Unsettling. Creepy. Something.
We split up. Explored separately, but when we got back on the bus, everything was different. Tense. Quiet. We went back to the beach at the hotel, but it wasn’t the same. That afternoon Simon ran his Jet Ski aground on the beach and got into a huge shouting match with the guy in charge of the rentals about where he had been and how fast he had been going, and Melissa went to bed early. The whole week had ended under a cloud that I, obsessed with my souring relationship with Marcus, had managed to forget.
What had happened in the cave, and how can I not remember? All my other vague amnesia is about the last few days. This was years ago. I remember the rest of the trip perfectly. Why not this, and why do I think it is what my captor wants to hear about?
But that makes no sense. Our mood that day had just been about boredom, tiredness, and a little sunstroke that triggered some petty domestic disputes. What could any of that matter to anyone else? It’s not related. It can’t be. And even if it is, I have nothing to offer my interrogator that might make my situation any better. I remind myself of what I already know.
You have to get out.
I feel cautiously around my wrist. The wound is still not bleeding, but it is beginning to swell, and that will only make the manacle tighter. I finish checking the chain for damage. Nothing. It’s all quite solid, and the chain itself doesn’t seem to have any of the rust-bitten characteristics of the ring or cuff.
New, then. Set specially.
I don’t like that, but I can’t think about it, as I can’t think about the pain in my wrist. The chain feels strong, solid. The ring is older and more weathered, but it is thick and crude and solidly embedded in the wall. That leaves the manacle on my wrist. The hinge is simple: one half of the cuff fastened through a hole in the other. The workmanship feels rough, almost certainly handmade rather than done by machine, and I wonder just how old the manacle is.
Ottoman. Venetian, I think, remembering the age of the house.
Is that where I am? Some ancient cellar of what was once a fortress? Images come to me: a bedroom window looking out over the cliffs, stone countertops in a long kitchen, a spacious living room, its windows dark and rain streaked . . .
The dark red pool on the floor.
Something lying behind the overturned armchair. Someone. Hair matted with blood, face streaked with black and red, thick and awful and . . .
I stiffen, the horror of the thing stopping my heart. A memory? I can’t be sure. Everything is too confused, though the other flashes of the house seem real, other sleeping parts of my body and mind stirring to them in recognition. But the blood? The body? I force myself to look closer at the image, but I feel only dread and a kind of awestruck revulsion.
I do not know who it is.
I have been sitting very still as these things go through my mind, and the pain in my wrist has ebbed out of my consciousness, but after the initial paralysis, the impressions of what I may have seen remind me of how badly I need to get out of here. I push down the throbbing tenderness in my wrist and refocus on the manacle.
The lock is crude, barrel shaped. Perhaps with a pin or something similar, I might be able to trip it.
Better chance of that than of shattering the cuff against the concrete bed, even if you don’t break your arm in the process.
I feel around for my solitary sandal and inspect it with my fingers, hoping for the prong of a buckle or something I might use, but it’s all soft parts. I feel my bra, but it has no underwiring, and the clasp at the back is tiny and plastic.
No use there.
I scoot carefully to the edge of the bed, doubly cautious now about overtesting the length of the chain, feeling its weight starting to wake the ache in my wrist, and drop my feet to the floor again. I stretch out my left arm to give myself as much range as I can, bite back the mounting pain, and reach down with my right hand.
Maybe there’s something—a nail or discarded screw—that I might use . . .
The floor feels swept clean, and I can reach no more than a few square feet before the angle of the metal cuff against my wounded wrist becomes more than I can stand and I have to stop.
I sit up again, nursing my wrist, my breathing rushed and uneven, and I try to decide how much more floor I might be able to cover if I push through the agony a little more.
Not much. The chain is less than a yard long, and my reach is not just about pain. If I ignore the agony and stretch as far as is physically possible, I’ll get a few more inches at best. The chance that those inches will contain my lifeline seems slim.
But it’s possible, so I have to try. I find myself wishing that I could somehow detect a usable object with some sci-fi device, like the kind they use on Kristen’s show, something that would light up and show me exactly how far I have to get to reach it. Going through the pain I am about to inflict on myself without even knowing if there is anything out there to be had is maddening.
But I climb back down onto the floor, this time twisting the chain carefully to make sure it doesn’t knot in on itself, and I think I have bought myself an extra couple of inches right there. For a moment I squat where I am, my right hand tracing the places I have already been, lightly, as if smoothing someone’s hair, trying not to think about what else might be there in the dark, the bugs and rodent droppings . . .
Rats?
Even there, with all the other horrors crowding in on me, the prospect of rats sends a visceral shiver of revulsion through my body. I hate rats. I saw two back in Charlotte only a few weeks ago in the dumpsters behind the store: long and brown, furtive but unafraid.
I swallow, then put my hand lightly, palm-down, on the ground, fingers splayed, feeling for something, anything, tracing a rough, expanding oval on the floor.
Then farther, the pain mounting.
Farther.
The manacle is lodged against the heel of my hand—bone, muscle, and sinew roaring in protest as I strain against it, right hand sweeping. I pull harder, and my oval expands another half inch. And another. A cry rises in my throat and comes out of my mouth, a long, teeth-set, relentless wail of fury and desperation. It comes out of me as a shout and keeps going as I reach and claw for whatever might . . .
There!
I touch something. Small and hard and long.
A nail?
But the pain is making me move too quickly. I brush it, and I hear it shift, a thin tinkling sound as it rolls out of reach.
Chapter Sixteen
“There was this guy during the war,” said Marcus. “A Brit called Jasper Maskelyne. Good name, huh? He was a stage magician in the thirties and forties.”
We were sitting on the patio at the back of the villa while Simon and Brad hovered over the burgers, chicken, and bell peppers sizzling on a charcoal grill; and Melissa carried a bottle of chilled white wine, topping off everyone’s glass whether they wanted her to or not. It was a beautiful, warm evening, but the clouds were gathering again over the sea, so Brad and Simon, conferring like surgeons planning someone’s bypass, had opted to fire up the grill as soon as we got back from Knossos. Their focus seemed to open up a space for Marcus, and he had launched into his story without preamble or explanation.
“Maskelyne figured he could put his knowledge of sleight of hand and illusion to work for the war effort,” he said. “So he joined the Royal Engineers. Studied camouflage techniques and added his own stage trickery. He didn’t want to just hide stuff from the enemy—he wanted to mislead them, right? They say stage magic is all about misdirection, about drawing attention to one hand while the other one does all the real work.”
“So what did he do?” asked Simon, moving to the burgers with a spatula only to get a headshake from Brad.