33. Thirty-Three
Thirty-Three
Sara
My head spins in this underground nightmare, but I force myself to backtrack, remembering the hallway entrance is a few feet from where I stand. Once I make my way through it, small emergency lights help me glimpse the narrow corridor around me.
“Liam… the electricity just shut off. I—I’m lost,” I say into the earbud. “I think I’m in the hallway I came from but — shit!”
“What is it?” Liam’s voice crackles with concern.
“It splits. I don’t know which way to go. I never noticed that on my way in. Damn it, Artemis is still in there.”
“Just keep—” His voice cuts off.
“Liam?” I demand, panic tightening my chest. The connection sputters, and my heart hammers.
Of course, this is just my luck. My sense of direction is as good as a goldfish and I'd lose connection with him right when I face a literal fork in the road—just like us, fighting to stay apart, only to end up colliding anyway. I’m going to have a heart attack. Keep going, Sara. You’ll find your way.
I sprint, cursing my mom’s red-bottom heels soaked with spilled champagne. She’s going to kill me, but if she does, it means I come out alive. So, that’s good news.
I take a left, praying to whatever deity might be listening that it’s the right choice. The hallway slopes downward, steeper than I remember. I’m descending some place I haven’t seen before. Definitely not the way I came in from. Now… this is not so good news.
The emergency lights grow dimmer the further I go, replaced by an eerie red glow bleeding from under a doorframe ahead. My stomach drops when I reach it. It’s not an exit, but a large open space beneath the main floor, bathed in crimson safety lights that tint everything like blood.
“What the hell?” I whisper, the words echo in the cavernous room.
It feels like a warehouse down here, with concrete floors and exposed pipes overhead.
Shadows slide on their own. I swallow and feel my blood run cold when I see the walls lined with metal doors, at least a dozen and each with a tiny window at eye level.
I can’t bring myself to peek inside or imagine what happens in those rooms.
The realization hits like a punch to the gut that this is where they keep the girls, the missing ones from Liam’s list. My breath stutters.
The implications are too horrific to process, but I force myself to memorize the layout because we have to come back and save them.
I want to believe my intuition led me here, not impending death.
I want to believe that everything I’ve surmounted gives me the strength to pay it back somehow.
A sound behind me makes me tremble as footsteps pound closer. Tyler running behind me and suddenly the reality slams into me. I’m stuck underground with him, and I’m pretty sure he wants to hurt me.
I can barely breathe when metal music shrieks at a volume that feels like it’s splitting my skull to explode my eardrums.
Fuck!
The waves of noise punch through my body, liquefying my thoughts.
I scream through gritted teeth, but I can’t hear myself and now my eardrums feel seconds from rupturing.
I cover my ears, desperate for relief, and then the words I never said to Liam, the three words, hammer into my mind.
He may never know how he pieced me back together when I broke, may never understand that between our fights and whispers, I became his.
His. Sometimes it takes being so afraid to know exactly where you belong, in his arms.
My legs shatter beneath me. I slam against the concrete, tearing into my knees, pain stabbing up my spine. This isn’t disorientation they’re trying to accomplish; it’s calculated destruction of the human mind as a torture tactic.
My vision blurs, consciousness fragmenting. I bite my lip, tasting copper, and force my body to regulate through the assault. Crawling forward on bleeding knees, I drag myself until something yanks me up by my hair and jerks me back with such force, I swear my scalp might tear.
White stars bloom across my vision as Tyler’s fist clenches in my hair, dragging me across the concrete like a ragged doll.
“What is a pretty little thing like you doing here?” His mouth presses to my ear, his hand twisting tighter, sending waves of pain. “Gosh, you’re making all of this ten times more fun.”
I thrash wildly, twisting enough to see his face now monstrous under the red glow.
“Fuck you.” I spit at him, blood spraying across his pristine white shirt.
A small victory that costs me immediately as he releases my hair only to clamp my throat in his fingers. My airway closes and panic claws through me. I rake at his hand, nails drawing blood, but his grip never loosens. Just when I think darkness will swallow me, he lets go.
I take a breath of air. “Was this your plan all along, Tyler?” I hiss inches away from his face. I collapse on the ground, gasping, bracing for the next blow as his arm rises, and I squeeze my eyes shut.
But instead of pain, I feel the gentle brush of fingertips against my cheekbone, tracing to my jaw with a tenderness that makes me want to vomit.
He hauls me up by my arm like an animal, slamming me against the wall.
“Such a pretty face,” Tyler murmurs in my ear over the pulsing music. “Would be a shame to damage the merchandise. I was starting to like you, Sara.” He tsks.
My stomach heaves. I’m their inventory, a product to be sold. This “gentleness” isn’t mercy…it’s business.
“You are as stubborn as they come, aren’t you?” he barks, and I’ve about had enough of this prick.
He wore a mask this whole time, one that has fallen as he looks at me with evilness staring into my eyes, and it’s repulsive how some men can be so deceiving.
I drive my knee up into his crotch with everything I have, and he staggers back, letting his grip on my arm go. A wicked satisfaction washes over me, and I manage a breathless smile as I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.
I run, begging for an exit, until I spot a door at the far end that looks different from the other ones, with a metal push bar against it.
I run and throw myself against it with every ounce of strength left, half-expecting another trap, but it gives way and a blast of cold sea air hits my face like a physical blow.
I’ve never been so thankful. The relief is so intense I nearly collapse on the spiraling stairwell in front of me. My lungs burn as I gulp in massive breaths and look up to the concrete stairs twisting tighter with each step, and I realize where I am with the lighthouse standing across the way.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck—where the fuck is she!” Liam’s voice bursts through my earbud, stabbing at my heart. He sounds like fear has knotted his throat.
“Liam… Liam…” I manage, breathless. “I—I’m okay… Artemis—please, help her. Please, Liam.”
“She’s safe. Where are you, Sara? Tell me where the fuck you are.” His voice cracks.
“I’m—”
Tyler’s fingers lock around my ankle and he yanks me so hard my body careens down the concrete steps. I try to slow the fall, but my temple slams into an edge, skin splitting, and I feel blood flooding my face instantly. The pain is disorienting but I force myself back up.
“Let me go!” I shriek, nails breaking against the stairs, but he’s too strong.
His arms lock around my waist, and I know that if he gets a full hold, it’s over—it’s all over. I’ll never go back to him. I’ll never see him again, and this is where I disappear forever. Liam’s face flashes behind my eyelids, already fading like a photograph burning at the edges.
No. No. NO.
I writhe myself out of his disgusting hold and hit him straight in the head with my heel landing on his cheek, and I curse I didn’t gouge his eyeball out.
“Lighthouse! Liam, Lighthouse!” I scream but there’s no answer.
Tyler curses losing balance and I climb higher up the stairs, desperate to get out of here.
I’m so close, I can feel it.
Once I reach sea level, I run along the pavement that gives way to the wall above the ocean-side rocks where waves crash violently against them. My heart pounds as I climb up along the narrow wall, the lighthouse looming across from me.
One misstep and I’m either meticulously jumping from one rock to another against the churning sea, or I’d fall to my death between quaint, peaceful restaurants on the port.
Enjoy your dinner, folks!
And while the rocks seem like a safer bet, as I’ve hopped on them my entire childhood, I never experienced a chase on them before.
“Fuck it,” I mutter, ripping off my mom's expensive heels and throwing the red bottoms landing in a crease between the rocks.
“Sara!” Liam's voice suddenly crackles through the earbud, “I see you, stay where—”
I run on the thin wall, never looking down, trusting my body, trusting that I can do this and keep my balance.
Don’t tilt, don’t sway, just look straight ahead.
“Who the fuck is chasing you, Sara? I’m coming,” Liam asks, and I instantly look behind me, almost slipping and regaining my footing. Tyler is chasing me like a lunatic.
To my left, the Capitainerie comes into view, the harbor-round stone building, gray stone facade rising like salvation at the end of the other side of the village.
They control every in and out of this port, and a lightbulb takes over my brain.
I remember Clem at Maggy’s lounge telling me she works there, but I don’t have any time to waste, and I have to pray this will work.
“Liam,” I gasp into the earbud, my voice raw, surprising me at the fear resonating in his name. “The Capitainerie— Ask Artemis to call Clem. She has her number. Now!”
“Sara, just get to—”
“No! Listen to me,” I interrupt, desperation making my voice crack as I sway and catch myself. “Clem controls all the port lights. Tell her to flood the lighthouse wall with every spotlight they have. Every single fucking one of them!” I catch my breath, only for a second.
“Now! He’s chasing me!” I scream with terror and fervor.
“On it!” Damien says in my earbud, and I hear Liam in the background getting a hold of Clem.
“Please hurry! He’s right behind—”
Tyler’s hands reach for me, my hair inches from his fingertips, ready, but in a breathless, immediate course of action, the village erupts in light.
Brilliant, burning white light.
My chest heaves, and I shield my eyes with one hand, squinting through the brightness.
It’s beautiful, chaotic for me up here, but my village looks absolutely glorious as the lights don't just reveal me and Tyler, they expose us to everyone. Below, every single head turns in unison, like a theater audience catching the final dramatic act of a play.
I spin around, my lungs burning, and I stare right into the eyes of a man who was so convinced he could hurt me. So convinced women are below men’s strength, and I see the ironic shift in his miscalculation as he backtracks, realizing I wasn’t the easy prey he thought I’d be.
Rot in hell, asshole.