“Romantic.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she murmured, and if she’d attempted to add some levity to her tone, she’d failed.
He’d scooped up the peanuts and begun counting them but now paused. “Yesterday you were given peaches, and then . . . you . . .” He paused, and she nodded. Thank God. He hadn’t wanted to say that out loud. “Is there a connection between these deliveries and what was done to you?”
“Like what?”
He couldn’t think of anything that made sense. “I don’t know,” he said as he continued to try to understand the situation they were in based on the new information.
“Did the man who . . . do you think he’s the one who took us?” he asked her after a moment.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I don’t think so. He wasn’t very . . . he wasn’t strong.”
“How do you think he knew about you, then? About us? Where did he rent you?”
She met his eyes. “A marketplace where you can buy and sell . . . people. I . . . I don’t know.”
Yes, he’d had the same dark suspicion. He’d even come up with the same word—marketplace. “Okay, yes, I agree. So then maybe these are . . . gifts . . . and are from the people who rent . . . us?”
“Gifts?” she asked and then shrugged. “It’s possible.”
“Why, though? I don’t think wooing is necessary. We’re sort of a sure thing.”
“Not funny.”
“I wasn’t trying to be.”
She stared morosely down at her strawberry for a moment before using her fingernail to score the middle and then pull it apart. She reached through the bars, giving him half. “It doesn’t matter. Rejecting this food won’t get us anywhere. We need it.”
He took the strawberry and set it on his tray, quickly counting the peanuts and handing her half plus one on account of the one he’d already eaten.
They ate in silence, allowing the other to savor the food, especially the chocolate, which he continued to suck from his teeth long after it was gone. He knew she was as aware as him that it would be the only small pleasure they’d receive that day.
When they were done, they pushed their trays back in the dumbwaiters without being directed to, and the doors slid shut, the internal cart lifting to some unknown location above.
They sat there in silence for several minutes before she picked up the conversation they’d been having before their food arrived. “We’re being sold. But I keep coming back to . . . why us? Why us in particular? Our connection . . . it still . . . it has to mean something.”
He couldn’t answer that. But like her, his mind kept returning to the same question. And if he could figure out what, maybe they would be able to appeal in some way to whoever was keeping them captive.
It wasn’t random. They’d been taken from two separate locations. It must be someone who knew them both, but he couldn’t fathom who. Maybe it was simply some sicko who’d followed the court case and had developed some strange fascination with them or their families or who knew what aspect of the case.
It had to be an operation, though. This wasn’t some singular deranged madman. There were at least a few more people involved, one being the lackey who’d escorted Noelle to the room upstairs. The man who’d threatened to take his fingers and appeared excited at the possibility. Another being the man who’d rented her. If they were being “rented,” then they were being advertised. On some black market, like she’d said. But where? He had no comprehension of that kind of thing.
He couldn’t even fathom the depth of evil he was pondering.
The kind of evil they were living.
“I think there were cameras up there,” she said after a few minutes. “I saw this tiny red light on the upper portion of the wall near the ceiling. I focused on it.”
“Cameras,” he repeated. “People watching as this man—”
“Yes.”
Someone watched? God. This is insane. He sat up slightly, leaning on his forearm. “Do you think there are cameras down here too?” He whispered the words as though speaking quietly might help make him invisible. “Do you think someone is watching . . . and listening?” It was like he could suddenly feel their eyes. The unknown predators behind all . . . this.
She leaned up, too, looking around. He hadn’t seen any small light, though. If it was here in this room, it was hidden well. Or perhaps the equipment was different. “I think we should assume there are,” she answered. “Otherwise, how did someone rent me? Based only on a description?” She shook her head. “No, I’d think they’d want to see what they were getting for the money.” She fell back on the floor, rolling onto her back and throwing her arm over her eyes.
For a minute he thought she was crying, and he began to put his hand through the bars to reach for her. But then she lowered her arm, turning her head toward him. “My father stopped taking me to church when my mother died,” she said.
Evan’s forehead met the cold bars, and he watched her as she spoke. “She’d been the more religious one.” She let out a small laugh that didn’t hold much humor, if any at all. “Ironic, I guess. I don’t know. She was committing adultery, after all.” He hid the grimace that threatened. “I think my father thought maybe it was all just BS. A building to go to on a Sunday morning. Words that went in one ear and out the other. I wonder if that’s what church became for him, because obviously that’s what it’d been for her.” She gave a fleeting smile and a small shrug. “Or maybe he just couldn’t bring himself to be around so many people. I really don’t know.”
Evan hung on her words, wondering where in the world she was taking this. “When I first woke in the dark, I thought about praying to die. But each time the words began to form, even in my mind, I stopped myself from saying them.”
“Why, Noelle?” Because he thought maybe there’d come a time when he said that very prayer. Wouldn’t it be better to fade into nothing than to live in untold suffering for who knew how long? How long could a person endure being caged the way they were before their mind slowly rotted anyway?
“Because a prayer like that felt like an affront to God,” she said, her eyes moving around the room, maybe searching for the cameras they’d just been wondering about. “And if there’s any chance God exists, we need him now more than ever.”
He looked up at the top of his cage, gripping a handful of hair and giving it a gentle tug. It already felt longer than it’d been when he’d left the gym that night . . . “God put us here,” he finally said.
She breathed out a laugh. “God didn’t put us here. Some person did.”
“God didn’t stop them. He didn’t intervene.”
“No, I guess not.” He turned his head and met her eyes and saw that tiny spark again. “But I can’t seem to give up on the hope that maybe he still will.”
He was amazed by her. She was in a cage after having just been raped, with unknown tortures in front of them, no possible way to get free, and there was still the flickering ember of hope in her eyes. And if she could manage it, so could he. “We can use all the help we can get.” He smiled. “But God helps those who help themselves.”
She smiled over at him, and for a moment he was able to linger in that tiny light of hope. It was abruptly interrupted when the door clanged open. Evan jerked, sitting up, and Noelle did as well, pushing her hair back from her face.
The same man in the black suit with red shoes entered the room. A spike of adrenaline speared through Evan’s system, his breath suddenly growing shallow. The man headed directly to Evan’s cage. “You’ve been rented,” he said, bringing the Taser from his pocket and holding it in one hand as he keyed a code into his lock with the other. Evan’s throat swelled, and for a moment, he had trouble catching his breath.