Chapter Sixteen #2
My eyes find Maisie instantly. She’s tied at the hands and feet, her hair covering her face where she’s lying on her side, appearing to be unconscious on the blanket that I left behind the morning I awoke here.
In the next second, they land on Lana, standing over her, twirling a pocketknife in her hand.
“What did you do?” I move to head toward Maisie but stop dead in my tracks when Lana lowers the knife, using it to push the hair away from Maisie’s face. Her eyes are closed, expression relaxed, like she’s deep in the thralls of sleep.
“I didn’t do anything you didn’t force me to do.” She tsks, rising to her full height, knife firmly clenched in her right hand, letting me know that if I don’t behave, she’ll be able to plunge it into Maisie’s still form before I’d ever reach them.
“What did you give her?”
“Oh, this?” She nudges Maisie’s limp form with her foot.
“Just a little GHP in her water bottle. Just enough to get her up here, and then a little more to ensure she wouldn’t remember my involvement in how she got up here.
Don’t worry, she’ll wake up eventually, and with no knowledge of what happened.
While getting her up here was more work than I bargained for, it made for such a dramatic scene that I simply couldn’t resist.”
“What do you want, Lana?” I clench my back molars so hard it’s a fucking wonder they don’t crack wide open.
“You know what I want.”
“I’m not yours. I’ve never been yours. I’ll never be yours.”
“Now. Now. Never say never. Besides, I wasn’t talking about you.
I was talking about the video. You know, the one you made without my knowledge with rather damning evidence on it.
” She cocks her head, a malicious smile tugging at her mouth.
“You didn’t think I’d just leave, did you?
That I’d let you win.” She laughs, but there isn’t an ounce of humor behind it.
“You want me to delete the video, fine. Get away from Maisie, and I’ll delete it.”
“We’re past the point where I trust that your word is good. You delete the video, then we’ll talk.”
“Fine.” I pull out my phone, opening the photos app.
The video I recorded is the second thing in there.
The first being a picture I took of Maisie last night while she slept.
She looked so damn beautiful, sound asleep, her hair spread out on the pillow behind her, her back bare, all I wanted to do was capture the moment.
Opening the video, I hit delete without hesitation, knowing that shit is already in the cloud and will still be available to me to turn over to the police, which I intend to do the second I get Maisie out of here.
“There. It’s gone.” I hold out my phone, though I doubt she can see it from this distance.
“You don’t think I’m that stupid, do you?” She tsks at me like a teacher reprimanding a bad student. “Delete it everywhere.”
“Not until you let Maisie go.”
“I don’t care about Maisie. I never have. She was merely a means to get to you. You want her so bad, come get her.”
I take one step before she crouches back down, sliding the back of the blade across Maisie’s cheek.
“But first, the video.”
“You harm a hair on her head, and I swear to God, Lana, it will be the last thing you ever do.”
“Such dramatics. Now delete it.”
Signing into the cloud, I find the video, turning my phone out so that she can see it’s there.
“Here is the video. The only copies were on my phone and in the cloud. Once I delete this, it’s gone forever, and you’ll walk away, leaving Maisie unharmed.”
“Of course.” She smiles, the sight causing alarm to race through my chest.
I hit delete with my phone still angled toward her.
“There, it’s gone.”
She bares her teeth like a wild animal.
“Now that that’s out of the way, let’s have some fun, shall we?” She turns the blade, pressing just beneath Maisie’s jaw.
“I did what you wanted. We had an agreement.”
“And what makes you think I would ever uphold my end after everything you’ve done?
” She snickers. “Such pretty hair. I wonder if you’d still find her attractive without it.
” She picks up a strand of Maisie’s hair and slices off a good six inches of length in one swipe, showing just how sharp the blade actually is.
“Lana.”
“Or maybe you don’t care about hair. It does grow back, after all. Perhaps you’d like her a little less if she wasn’t so infuriatingly perfect.”
I watch in horror as she drags the blade across Maisie’s cheek, blood pooling to the surface in an instant before trickling down the side of her face.
“What the fuck do you want?” I roar, panic and anger melding together.
“I want you to suffer, of course.” She says it so casually, as if we’re talking over a cup of tea.
“Then hurt me, not her.”
“But don’t you see, hurting her is how I hurt you.”
“So help me God, Lana, if you touch her again, I will kill you.”
“Unlikely you’d reach me before I make good and sure hers is a face you never want to look at again.” She makes her point by dragging the blade across Maisie’s cheek a second time, right next to the first cut.
I watch, completely helpless, as more blood pools to the surface, painting her entire cheek red.
I take a step toward her, only to come to an abrupt stop when she moves the blade to Maisie’s throat.
My brain struggles to come up with a way out of this that doesn’t get Maisie more hurt than she already is, or worse, get her killed, but I’m at a loss.
Lana is in complete control, and I see the moment she realizes that I know it.
Only she’s so focused on me that she doesn’t see the slight twitch of Maisie’s brow as she begins to come to, the drug Lana gave her wearing off.
In an instant, I change tactics.
“You know what, do it.” I shrug. “Slit her throat. You’d be doing me a favor.”
“Lies.” She hisses, pressing the blade harder in Maisie’s skin, tiny beads of blood bubbling forward.
It takes everything I have not to react.
“You know me, Lana. I’m only in it for one thing. What makes you think I care what happens to her? I’m only trying to protect you from yourself.”
“Protect me.” She balks.
“You know I care about you. I’ve always cared about you. We can start over, you know. We can leave this place behind and be together the way you’ve always wanted. Just you and me.”
“You’re lying.”
“No, I’m finally admitting the truth. That I love you, Lana. I’ve loved you since the first moment I saw you, and it scared me so much I’ve spent every minute since then running from it.”
I see the instant the lie sticks. See her desperation to believe it. And I know I chose right in my assumption that, at the end of the day, all she really wants is me. The press of her knife to Maisie’s throat eases, her grip loosening.
“I knew it.” Her eyes light up. “I knew you loved me.”
“You were right.”
“We belong together.”
“I know that. I’ve always known it. I was just... scared.” I take a tentative step toward her. “Come with me. We can leave this place. Together.”
The next set of events happens so fast, I barely have time to react.
The door behind me opens with so much force, it slams against the wall behind it.
A red-faced Char emerges at the same time that Maisie grabs hold of Lana’s hand, forcing the knife away from her throat while she wrestles her for it, even though her movements are weak and sluggish, the full effect of the drugs having not yet worn off.
I rush toward the two of them and tackle Lana to the ground. We hit the concrete hard, all the air leaving my lungs the instant we land. Pain shoots through my abdomen, but I’m too busy trying to restrain Lana to think too much of it.
Forcing her to her stomach, I jerk her arms behind her back, holding them there as I look over my shoulder in time to see Char pull Maisie upright, her hand cupping her injured cheek.
That’s when I remember the pain in my stomach. Looking down, the world tilts sideways when I see Lana’s knife protruding from my stomach.
Looking back at Maisie and Char, I see the moment they realize that I’m injured. See the panic that widens Maisie’s eyes as she stumbles toward me, having yet to regain her strength. And then, like a light switch being flipped, the world goes black.