I nodded, my eyes brimming over with tears.
“If you scream without my permission, you will kill your family. Nod yes if you understand.”
I nodded and felt bile rise in my throat. I was going to choke.
“Okay,” he said smiling, “here we go. This might hurt a little.”
And then he ripped the duct tape from my mouth. I retched onto the slatted floor: that was when I noticed there was water beneath it. The ocean? A lake?
The ocean. I smelled salt.
Jude shook his head. “Gross, Mara.” He looked at me the way you would at a puppy for soiling a newspaper. “What am I going to do with you?” Jude looked around the room. His eyes settled on something. A mop. He stood up and cleaned the mess from the weathered wooden slats.
Trying to kill him was useless. He lived through the collapse somehow and anything I tried would fail. Jude realized it, because when he looked at me, he wasn’t at all afraid.
But even if I couldn’t kill him, I wasn’t powerless. I heard Noah’s defiant voice echo in my mind.
“Don’t let your fear own you,” he had said. “Own yourself.”
Jude wanted something from me, otherwise I’d be dead already.
Whatever it was, I couldn’t let him get it.
“I asked you a question,” Jude said, when he was finished. “You can answer.”
He wanted me to answer, so I stayed silent.
Something hardened in his face and I was glad, because he finally looked the way someone who bound and gagged and kidnapped someone was supposed to look.
“What am I going to do with you?” he asked again, his voice quieter and infinitely more horrifying. “Look at me,” he said then.
Own yourself. I looked away.
Then he came close and pinched my cheek. “Look at me.”
I closed my eyes.
“You look pretty good, Mara,” he said softly.
Please, please let him die. Please.
“Your opinion,” I whispered, “means very little to me, Jude.” I opened my eyes. I couldn’t help it.
Jude’s smile had spread. He rocked back in his chair. “I bet that mouth gets you into all sorts of trouble.”
He exposed more of the blade he was holding, smiling the whole time, and a primal, instinctive shiver ran through me. He raised his hand, staring at the wickedly sharp edge.
“What do you want?” I was surprised by the strength in my voice. It fortified me.
Jude looked at me like I was a puzzle he was trying to work out. “I want Claire to not be dead.”
I closed my eyes and saw the words he left for me in blood.
FOR CLAIRE
My bones hurt and my mouth and arms ached from my position. “I want Claire to not be dead too.”
“Don’t say her name.” His voice was edged with razor blades. But then, seconds later, it was calm. “Are you going to bring her back?”
He knew what I’d done. That I killed her. And now he was punishing me; he’d been punishing me all along. This was revenge.
I had no idea what to do. I didn’t see a way out; I was tied up and trapped and I’d tried to kill him before but he didn’t die.
Should I lie? Pretend I didn’t understand? Or admit what I did since he already knew it? Apologize?
I couldn’t decide so I ignored the question. “I thought you were dead too.” I swallowed. Looked at his hands. “How are you alive?”
He rocked forward in his chair this time, until he was inches away from me. I felt his breath on my face.
He wanted me to flinch, so I kept still.
“Disappointed?” he asked.
He wanted me to say yes, so I said, “No.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Really?”
I couldn’t help it. “No.”
At that, a toxic grin spread across his mouth. “There we go,” he said softly. “Some honesty, finally. Don’t worry, I don’t hold that against you.”
“It was an accident,” I said, before I even knew that I’d said it.
Jude considered me for a moment, then gave a single shake of his head. “We both know that’s not true.”
“The building was old and it collapsed,” I said, trying like hell not to sound so desperate and fake.
He tsked. “Come on, Mara. You don’t believe that.”
I didn’t, but how did he know what I believed?
“I don’t believe that either,” he said. “You saw the video.” He shook his head. “God, that laugh, Mara. Really creepy.”
“How did you get it?” I asked him. “How did you get out?”
“How did you trigger the pulley system?” he asked me, moving closer. “How did you get the doors to close? Did you just think it and it happened?”
Was that how I did it?
“I heard the levers shriek and then ran to the doors, but they closed on my hands,” he said. His eyes studied my face. “You actually smiled at me when I turned to look at you. You smiled.”
The memory flickered in my mind.
One second, he had pressed me so deeply into the wall that I thought I would dissolve into it. The next, he was the trapped one, inside the patient room, inside with me. But I was no longer the victim.