No.
She leaned over the desk, writing out a short poem, and then she took several minutes to sketch an accompanying piece of art. It was juvenile both in content and in lack of talent, but it gave her a small burst of satisfaction all the same. I hope you take something of our time together with you as well. She paused, something occurring to her as the words he’d emphasized pricked at her mind.
Would I . . . break . . . the rules?
You’re so hot when you’re mad.
She left the paper on the desk, gripping the pencil and turning slowly toward the tiny eye of the camera peeking from high up on the wall. Why hadn’t they hidden this one? Did they want them to know they were being watched up here? Was it meant to add to their humiliation? She stared, wondering how many sets of predatorial eyes stared right back at her. It made the hair on the nape of her neck stand up.
Noelle raised the pencil held in both hands, hesitating only a moment before snapping it in two. She narrowed her eyes, gritting her teeth as she pictured her hatred like a ball of flame flowing from her eyes and leaping through the lens of that tiny eye, straight to whomever was on the other side as they burst into flames.
Her chest rose and fell as she took in swallows of air, lowering her hands and then tossing the broken pencil to the floor. She waited a beat, then two, but no repercussions came in response to her mini temper tantrum. Perhaps they had enjoyed it.
The man by the door remained still, staring straight ahead, his firearm held by his side. A moment later, the man in black arrived to return her to her cage.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Evan’s muscles burned, his arms shaking as he grunted and struggled to push his body up one more time. He growled with the effort, straightening his straining arms, then dropped down to the floor with a whoosh of released breath, pressing his cheek to the cold cement floor. He had to stay strong. He had to push through the pain. And even though he wasn’t getting nearly enough calories to do this, he refused to lose all muscle tone. Refused to grow weaker. Because someday . . . someday, he was going to be the one doing the beating. “If it’s the last thing I do,” he murmured beneath his breath.
The door opened, and he came quickly to his knees, waiting as Noelle was returned, eyes cast away as they always were. A scream of rage rose in his chest. How much more of this could they take? The door slid closed behind the henchman, and Noelle sat down, though not as gingerly as she had the past couple of times. He wished he didn’t notice that kind of thing. He wished he didn’t realize what it meant.
She seemed different, though, her eyes alight despite the slackness of her features. And this time, she didn’t lie down immediately and close her eyes. Was she in shock? Oh God, whatever had been done to her must have been worse.
“It was only my teeth, Noelle,” he said. They’d said they’d leave here whole. They’d made a silent pact the moment he’d followed her lead and refused to hand to her what was to be his own suffering. But some sufferings were greater than others, and they should recognize that too.
“We leave here whole,” she murmured.
“Yes, but—”
“No buts,” she said. “None.”
He sank down to the ground, turning his back without being asked so she could use the toilet or do what she could to wipe away the evidence of the man who’d rented her.
And then he waited for her to sing, tapping lightly on the bars as though accompanying her with percussion. He didn’t expect that she would utter a word about what had happened upstairs. They had an unspoken rule about that, developed over time. Neither asked anymore, and neither offered. Of course, they were in the same predicament, which meant neither was completely in the dark about what the other was enduring.
Instead, they planned and discussed possibilities for escape, few of which they’d come up with so far. Sometimes they spoke out loud, too, after they’d sung the most secret part of their conversation. They’d pretend they were talking about another topic, when they were actually discussing the secret they’d just shared. He hoped that anyone listening in, even if they were suspicious about some part or another of their spoken conversation, would have no frame of reference from which to make any assumptions.
So far, they’d worked out that they needed the codes to their cages, and they might have a way. By watching in the henchman’s tie pin, which, so far, he’d worn each time he’d shown up. But that presented a few problems. Number one, he only entered the code when they’d moved away from the door to their cage. Number two, sometimes he was turned slightly away. And number three, they weren’t even sure the code could be seen clearly in such a small accessory. The theory hadn’t been tested.
Evan kept tapping, and Noelle finally began to sing.
“Stole a song of sixpence, a something full of rye,” Noelle murmur-sang, raising her voice on the correct words so those were the ones that stood out.
Stole. Something.
His pulse gave a sharp leap. No wonder she’d looked like she was vibrating in some strange way. He’d assumed it was shock, but no; was it nervous energy she’d been trying to contain since she’d swiped some object from the room? But what? He’d done a full visual inspection of the space, and even when he wasn’t tied up, there was nothing small enough to swipe and hide. He stretched his neck, giving a small questioning shrug in response, knowing she was watching him from behind. What?
“Four and twenty pencils baked in a pie. When the part was opened, the birds began to sing.”
Pencil. Part.
That confused him. He knew that sometimes it was too difficult to say a specific word because it either didn’t blend into the song or it gave too much away, should it be overheard. He assumed that was the case now, so he considered the parts of the pencil and what purpose they might serve but couldn’t come up with anything other than maybe a sharp piece of wood. But that would be so tiny that even if they managed to sharpen it into a blade, it would break upon contact with even the softest target. Another stretch, another shrug. Why?
“Oh, wasn’t that a dainty plug, to fire before the king?”
Plug. Fire.
He’d been rubbing his shoulder, sore from the push-ups he’d done while she was gone, and now he paused, his breath catching. He gave a small cough to cover his reaction.
“I’m done,” she said.
Evan turned, lying down on the floor of his cage and facing her where she was now doing the same across from him. “You were telling me about that kitten you found when you were a kid,” he said, picking up the topic they’d been using to converse about their plan earlier. He assumed that, like him, she made up some of what she told him to fit within the framework of the secrets they told but that she also inserted some truth.
“Right,” she said. “Yes. So, I adopted this kitten, but he was a little troublemaker who was always causing havoc in places he shouldn’t.” She yawned, and her eyes slid upward and slightly to the back before her gaze quickly returned to him. Evan stretched his neck, his glance going to the place behind her that she’d signaled toward. There was only the small square of the dumbwaiter directly behind her cage. Was that what she meant? “Even the smallest, seemingly inconsequential places,” she said.
So not the dumbwaiter. His gaze slid backward on another stretch, his eyes moving over the outlet off to the right of the dumbwaiter and low on the wall. Was that what she was talking about? Her chin tipped downward. Yes.