Chapter 27
AMY
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The idea of escaping whispers its way into my head while I’m staring at my dazed reflection in the bathroom mirror. Jill is muttering a circle around me as she gingerly picks up the stained clothes I’m shedding as fast as my trembling hands will allow.
“You all right?” she asks curtly, raising her voice to be heard over the water pouring into the bath.
I nod, tolerating the hypocrisy of her concern because I can’t afford to antagonize her. I don’t miss the irony behind the fact that it’s Jill—and not Kane—helping me now. I’m still reeling from my misjudgment of him.
“Why do you have to push him?” she asks suddenly, fiercely. “Why can’t you keep your mouth shut and do as you’re told?”
I stare wordlessly at her, knowing that anything I say will only endanger me further.
“You had to force him to pay attention to you,” she continues. “You had to get him to notice you as a woman.” As if aware she’s revealed too much, Jill falls silent. Giving my naked body a last, surreptitious scan, she turns off the water and stalks out of the room.
I glance again at my reflection. Kane notice me as a woman? Only in Jill’s twisted world. I barely recognize the face suspended in the glass: the dull skin, trembling mouth, the traces of vomit in the tangled ends of my blonde hair.
Look at what they’ve done to me. Look at what I’ve let them do.
I slump to the floor and let the tears come. Despair swells inside me until I think I’ll drown in it. Alongside the despair, however, flows a longing to escape so powerful, I shake from the force of it.
My head aches and my eyes are swollen. I climb shakily to my feet and step into the tub. The water is so hot I gasp. Perhaps scalding my skin will burn away the memory of this night.
I close my eyes, the pictures from the slide show tumbling through my head.
In spite of what Kane did to me, I’m forced to acknowledge how awful those pictures were.
I can’t believe this level of suffering is happening in research labs, yet I saw the evidence with my own eyes.
Can pictures be doctored? Can Kane’s allegations simply be emotional propaganda?
What did he say, that it’s the same in my father’s lab?
A cold fingernail of suspicion scratches its way up my spine.
I don’t know the details of my father’s work, but I know it’s important.
It’s the one thing, apart from me, that motivates him to get up in the mornings.
Although Dad never speaks about his work, claiming it’s too boring and technical for me, he’s always maintained that animal research is responsible for nearly every major medical and scientific advance, including antibiotics, vaccines, and insulin.
I can’t remember them all, but I do recall an impressive list of achievements.
Working shampoo into my hair, I try to remember if I ever visited Dad at work. I’m disturbed to realize I’ve never set foot inside the Galen Research Institute. Whenever I met him for lunch, it was at a restaurant nearby because he insisted the cafeteria food at his work is dismal.
Only once had I asked to visit his lab, wanting to see firsthand what was keeping him occupied during the day and so preoccupied in the evenings. But he brushed aside my request, saying lab animals often carried diseases and he couldn’t risk my health.
I believed him. Now I don’t know who to believe.
As I towel myself dry and slip into my own clothes, news scraps of kidnappings gone wrong hiccup through my head—the Italian Mafia chopping off the ear of J Paul Getty III, Islamic militants beheading journalist Daniel Pearl.
..animal rights fanatics burying alive Amy Hutchinson, the professor’s daughter.
I have to escape. Overpowering either Kane or Jill isn’t an option.
They’re both stronger than me. I felt the muscles in Kane’s arms when he grabbed me, the toned hardness of his chest when he restrained me against him.
And Jill seems to be Kane’s physical peer.
No, the only way to escape is to surprise strike first. To do that, I need a weapon and they’ve stripped the room of everything but the basics.
I stare at myself in the mirror, scheming, fretting, so scared I’m struggling to think straight.
The mirror.
I can break the mirror.
My stomach tightens as I realize what I’m contemplating, and what will happen to me if I fail. But if I stay? No, I can’t stay. Not after what they did. Not risking what they could still do to me.
Kneeling, I inspect the toilet. If I can somehow remove the porcelain lid, it’ll be heavy enough to do the job. It takes me a while to unscrew the nuts holding the bolts in place on the underside of the toilet, but finally the lid comes free.
To muffle the noise, I cover the end with a towel. Taking a steadying breath, I heft the lid in my hands, swing it back, and smash the glass.
#
Thursday morning, July 15
Even superficial scalp wounds will bleed profusely.
That’s what my father told me the day I did my George-of-the-Jungle imitation and cracked my nine-year-old head on the paving under the monkey bars.
At the sight of all that blood, I screamed so loudly a neighbor called the police.
My dad was right though. All I needed was two stitches.
So when Kane grunts in pain and I feel his blood on my fingers, I don’t let that deter me, but slash him again, aiming for where I imagine his heart to be. Earlier, I selected the largest, most lethal-looking shard of glass, wrapping a pillowcase protectively around the palm of my hand.
The glass shard slices through something soft and yielding.
Please not an artery, but please let it stop him.
I hear the sharp intake of his breath, feel him stagger against me, knocking me off-balance. I shove against his chest. He falls to one knee and I kick out at his head, connecting clumsily with his skull. I see him sway, and my focus narrows to one goal. The open door.
I stumble toward it, but his hand shoots out and grabs my ankle, pulling me down onto the floor with him. I try to slice him again, but the brutal pressure he applies to my wrist forces me to drop the makeshift weapon with a pained hiss.
And then we’re grappling on the floor, me pummeling him, Kane deflecting my blows and trying to pin down my wildly flailing form. If it wasn’t for his injuries, I wouldn’t stand a chance. At least now there’s the hope we’re roughly matched.
It’s an eerie struggle. Apart from our labored breathing, neither of us makes a sound. I know the reason for my silence, but I don’t know why Kane doesn’t call out to Jill.
“Give it up,” he pants in my ear as I lie stretched out on top of him.
“Not a chance.”
I claw at his ski mask, ripping it off, allowing me to see clearly a face I’ve wondered about since I was kidnapped. A face I imagined older and uglier than the one before me now. The features are too strong to fall under the pretty-boy label, but it’s still a surprisingly attractive face.
His unmasking takes us both by surprise. For a split-second, we’re frozen. Kane is the first to react. Still lying on his back, he grips my wrists and wraps his legs around my thighs, locking me against him.
“You tried to kill me,” he says in a tone of disbelief. “Are you so desperate to escape you’d kill me or Jill, whoever walked through the door first?”
“Why not?” I retort, the sour taste of defeat in my mouth. “You’re planning on killing me.”
He seems stunned by my statement. “Where did you get that ridiculous idea?”
“Maybe when you took me away by force from my home,” I say thickly. “When you paralyzed me, when you tied me down and forced me to look at those pictures...” My voice breaks.
His eyes slide away from mine. “About last night, I might have gone a bit overboard.”
“Might!” I almost choke on a surge of helpless rage. I wish I had cut an artery.
His eyes flick back to mine. “What I subjected you to, that was wrong. But you—” He stops, shaking his head.
“How could you do that to me?” I ask, tears blurring my vision. “What have I ever done to you?”
“Amy.”
But I’m crying too hard to take in anything he says, to realize he has, for the first time, called me by my name. When my sobs become shudders punctuated by hiccups, he asks quietly, “Are you okay?”
I shake my head, keeping my face averted.
Kane exhales heavily. “If there was another way to do this, I’d take it.”
There’s a note in his voice I haven’t heard before, but I’m too exhausted to try to figure it out. In a hollow voice, I ask, “Do you love animals that much?”
“You’re asking the wrong question.”
“What should I be asking?”
“Do I hate injustice that much?”
I look at him. “What you did to me, was there justice in that?”
Kane flinches. “No.”
“No,” I echo resentfully. “You got that right.”
An indefinable emotion wells up inside me. I spent most of last night crouched in the dark, waiting for one of them to open the door and walk in. And now my escape plan has failed. I’d have to stay in this room, at the mercy of two people who want to use me as a means to their end.
I’ve had enough. Feeling as though I’m suffocating, I buck against his hold. Wincing with the effort, his legs still wrapped around me, Kane rolls me onto my back. He wrenches my arms above my head and uses his shoulder to swipe at the blood on his cheek.
With his face suspended only inches above mine, I observe how pale his skin is, how his mouth pinches at the corners. It’s hard to tell where I managed to cut him because there’s blood everywhere. In his dark hair, on his face, his neck.
Astonishment sweeps through me. I did that to him. Me, Amy Hutchinson, who fainted when a friend dropped a dumbbell on his toe and it splattered like a crushed grape. The burst of satisfaction fades when the truth hits me that, despite the show of blood, he’s the one on top.
“Amy, I’m not proud of what I did to you last night.” Kane’s voice is low and hoarse. “That kind of stunt was never on the agenda. I was angry at you and I let that anger lead me.”
His confession is so close to an apology I’m momentarily taken aback.
Do kidnappers apologize to their victims?
How am I supposed to respond? Accept his halfhearted apology or throw it back in his face?
There’s no rule book to cover this. I know what I want to do, but emotional indulgence is now too great a risk.
I swallow. “Are you going to kill me?”
“No,” he answers forcefully.
“Are you going to...humiliate me again in some way?”
There’s the faintest hesitation. “I can’t answer that.”
“You just did.” My eyes examine his face, the hard line of his jaw, the proud slope of his nose, the faint crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. I’m searching for something that can touch the core of this man. “Let me go,” I whisper.
“I can’t.”
“I’m begging you—”
Kane’s jaw clenches. “Stop.”
He says nothing more, but he doesn’t look away either, keeping his eyes locked on mine. The moment stretches out.
Then everything changes.
His gaze trails from my eyes down to my mouth.
Trapped along the length of his body, I still, not daring to breathe, sensing his interest, and stunned my body is reacting to it.
His eyes stray up to mine again. I stare into those gray depths, unable to tell what he’s thinking. His head lowers, and I hold my breath, the air between us so charged it feels as though my skin is burning.
With a curse, he leverages himself off me so abruptly I wince. The look in his eyes is volatile.
I scoot backward until my back bumps the wall. Kane kicks the door shut with his foot, pressing the palm of his hand to his side, the blood stark against his white T-shirt.
There’s a beat of silence while we both wrestle with what nearly happened between us. I see in his face the same realization no doubt reflected in mine, the knowledge that something dark and dangerous has opened between us. Something we both have to back away from.
Kane lifts his hand, staring at the blood on his palm. “You planning any more dirty tricks?”
“No,” I lie.
“Forget it. It was a stupid question.”
I bite my lip. “I’ve seen your face.”
“It wasn’t your smartest move.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.” He sways slightly. “You really worked me over with that piece of glass. Did you break the mirror?”
I nod.
“Huh. Didn’t think of that.”
“What will the punishment be this time?” I ask bitterly.
“I tell you what, let’s call it even between us.”
And then he passes out.
My breath hitches as I stare at his still form. Is he toying with me? Is this a test?
I stand up slowly and step cautiously over to him.
He looks terrible, his skin so white it’s almost translucent.
I risk a closer look at his face. He has thick dark hair cut short, a jaw shadowed by stubble, and dark lashes concealing eyes that haunt my sleep.
His profile is strong and hard even while he lies there unconscious.
I nudge him with my foot. He doesn’t move. Maybe he isn’t faking it.
Looking at him, at what I did to him, I feel a measure of remorse.
But not enough to stay.
Not enough to help.
I turn, fling open the door, and run out of the room.