Chapter Nineteen
Cayden
M y eyes never stray from Harley as she descends down the stairs, her back ramrod straight. Ryker, I'm assuming, smacks the back of my head as Grayson hisses, “What the hell is the plan, Cade?”
As she disappears into the darkness, I finally pull my eyes away and look between Ryker and Grayson. “Give her a minute and then we will go down. She needs this.”
“You went too far,” Grayson seethes, his shoulders tense with anger that’s directed at me.
I blink a few times, shocked to see Grayson so mad and to have it directed at me. That rarely ever happens. Usually, it’s Ryker. Not to say he isn’t mad; the fact that he’s silent is a bad sign.
A stab of guilt hits my chest, but I shake it away and stick with my gut.
She did need this. Harley may need softness and someone to hold her hand sometimes, but she also needs to be pushed.
Even if watching her deal with something on her own, or fall apart, hurts really fucking badly.
Some battles though, some battles we can’t fight for her. She has to do it for herself and then we can, we will, be there to pick up the pieces and put her back together as an even stronger person than she was before.
“You can be pissed at me, but she needed this. And now we need to go down there together and help her the rest of the way through it.”
Grayson pinches his lips together but doesn’t comment, and Ryker just shoulders past me and heads down the stairs, Gray and I following suit. We turn on the flashlights on our phones because the basement is completely dark besides the light shining from the open door upstairs.
We find Harley sitting in the far left corner, with her knees drawn up to her chest. Her arms are wrapped tightly around herself as she stares off into space, lost in her memories.
Without saying a word, we all walk towards her and sit in front of her. I’m on her right, Ryker is directly in front of her, and Grayson is in between us. I turn off my flashlight, the others doing the same, and we stay silent, giving her however much time she needs.
There are faint sounds above us: feet stomping on the ground and murmurs of voices that are too muffled to make out the words. There’s a different kind of silence down here. It feels suffocating. Not relaxing like when I run in the woods or go out to my spot to hide away from everyone.
This is what she had every day for three years. She lost her mom, her best friend, and was left with this darkness.
“The first few days I was here…” she says, her voice hoarse, quiet, and distant as she speaks. “Those first few days, I really thought I was dreaming. I thought I would just wake up, and I’d be back home having another stupid argument with my mom or playing the piano with her.
“Then Tammy started coming downstairs. The taunts began, the beatings, being forced to go upstairs and clean or stand in the corner of the dining room while they ate in front of me.”
My blood boils with rage, and a big part of me wants to leave this basement. Go run and beat the shit out of something, someone, do anything but listen to this right now.
But I force myself to sit here and let her speak about the horrors of this room. Help her heal in whatever way she needs.
“Time passed slowly down here. They’d give me one can of food a day. Sometimes they’d come down with three cans. The first time they did that, I thought they were going to start giving me more. I was so hungry at the time I devoured all three cans right away. I learned my lesson the hard way when they didn’t bring any other food down for three days.”
She lets out a humorless laugh, and the sound hurts my heart.
“Any time they brought down more than one can, it meant they wouldn’t be coming back down for days. I had to train myself to still only eat one can a day no matter how hungry I was so I didn’t eat it all on the first day. Then there were the days that she’d beat me so badly I couldn’t move from wherever she left me. Someone would drop a can of food off at the bottom of the stairs, but I would be in so much pain I couldn’t move to get it. I’d just lay there staring at it.
“After the first year, it got easier to handle the pain. My pain tolerance went from crying over a paper cut to being able to walk upstairs and clean a house with cracked ribs, a concussion, a broken arm, open wounds. I became numb to it all.”
She takes a shuddering breath and then gasps. The light from upstairs makes it so we can just barely make out where each person is, so I see when Harley grips her chest and begins hyperventilating.
I move without thought, pushing her forward away from the wall, closer to Ryker and slide in behind her, putting her between my legs.
Ryker scoots closer in front of her, and Grayson scoots closer to my leg.
We all continue to touch her in some way while Grayson speaks softly, getting Harley to breathe so she doesn’t pass out. Once she gets her breathing under control, she continues to sob silently.
“I know we tell you all the time,” Ryker whispers as he places his forehead against hers. “But you really are so strong. Do you know how many people wouldn’t have been able to survive that? How many people wouldn’t have had the will to get away?
“Not only get away but take the risk of finding someone you had never met and trusting them. You are a force, little flame.”
“You're unstoppable,” I murmur in her ear.
“You’re courageous,” Grayson adds.
She takes a shuddering breath. “I came down here.”
“Yes, you fucking did,” Ryker responds to her.
“I thought I would spiral out of control coming down here. I thought that if I kept repeating that I’m fine and it’s just a fucking house that it would be okay. Everyone kept giving me these sad eyes and asking me if I’m really sure and it was too much. I needed someone to just help me push myself.
“I hate it here. I want to burn this place to the fucking ground. I never want to see it again. I want to move on from this part of my life. I know Tammy is now out there somewhere, but the things that happened in this room need to just stay here. I don’t want to bring them upstairs with me because I’m not this person anymore.”
“Harley?” Rage questions from above, by the basement door.
“We are all down here,” Grayson calls out.
Footsteps sound on the stairs, and then a flashlight turns on and shines on us before looking over the room. I hear Rage suck in a sharp breath as he takes in the space before he comes closer to us.
“Everything okay?” he asks in a strained voice.
Harley wipes her cheeks off and shakes her head. “No, but it will be,” she says softly. “There should be a pull string in the bathroom for a small light that’s in there. It’ll help us see better,” she mumbles bitterly.
Grayson jumps to his feet and heads to the bathroom that’s along the same wall as the stairs. A second later, a dull yellow glow lights up part of the room.
I stand up and walk to Harley’s side, holding out my hand for her to take. She places her hand in mine and lets me pull her up. Instead of letting go, she grips my hand tighter as she takes in the room. “Everything is gone.”
Ryker stands up last and faces her. “It was empty when I broke in here after you got out last year. Stuff was shoved into the secret room.”
“What secret room?” Harley asks, furrowing her brows.
Ryker gestures to the wall right next to the bottom of the stairs, and we all walk over to it. Running his hands along the corner of the wall, he finds a spot to hook his fingers in and starts pulling.
Rage steps forward and helps him pull it open while Harley squeezes my hand so hard I can hardly feel my fingers, but I take the uncomfortable feeling for her. She needs me right now.
“It’s empty,” Ryker grumbles as he and Rage step to the side so we can look in.
It’s a small closet-sized room with no light. The door is just the wall on squeaky old hinges that are barely holding it up.
“I had no idea this was here,” Harley says, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I didn’t find it right away when I came down here,” Ryker explains. “I think the only reason I did was because they had just put stuff in it and then didn’t close it all the way.”
Rage clears his throat. “Harley, I know this can’t be easy for you, but can you tell me if everything's the same?” he says softly.
Pinching her lips together, Harley pulls me along with her as she walks over to the small, dingy bathroom, glancing around. Then she spins around and heads towards the center of the room, glancing down at the floor. “The, uh, the ring thing is gone.”
“The what?” I ask, furrowing my brows.
Still not letting me go, she squats down and runs her free hand over the ground. Rage shines a flashlight on the ground in front of her and stops when she finds a small hole that looks like it had a screw in it.
“This is where there was some kind of metal ring attached to the floor that the other end of my chain was attached too.”
“Fuck.” Rage's voice cracks. He presses his hand against his mouth and clenches his jaw so hard his teeth can be heard grinding.
“That’s it, though. The room is the same, but the mattress, clothes, and chain are gone. Upstairs, everything seemed the same, but I can take a closer look.”
Rage, who had walked to the other end of the room and put his hands on his knees, taking deep breaths, stood back up straight. “Okay. After that, we can get the fuck out of here. How did you know the code to the safe?”
Her fingers shake in my hold, so I tighten my grip, silently reassuring her that I am here with her. “Tammy’s favorite day of the year was the day my mom died. She would make sure to remind me about it and taunt me, and I had some of my worst beatings on those days every year. I heard her giving Tabby the passcode to her phone once when I was upstairs cleaning, and it was the same as the day my mom died, so it didn’t take much to assume she would have the same code for her safe.”
“Fucking hell,” Rage mutters, while Ryker looks like he is ready to go hunt Tammy down and murder her right now. Not that I blame him; I think the only reason I can remain calm is because Harley is holding my hand, keeping us both steady.
Harley walks through the house with us checking each room, but she doesn’t notice anything different. We walk back into the office where a few of the others are still going through some of the shit they had in the desk.
Harley releases my hand and circles the desk glancing down at some papers. “What is this?” she questions, pointing at something.
Sugar comes up next to her and explains, “We found these files and ten thousand dollars in a hidden compartment in the safe.”
Harley flips through the papers before she looks up and focuses on Grayson. “Remember that rec center we found when we were tracking everyone’s locations?” she asks, and he nods at her. “What was it called?”
“Jacksonville Recreation Center. Why?” He approaches the desk to stand next to her.
“This file is labeled for the rec center, and all the papers inside are like face sheets of different kids. It has a picture of them, their age, their ethnicity, and a little bit of information about their personalities.”
“I’m going to assume that the center isn’t keeping face sheets like this on kids. Or if they are, they definitely don’t just hand them out to other kids' parents,” Ryker snarks angrily.
“Why would they have left these behind, though? And the extra cash? The safe was completely empty besides these things in the hidden compartment,” Rage sighs as he runs a hand through his beard.
“Should we keep these?” Harley asks quietly, staring down at the pages while running her fingers over their pictures. She freezes after a moment and then shoots her eyes up to look at Grayson. “Could you look into these kids? Could Nerds? Can we find out if they are missing or if something is going on with them?” She shoots off questions in one big breath.
Grayson places a hand on her shoulder. “Breathe, beautiful. We can take pictures of each page, and I’ll see what I can find. But I don’t think we should take the pages right now.”
“Why not?” she asks, a crease forming between her brows.
“We are making sure that anything we’re looking at is put back how it was. Nerds brought a device that scanned every room for cameras or bugs, and the only one that popped up was ours. So unless someone is outside watching us, no one knows we’ve been here, and we want to keep it that way so Nerds can place a few hidden cameras and bugs,” Rage responds.
“And we should probably get a move on. We’ve been here too long as it is,” Sugar says.
Everyone agrees and gets moving so we can get out of here. Once we’re all ready and heading out the front door, Harley stops in the driveway and spins around to face the house.
“Someday, sooner rather than later, we are going to come back here and burn this fucking house to the ground,” she seethes.
Ryker chuckles and tosses his arm around Harley’s shoulders. “Someone has enjoyed setting things on fire.”
Harley shrugs. “Fire is pretty. And very satisfying to watch. Especially when it’s burning down something or someone that deserves to be burnt to a crisp.”
Ryker spins Harley away from the house and steers her towards the truck. “Alright, little flame, save those thoughts for when we can actually set shit on fire.”