He reeled in his thoughts. He didn’t want to make too many assumptions and miss something that might tell him otherwise. Watch. Listen. Learn. It was what he did best.
A light in the room flashed, and both the boy and the girl made sounds of surprised fear, moving backward to the corners of their respective cells, away from the bulb. The girl brought her arm over her eyes, her face screwed up in pain. The light must be torturous after so long in the dark. The boy sat still, though his face was contorted similarly, one arm held out in front of him like he expected an attack. He couldn’t do much about it, but he wanted to feel it coming. His left eye was swollen shut, but he blinked the other repeatedly, trying desperately to see.
“What’s happening?” she asked, voice breathless and filled with fear.
“I don’t know,” he answered, his arm moving one way and then the other, warding off whatever invisible threat his mind was conjuring. There was nothing in front of him, though. Only light had entered his cage.
The Collector watched, waiting along with the captives to see what would happen next. His eyes slid to his cell phone on the desk next to him. One of his options was to call the authorities. But he didn’t think that was the best choice. At least not yet.
He had ended up here, this voyeur, through a series of well-strategized liaisons but also a twist of auspicious events. When he’d realized what this was, he hadn’t anticipated having any interest in watching. He would play, yes, but he’d intended to skate the perimeter. After all, he had a different form of winning in mind. But now, he couldn’t look away. People thought they watched reality TV, but there was very little reality to it. It was scripted and edited to lead the watcher toward predetermined conclusions. This, though—it was riveting. He understood the draw.
God help him, he did.
CHAPTER THREE
Evan flinched, trying to see but helpless against the painful pinpricks of sudden light that jabbed his eyes. Blindly, he swept his arm from side to side. If he was attacked before he managed to crack his lids—or lid, rather—open, he wanted to feel it coming. Not like the first time when he’d been roughly woken from sleep and hauled from the first cage he’d been kept in for what felt like weeks. He’d been taken off guard then, but he wouldn’t let it happen again. At least not while he was awake.
He took in flashes of the room through the slit of his eye, holding it open for a millisecond at a time.
His own splayed hand held out in front of him.
Gray metal bars.
A hazy counter-like structure beyond his cage.
He heard Noelle gasp, heard her movement, and turned his head in her direction. He saw her blur as she crawled to the front of her own cage, situated several feet away from his own.
Concrete floor between them.
“What do you see?” he asked, as she’d obviously managed to open her eyes before him. Likely because she was working with two.
“There’s a table. Or a counter,” she said, and he lowered his hand. He could see enough now to know he was the only one in his cage. He moved forward, too, crawling toward the front of his enclosure. There was a door on the front of his tiny cell, and when he tilted his head, he could see a black keypad lock toward the top holding it closed. He’d look at that more closely in a minute.
He felt a surge of hope, small but energizing. If he could see, his chances of working his way out of this improved dramatically.
He held on to the bars as he looked over at Noelle. Yes, it was definitely her. He didn’t know why or how they’d ended up here together, but he had to believe it had been by some sick design. They’d been chosen purposefully. Why, he couldn’t guess, but their connection wasn’t a coincidence. He was all but sure of that.
Your father is Leonard Sinclair. He killed my mother.
What the fuck? Who is behind this?
She looked over at him, eyes still partially squinted, skin pale. She was wearing black leggings and an oversize pale-pink sweatshirt. Her feet were bare like his. His heartbeat quickened. He could feel his pulse thrumming in his neck. As they’d first spoken in the dark, even after she’d told him who she was, he’d half believed he’d made her up. He’d finally cracked after so many days and nights alone in the pitch black, and she was nothing but a figment of his deranged imagination. It even seemed appropriate somehow that it was her he’d summoned to torment himself as he descended into all-out crazy.
She’d turned her head as he stared, and leaned forward, studying what was in front of them. He faced forward, too, toward the counter against the wall. It was about six feet away from them, out of reach, but there were several items on it. He couldn’t see the things on the back of the counter from his position, but he could see one that was slightly toward the front. “There’s an ice pick,” Noelle said breathlessly. Her eyes were wider now as she glanced quickly at him and then away. He craned his neck, blinking his one eye rapidly as the room came into sharper focus. Yes, yes, he saw the ice pick among the things that were farther back. It looked like an ice pick anyway. But all he saw was a weapon.
He turned around, looking desperately around his cage for something he might use to retrieve it, but the enclosure was empty except for the metal toilet in the far corner. He reached his arms wide, gripping the bars on either side of his metal prison and throwing his body forward in an effort to move the entire structure with the force of his weight. The cage trembled, causing his teeth to vibrate, but it didn’t budge. It felt like it was bolted to the floor. He let out a grunt of frustration, returning to the front and peering at the counter.
“One of the things near the back has a cord attached to it . . . I think,” Noelle murmured, her head touching the top of her cage as she attempted to peruse the elevated table. “It’s hard to tell.” She looked his way.
He could only see out of one eye, and so her account was going to be better than his. His gaze hung on the weapon he could see clearly for a moment before he huffed out a breath, sitting down and leaning against the bars before drawing his knees up and planting his feet on the ground. He raked his hand through his greasy, unwashed hair. “Fuck!” he yelled. “What the fuck good is a goddamn machine gun, much less an ice pick, when it’s halfway across the room and we’re caged like fucking animals!”
“If we can retrieve it, maybe we can jimmy that thing somehow,” she said, glancing up at the identical lock at the top of her own cage.
“Jimmy it?” he asked. “Do you know how to jimmy a keypad lock with an ice pick? If you even had a way to get the ice pick? Jesus, even if you managed that, you couldn’t fit your hand through these bars to grab hold of the lock anyway,” he said as he jerked his head toward the bars of the door portion of the cage, skinnier and closer together than the bars that made up the rest of their enclosures and going in two directions so they formed a grid.
“Do you have a better idea?” she spit out.
“Someone turned on the lights,” he said, ignoring the derision in her tone. “Maybe that someone will make an appearance.”
She let out a thin laugh. “Is that your plan, then? To charm your way out of here? Flash them that megawatt smile? Maybe you can promise them a few bars of gold if they don’t already know who your daddy is.”
So it had come to that very quickly. How could it not? Even in this unimaginable situation—trapped and traumatized.