I didn’t want to think about it. Instead I held tightly to a sliver of hope that maybe together Jacob and Dylan could buy me some time, time I needed to save myself. I continued to believe until the voices stopped.
A muffled sob erupted from my chest and my breath stuttered. The voices were gone. They’d left me and soon Jacob would fly back to Alaska. I was truly alone.
The new silence came like a thick cloud settling in the chilled basement. In some ways it reminded me of my psyche after my accident. Time lost meaning as only my breaths moved me, and then slowly I became aware of the world beyond my closed eyes. I fought the cloud and pushed it away. The fine hairs on my arms stood to attention as Stella’s fear was realized. I wasn’t alone.
Slowly I opened my eyes and turned my head. On one side of my bed, radiating coolness, was a gray wall. In the dim light I made out the rectangles and knew it was made of cement blocks. The far wall was also made of cement blocks. There was the one door, the one Jacob had walked through, and the one I’d heard lock. A dim light came from a lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Unlike the grand ceilings upstairs, this ceiling was nothing more than insulation and boards.
As I turned to my right my breathing hitched. There was another bed in the room and someone was in it—a woman. Opening my eyes wide, I quickly sat and backed away, scooting myself to the top of the bed. Backed against the cold cement wall, I pulled my knees against my chest, while my heart beat erratically and I stared at the silhouette of a body. Memories of bodies on Tracy’s table in the morgue prickled my skin with goose bumps as I tried to determine whether the woman was alive.
I released a breath as recognition propelled me from the remnants of my fog. Despite the bruises, contusions, and bandages around her eyes, I recognized the girl in the bed. Moving as quietly as I could, I eased myself to the cold hard floor. With my gaze narrowed to the other woman, I gasped as I nearly toppled an IV pole holding a bag of clear liquid near my bed.
Shit! Have they medicated me?
Quickly I scanned my arms. For only a moment, I feared that somehow I’d lost time, but my arms were clear of IV marks. Step by step I moved closer. Standing at her bedside, I saw the thick leather collar around her neck. Only a few inches wide, it wasn’t a brace, and seeing it, I was once again reminded of the bodies in the morgue. The one I recalled seeing with Dylan had had a thick bruise around its neck. Taking a deep breath, I reached for the woman’s hand. In the dim light, the tips of her fingers had the same ghostly hue as mine, and even in the coolness, her hand had warmth.
Thank God!
She was alive.
She might have been alive, but the swelling and black-and-blue contusions of her face peering out from the bandages over her eyes, as well as the ones on her exposed arms, told me she’d lived through hell. Attached to her other arm was the IV, with two bags hanging from the pole. One was the same as the one near my bed. I hoped the other was pain medicine. I eased her blankets down and found a cast on her right leg. I knew where I’d seen her before. She was the girl from the service.
“Sister Sara, leave her alone.”
I turned at the voice. I’d been too interested in the unconscious woman to hear the opening of my cell. In the doorway was the figure of a woman. By her attire, I wondered whether she was the same one who’d opened the door when we first entered the mansion.
“Come with me,” she said.
Nervously I tugged the silver cross on my necklace and ran it up and down the chain. This was my means of escape. It couldn’t happen from within this cell. I needed to comply, no matter where she led. As I followed, I squinted—not that the outer room had natural light, but it was brighter than the room where I’d been held. I quickly scanned the new room. It was depressingly like the one I’d just left, unpainted cement block and cement floor, with only old couches as furniture.
“In here,” the woman called from another room.
As I followed her voice, my steps slowed at the threshold of the room where she’d led me. It was a bathroom.
“You have three minutes, strip and shower.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, my knees once again feeling too weak to hold me.
Up close I saw that she wasn’t the same woman who’d opened the front door. This one had dark-blonde hair in a bun at the back of her head and was wearing the same shapeless white dress and soft shoes, but her scarf was a darker shade of blue. Her lips pursed and her eyes narrowed. Stepping closer, she lifted my silver cross and pulled. I gasped as the fine chain snapped.
“Strip and shower. That means your jewelry. You’re no longer chosen nor are you married. I personally don’t care if you succeed or fail. However, I’ll give you a bit of advice—follow directions the first time.”
When I didn’t reply she went on, “We all know the chosen think they’re so much better than the rest of us.”
Defensive at her tone and words, I stood taller.