“I think we can both agree that he kept some very personal things of theirs.”
Perhaps remembering what he saw at the property, Eddison doesn’t argue. “Why this one?” he asks. “Ramirez says there are others not too badly injured. More frightened, maybe more willing to talk. This one looks like a tough nut.”
“The other girls look to her. I want to know why. They must be desperate to get home, so why do they look at her and choose not to answer questions?”
“You think she might be part of this?”
“That’s what we need to find out.” Picking up the bottle of water from the counter, Victor takes a deep breath. “All right. Let’s go talk to Maya.”
She sits back in the chair when they walk into the interview room, gauze-covered fingers laced together across her stomach. It’s not as defensive a posture as he would expect, and it’s clear from his partner’s scowl that he’s thrown by it as well. Her eyes flick over them, taking in details and filing away thoughts, none of which show on her face.
“Thank you for coming with us,” he greets her, glossing over the lack of choice she’d been given. “This is Special Agent Brandon Eddison, and I’m Special Agent in Charge Victor Hanoverian.”
The corner of her mouth ticks upward in a fleeting movement he can’t really call a smile. “Special Agent in Charge Victor Hanoverian,” she repeats, her voice hoarse with smoke. “Quite a mouthful.”
“Would you prefer Victor?”
“I don’t really have a preference, but thank you.”
He unscrews the cap and hands her the bottle of water, using the moment to adjust his strategy. Definitely not traumatized, and not shy either. “Usually there’s another part to the introductions.”
“The helpful tidbits?” she says. “You like to weave baskets and take long swims, and Eddison likes to walk the streets in heels and a mini?”
Eddison growls and slams a fist onto the table. “What is your name?”
“Don’t be rude.”
Victor bites his lip against the temptation to smile. It won’t help the situation—certainly won’t help his partner’s state of mind—but the temptation is there just the same. “Would you please tell us your name?”
“Thank you, but no. I don’t believe I care to share that.”
“Some of the girls called you Maya.”
“Then why did you bother to ask?”
He hears Eddison’s sharp intake of breath, but ignores it. “We’d like to know who you are, how you came here. We’d like to help you get home.”
“And if I said I don’t need your help to get home?”
“I’d wonder why you didn’t get home before this.”
There’s a not-quite smile, and a flicker of an eyebrow that might be approval. She’s a beautiful girl, with golden-brown skin and pale brown, nearly amber eyes, but she’s not soft. A smile will have to be earned. “I think we both know the answer to that. But I’m not in there anymore, am I? I can get home from here.”
“And where is home?”
“I’m not sure if it’s there anymore.”
“This isn’t a game,” Eddison snaps.
The girl appraises him coolly. “No, of course not. People are dead, lives are ruined, and I’m sure you were very inconvenienced at having to leave your football game.”
Eddison flushes, tugging the zipper up higher over his shirt.
“You don’t seem all that nervous,” Victor notes.
She shrugs and takes a sip of the water, holding the bottle gingerly in her bandaged hands. “Should I be?”
“Most people are when talking to the FBI.”
“It’s not that different from talking with—” She bites her chapped lower lip, winces at the beads of blood that seep through the cracked skin. She takes another sip.
“With?” he prompts gently.
“Him,” she answers. “The Gardener.”
“The man who held you—you talked with his gardener?”
She shakes her head. “He was the Gardener.”
You have to understand, I didn’t give him that name out of fear or reverence, or some misguided sense of propriety. I didn’t give him that name at all. Like anything else in that place, it was made up out of the whole cloth of our ignorance. What wasn’t known was created, what wasn’t created eventually ceased to matter. It’s a form of pragmatism, I suppose. Warm, loving people who desperately need approval from others fall victim to Stockholm syndrome, while the rest of us fall to pragmatism. Having seen both sides in others, I’m for pragmatism.
I heard the name my first day in the Garden.
I came to with a splitting headache, a hundred times worse than any hangover I’d ever experienced. I couldn’t even open my eyes at first. Pain lanced through my skull with every breath, let alone movement. I must have made a sound because suddenly there was a cool, damp cloth over my forehead and eyes and a voice promising that it was only water.
I wasn’t sure which unnerved me more: the fact that this was obviously a frequent concern for her, or the fact that it was a her at all. There’d been no woman in the pair that kidnapped me, of that much I was sure.
An arm slid behind my shoulders, gently pulling me upright, and a hand pressed a glass against my lips. “Just water, I promise,” she said again.
I drank. It didn’t really matter if it was “just water” or not.
“Can you swallow pills?”
“Yes,” I whispered, and even that much sound drove another nail through my skull.
“Open up, then.” When I obeyed, she placed two flat pills on my tongue and brought the water up again. I swallowed obediently, then tried not to vomit when she gently lowered me back to a cool sheet and a firm mattress. She didn’t say anything else for a long time, not until the colored lights stopped dancing across the backs of my eyelids and I started to move of my own volition. Then she pulled away the cloth across my face, shielding my eyes from the overhead light until I could stop blinking.
“So you’ve done this a few times before,” I croaked.
She handed me the glass of water.
Even folded over on herself, on a stool beside the bed, it was easy to see that she was tall. Tall and sinewy with long legs and lean muscles like an Amazon. Or a lioness, really, because she slumped bonelessly like a cat. Tawny gold hair was piled atop her head in some fancy nonsense, revealing a face with strong architecture and deep brown eyes with flecks of gold. She wore a silky, black dress that tied high around her neck.
She accepted my frank appraisal with something like relief. I suppose it was better than shrieking hysterics, which she’d probably gotten before.
“I’m called Lyonette,” she said when I’d looked my fill and given my attention back to the water. “Don’t bother telling me your name because I won’t be able to use it. Best to forget it, if you can.”
“Where are we?”
“The Garden.”
“The Garden?”
She shrugged, and even that was a fluid gesture, something graceful rather than inelegant. “It’s as good a name for it as any. Do you want to see it?”
“I don’t suppose you know a shortcut to a way out of here?”
She just looked at me.
Right. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, planted my fists on the mattress, and realized I could see every bit of me there was to see. “Clothing?”
“Here.” She handed me a piece of silky, black something that proved to be a slinky, knee-length dress that came high around the neck and low on the back. Really low. If I’d had dimples on my ass, she’d’ve been seeing them. She helped me tie the ropy sash around my hips, then gave me a gentle push toward the doorway.
The room was plain, severely so, with nothing in it but the bed and a small toilet and sink in one corner. In another corner was what seemed to be a tiny open shower. The walls were made of thick glass, with a doorway in place of a door, and there was a track on either side of the glass.
Lyonette saw me looking at the track marks and scowled. “Solid walls come down to keep us in our rooms and out of sight,” she explained.
“Often?”