CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Naomi
Something was wrong.
I surfaced slowly, like dragging myself up through thick, syrupy dark. Not awake—just … less gone.
Sound came first.
A low, steady hum. Mechanical. Close.
Then heat. So. Much. Heat.
It pressed in from every direction, heavy and suffocating, wrapping around me like a damp hand. My skin prickled, already slick. Sweat pooled at the base of my neck, slid down into my ears. My hair was plastered against my face and neck, and my mouth resembled the bottom of a pond during a drought.
My head throbbed.
A deep, pulsing ache that made my stomach roll when I tried to move. I sucked in a breath—too fast—and the air felt wrong. Hot. Wet. It didn’t fill my lungs so much as sit there. And burn.
I swallowed, throat dry despite the humidity. Then I tasted blood and slowly opened my dried and glued-together lips, swiping my thick tongue across them so they didn’t crack and bleed.
Where—?
The thought slipped, fragmented. Wouldn’t hold.
I blinked, my vision smearing before it slowly crept into focus. Wood. Close. Too close. Honey-colored planks, darkened in places with moisture. The sharp scent of heated cedar filled my nose.
No.
No, no, no—
My stomach dropped out from under me.
The hum. The heat. The walls.
A sauna.
Panic hit all at once, jarring and absolute. My chest seized, and my breath turned shallow and useless. I pushed up on shaking arms, but my muscles refused to cooperate. The world tilted violently, and I had to grab the bench to keep from face-planting.
Memory slammed back in jagged pieces—
The door. A woman I didn’t recognize. The crack of the taser. Falling—then … blackness.
My hand flew to the side of my head, and my fingers came away damp. Sweat. Just sweat. I didn’t know if that was better.
The air seemed to grow thinner by the second.
Too hot. Too small. My chest tightened as the memory hit—my father locking us in the crawl space, dirt under our knees, barely enough room to sit, winter cold biting through bone, summer alive with things that crawled.
Claustrophobia was easy to explain. The fear of heat?
That was just survival. I lurched to my feet anyway, legs unsteady, and stumbled toward the door.
“Hello?” My voice came out rough, barely there. “Hey—this isn’t funny!”
The wood burned under my palm as I grabbed the handle and yanked.
Nothing.
It didn’t move.
My pulse roared in my ears, drowning out the hum, drowning out everything.
“Hey! I don’t know who you are, or what I did to piss you off, but this isn’t funny. Open the door!”
The heat pressed closer. Squeezing. Like the room was alive, a snake, and coiling around me. Suffocating.
I hit the door with the flat of my hand, once, twice—then harder.
“Hey!”
Slowly, which had to be for dramatic effect, she came into view, standing in front of me, the dense trees behind her. “I saw you with him,” she said calmly.
“With who?” I pounded my fist on the door. “Let me out. I don’t like the heat. I don’t like small spaces.”
Her smile spread into something you typically only see on the faces of Disney villains. “I knew he liked older women.”
Like a sledgehammer to the side of the head, it hit me. “Kyla,” I whispered.
“He was using you to have his needs met. But I’m back now. You are no longer needed.”
I shook my head, banging on the door and trying the handle.
Nothing budged. Frantically, I searched the small dome for a safety latch or security hatch.
There had to be a fail-safe escape door, right?
There had to be. The floor was solid. The walls were solid and hot to the touch.
Every inhale was like hot coals across my lungs.
Anger filled her hazel eyes. “I don’t like it when people touch what doesn’t belong to them. It’s not very nice.”
“H-he doesn’t belong to you. Y-you are a predator. You molested him. You groomed him and raped him. You took his childhood and innocence away from him.” The dry, hot air scorched its way down my throat as my breaths grew shallow. I was starting to panic.
She smirked. “Please. I made him a man. He was just as in love with me as I am with him. Still is. I know it.”
I shook my head. “You’re delusional. He doesn’t love you. He hates you.”
“It’s a very fine line between love and hate. He’s just confused. You’ve confused him. But I’ll set him straight.”
Sitting on the edge of the bottom bench, I started to kick at the plexiglass window, but it just shook, billowed, and stayed intact. “You’re not going to get away with this. They’ll find me.”
She shrugged again. “Probably too late though.” Stepping closer to the glass, the amusement in her eyes sickened me.
“I watched him go down on you. Watched him stick his fingers inside of you. I taught him that. I taught him everything. There wasn’t a thing we didn’t do or try.
I was his willing teacher, and he my over-eager, ready-to-please pupil.
There isn’t a part of him that I didn’t teach.
Not a part he didn’t give me. And he even let me peg him. He loved that. Came so hard.”
“That’s bullshit. He never went down on you.” Spots clouded my vision as the heat infiltrated my brain, frying it from the inside. I was in an oven, slowly being cooked alive. Now I knew how lobsters felt.
Her snicker made a fresh wave of nausea roll through me. “Is that what he told you?”
The air in the sauna felt thicker now—like it had weight. Like it was pressing in from the outside as much as from the inside. Even though the throbbing in my head made it tough to concentrate, I needed to let this psychopath know I saw her for what she was—a monster.
“You think that makes you special?” I rasped. “That just proves what you are. He was a child. You didn’t teach him anything—you trapped him. You abused him.”
“He wouldn’t have been able to get an erection or finish if he didn’t want me. If he wasn’t attracted to me. Women can’t rape men.”
“You drugged him.” I slunk down to my knees on the floor. Hot air rises. The lower I stayed, the cooler I would be.
She didn’t react to that, just continued to stare at me.
“He won’t—” Every breath scraped my lungs raw. “He won’t be with you. He won’t let you anywhere near Mabel.”
The expression on her face next made bile coat the back of my dry tongue. “She’s the reason I lost him in the first place. I won’t make that mistake again.”
What the hell did that mean? Did she do something to Mabel?
I sprang back up to my feet and hammered on the acrylic glass. “Did you hurt Mabel? I will kill you if you hurt her.”
Kyla rolled her eyes. “You’re very dramatic. I’m not sure what he sees in you.”
Something inside me snapped—not panic, not fear. Something colder. Something razor-sharp.
“You don’t know anything about him,” I said, my voice low. “You don’t know who he is now. You only know what you made. And that person is gone.”
For the first time, her smile faltered.
Just for a second.
I saw it.
And I pushed.
“He wasn’t yours. He was a child you trapped in your sickness. And now he’s a man who hates you for it.”
The heat in the sauna seemed to spike with her expression, and I had to sit down on the lowest bench. I closed my eyes for a second and pressed my fingers to my temples, massaging them.
“You don’t get to say that,” she said quietly.
But she didn’t sound calm anymore.
I shifted on the bench, forcing my shaking legs to move. The wood was molten hot beneath me. I forced myself toward the wall, toward the control panel I’d noticed earlier—half-hidden behind a warped paneling seam.
If I could—
Kyla noticed.
Her voice sharpened. “Don’t.”
I ignored her.
My fingers found the edge of the panel. Loose. Cheap construction. Not sealed properly. Probably one of the reasons why we had gotten these saunas for such a good deal, and the manufacturer was going out of business.
This human slow cooker wasn’t meant to hold someone forever. Just long enough.
I yanked, and the paneling cracked. Hope filled my chest.
I pulled harder, revealing wiring.
“Stop,” Kyla snapped, stepping forward.
I didn’t stop. I grabbed the wires. I knew enough about home renovations and electrical that tugging on these wouldn’t electrocute me. I pulled as hard as I could, causing the plastic coating on the wires to stretch and snap.
The sauna died in a violent blink.
The roar of heat cut out like a severed scream.
For half a second, there was nothing.
Then: silence.
Then: distant shouting.
Kyla froze. Her eyes flicked past me—toward the roadway we’d cleared. Tire tracks in the dirt and flattened grass. To the place where Lennox and I parked to stargaze and make love.
Someone was there. Someone was coming.
I started to scream and bang on the side of the sauna.
“Help! Help me! Kyla has me locked in the sauna!” Even though I’d cut the power, it was still deadly hot inside, and every gulp of air, every syllable hollered was like fresh embers down my throat and through my lungs. “Lennox! I’m over here! Help!”
For privacy purposes, they had positioned the saunas to face the trees rather than the rest of the property, so all I could see was Kyla’s expression.
The roar of a vehicle engine echoed through the thin cedar walls, and Kyla’s face turned ashen. At the same time, Jagger, Clint, and Raina emerged through the trees since the McEvoys’ property was on the other side of the woods.
For the first time since I’d woken up—
Kyla looked afraid.
“Kyla!” Raina shouted, which just prompted my captor to take off running in the direction of the beach. “Stop!”
Clint and Raina chased after her.
Jagger limped toward me. “Hang on, Nay. I’ll get you out. It’s going to be okay.”
Lennox appeared, terror carved into every line of his face. His eyes found me—locked on—and everything else fell away.
Alive.
He saw it.
I was alive.
Relief shattered something in his expression—and then it hardened into pure, lethal focus.
He didn’t hesitate.
Didn’t slow.
He reached the door and drove his foot into it.
Once.
Twice—
The latch gave with a crack.