by Rachel Caine
I tell the flight attendant to take the day off with pay. We aren’t going to need drinks and dinner. She seems surprised, but nobody ever argues against an unexpected bonus, and her quick departure leaves us on the aircraft, alone.
Mike’s watching me as I check the time. It’s already eight o’clock central time. Flight time to Baton Rouge is about an hour and a half, but the weather between us means diverting around it, and that adds at least another half an hour. If we’re not wheels up until nine, that’s eleven on the ground, and no time to get to where Gwen’s being held. We should have tried having Rivard call it off. But I knew he’d screw us on that. It would be his only sure revenge.
Every second we waste now is blood in the water. “I’m taking the plane,” I tell him. He nods; he’s been expecting that. He knows I can fly it, and it’s fueled and ready. “Lock it up and let’s get in the air.”
I slide into the pilot’s chair and start preflight checks. The cockpit’s different—sleeker and more automated than most—but I’ve driven enough birds that everything’s clear at a glance. Tens of thousands of hours behind me. This plane’s a piece of cake. I plot the course and lock it in, and the onboard computer automatically loads the weather stats and adjusts. I was right. Two hours’ flight time.
I know how to clear the plane for takeoff, and I’m not surprised that the tower doesn’t notice the pilot change; small airfields like these, they thrive on people knowing their own business. I get on the com and tell Mike to take a seat, then taxi the plane out. Focusing on the work keeps the jitters at bay, and the images of what’s happening to Gwen a distance, at least for now.
Takeoff feels like victory, like speed, like we’re finally beating Absalom at their own game. But I know that’s an illusion. Being in the air is freedom to me, and the vibration of the plane is a familiar, soothing rhythm. It keeps the fear in check.
I lock in the autopilot and step away to talk to Mike. “Anything else we can do?”
“I called the FBI’s Baton Rouge resident office,” he says. “Both agents stationed there are coordinating with New Orleans. I’m trying Shreveport. We might have to go to the state police. Last resort, because I don’t know if they’ll take it seriously, but we’re running out of options.”
I leave him to make the calls. There’s nothing else I can do now but wait, and I’m not good at it.
Keep fighting, Gwen.
Keep fighting.
27
GWEN
The despair lasts until a ratty-looking, thin woman, arms pocked by a junkie’s scars, brings me water. The second I see it, I realize how desperately thirsty I am, and I take the bottle and guzzle it thirstily.
It’s a mistake, and I know that as soon as the drugs hit my system. In just a few minutes, I feel the chemical wave of them rushing through my veins, and though I try to pull my broken hand the rest of the way through the cuffs, I can’t seem to stay focused. The pain keeps holding me back, and no matter how much I try to concentrate, it’s like sand through a screen.
By the time the drugs take a real hold, I’m panting, sweating, moaning, and everything is smeared and blurred around me. Spiders in the sheets. Eyes on the ceiling. The terror is like something alive inside me, fighting to get out. I imagine it clawing through my skin, bursting through in thick, black streaks that choke and blind me.
When I finally pass out, it’s a mercy.
I don’t know how many hours go by. When I’m finally aware again, I’m not handcuffed anymore. My left hand is swollen, and I can barely move it. The drugs keep me soft-focused and weak, and I see the thin woman again. She shouts at me, a red cascade of sound, and then roughly scrubs me down with a wet towel. She takes off my nightgown and throws clothes at me. I can’t manage it myself, so she dresses me like a doll, slaps me when I start to lie down in the bed, and makes me lie on the floor. I don’t care.
I’m barely aware that she chains me to the bed’s thick iron leg. I’m gone again before I can work out what to do next.
The next time I wake, I’m much clearer. My left hand is massively swollen and bloodied now, and locked back in the handcuff. No chance now of pulling it loose. I’ve made a real mess of it, and I’m still not free.
I need to find a way out of this and get back to my children. Their faces are so clear that I feel I can reach out and touch them, and I’m seized by a feeling of loss so intense it tears me apart, and I start to cry. I lost them. I lost my kids.
I bang my left hand against the floor, and the pain that shatters through me is breathtaking. It destroys the grief, drives a bright shard of alertness into my brain.
I do it again.
I bite my lip to keep from screaming, and my whole body shakes from holding it inside. I think I’m going to fly apart, but I don’t. My head’s clearer when the storm’s passed. Pain helps. Pain drives out the last of the drugged fog.
I hear creaking footsteps, and I see the thin, bare legs of the woman who gave me the drugs. She stands over me. I nod like a junkie, and she watches for a moment, then leaves. I make sure she’s gone before I look around.
I’m in the same room. It’s the same bed. Did I really wake up here with Melvin, or was that some hideous drug dream? God help me, I wish I could believe that, but I know this is real. He’s real.
This is all grimly real, and I need to get it together because time is running out.
He told me something about the kids. Something awful. I reach for it, but it slips away like oil in water, and I’m almost grateful for that, because I can only remember the feeling of that despair, not the shape.
I focus on what’s in front of me. My puffy, wounded hand. The handcuff digging into swollen flesh. Purple-tinted fingertips.
The other half of the handcuffs is fastened around the iron leg of the bed.
I stare at that for a long few seconds, and then I slowly realize why I’m staring.
I can slip it off.
The bed’s heavy, but that leg? Thinner than the cuff. If I lift the bed, I can slip it under. The junkie girl isn’t careful. She thinks I’m beaten.
I inch over, careful not to make much noise, and I slowly lift myself up to take the weight of the heavy bed on my back, pushing it up. It’s awkward, and agonizing, and I have to concentrate hard to keep my trembling muscles from just giving up and letting the bed slam down again . . . but I slowly pull the empty side of the handcuff free, and then I bend back down, inch by inch, until the iron foot touches the wood again. Silently.
Somewhere deeper in this house, I hear bells. No, they’re chimes. A clock. I’ve missed some of the chimes, so I can’t tell what the time is, except that it’s later than ten. Could be eleven. Could be midnight.
Floorboards creak across the room. I get ready. Come up fast, I tell myself. I want to cry, I feel so lost, so tired, but part of me is still that forged steel that Melvin has made of me. Come up fast. If it’s the girl, swing the metal handcuff into her face. Get her down. Take her weapon, if she has one. Keep moving. Don’t stop.
I don’t know where I can go. I don’t think there’s anywhere to run.
But I’m not stopping.
I tense up as the footsteps come nearer.
It’s not the junkie girl I see first. It’s Melvin, and the sight of his broken smile shakes me once more. “Look who’s awake,” he says. “Annie. Get her up. We need to start on time.”
Start on time, like this is some Broadway production, and he’s the stage manager.
I come up with all the power I have and slash the handcuff at his face, but I fall short. I’m off balance, and he easily dodges it. He grabs me by the forearms and shoves me at Annie, who takes my left hand and squeezes so hard my knees give way. I don’t scream. Not quite.
“Do what I tell you,” she says. “Walk.”
She shoves me into a stumble, and she keeps her iron grip on my injury, reminding me she can inflict pain anytime she wants. Outside the room, I realize that we’re on the second level, and there’s a w
ooden railing on the right overlooking the room below. Everything smells of neglect and rot, and the floor creaks and groans with every step. There’s a large, gaping hole ahead, and above it, the ceiling’s fallen in. Water drips from the sagging, blackened edges to patter on broken boards. I can see a cloudy night sky up there, and when I tilt my head back, the drugs threaten to lift me up into the faint, glittering stars.
Annie leads me around the hole and close to the banister. The railing isn’t in any better shape than the floor. If she was on the side closest to it, I’d push her over. It would probably break loose and send her crashing down to the atrium below.
But I’m on the railing side. Go over, I tell myself. It’s better than what he has planned.
But I know the fall won’t kill me, and I’m afraid I’ll break a leg and lose any chance to run, or fight.
I stumble over the torn carpeting and fall forward so suddenly that Annie lets go. I catch myself on my hands. The left one gives a searing stab of agony, and I cry out and lurch over to my right . . . and my fingers catch on a loose piece of floorboard. It’s splintered at the end, and I feel the sharp edge. I don’t hesitate. I dig my fingers in and pull on the break, and a piece splits off. I grab it as Melvin jerks me upright by my hair. I don’t use it yet—not yet. I press it flat against my right wrist, out of sight.
Wait until you can be sure. You won’t get another chance. I know what’s coming for me will be slow, and brutal, and horrific, and the worst part, the worst part, is that I don’t think it will do any good to hold out. I don’t think anybody can help me now. I have to help myself. As long as he’s focused on me, he isn’t going after the kids.
The kids.
I remember what Melvin said now. Brady called me. We have Lily. I feel a wave of pure horror, like cold honey over my skin. No. No. No.
We’re approaching a closed door, and I slow down. Annie’s hand grabs my left wrist and twists hard, but it doesn’t affect me as much now, because there’s a greater pain. A greater horror. I can’t let this happen. I can’t let him have my children.
Melvin steps ahead and swings the door open. A gentleman’s gesture from a monster.
It’s his torture chamber. I don’t even need a glance to see that; it comes at me as one thing, as inevitable as winter. I don’t look at the details.
I’m looking at the girl. The girl who stands on that oval, bloodstained rug, with the wire noose around her neck. The girl with dyed black hair, coarse and clumped with sweat, which hangs over her features.
For that one, horrible, irrational second, I think that it’s Lanny.
I scream. It bursts out of me in a shocking rush, all of the agony and grief and horror so real and present that I feel everything in me has been cut to the bone and flayed open, spilling out like blood. I swallow the cry a second later, but I know what it reveals to him.
The girl isn’t Lanny. She’s not my daughter. But she’s someone’s daughter.
She’s standing on the balls of her feet, straining to keep her balance, because if she relaxes at all, the noose bites into her neck. It’s deliberate and cruel and finely calculated, just like the tools hung on pegboard, arrayed in order on the walls. On the wooden workbench, toolboxes stand open to display wrenches, screwdrivers, pliers . . . all color-coded, aligned in precise rows in the drawers.
Precise in his barbarity.
There are two other people in the room. One man adjusts lighting, ignoring the girl and her horrible struggle. Another one adjusts the focus on a video camera on a tripod. Both look completely normal, and it’s horrifying to see that this is just work to them. Just another day.
“Shit,” the video guy says. “I wasn’t rolling. I wish I’d gotten that scream. That was something.”
“Are we close?” Melvin asks.
“Ten minutes out. You can start with the daughter stand-in, but keep it short. They’re paying for the main event, not the opening act.” He’s just so . . . normal. He’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt with hula girls on it, and cargo shorts, and slip-on sandals. But nothing about this is normal. Not one of these people has a soul. There’s something missing in all of them.
I turn my head. Melvin’s stopped next to me. He’s staring at that poor girl with horrible, fixed intention, but he tears himself away to transfer that look to me. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen. The pupils of his eyes have dilated, and in the light from that room they look almost . . . red. Monster’s eyes. “She looks a lot like her, doesn’t she? Our Lily.”
I can’t breathe. I can’t move. There’s something so dangerous in front of me that it paralyzes even my voice. I knew he was evil. I never knew he was this. There’s . . . nothing in there. Nothing I can identify as the least bit human.
“Yes.” It comes out in a shaking whisper not out of fear but rage. “But this girl isn’t Lily. There’s no point in hurting her. It won’t have the same impact.”
“Won’t it?” He considers me, like a bird considering a bug. “I’ll let you choose.”
The video operator has quietly turned the camera on. I’m blinded as lights suddenly flare hot against my face. But I don’t blink. I can’t. If I show any weakness at all, he’ll have me.
“Choose what?” The small shard of wood’s pressed hard against my skin, and I can feel the gouge it makes. I shift, put my weight on my left foot. I make sure he can’t see my right arm.
“I’ll let this girl go if you ask to take her place. But you have to want it, Gina. You have to ask. Beg me for her. If you do, I’ll turn her loose and let her leave. It’ll take her hours to get to a road. Lots of time before she can find anybody to listen to her. She’s a junkie whore. Maybe nobody will ever believe her.” His lips twitch, and a slow smile overtakes them. “But she’ll be alive. I know how much you want to save people.”
Breath turns to poison in my lungs. He has me. He knows what I’m going to do. But before I do it, I say, “You’re never going to have Connor.”
“Oh, Connor’s all yours,” he says. “But I’m going to have Brady. Count on that. What’s your answer? Because either way, you’re going to die tonight. This one doesn’t have to. Clock’s ticking, Gina. Choose.”
I don’t want to look at those dreadful eyes anymore. I let my lids drift shut, and I say. “Please, Mel. Please let her go. I beg you.”
It burns in my mouth to do that. Worse, I’ve just called him Mel. It’s the first time since the day our lives shattered apart. I wonder if he even notices.
“Good girl,” he says. I feel sudden heat against my skin. He’s put his hand on my cheek. “All right. She gets her life. I always knew you’d give in, if I found the right motivation.”
He bends close to me. His breath flutters against my skin. His fingers are gentle as they trace the line of my chin, my lips. I keep my eyes closed. God, I can’t look. I can’t. I’m trembling. The drugs make me dizzy, and unsteady. I wish Annie would twist my broken hand again, just to clear my mind.
“Let the girl down,” he says. He’s not talking to me, but his lips are so close to my cheek they brush my skin. “Get her out of here. Put her on the road and tell her to run.”
The spell breaks, but it isn’t me who breaks it. It’s the sound of the winch control activating with a whine, and the choked gasp of the girl. She’s crying. “Oh God, thank you, thank you—”
“Out,” Melvin says. “Or I kill you.”
I hear the rush of running feet. She’s leaving.
Now, I think. Now. I can’t miss. He’s right here.
I open my eyes and adjust my grip on the wooden dagger.
Someone laughs.
It shocks me. It shocks Melvin, too, and we both look toward the doorway. Annie’s leaning there, high as a kite from the look of her, and she’s giggling as she watches the other girl run for her life. “Son of a bitch,” she says. “I thought you were some fuckin’ badass, man. Here you are letting people go, making deals. Don’t you already own this sorry bitch?”
“You’re
talking about my wife, Annie,” he says. His tone is mild, and calm, but the eyes . . . he’s deep in whatever fantasy he’s cultivated. “Don’t disrespect my wife.”
“Her?” Annie’s lip curls. “She’s nothing.”
“No. She’s mine.”
When he moves, it’s like the strike of a snake, too fast to be seen. He smashes her head into the door frame, again and again and again, a flurry of moves so shockingly violent that I can’t even think to act, to attack him, to try to save her life. He’s a tiger, pure bloody rage, and I’m terrified. Everybody’s frozen, even the film crew, who must have seen horrors I can’t imagine.
I don’t want to see this, but I can’t close my eyes. It’s as inevitable as a nightmare.
Annie collapses, gasping, eyes blind with blood. She crawls toward me.
I back up. I can’t help the instinct. Panic is howling inside me, a black tornado of despair because my thin piece of wood is nothing, nothing against this madness, it’s a paper-thin lie I’ve told myself, and nothing can stop Melvin Royal.
Melvin steps over Annie, grabs a screwdriver from the rack, and with one viciously powerful blow, he drives it through her skull.
Then he loses control.
My vision grays out. I can’t see this. I can’t know it. My mind is trying to run, trying to hide like a child in a maze, and I hear myself screaming because Annie can’t, she doesn’t make a sound, and all I want to do is run.
But I can’t make it past him. The second I move, I’m a victim.
When Melvin stops, it’s because he’s tired, not because he’s finished. I can see that in the way his chest heaves, and his hand shakes, and the butchered woman lying on the floor is barely recognizable as human from the neck up.
The lighting and camera operators haven’t made a sound or a move. They’ve frozen in place, too, as if they know they’re in the presence of an animal who could eat them just as easily. When Melvin sits back on his haunches, he looks at the camera operator. He’s dripping with Annie’s blood. He still has the screwdriver.