“I agree. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me too. But I wasn’t missing yet. And if he’d been somehow told in advance that I would be and was . . . I don’t know, trying to pay someone off to stop it from happening, he’d have let me know in some way. He’d have warned me or hidden me or something. At the very least, he would have called me.”
Yes. But there was some thread of truth floating around their attempts to understand. It was like he felt it, but he just couldn’t connect it to the part that would then link it to something else until the trail led them to all the answers. It was frustrating as hell, because it wasn’t like they had nothing. They just didn’t have enough. Not yet anyway. “Hey,” he said. “Since we’re here, what do you say we change and go check out the strip? It might help us clear our minds. Sometimes ideas end up coming to me about a case when I put my brain on search and then go off to do something else.” He smiled. But it was true. It’d helped before.
She ran her finger over the label on the water bottle for a minute, finally nodding. “Do you mind if I lie down for a little bit? I slept awful last night. I’d like a shower, and then I’ll meet you in the lobby?”
He stood, holding out his hand. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet. “Sounds good. I’ll see you in a couple hours.”
“I’ll be ready to win the biggest jackpot in town.” She laughed over her shoulder as she opened the door.
“You’re here with me,” he called to her. “You already did.” The door shut, but he heard her laugh from the hall outside.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Grim moaned as he sat up, his head swimming. But after a moment, the world cleared, and for the first time in a damn long time, there was no pounding in his brain.
He still remained caged, however.
He would have preferred an aching head.
The kid was already up. He heard him using the toilet and turned away to give him what privacy he could as he brought one arm over his chest, stretching it, and then doing the same with the other one.
The paper poppy caught his eye, and he wondered again who had sent it and what the point was of reminding him of the daughter he’d loved and lost, the little girl who had been murdered because of him.
There was the whooshing sound of the toilet flushing, Cedro’s waste being sucked into some container below wherever they were being held captive. Was this whole setup designed in a way that could be easily disassembled once he and Cedro were dead? DNA washed away, carted away, swept away.
How easy it would be to dispose of their bodies. Just drop them off somewhere in the unforgiving desert and leave them for vultures. If their bones were ever found, which was unlikely at best, the kid would be thought to have made the poor decision to cross the desert in search of a better life, Grim illegally transporting him.
What ripe pickings monsters had. So many throwaways to choose from. He looked at that handmade flower again. Poppy hadn’t been a throwaway. Neither had her mother. Not to him.
He used the toilet, flushing just as he heard the clunk of the trays being delivered. He crawled on his knees to the end of his cage and took the tray from inside the shaft where it’d been lowered. There was another white napkin on this tray, and when he lifted it, there was a prayer card below. Grim picked it up, looking at the picture of the blessed mother on the front and then turning it over. On the back was the “Our Father” prayer in Spanish. What the fuck was this? Was someone mocking him?
He read it and then flipped it back over, running his finger over the art. Oh. Yes. There. Those small bumps.
“What do you have?” Cedro asked.
“A prayer card,” Grim murmured. “Did you get anything?”
“The same,” he said, holding his up.
“Can I see it?” Grim asked.
Cedro hesitated, clearly considering whether it was something he should guard from Grim. But then he shrugged, obviously deciding that in their situation, a prayer card was of little value, if any at all, setting it on the floor and flicking it across to Grim.
Grim picked it up. The picture on the front was the same, but instead of “Our Father,” the prayer on the back was the Hail Mary. Grim read through that one, too, and then used his finger to feel the small bumps hidden within the artwork on the front.
His heart was beating swiftly, pumping blood through his veins. Making him feel alive in a way he hadn’t in a very, very long time.
Grim ate the roll and drank the Styrofoam cup of water. He saw Cedro doing the same from his peripheral vision. He sat down, stretching his legs as far as they would go in the narrower direction of the crate he was in.
“Who was in that locket?” Cedro asked after a few minutes.
Grim considered not answering, but again, hell, the kid had sacrificed for him. And by the expression on his face when he’d returned, he’d paid a hefty price. “My daughter,” he said.
“What’s her name?”
“Penelope.” I called her Poppy. Who had known that? “And she’s dead. She died five years ago.”
The kid considered him. “Is that why you’re drinking yourself to death?”
He let out a surprised chuckle that ended in a sigh. Direct. But not wrong. He’d been drinking heavily before that too. But it’d definitely increased after that. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Most of it anyway.”
“What’s the rest?”
That I was responsible. That I’ve seen too much evil to care much about life anymore. All these things were true, but he didn’t exactly know how to express them, especially to a fourteen-year-old kid. The fact that he was acknowledging them to himself was frankly surprising the hell out of him. “I guess I don’t have a lot to live for, kid,” he said.
“Kid,” Cedro scoffed. He pointed his finger at him. “Listen, I didn’t save your eye so you could go and kill yourself once we get out of here,” he said, a clear note of anger in his voice.
Grim almost laughed but held it back. When we get out of here. So the kid had a pipe dream. Or he didn’t get what this was about. The chances of them escaping this were close to nil. He turned his head and then nodded to the candies sitting in the corner of Cedro’s cage. “You didn’t eat your peppermints.”
Cedro shrugged. “I’m saving them.”
“For what?”
Before the kid could answer, the door slid open, both of them turning toward the same man who’d come into the room the day before. Only this time, he headed straight for Grim’s cage. “You’ve been rented.”
Fuck. Fuck. “Fuck you.”
The man barked out a laugh. “You have a choice of course.”
“Fuck you,” Grim repeated. This time the man didn’t laugh.
“Come with me, or I take his tongue.”
His tongue. He didn’t look at Cedro. He didn’t want to see the look on the kid’s face. “Show me the way,” he said to the man. The man looked vaguely disappointed but took the key from his pocket and opened the lock on the top of Grim’s cage, inaccessible and blocked by a square piece of metal. The front folded down, and Grim walked out, half hunched over. He came to his full height once he’d exited, stretching his back.
The man waited for Grim to walk in front of him, holding the Taser, ready to shoot Grim should he make any sudden moves. He didn’t glance at Cedro as he shuffled past his cage.
“Open the door,” the man told Grim once they’d walked along a long hallway and turned down another, eventually ending up at a door.
Grim’s mouth was dry, his heart beating swiftly. He opened the door, his breath stalling at what he saw, his brain attempting to make sense of what this was.
It was a treadmill.
A treadmill.
And behind it and on each side were wide pits of burning coals, surrounded by what looked like electric fencing.
“One hour,” the man said, barely suppressed glee in his tone. “You run for one hour.”
One hour? Grim stared in mute horror. He’d just spent the week puking up his guts and then sitting or lying in a cage. He didn’t think he could run for ten minutes, much less an hour. And when he fell off, he’d fall into . . . a pit of fire with no escape.
“There’s still time to change your mind,” the guard offered. “His tongue, or you run.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT