21. Penelope #2
The building is an old mill near the docks.
Brick. Abandoned. The architecture of a coastal Massachusetts town’s industrial past—the kind of building that used to employ two hundred people and now employs nobody and exists as a monument to the American tradition of building things, abandoning them, and letting teenagers use them for crimes.
We park. Sit. Stare at the building. The salt air comes through the vents—ocean, cold, the scent of January on the Massachusetts coast.
Cat: “Kaiden and the guys are fifteen minutes out. The cops are coming.”
“Reece said thirty minutes. We’re already at twenty-five. If we wait—”
“I know.”
We get out. The metal door screeches. Inside is a building that has been stripped of everything useful. Concrete floor. Exposed beams. The industrial-scale silence of a space designed for machinery and now housing nothing but echoes and whatever Reece has built in the center of the room.
Xander.
He’s in a chair. Center of the room. Hands bound behind him. Duct tape, not rope—the efficiency of a person who has done this before. His face is a mess—split lip, black eye, blood dried on his temple from whatever hit him in the parking lot. His shirt is torn. His head is bowed.
But his wrists—
On his wrist, visible even from across the room: the friendship bracelet.
Teal and yellow. Faded. The one that was cut off in a jail cell.
The bracelet survived the arrest and the evidence locker and the parking lot attack and whatever Reece did to him in the hours since. It’s still there. Still holding.
I run to him. Rip the cloth from his mouth. Wipe the blood from his face with my sleeve.
“Penny—what the fuck are you doing here? Go! Run!”
“No. I’m not leaving you.” I start working the tape on his wrists. “You’re always saving me. The treehouse. The hospital. Every hallway and every classroom and every time I was falling and you were there. This time I’m saving you.”
“Penny—”
“Shut up and let me work.”
Footsteps. Cat grabs my arm. We both turn.
Reece. Walking toward us from the far end of the building.
Slow. Smiling. The stride of a man who has set a trap and is watching it work.
And beside him—Daisy. Twitching. Her eyes darting.
The jitteriness of a girl who is high and scared and trying to be neither.
Her nails bitten to the quick. Her weight shifting foot to foot.
The restlessness of a body that is both using and withdrawing simultaneously because the drugs Reece gives her are designed to keep her functional enough to follow orders and addicted enough to never leave.
“Well, well.” Reece stops ten feet away. The gun is in his waistband. Visible. Deliberate. The particular display of a man who wants you to see the weapon before he uses it. “You brought Cat. How sweet. A two-for-one.”
Cat steps forward. Beside me. Not behind. The positioning of a girl who has stood in front of worse men and survived.
“I’m here,” I say. “Let Xander go.”
Reece laughs. “Sit down, Penny. We’re going to have a little chat first.” He pulls the gun from his waistband. Not aiming—holding. The threat is in the holding. “Both of you. Sit.”
We sit. On the concrete floor. The cold seeping through our jeans. Reece paces in front of us—the energy of a man who is spiraling and performing control to mask it.
“You know what’s funny, Penny?” He crouches in front of me.
Close. His cologne—the same one from the couch, from the house, from every transaction.
“All of this could have been avoided. You could have just kept taking the pills. Kept being my good little customer. Kept the quiet and the peace and the arrangement we had. But you had to get clean. You had to go to Darla’s little program.
You had to—” he pulls a small bag from his pocket, holds it in front of my face—white pills, the familiar shape, the visual that makes my body respond before my brain can intervene—“stop taking these. And now look where we are.”
The craving hits. Immediate. Nuclear. The violence of an addict being shown her substance by the person who addicted her.
Done by a man who knows why I reach for them, especially in situations like this.
My mouth goes dry. My hands shake. The pills are right there—six inches from my face—and every cell in my body is screaming TAKE THEM.
I close my eyes. Breathe. The way Darla taught me. The way X taught me in the kitchen. “Fuck you, Reece.”
He grins. Pockets the pills. Stands. Daisy is hovering near the door. Her arms wrapped around herself. Her eyes on the bag in Reece’s pocket.
Reece turns to Xander. “You want them out alive? You fight. One more time. That’s the deal. One fight. Win, and they walk. Lose—” He shrugs.
Xander’s face is bloody. His eye is swelling shut. But his voice is clear: “Untie me and I’ll fight you right now, you piece of shit.”
Reece smacks him with the butt of the gun. Xander’s head snaps sideways. Blood sprays.
“STOP!” I scream. The sound filling the building, bouncing off the walls.
Cat, beside me, is shaking. Not visibly—I can feel it through the concrete.
The tremor of a girl who is remembering basements and bleach and the sound of a man’s fist on skin.
She is terrified. She is so terrified. But she’s doing the thing Cat does: converting the fear to ice.
Using the ice as armor. The survival mechanism of a girl who has learned that freezing is safer than flinching because flinching shows them where it hurts.
“How long until the boys get here?” I whisper.
“Minutes. Maybe less.”
“We need to stall.”
Cat nods. “Reece.” Her voice cuts across the room. Controlled. The ice princess. “You’re making a mistake.”
He turns. “Am I?”
“Our parents know where we are. The police know where we are. Iz Walsh—whose father is the best lawyer in the state—is on his way here right now with Kaiden Monaghan—whose father is a federal arbitrator. You’re not escaping this, Reece.
There’s nowhere to go. Every road out of here leads to a badge. ”
Reece’s grin flickers. The first crack. The particular micro-expression of a man whose plan is unraveling and who is only now realizing that the girls he kidnapped are not helpless—they are connected.
To lawyers and fathers and a network of adults who have been building a cage for months and have just been given the final piece of evidence they needed: a kidnapping.
Daisy: “Reece—we should go. We should just—”
“Shut up!”
“Reece, please. The cops—I can’t go back—I already talked to the feds, if they find me here—” Her voice is rising.
Reece’s face changes. The grin dissolving. What’s underneath is not fear—it’s the fury of a man who has lost control of a situation he thought he owned.
He grabs me. His arm around my neck. The gun against my temple. The cold metal on my skin. The intimacy of violence—a man’s arm around a girl’s throat, the position that could be a hug if the circumstances were different and the object in his hand was not a weapon.
“Nobody fucking moves.”
Cat is on her feet. Xander is straining against the tape, the chair creaking, his wrists bleeding from the effort of trying to tear free.
“PENNY!” His voice. Wrecked. The scream of a boy who is watching the worst-case scenario unfold in real time and cannot reach the person he’d die for.
My name on his lips wrecks something in me. Not soft. Not sweet. Violent. Like it’s being ripped out of him.
I don’t move. I don’t fight the arm around my throat, don’t lean away from the gun pressed to my temple. I go still instead. Calculating. Breathing slow through my nose like if I keep my body calm, my brain will follow.
It won’t. But I pretend.
“Good,” Reece murmurs against my ear, like he can feel the shift in me. “That’s better.”
His grip tightens just enough to remind me what this is. Not a hug. Never a hug.
Cat takes a step forward. “Let her go,” she snaps, voice sharp enough to cut glass.
The gun presses harder into my skin. A warning.
Reece doesn’t even look at her. “Didn’t I just say nobody moves?”
Xander is still fighting. The chair legs scrape violently against the floor, his whole body straining, muscles shaking, wrists slick with blood where the tape is tearing skin.
“Don’t—” His voice breaks, then comes back raw. “Don’t fucking touch her.”
Reece exhales like he’s bored. Then—
He drags me back a step. I stumble with him, his arm locking tighter around my throat, cutting off just enough air to make my vision flicker at the edges.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he says, calm. Controlled. Like he’s explaining directions.
Not a threat. A plan. My stomach drops.
No. No no no—
Daisy moves first. She steps past Cat like she’s not even there, heels clicking against the floor, phone already in her hand.
“All set out back,” she says casually, glancing at Reece. “We’re clear.”
Clear for what?
Cat lunges. Fast. Desperate. Daisy doesn’t even flinch. One of the guys intercepts her, catching her around the waist and hauling her back hard enough her feet leave the ground.
“Get off me!” she screams, thrashing.
“CAT—” I choke out, the word breaking as Reece’s arm tightens again.
“Enough,” he snaps.
Everything stills. Not because they want to. Because they have to. Because the gun is still at my head.
Reece leans in slightly, his mouth close to my ear. “You’re coming with us,” he says, almost gently.
Ice floods my veins.
“No,” I whisper, even though I know it doesn’t matter.
He huffs a quiet laugh. “That wasn’t a question.”
Xander loses it. “NO—”
The chair tips. Crashes. He hits the ground hard, still fighting, still trying to get up, the tape stretching, tearing, his breath ragged and furious.
“Penny, don’t—don’t let them—”
“I’m right here,” I say quickly, the words tumbling out before I can stop them. “I’m okay—”
Lie.
Lie.
Lie.
But I need him to hear it. Need him to not break. Because if he breaks, I will.
Reece starts walking and I have no choice but to go with him. My feet drag at first, then catch, then move. One step. Then another.
Daisy is already at the back door, pushing it open. Cold air rushes in. Darkness. Gravel. Freedom so close it feels like a joke.
“Wait—” Cat gasps behind us, voice cracking. “Please—please don’t—”
The door slams open fully and there it is. A black van with the engine running and side door already sliding open.
Of course. Of course this was planned.
My heart starts slamming now, panic clawing its way up my throat, sharp and choking.
“No,” I breathe, digging my heels in.
Reece doesn’t even pause. He just shifts his weight and lifts me slightly off the ground, dragging me forward like I weigh nothing.
“Stop—” I gasp, grabbing at his arm, nails digging into his skin.
He squeezes my throat. Not enough to knock me out. Enough to make everything go fuzzy.
“Don’t make this harder,” he mutters.
Daisy grabs my arm and yanks. Between the two of them, I don’t stand a chance. I’m hauled to the van, shoved forward—
And then I twist.
Hard. Just enough to look back.
Xander is on the ground. Bleeding. Fighting. Still trying to get to me.
“PENNY—!”
The door slams. Darkness swallows me whole. The lock clicks. And the engine revs.