Chapter 7 Maeve
MAEVE
No one even knows where you are.
Ethan Todd’s words burrowed into my psyche like a rabid mole in the hours after he left my cell. I’d been sure the Butchers would come for me, but now I couldn’t help wondering if I’d been naive.
There was a big blank spot in my memory from the time I lost consciousness outside the loft until I woke up in the underground cell, but in the moment before everything had gone black, Todd had mentioned a plane.
We crossed an ocean to get here.
Todd hadn’t locked me up in some compound in the mountains surrounding Blackwell Falls — he’d taken me somewhere far, far away.
What if the Butchers couldn’t find me?
… in a few days, you’ll be another dumb bitch fucking rich guys for money.
The thought chilled my blood. It was terrifyingly easy to imagine disappearing into the black hole of Ethan Todd’s sex trafficking enterprise, becoming just another girl on the bulletin board at Cassie’s coffee shop, behind the announcements about pancake breakfasts at the firehouse and local teenagers looking for babysitting gigs.
It would kill my parents. It would ruin Simon and Olivia.
Exactly. So stop thinking about all the things you can’t control and start thinking about the things you can, M.
I was relieved to hear June’s voice in my head. She’d been quiet since I’d woken up in the stone cell, like Ethan Todd had scared her away.
Where have you been?
I’m always right here.
I wanted it to be true, but I knew it wasn’t.
June was gone, her voice a figment of my imagination.
Still, she was right: I couldn’t assume the Butchers would find me, and it was the thought of my parents — of all they’d been through with June — that got me to stop obsessing about the possibility of rescue.
I needed to find a way out on my own.
But first, I’m going to hunt, Ethan had said.
He was going to set me loose in the dungeon, hunt me like he’d done in the tunnels under Blackwell Falls when he and Anton and Mr. Skinny had taken the Ghosts’ place.
The thought of it sent a wild thrum of fear through my body.
This wouldn’t be a hunt like the one I’d opted into under Blackwell Falls.
I didn’t know this place, had no idea what lay in the tunnels around me or on the ground above me.
And there was no time limit, no clock silently ticking down the hours to my freedom.
Todd could keep me down here forever if he wanted to.
Panic clawed at my throat. No, I wouldn’t let that happen. There was at least one way out because Ethan Todd, Meathead, and Mr. Skinny had been using it to bring me food.
I took long deep breaths, waiting for my head to clear of the fear that made it impossible to think straight.
Now think, June said.
I would use what little I knew about the dungeon to escape it. But first, I would need weapons, something to fight off Todd and his goons, something to buy me time, give me a chance to run again if they caught me.
I looked at the blinking red light on the camera near the ceiling and tried to gauge its range. Then I crawled toward it, waiting until I was out of its line of sight to start scrabbling for loose stone on the floor of my cell.
This was bad — really bad — but I would rather die than disappear inside Ethan Todd’s dark web.
And if I was going to die, I was going to die fighting.