Chapter 41 Violet
VIOLET
Francine had dropped her bomb about taking our babies and then locked us back in the darkness. It pressed in like it had weight, the air down here already stale and sour.
I clutched Nyah’s fingers, still trying to convince myself she was alive and not just a figment of my imagination. The daylight barely filtered through the cracks in the floorboards, but it was enough to see the dullness in her dark eyes.
I rubbed my thumb across the back of her hand. “Have you been down here this entire time?”
“Yes.” Her whisper barely carried over the sound of my heartbeat.
She wrinkled her nose, and when she spoke again, her voice was a tiny bit louder.
“As you can probably smell. She brings food and water. Changes the piss bucket occasionally. But it’s not exactly a five-star stay.
” She sniffed and tried to laugh at herself.
“I’ll be leaving a very poor one-star Yelp review. ”
I would have laughed if the sadness hadn’t been breaking my damn heart.
I put my arm around her shoulders and drew her close, feeling her shudder as she hugged me back. I didn’t care how bad she smelled. Only that she was alive. “We’ve been searching for you,” I swore to her. “Me, Whip, X, and Levi. And Dax.”
She lifted her head, her tears shining in her eyes. “Dax? I figured he would have just assumed I ghosted him.”
I shook my head and laughed, just a little. “I think he might be in love with you.”
She breathed out a long, slow breath. “I hope he isn’t.”
“Why would you say that? I know you love him too. I’m pretty sure you told me you were in love with him the very first day you met him.”
“And look at the hurt and danger I’ve already brought into his life in just a few weeks. I should have listened to my father when he told me I could run but never hide from him for long.”
She wasn’t being fair to herself.
“None of this has anything to do with your family,” I assured her.
“Maybe not. But if it hadn’t been Francine hunting me down and locking me away, it would have been one of my father’s enemies.
And if it hadn’t been them, then it would have been my father himself.
I was free on borrowed time only, and I knew it.
I had no business starting something up with a man like Dax.
” She sighed heavily. “He’s so good and sweet and kind.
He has a regular, run-of-the-mill job and comes from a normal family.
His life and mine are worlds apart, and I was kidding myself, hoping I could live in his, even for a little while. ”
I hated the sadness in her tone. “I don’t think you get to choose who you fall in love with.”
She shrugged. “I guess. But it doesn’t really matter, does it? It ends with a broken heart, either way.”
The helplessness and despair radiated from her, and I couldn’t blame her. How many days had she been down here? How many weeks? I couldn’t remember, everything since she’d gone missing had become a blur.
But I needed her to rally. Needed her to have hope. We weren’t dying in this goddamn hole. We were getting out.
My eyes adjusted enough to make out the shapes in the gloom—our knees drawn up, the jagged seams of floorboards above us, and the cleaning caddy that had been in my hand when I’d walked inside.
It had come down into the hole with me. The handle was cracked, one side bent out of shape.
Supplies spilled across the compacted dirt floor, rags and spray bottles and scrubbers.
“Bleach,” I breathed, nodding toward the white bottle tipped on its side.
Nyah’s face turned toward me, teeth flashing faintly.
“You want to do some cleaning while you’re down here?
I think that red warning label would advise not to use in enclosed spaces.
” She poked the bottle with her foot. “I know the piss bucket smells grim, but pretty sure this does not count as a well-ventilated area.”
“If we could get her close enough, we could spray her in the face with it though. You said she brings you food and changes the bucket. So she has to get close at least once a day, right?”
Nyah peered up at the floorboards, a good distance above our heads. “She lowers everything down on a rope.”
But I wasn’t going to be deterred that easily.
The pit was deep beneath the house, there was no doubt about that.
It had clearly been dug with the intention of keeping grown adults in.
The walls seemed to have been reinforced with whatever they’d been able to find—bits of wood and steel, all things easily found on any construction site.
“Did I ever tell you I did cheerleading in high school?”
She raised an eyebrow. “You don’t strike me as a pom-pom, fake-smile sorta girl.”
I half smiled at that. “Toby made me do it. But point is, I could boost you up.” I studied the mechanical bits and pieces someone had rigged up beneath the floor. “We’d just have to time it right so you go up right as she opens it.”
Nyah looked doubtful. “And if she’s not bending down?”
I could admit that was a fault in the plan. “Then I guess she’ll get bleach spots on her socks.”
Nyah snort-laughed at that. “That’ll teach her!”
I dissolved into giggles as well. Despite the situation, I was so damn glad to have her back. “I’ve missed you.”
She bit her bottom lip, and her eyes filled with tears again. “I missed you too. So much.”
I wasn’t willing to die down here and lose the first female friend I’d ever truly made. I’d loved Toby with every beat of my heart. He’d been my person. But he’d also been my crutch. I’d clung to him in a way that wasn’t healthy because I’d had nobody else.
This friendship with Nyah felt different.
It felt like something I wanted to hang on to and cherish.
Something that would last, if only given a chance.
She might have fallen in love with Dax at first sight, but I think a part of me had recognized her as a soul mate at first sight as well.
I didn’t love her the way I loved Whip and X and Levi, but there was a connection there that felt important.
“Okay, we need a plan B then.” I leaned forward, groping around in the dirt, sorting through the things that had been in my cleaning caddy. Why the hell hadn’t I packed a pocket knife in there? Or better yet, a gun. Maybe a ladder to climb out of this freaking prison hole.
My fingers closed around a stiff piece of plastic from the broken handle. “Plastic can get sharp,” I whispered, scared Francine had her ear to the floor above us, listening to every word.
Nyah offered up a suggestion of her own. “There’s a big rock over here. Maybe we could dig it out and throw it at her.”
I grinned at her, not hopeful in the plan, but happy there was a little fight in her expression again. “Or we could try breaking this plastic up against it. Maybe seeing if we can sharpen it on the rock.”
Nyah nodded and scuttled onto her knees.
I pressed the broken plastic to the rock until it gave with a brittle crack. Shock punched through me when I came away with a jagged spear, crude and barely longer than my palm but perhaps sharp enough to do some damage if it caught a person somewhere soft or vital.
Excitement replaced some of the fear circling around inside me.
The same feeling I’d had when I’d taken Travis’s life.
If Nyah noticed I was having a psychotic daydream, she didn’t comment on it.
She took the plastic weapon, turning it over in her hands, then looked up at me, clearly just as shocked as I was. “That tip is really kind of sharp. This could actually work.”
She went to give it to me, but I pushed it back into her palm. “Hold on to it. I’m going to try—”
A banging on the front door cut me off. “We’d like to talk to you about your car’s extended warranty!”
I frowned.
Nyah widened her eyes. “Is that X?”
But I knew my guys, and even though that was a very X thing to say, I’d recognize Levi’s voice anywhere. “Levi!” I screamed. “Help!”
Nyah instantly joined me, her voice much weaker but screaming Levi’s name, even though her voice was hoarse. “Please! We’re down here!”
I had no idea if they could hear us. There were gaps in the floorboards, so I wasn’t worried about running out of air, but I had no idea if our shouts would carry far enough for Levi to hear while he was standing outside the door.
I opened my mouth to scream that we were beneath the house, when a darkly taunting voice filtered through the gaps.
“Come through my door and you’ll dance with the dead,
The floor’s full of teeth and they’re hungry for red.
Stay where you stand if you value your skin,
One wrong little step and you’ll see I win.”
Nyah froze, clutching my arm with trembling fingers.
But I’d heard that voice before. Heard the robotic, distorted sound of its threats.
And this time, I heard Francine speaking into the voice changer as well.
Travis might have been the brawn. He might have been the one who’d built this prison, who’d rigged explosives and traps.
But Francine was the brain. It was her twisted mind who’d come up with these games to torture us for taking away the man she’d loved.
Were we really so different? Wouldn’t I have completely lost my mind if someone had murdered Whip or X or Levi? Wouldn’t I have hunted them down and made them pay?
I could have so easily walked in Francine’s shoes.
Except I would have never sent young women to a predator’s home so he could rape and murder them. And Levi, X, and Whip would have never asked me to.
We were not the same.
Francine repeated the message, and I heard it in both places, from her, standing somewhere above our heads, and through speakers I was sure Levi, X, and Whip could hear from outside.
“Come through my door and you’ll dance with the dead,
The floor’s full of teeth and they’re hungry for red.
Stay where you stand if you value your skin,
One wrong little step and I win, I win.”
“What does that mean?” Nyah asked in a whisper.