Chapter 54
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CASPER
“What the fuck are we doing down here?” Bellatrix called out from behind me. She made me go first, which was smart. Never knew what sort of devious shit was going through a guy’s head as soon as he got a girl alone.
“Going on a field trip, myshka,” I called back.
I paused to let her catch up to me. She stopped a few steps short of the little cell Donnie left her in the last time we were in this basement, and I spun around to look at her, flicking the flashlight over her face and grinning when she covered her eyes with a hand.
“Show me where you went after you got out of there.” I bounced the light between her and the cell.
Bellatrix crossed her arms over her chest. “Why?”
“Because I asked nicely.”
“You didn’t ask at all,” she huffed, pivoting on her boot heel, turning down one of the hallways, and then disappearing through a hole in the wall in a nearby room.
I had to duck my head to follow her. She paused and glared at me over a shoulder.
Even though she couldn’t see me because I was the one with the flashlight.
I swept it along the ceiling, all the cobwebs hanging down to eye level, the floor which was covered in rat shit, before panning from left to right.
It was a tunnel system. I directed the flashlight in front of us, testing to see if it reflected off something at the other end. It didn’t. It just kept going instead.
Bellatrix was already walking again, so I jogged forward to meet her stride.
“How far does it go?” I hummed from beside her.
“Far,” she replied.
I pulled a candy bar out of my pocket, peeled back the wrapper, and nudged it in her direction. She shook her head, so I shrugged and bit off the top half.
“Your loss,” I told her around a mouthful of chocolate. “I grew up here, you know.” I gestured to the tunnel before hiking a thumb behind us. “Well, not here but back there.”
Bellatrix side-eyed me but she didn’t stop walking. “I know.”
I grinned. I could feel the chocolate sticking to my teeth and used my tongue to lick most of it off. “You got a file on me?”
“You got a file on me?”
“Right, well, for the sake of some friendly conversation, pretend you don’t.”
“Wish I didn’t,” she mumbled under her breath.
“Anyway,” I talked over her continued grumbling. “Because of my chair, I never got much of a chance to explore down here. There’s not much I don’t know about Briarwood. But didn’t know about these tunnels.”
Bellatrix stumbled in her steps, pretended like she didn’t, then attempted to walk a little faster. “You were in a chair? Like a wheelchair?”
“Guess your file doesn’t have everything.”
“How did you fix your legs?” She was trying her hardest not to look at me. But her eyes kept flicking down and to the side before shooting out in front of us again. She wasn’t worried about watching her steps. She was watching mine. She was curious. Most people were.
“I didn’t.”
“Who did?” she pressed.
I shook my head. “Not part of the story.”
“You’re telling a story?”
“Tryin’ to but the audience keeps interrupting.” I glanced to the right, and this time, I caught her looking at me. She didn’t appear embarrassed, though. More annoyed.
“Maybe they wouldn’t interrupt if you got to the point,” she grunted. “What are we doing down here, Casper? If you really wanted to know how I got out, I could have drawn you a map or you could have spent a little time exploring it on your own. You don’t need me here with you.”
“I could have.” I lifted another shoulder. “But I enjoy the company. Plus, it’s not as much fun telling the story to myself.”
“Right, the story.” She rolled her eyes. “The one where you’re the main character?”
“Always. Wouldn’t be much of a story otherwise.
” I stretched my arms high over my head, popping each back into their sockets, crammed the rest of the candy bar into my mouth, then dropped my hands to my sides.
I let the wrapper flutter wherever it landed.
“Anyway, as I was saying, never really came to the basement.”
“Because of the chair,” Bellatrix chimed in.
“Exactly.” I nodded. “Until one day, I did and discovered a shit-ton of patients they kept down here. They’d been here for a while too.
Longer than me. Most of ?em didn’t have names or charts, and they were tied up or chained down.
Holed up in cages or inside the cells like the ones you saw back there. ”
“That’s not really a story, though. I remember reading about it in the papers. It was all over the news for weeks… after the mass—”
“It wasn’t a massacre,” I was quick to interrupt her. “That’s just what people liked to call it. To make themselves feel better for what was really going on under their noses. It was a coup. A regime change.”
“With Dr. Adrian Lambert leading the charge?” Bellatrix quirked a brow. I didn’t bother answering her. We weren’t here to talk about him or any of the other shit that was public record. We were here to talk about these tunnels.
“What wasn’t mentioned in the papers were the girls…”
“The girls?” she parroted.
“They just appeared one day. A few at a time. They weren’t patients, though. They never came through the front door, didn’t leave that way either.”
“How do you know?”
I shot her a look that said really? Without saying anything. And Bellatrix rolled her eyes again.
“Point is… I think I know how they got there now. I just don’t know where they came from or why.”
“And suddenly that matters? However many years later?” she asked.
“Aren’t you the tiniest bit curious?” I threw back at her.
She stepped up in front of me, with an extra little pep. “I’m always curious.”
“Me too, babe.” I grinned, flashing the light over the way her ass cheeks jiggled in her tac pants each time she swayed her hips.