried to hold in all the air. He begged his body to stop. Just stop. So close to escaping! The pain must stop. His body shook harder as he pressed his hand into his mouth tighter, stopping any sound from escaping. He lay there for fifteen minutes, then twenty, then an hour, until the pain became manageable.
He rolled over to his back and sat up, hugging his knees to his chest with his good arm. The left arm was useless. His missing toes dripped blood. He hugged himself one-handed, and tried to calm his screaming body. He looked around. It was dark. Dammit. The darkness was not his friend. After that white hall and the white room, his eyes felt like they would never adjust. Though they would. He sat there, curled up, and eventually, the pain tormenting his body slowed to a bearable throb.
He saw tiny lights, so he crawled backwards across the room. It was slow, with one arm useless. He bumped into a chair in the dark. It was a massive control panel. Who knew what it would control? He wasn’t excited to touch any of the buttons. What if they released monsters on other victims?
Of course, one might be a light switch.
There might be one on a wall, though. He struggled with what to do next. He didn’t want to tempt himself, and the only button he wanted to press was the one that let everyone go.
He crawled until his back bumped a wall. Flailing at it, he wondered if this was an excellent spot for a light switch. His hand grasped a strange corner. He blindly reached into the air with his good hand, and his hand rested on the bottom step. Stairs. He couldn’t decide if he loved the stairs or hated the stairs. They were so hard to climb. But they might be a way out. He sat on one step and pressed with his right hand until he could lift his butt to the next one. Shifting up them backwards, painfully trying to spare his feet.
When he got to the top, it was another dead end. He wondered if he could open this door by listening and staying still. He still wasn’t sure how the other two doors let him go. It didn’t appear anyone was opening them for him, though, since the control room was empty and dark. It also seemed like he was escaping. Behind the next door must be a trap; the moment he stepped through, death. But he had to try.
He stood up at the top, and he ran his right hand across the door and the walls. He found a small switch and he clicked it. The door swung and he was out of prison, and into… a library? Oh yes. Her library. He remembered her making him that drink. That bitch.
*** Four Years Earlier ***
Jaspierre stood in her newly built control room. She liked this much better. Now she had a maze for her cats to play in, and she had fortified and improved Lucas’s room quite a bit. She added many dumbwaiters and the hidden doors. She hired Italian engineers to do all the work. They made her the most seamless, gorgeous, perfect walls. Their team developed the maze for her experiments. They never asked many questions about why she wanted such an elaborate, detailed project. But she paid them for their talents, and sent them back to Italy.
For one short week, she moved Lucas upstairs into her closet. It was interesting that, as a gorgeous twenty-three-year-old woman, the first man to stay a week in her bedroom was her hostage. She tied him to a ring on the wall with the chains her mother used to use. It was a strange thing to have a man so close. She barely spoke to him, though, he didn’t speak to her much either. Until one day when she got home early and he was singing a song. She opened the closet and looked in on him, and he stopped and blushed.
“My apologies. I didn’t know you were home.”
“Oh, yes. I am. Your room is almost ready.”
“Do I get a view now?” She shook her head.
“I figured as much,” he said.
“Sorry,” she said, and somehow they both almost believed her.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“Is there a way I could trade you for my freedom? A test? Is there anything I can do?”
“Like what?”
He sighed with relief; she didn’t say no. She might even say yes. “Well, I was thinking we could bet on things, and if I win, I get to leave. And if you win, you… could…have one of my digits. Toes first, of course, I’d get to pick which one I am betting.”
“I get your digit? Like… get it how?”
“Well, I dunno. Cut it off, I guess is what I mean. I have nothing else to trade with you. You love to experiment. I thought this might be fun for you.”
She closed the closet door.
Lucas woke up in his room. Everything looked different and the same all at once. The rings in the wall still hung in pairs up the wall like a ladder. But the other walls were a new, smooth, shiny, and cold material. Her observation window was bigger, and grander. He had a new bed, much nicer than the wobbly old tiny cot he had been sleeping on. He looked under the bed, and his razor was gone. Jaspierre was standing overhead.
“Okay, first wager. You have one hour to find your bathroom. You find it, and you are free. You don’t find it, I get a digit. Start thinking of your least favorite. No guesses. You either find it or you don’t.”
He didn’t know what to think. He had never had a bathroom before. Mostly an awkward bucket system, of course. Finding a toilet meant finding his freedom.
He looked under the bed and around the room. The walls were white and blank. There was nothing. He was puzzled.
He climbed the rings to the top and looked at Jasp. She smiled and waved. He did not see any bathrooms. He climbed back down. He ran his hands along the walls; they were so smooth. His fingertips didn’t find anything else. “Hot or cold?”
She roared with laughter. “I am not gonna help. I like having you here.”
Examining the floor and the walls, he searched. He pressed his ear to the walls, and he didn’t hear anything in them. He climbed the rings again and looked at the girl. “Come now; you don’t wanna chop off my pretty toe. Give me a hint.”
She flashed him a sweet smile and shook her head. He was so cute.
Sixty minutes came and went faster than Lucas would have liked. This game was so rigged. It was pleasant to have something to do. But it was unpleasant to have his toe on the line so to speak. He knew he could live without a few toes at least. Nineteen more guesses to freedom at least.
She told him he was out of time, and he climbed up the rings and looked at her again. “Try not to kill me when you take it, okay?” He flashed his smile and winked at her.
“Well, not tonight, but in a few days. I don’t have… a way to remove it right now.” Generally speaking, she wasn’t looking forward to it. But it was part of the game, and the game was quite fun.
“Can I know where the bathroom is?” Lucas grinned at her playfully.
She laughed. After the flick of a button, the wall panel slid over and a tiny toilet and sink were there. The toilet and sink were both facing outward, so his legs dangled into the room if he sat. And he would stand in his bedroom to wash his hands at the sink. He could see a little package with a bow on it.
“How, how… that wall was smooth! I don’t know how you did that. Magic, must be magic.” He looked at her. “Thank you. Then he blew her a kiss, climbing down the rings. He paused a few rings down. “Hey Jasp? How would I open it if I would like to use it when you aren’t here?”
; “Oh yes.” The door snapped shut, and she pressed a button. A little red light was visible from behind the white wall. Just a faint glow. “Hold your hand there for fifteen seconds. That light is only going to last for two minutes, so don’t forget where it is.”
He scrambled down the ring wall. Losing his toes was part of the plan. The plan to escape. Plus, he now had a bathroom! And to top it off, she was smiling at him occasionally. So if he kept flirting, she’d keep smiling and let him go. She would treat him better if she liked him a little. It was a long-term kind of game plan. Plus, frankly, sitting around bored half to death for the last six years hadn’t gotten him anywhere.
He pressed his hand on the light and tried to memorize the spot. The door popped back open in about sixty seconds. The hand print area was exactly as high as his nipple. Finding it vertically wasn’t going to be an issue. However, finding it horizontally would be annoying. He paced the wall. Four steps. His room was nine steps long, four of them to the bathroom door switch. He opened the little box with a bow on it and found a new electric razor. Nice. He was so pleased with himself.
He marked the second toe on his left foot, right next to the pinky toe. So long, toe.
A few days later when he woke up and his toe was missing, he regretted everything. He sobbed at his deformed foot. The sheer agony to move about horrified him. He curled up into a pit of despair on his bed and kept thinking, What did I get myself into? For her part, Jaspierre did not enjoy it much either. Chopping off a toe was bloody, irritating work.
Neither of them spoke about making another wager for several months.
Chapter 15
Jaspierre took Lucas’s hands and pulled him close. “He might still be in the house. He killed Marcy. It is time to fight. First, I will put you somewhere safe.”
Jaspierre (Jaspierre Trilogy Book 1) Page 10