Or I might be too late. I can’t imagine anything beyond that. Every surge of hope is met with biting fear.
Quietly I approach the doorway, the open-floor-plan type without a door, and slip through it.
There’s a dead deer mounted on a plaque above a large wooden desk. The deer’s black nose is huge and lined with white, its mouth a harsh bitter line, its antlers soaring up into sharp points. But the worst thing is the pair of glasses jauntily perched on its nose. They are grotesque, an insult. Stepping closer, I reach up to flick them off, and when they fall onto the desk, I see they are a woman’s reading glasses.
There’s a tremor in my hand as I pick them up. Are they Ava’s glasses? I can’t tell, because I haven’t seen her in so long. The impassive glass eyes of the deer judge me. This is how it is, they seem to say. You ran away. You didn’t want a sister. You don’t deserve one.
I slip the glasses into my pocket like a good-luck charm. The surface of the desk is covered with papers. I pick up one packet, the manuscript of a book, and read the title: New Directions in Information Acquisition: Solving the Human Problem. Ava’s the problem, the human problem. The dead deer, the lab rat, she’s the one they’re torturing. Oh God, let her be alive. I turn, running out of the room, propelling myself down the stairs, promising I’ll be a better sister, wife, mother, just better if she’s okay.
I miss a step at the bottom and pitch forward, but Glenn catches me. His hands on my shoulders, he searches my face. “What happened? Are you all right?”
My heart is pounding so hard, he must feel it shaking my body. “I’m fine.”
Behind him I can see the room, its minimalist furniture scattered here and there, the black leather sofas askew, a metal lamp lying on the floor, but the lack of clutter makes even this disarray seem artistically arranged.
“Where else can we look?” I ask. No unopened doors, no furniture against the walls, hiding a secret passage. The only items left untouched are a few framed photographs hanging on the living room walls.
Pulling away, I run toward one, desperately hoping for a clue, a sign, anything. But it’s only a black-and-white picture of this house. Behind me I can hear Glenn flipping pictures over, even breaking the frames. This is our last chance. The light gleams off the glass over the photograph until all I can see is my own reflection. I yank it off the wall, but instead of smashing it on the ground, I let it fall.
Behind it is a keypad.
Glenn gives a whoop of triumph and pushes me aside, already holding up the scrap of paper with the security code Spiegler gave us. By the time he types it in, I am vibrating, full of fear-fueled adrenaline.
Somewhere in the depths below us, a piercing alarm sounds, then cuts off. We freeze, looking at each other. Uncertainty flickers across Glenn’s face, softening the angles of his brows. Then it settles back into its familiar lines as what seemed to be a panel of the wall slides open. We’re at the top of a staircase that leads down into darkness.
Before Glenn can take that first step into this new doorway, a blur rushes past him.
And knocks me to the ground.
Everything is fur and teeth. No growling, no warning bark. A dog is lunging at my face, snapping, held back only by my outstretched arms and my hands clenched in the fur of its neck and chest. Its hot, fetid breath fills my lungs. I hear Glenn cry out, but there’s no way for him to help. Everything’s too fast.
After its initial lunge, I can tell the animal’s smaller than it seems. My grip on its coat is deep, and I throw my body sideways and roll onto the dog, not away from it. Now the dog is on its back, pedaling its legs in a futile attempt to dislodge me. It’s making noises, panting little whines.
Somewhere in the edges of my attention, Glenn is shouting, trying to get around me, but all my concentration is focused on making the attack stop. When Glenn disappears, I hardly notice.
The dog and I are at a standoff. It cannot tear out my throat or escape me, but I can’t let go or outrun it. My knees are pinning it down. I think I see fear in its flat blue eyes, and it isn’t snapping anymore. It’s just protecting the house; that’s its job. I’m not going to hurt a dog; it’s only what people—evil people—have made it.
Then Glenn is back beside me. “Let go.”
I push the dog to one side hard and roll away from it. Glenn lunges over me, cloth billowing in his hands. But the dog bursts up, attacking, and seizes him by the forearm, its teeth sinking deeply into his flesh. He’s trying to hold it off with his other arm, and the curtain trapped between them is streaked with blood.
Before I can think, I’m on my feet. Glenn staggers under the weight of the dog. He must have raised his arm just in time to keep it from ripping out his throat. Despite the low, desperate growling in its throat and the terror in its eyes, the dog hangs on.
I try to grab the scruff of its neck, but Glenn shakes his head. “The sheet!” he shouts at me. “Wrap it!”
I grip the end of the curtain, but before I can pull it up over the dog’s head, the animal moves again, biting swiftly once, twice, three times, moving up Glenn’s arm, sending him reeling back against the wall and pulling me with them. I’m too afraid to breathe, but I force my hands forward, lifting the cloth higher than the dog’s head. Glenn uses his free hand to pull the wrapping tight. The dog thrashes under the curtain and then the whole bundle falls to the floor. Glenn’s arm is free, but his skin is torn and bloody.
We have to get away before the dog untangles itself.
Glenn is already moving through the open door and down the stairs. I follow, slamming the door behind us. The air temperature seems to drop twenty degrees as I descend.
At the basement is another door with a keypad and a large wheel like a bank vault. Glenn is struggling to open it. His one good arm isn’t enough. He calls to me. “Come on!”
“Wait, we have to stop the bleeding.”
“There’s no time.”
But he’s pale, so pale, and his mouth is drawn with pain into a tight line, like the deer in the study.
“If you pass out, you won’t save her.” Where can I find something to stop the bleeding? If I had been smarter or braver, I would have checked the kitchen before we came down the stairs, but I don’t know how much time we have before the dog gets loose. My shoulder bag and cardigan are in the car, but I remember the all-purpose tool in my pocket. Quickly, before he can hurt himself anymore, I pull it out. “Give me your socks.”
I cut a strip from the bottom of my T-shirt, cropping it, while Glenn slips his feet out of his shoes and struggles to remove his socks. Bracing himself against the door, he cradles his arm against his chest. I take the socks from him and ball them up, but a closer look at Glenn’s arm stops me. The swollen skin is streaked with red and already darkening bruises, and the puncture wounds are still oozing. I pick the places where the bleeding seems heaviest and place the socks like pads there, then tie one end of my T-shirt strip around his arm and wrap everything as best I can.
“Keep the pressure on and raise your arm up!” I pull out my phone, frantically dialing 911, but I can’t get a signal. Nothing. My whole body is shuddering, racked by the aftereffects of the attack, and I hear myself whispering encouraging lies. It’s going to be okay. You’re doing great. Help is coming.
But it’s not enough. This is no skinned knee on a playground or even a sliced finger at a kitchen counter. Blood is everywhere—my hands, the floor, and already seeping through the makeshift bandages. I don’t know how to stop it. But the dog is at the top of the stairs, and Ava is somewhere ahead of us.
We have to keep going.
Together, Glenn and I crank the door open, revealing another stretch of stairs. How far under the earth will we have to go? We stagger to the bottom, and opening the next door, we find a large room with a concrete column in the center. No one’s here.
“Ava?” I call, but there’s no answer. And then I see the two halves of an accordion fence splitting the room in two, creating a giant cage. Three o
pen padlocks dangle from the steel trellis. This cage wasn’t for lab rats or even the attack dog. There are folding chairs and bottles of water. People were held here. The sight of a lone woman’s shoe in the corner feeds my darkest fears. Ava’s shoe.
If Ava doesn’t need her shoes anymore, if she’s not in the cage being tested, we may be too late. My sister may be a bruised and barefoot corpse.
Oh God, she has to be alive. Where is she?
Then from behind a desk, a man in a lab coat rushes at us, his head tucked low. I cry out, throwing my arms up to defend my face, but he’s not attacking. He’s trying to get around us to the stairs.
Glenn grabs him by the sleeve and swings him away from the door. The guy stumbles back, and he’s about my age, very thin, completely ordinary. He could be a delivery man or a bank teller or the manager of my local grocery store. He’s nobody I’d look at twice. But now he’s in a defensive crouch, his eyes wide with fear. And he’s in this secret lair wearing a lab coat. My fear curdles into anger.
“Where’s Ava?” I ask at the same time Glenn shouts, “Where’s my wife?”
Lab Coat holds his hands up, but we advance on him and he backs away. “I don’t know. Wait, just wait.”
On the desk behind him I see medical tubing, charts, and a syringe. That’s what’s so awful about this room: not the things that are here, but the things that used to be—caged victims, medical experiments, and a twisted psychopath.
I’m getting answers. “Where’s Cristina?”
Lab Coat flinches. “I don’t know.” And then he makes a break for the door. Glenn blocks him but cries out, even as he pushes Lab Coat away.
The stranger falls heavily, and faster than I can process the thought that he’s inside the cage, my hands are struggling to pull the sides of the fence closed. Desperately I wrench the mesh together as Lab Coat scrambles forward.
Glenn is right behind me, reaching around me to snap the first lock, then the second, and then the gate is secure enough that I can step back while he snaps the third. He fumbles this one, his fingers slipping before he gets it locked.
“We know Cristina did this,” I say to the guy in the cage.
At the sound of her name, a shiver ripples over him. “She isn’t finished. If you spoil her results, she’ll be unhappy.” There’s a disconnect between the word unhappy and the kind of person who keeps a killer dog and humans in cages. The kind of disconnect between action and emotion I’ve seen in my mother. He backs away from the fence, shaking his head. “I can’t help you. I won’t.”
Then beside me, Glenn sways and drops to the ground.
CHAPTER
32
ZOE
IGNORING THE MAN in the cage, I kneel beside Glenn, placing my fingers on his throat where the pulse beats. His breathing is steady, but his arm is still oozing cherry-bright blood through the crappy bandage I made. It’s not gushing, but he’s pale, and sweat beads along his hairline.
I rush to the desk with the medical supplies, knocking the syringe and stethoscope to the ground. Under the medical tubing is some tape and a packet of gauze, tiny and useless. I take the tape and kneel beside Glenn.
His eyes flutter open, and to my horror, he starts trying to get up.
“Stay down,” I order him. “You’ll bleed to death.” But as soon as he starts to move, his eyes roll back and his head falls heavily on the concrete floor. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve only practiced “mom medicine,” patching up invisible scrapes and putting Band-Aids on minor bumps. But I have to do this. I take the tape and wrap it around Glenn’s wrist. Maybe if I make it tight enough, it’ll supply pressure. That’s the only thing I know about wounds. You have to keep them under pressure. So I wrap the tape up his arm and then again back down, crisscrossing it over the sodden T-shirt bandage.
When the tape is gone, I sink back on my heels, my stomach churning with the effort of holding my shit together. I can’t fall apart, no matter how frightened I am. I’m all Ava has left.
Glenn’s completely vulnerable, but I have to go. We’ve checked the whole house, the attack dog can’t get through the door, Lab Coat is in a cage. Glenn will be fine. He has to be.
Ava’s still in danger.
I rise to my feet and realize Lab Coat has been silently watching every move I make.
I step right up to the cage. “If you don’t tell me how to find my sister, I will leave you where you are. They’ll never find you. You’ll never get out.”
My voice is low and menacing, and I’m selling it with everything I have. His body collapses inward, just a little bit. He’s not a psychopath. The things he was doing down here affected him, even if he didn’t know it. And his greatest fear is being the one in the cage, overlooked and alone.
He whispers, “The police—”
“The police will save you? They only care about Ava. We’ll hide that secret doorway and no one will ever see you again.”
“I don’t—I can’t—I mean, it wasn’t me. It was her. This whole plan. It was her. And nobody was hurt, not really. We used old footage and videos. But Cristina took it too far.”
“Where is she?” Without Glenn, I’m afraid I’ll be lost down here, running through a claustrophobic subterranean maze. But I can only go forward. There’s no way to carry Glenn up the stairs, no way to get past the dog, and no future for me unless I find my sister.
“I don’t know where Cristina is.”
“Ava! Where is Ava!”
“Don’t leave me down here. Let me out and I’ll show you.” But his gaze shifts past me, and I turn to see a door beside a file cabinet.
I hurl myself toward it as Lab Coat shouts behind me, “When Cristina finds you, you’ll wish you were in this cage!”
I open the door onto a metal stairwell like an indoor fire escape. My hand is already on the knob of the next door when I hear a thump coming over and over from above. Ava.
I sprint up the staircase, each step clanging beneath my feet.
Panting, I fling open the door of a room that’s completely dark except for a red light shining like an eye. I grope for the light switch, and an overhead bulb illuminates a small room, barely big enough for the wooden chair in the center of it.
The chair with a bound and hooded figure in it. “Please,” a man croaks.
And it is a man, slight of build, wearing soiled khaki trousers and a stained pinstriped cotton shirt. Not Ava, but another human guinea pig.
“It’s okay, I’m here.” Gently I touch the black cloth, rolling the bag over the man’s head and exposing the contours of his face, patchy dark stubble over his jawline, the blackened smudge of a bruise on his cheekbone. Only then do I look at his whole face, his brown eyes on mine. I think I know this man.
“Beckett?” We are not quite strangers, although we never met. I’ve seen him in a photo from the wedding I didn’t attend, and after the divorce I looked him up online. From his confused expression, I’m thinking he didn’t do the same for me. Why is he here?
“Ava’s my sister.” Clumsy with fear, I pull out the multi-tool and start clipping the duct tape binding his arms and legs to the chair.
“Zoe?” So he does know my name.
“What did they do to you?” I finish slicing his right arm free, but there’s something hanging off the duct tape, some kind of wires. Before I can move to the other arm, he says, “No, take it off. Quickly!”
I work my fingers under the edge of the duct tape. It’s stuck directly to his arm, so I treat it like a Band-Aid and yank it as hard and fast as I can. I expose more than Beckett’s bare arm. On the underside of the duct tape are electrodes, but the wires running from them are taped harmlessly to the back of the chair.
Now that one hand is unbound, Beckett is scrabbling at the duct tape on his other arm, but it’s wrapped more than once and his hands are clumsy. This time I cut the wires leading to his arm and legs, then hack through the tape.
“Where is Ava?” I ask, afraid to hear the answer, as I work
on his second leg. There’s a stench that recalls the animal smell of the cage.
“I don’t know.” His nerveless hands fumble to peel back the cut tape. “Cristina might have seen us. We have to get out of here.”
“Not without my sister.” The way he keeps looking behind me to check the door creeps me out. I’m finding it hard to concentrate on clipping the duct tape without hurting him, because I feel like someone’s hovering behind me.
As soon as his legs are free from the chair, he stands, then staggers. I jump to my feet in time to keep him from falling.
Beckett leans heavily on me and he tries to steer us both to the door, saying, “We have to go before she comes back.”
How did Ava describe him after the divorce? “Weak.” I guess that was all it took for her to call it quits. I can’t be weak, not now. I have to be strong enough to find her and bring her home.
“I’m not going anywhere without Ava.” I speak sharply, but he doesn’t even look at me, too lost in his own panic.
“Ava’s dead. She has to be. If you saw what I saw—” He pushes away from me, but I grab him, holding his arm as hard as I can.
“What happened?” The torture was supposed to be faked, but Beckett’s terror is real.
“I saw it on the screen. They crucified her. And if Cristina finds us, she’ll do it to you too!” With desperate strength, he wrenches himself free and stumbles through the door.
Stunned, I follow him down the stairs, unable to process the word. Crucifixion? Like on a cross? The word is so far from anything I expected that it reverberates in my mind.
Beckett lurches down the stairs, faster and faster. “Wait!” I yell after him. He has to help me find Ava. He has to …
But he barrels right through the door to the cage room, leaving me alone.
I can’t follow him. I can’t run, not yet.
Ava’s waiting.
CHAPTER
33
ZOE
Once Two Sisters Page 25