I try the desk drawers. Locked. Course they are. There’s no convenient key stuck underneath with tape either.
I shake the mouse and the computer whirs back into life. Password-protected. And I’m no hacker. I try obvious things like Bastixair and Feminaid, but when is life ever that easy? It blocks me out after three tries. Hopefully I’ll have made it out of the warehouse by the time they return in the morning and realize someone’s tried to break into their system.
The filing cabinet drawers are locked, too. I almost laugh. What do I think this is? A video game on the easy setting?
Positioning the desk chair next to the filing cabinet, I manage to clamber back up and into the vent, heart pounding and beads of sweat forming between my boobs. I only allow myself thirty seconds to catch my breath before moving on.
The next room I come to is an almost identical office, and the next a storeroom like the one I was held in. I remember the layout of the mezzanine level—six doors, equally spaced. I was in the sixth, and I’ve passed three more. Two more rooms to go, then hopefully . . . a way out? I’m on the first floor, not ground level, but I’d jump from the fifth if it meant getting away from those two men with fangs for teeth and empty cavities where their hearts should be.
Slowly but surely, I progress through the vent, coughing away dust and cringing at the echoes my body makes as it shuffles. Another storeroom. Another office, this one completely disused and empty of belongings. Not even a computer.
Only another twenty yards to the next grate, and then . . . what? All I can see right now is black in front of me. There’s still no light, and I try not to panic. Surely, if it led to the world outside, there would be some kind of sky ahead. Nope.
My muscles ache, my face is killing me and I’m drenched in sweat now, but the only choice I have is to keep going. I reach the next grate, look down. Another storeroom, barely light enough to make out despite the strip window at the top. The shelves in this one are empty, too.
I’m about to move on, but something catches my eye as I turn my head away. An incongruous image I almost didn’t register.
Dim night sky cast over a form on the floor.
A form so shadowed I nearly missed it. In fact, I would’ve . . . if it weren’t for the white-blond hair catching the weak light.
Erin.
Chapter Twenty-Three
August 4, Serbia
FOR A MOMENT I’m paralyzed. Disbelieving, hopeful, scared.
She’s not moving.
Forget the echoing in the tunnel; my heart pummeling my rib cage is deafening.
I almost don’t want to look.
If she was alive, she’d have heard me coming.
Am I strong enough to drop down into a room containing my best friend’s body?
Am I strong enough to survive the next minute of my life?
Right now, she’s Schrödinger’s cat. In this moment, she is both alive and dead.
I can’t bear to open the box and confirm the latter.
And yet what’s the alternative? Leave her here?
Shaking so hard I can barely grip, I lift the latch and tug the grate up into the vent shaft.
Drop down onto the top shelf, loudly.
She still doesn’t hear. Doesn’t move.
In the dim light, I can’t tell whether or not her chest is rising or falling. She’s curled limply in the fetal position, either in a last-ditch effort to give herself some kind of comfort, or because that’s the position in which she was carried up the stairs and dumped on the storeroom floor.
There’s a smell. Pungent, acidic, human.
A decomposing corpse?
I gag, both at the stench and at the idea of what it could be.
I look away from her flaccid form, and as my eyes adjust to the light, I spot a bucket in the corner of the room.
Waste. Human waste.
Which means . . . she’s alive. Or at least, she has been until very recently.
The revelation gives me renewed hope. I awkwardly cling to the framework of the empty shelving and shuffle down to the ground like a burglar on a drainpipe. My feet hit the ground, but she doesn’t stir. Flinching away from the smell, I dash over to her and crouch down. Rest both hands on her shoulder.
She’s breathing.
“Erin?” I shake her, but so gently it’s like she’s made of glass and I’m scared of shattering her.
Ba-boom, ba-boom.
Every beat of my heart sounds like: “She’s alive.”
She doesn’t stir.
“Erin,” softly, softly.
Her eyelashes flutter. It’s dark in the room; so dark she’s just a shadow. I feel absence emanating from her, loss, a new void opened up. Everything missing from her, everything taken. I squeeze her bony shoulder, covered in a baggy gray hoodie; not the pink blouse from JUMP, not the murder victim smile. Lying frail and senseless on the floor, empty, vacant. No red lipstick staining her teeth, no sparkly stud in her nose, no sailor’s laugh or filthy innuendo, no fuck-you leather jacket. No animal howling or manic tears, no vivid blue eyes or razor-sharp wit.
There’s no warmth emanating from her, no trademark Erin-ness. She’s Erin but she’s not.
My eyes burn. “Erin, please. It’s me. It’s me.”
Then I realize she is awake. Her eyes have peeled open ever so slightly, and her hand, pale from three weeks without sunlight, has curled into a half-tight fist like a newborn baby. She’s awake, but she doesn’t want to be. Isn’t trying hard enough to fight for consciousness.
“Erin,” I say, and my voice cracks, and I hug her from behind like we’re spooning. “Erin. I’m here. You’re okay.” The word is a falsehood. “But we have to get out of here. Before they come back.”
She winces at “they,” a tiny flicker of movement, and I wonder what they did to her.
“Can you move?” I urge, listening for footsteps on metal stairs and the murmur of low Serbian voices.
Eyelids droop again, unnaturally slow and heavy. The fist unfurls like a flower opening. She’s loose, numb, cold. Did they drug her? Sedate her to keep her quiet?
Why is she here?
Did she find out the same thing I was on the cusp of uncovering?
“Erin, we can get out through an air vent. We can escape. You can live, you can survive. We can survive.” Nothing. Desperation rising in my throat, I murmur, “Erin, you can see your mum again. She loves and misses you so much. And Annabel. Smith. Me. We love and need you. Please. Please. Open your eyes. Let me know you can hear me. Can you hear me?”
A shuddering breath I feel in my bones. But still nothing. Eyes, naked without their winged eyeliner, stay closed. I take her freezing hand in mine, lift up her arm ten centimeters. Release. It flops lifelessly back to her hip.
Smooth, hard dread like a pebble settles in my gut. I’ve found her, but I can’t get her out. I have no phone to call for help.
And I still don’t know why she’s here.
Wow. It’d be so easy to have a panic attack right now.
“Erin,” I whisper. “I can only ask you one more time before I have to think of another way. Can you move? Can you climb through the vent with me? Can you let the thought of seeing your family propel you?”
A tiny head shake, so slight it’s almost imperceptible.
“Why?” I mutter, quietly so I don’t frighten her even more. “Did they drug you?”
An even tinier nod, knocking the wind from my lungs. They drugged her. To keep her quiet but alive? Or in an attempt to kill her? Or because they wanted to get her addicted to drugs so that—
No. Stop being ridiculous. She isn’t being trafficked. That no longer makes sense in the context of everything I know.
What does make sense?
That’s the million-dollar question right now.
“Are you . . . pregnant?” I ask, the words delicate yet deadly between my lips.
She says nothing.
“I don’t want to leave you, Erin,” I almost plead. “But I need to go and get help. Can you stay alive for me? Keep breathing, keep fighting, don’t do anything to anger them. Fight. Please. We need you to fight. Okay?”
A single tear slips down her cheek, pooling in the Cupid’s bow of her perfect lips.
“Don’t cry. Please. It’s going to be okay. I’m here. I’ve found you. We’re going to get out of here. I promise.” I hug her again, a hug full of desperation and disbelief and fear. “It’s nearly over.”
Is it?
My mind reels as I clamber back up the shelving and back into the vent, pulling the hatch shut behind me. For a few moments, I don’t start moving, don’t opt for one direction over the other. What am I going to do? Should I try to escape anyway, and come back with the police?
But I have no idea how far I am from civilization, no idea how far I am from a town or a phone or the police. And by the time I reach someone or somewhere, Andrijo and Borko will have noticed me missing. What would they do to Erin then? Move her, knowing I’d be back with police? Worse?
I could try and search the offices to find the key to the storeroom she’s being held in. Carry her out. But again, where would we go? We’d likely be caught before even making it to the doors. Then we’d both be in trouble.
I rack my brains. Lightning strikes. I could keep crawling around the air vents, keep looking for them. Try and find a location where I could listen in on their conversations, work out why I’m here and why they have Erin and what they’re going to do about it.
The penny drops heavily.
They’re Serbian. I’m not. The language barrier prevents any hope of eavesdropping.
Instinct is screaming at me to go back to my storeroom and figure it out. The last thing I want is for them to come up with a bucket for my waste, notice me gone and start searching the warehouse. Moving Erin. Or . . . worse.
I keep coming back to that word: worse.
Does such a thing even exist anymore?
For once in my life, I follow my gut, awkwardly turn around in the vent and go back in the direction of my storeroom.
SLEEP THREATENS TO swallow me, and soon I can no longer fight back.
It’s the dark, and the warmth, and the silence, and the knowledge that my best friend is alive. Hunger aches in my tummy, and my bladder is full despite the lack of water. My throat burns with thirst. You don’t realize how bad the physical discomfort can be when your basic needs aren’t fulfilled.
So sleep, when it beckons, is easy to succumb to. My tired brain can no longer think of a solution to the Erin problem, and sooner or later, fear makes way for exhaustion. I curl up in the fetal position, exactly as Erin is less than a hundred yards away, and fall asleep knowing she’s nearby.
I dream of Erin and of fire.
I’m back in the graveyard where I met Smith in the weeks after she disappeared. It’s dusk, and the sky is dusty pink streaked with indigo clouds. The ancient oak trees are charcoal silhouettes shadowed by the towering church behind me, and the tombstones are crooked thumbs sticking out from the earth. Crows watch from the stone wall, embers reflecting in their eyes.
Everything in the graveyard is coated in ash, a thin layer of white-gray cinders catching the dying sun’s rays. I run a finger slowly along the top of a tombstone. The ash is soft and powdery, already cold.
Somehow, I know what’s happening behind me without turning to look. The church is ablaze, and Erin is standing before the stone steps leading up to the entrance, not flinching away from the licking flames. I turn to look at her. She’s wearing the leather jacket.
“Erin,” I call, but my voice is far away, both too quiet and too loud and vaguely ethereal.
The heat of the fire engulfing the building burns against my face, even from this distance. Erin’s blood must be boiling in her veins, standing that close. I take a step toward her and the heat soars, but as soon as I do, she mirrors my movements, stepping even closer to the inferno.
I’m about to yell at her in my pseudo-distant voice, scream at her to step back, demand to know what she’s doing and why, but as it so often does in dreams, the answer comes to me without words or explanation. It’s a feeling, an abstract perception of her mind-set. She’s getting closer because she wants to. Because the flames make her feel alive. Because she’s lived with the heat for so long she’s terrified of its absence. Because the intensity lures her in like a mythical creature: coaxing, compelling, commanding.
She plays with fire because incandescence is her lifeblood.
Still convinced the heat is real, I wake up to a stiff, sweaty neck and the click of a key in a lock. The plan comes to me of its own accord: fully formed, terrifying, complete. I remain still, deathly still, stiller than even Erin in her sedated state.
I’m facing the shelf, curved back turned to the door, so when it swings open I don’t know which lion it is; all I can gather is there’s only one set of footsteps.
“Carina.”
It’s Borko, I think. Less gravel in the stilted voice.
I focus so hard on staying absolutely, completely rigid that my muscles are on the verge of shaking.
“Carina. I brought you water.”
He brought me water? He mustn’t be planning on killing me too imminently.
I remain still.
A sneaker squeaks against the floor as he moves closer to me. “Carina?”
I’d guess he’s around a meter away. Not close enough. I tighten my grip.
The toe of a sneaker jabs at my kidneys; I suppress a gasp and allow myself to flop forward like I’m unconscious. He mutters something in Serbian. Another step forward, then the click of stiff knee joints as he crouches down on his haunches.
Now. I have to go now.
Not allowing myself the luxury of forethought, I swivel my entire body quickly to face him, grab his right shoulder and, before he has a chance to react, I slam the sharp end of the letter knife into the right side of his neck. The impact shudders up my arm and I let go.
Eyes wide, he tumbles forward, and I push the immediate and crippling guilt from my mind in time to slide out of the way before he collapses on top of me. Heart thudding, I wrench the letter knife from the deep stab wound, and the instant I do, I’m sprayed with a burst of warm blood. It gurgles and bubbles as it pulses from the gaping hole in his throat, flowing out of his body impossibly fast—a maroon river bursting its banks.
Squirming and moaning, he writhes on the floor for a few moments before abruptly ceasing all movement, eyes still frozen open.
No.
He can’t be dead already.
It can’t have been that easy to take a life.
I’m numb. Why am I numb? Why did the jolt of shame only last an instant? Why am I not overcome with guilt looking at the corpse of a young man whose life I just stole from him?
Maybe because the image of Erin curled around herself just a hundred feet away, devoid of feeling and damaged beyond repair, burns hotter than my conscience can compete with.
Hand surprisingly steady, I wipe the now slightly bent letter knife on his black hoodie and tuck it back into my jeans pocket. His gun is still sticking out the top of his waistband, and so I snatch that, too. It’s warm from his skin and smooth in my hand. I’ve never even seen one before, let alone held one, and it’s heavier than it looks. I slide it into my waistband, the same place he kept it, double-checking the safety is on so I don’t shoot myself in the ass.
Then I see it. The corner of my pink phone case sticking out of his back pocket.
Yes.
The relief is so instant it’s almost overwhelming. Tears prick my eyes, hot and sharp. I grab it, wipe the dirty screen with my thumb. Hold down
the on button.
In the few seconds that follow, I say a silent prayer, even though I’ve never been religious. Please, God, if you really do exist . . . please let my phone have been switched off manually. Please don’t let it have run out of battery. I need this. I need to see the little white Apple icon light up the black screen. I need battery, I need reception. I need to survive.
Flicker.
The Apple icon.
Yes, yes, yes.
I clutch the phone to my chest, sob once, deeply, and sniff away the rest of the tears.
I eye the reception bar desperately.
Searching . . .
It searches for too many seconds. Minutes, hours, days, weeks. It searches for an eternity so vast and deep it gives me vertigo.
And then it connects.
The first thing I do is click on Maps and ask it to find my current location. My hands are shaking so hard it takes a few attempts, but it eventually drops a flag on a vast building in acres and acres of fields—we’re in the middle of nowhere. I zoom out, out again . . . we’re far north of Zrenjanin and Novi Sad, west of a city called Subotica, near the Hungarian border. Over one hundred and forty kilometers from the clinic. My stomach drops. Even though I’m sure they can send local police cars, it’s going to take a while for Ilić to get here.
I dial his number—it’s one of the most recent on my call log. He picks up after two rings.
“Carina! Where are you? Why has your phone been switched off? We tried to find you once we got to Zrenjanin, but—”
“Ilić,” I interrupt. “I found Erin. She’s alive, but not in good shape. She’s been sedated.”
I expect him to flip out, ask why I went looking for her, demand to know everything that’s happened, chastise me for trying to play the hero. But he doesn’t. He’s the height of professionalism. I don’t give him enough credit.
“Right. Where are you?”
I tell him what I saw on the map, and he guides me through the process of sending him my exact location using my phone.
Perfect Prey Page 18