“Yeah,” he answered. His hand was pressed tightly against his stomach. “Did you have to kick so hard?”
“What the hell are you doing?” I answered, ignoring his question. I sat up, running a hand through my hair. I looked up at the camera and back down at him.
He shook his head. “It’s not on. None of them are. They malfunction sometimes; it’s normal, so no one will suspect I did it on purpose. It’ll give us at least fifteen minutes of privacy.”
Things were not making sense to me. “Why do you need…” I started, as a horrible thought occurred to me. “Oh god, please don’t touch me.”
He threw me a scathing look, and for some reason, I was comforted by it. It was a look I had grown used to with Tommy, and it was familiar. “Jesus, Zoey,” he repeated. “I’m not going to touch you. I’m here to help you.”
I stared at him warily. “Help me? Help me how?”
Tommy glanced upward at the camera and then at his watch. He sighed. “Your boy came to me, okay? He asked me to help you get out, and so that’s what I’m going to do.”
“You’re…you’re going to help me get out?” I stuttered. “But why?”
He seemed to think about it for a moment, taking time to ponder his answer. “Well, I guess…I guess because I like you.”
I leaned away from him, my wariness of him growing even more. “Oh,” was all I said.
I could barely see him roll his eyes in the darkness. I had just noticed that the light was on the bathroom, lending us enough light to see each other but not to cause any alarm to anyone who might pass through. “Not like that, Zoey. Not everyone is groveling at your feet.”
“Shut up,” was all I answered. I sat up straighter. “You’re going to help me. You’re going to help me get out of Sekhmet. How the hell are you going to do that?” my voice grew louder with each question, and I saw him flinch.
“Keep your voice down,” he hissed at me, his arms coming out to grab my wrists. “Do you want the whole compound to hear you?”
“Sorry,” I said, looking down at my wrists. His hands were huge, and wrapped around both wrists with no trouble. It was weird how I was noticing things about him now, in the darkness, that I had never known in the light, when he had escorted me everywhere, for days.
“Did anyone ever tell you that you’re ridiculously loud?” he asked. He didn’t make it sound like a compliment.
“You were saying about getting me out of here?” I reminded him.
His eyes flicked down to the watch at his wrist again. “Right. We’re going to get you out of here. It’s not going to be easy. They’re watching you like crazy. I can assist, get you a keycard, that sort of thing, but a lot of it is going to be on you.”
I nodded, immediately caught up in this. I hadn’t even heard the plan but the direction he was going in made it sound dangerous and impossible. Dangerous and impossible sounded so much better than staying here and waiting for them to force me to have children. “Tommy, I’m ready to do anything. I don’t want to be here.”
He nodded again, looking nervously at his watch. “We’ll talk about it when I come later to escort you to see Liam. There are cameras, but they don’t pick up sound. I’ll stand at the door, where the cameras won’t catch me, so they won’t be able to see me talking to you. We’ll figure it out, okay?” He stood up, smoothing out the invisible wrinkles of his pants. “I have to go.”
“Okay,” I said, pulling my legs up and resting my chin on his knees. “Wait, Tommy?” He paused, looking back at me. “Liam asked you to do this?”
He nodded and, saying nothing more, left the room.
I went through the motions on autopilot, my mind stuck on the possibility of finding a way out of here. Hopefully we could figure out a way to get a keycard into my hand, and then I could be free, free to make my way to Sanctuary or anywhere that wasn’t here.
A face came flashing into my brain and I stumbled, tripping on the conveyor belt of the treadmill. I fell and immediately felt it scrape my knee. The doctor surveying me immediately pressed the stop button on the treadmill, watching me carefully as I lifted myself up, shaking.
Ash. Ash was still here. I had to believe that he was still here and that this plan included him as well.
As soon as Tommy escorted me to the small room after lunch, I turned to Liam. He had beaten me to the room and I wondered if that had been done on purpose, in order to prevent Patrick from staying in the room as well. “Ash,” I said firmly. “Is Ash going to get out too?”
I saw Liam and Tommy exchange knowing looks, and I felt my heart sink. “No,” I said. “I won’t leave without him.”