Chapter 15 #2
My hands curl into fists.
Come on, Skye. Do something.
I shut my eyes for half a second and reach inward.
The bond I have with my men should be there.
It should feel like a thread in my chest, a pull, a warmth.
Something that answers when I call. Maybe I can find energy in it and lead them to me, tug on it like a line in the dark.
Maybe I can coax some kind of silver thread from them back to my sternum, the way a fairy tale would do it.
I don’t know. I’m reaching for anything that sounds remotely possible.
I’m right about one thing, though. I feel them. All three of them, even Cassian, shot and bleeding somewhere out there.
Relief hits so hard it almost buckles me.
They’re alive.
And I still can’t do a damn thing with it.
They feel far away from here, too far for me to catch their emotions, and I don’t have what it takes to manipulate the bond itself.
It’s like I’m a radio receiver stuck on a weak station.
I can pick up fragments, static-laced impressions, but I can’t broadcast anything back.
“Goddamn it,” I whisper.
Plan B.
I reach for the only other lifeline I have.
Pain.
He didn’t answer me in the car last time, but he has to answer now. He simply has to.
I don’t know how long I sit there, meditating, emptying my mind, cycling through every monk technique I’ve ever heard of.
It feels long. It feels obsessive. By the time I’m done, I’m spent and exhausted, with sweat sliding down my forehead from tensing my muscles and holding my breath like that will force the universe to listen.
And I get nothing.
Zero. Absolute freaking zero.
“Are you okay?” Hailey asks.
“Um, yeah,” I mutter. “I was just trying to… visualize something.”
She scoffs.
“Already?” she murmurs.
“Why, you do that a lot?” I ask.
She shrugs, then lets her head fall back against the wall. “I haven’t seen the outside world in a long time. I like to imagine.”
That’s completely fair. Perspective changes so violently depending on context that it’s almost laughable. I wonder when the last time was that she saw something as stupid and ordinary as a parking lot, the same parking lot I’ve been fighting in like it’s the edge of existence.
I pinch the bridge of my nose, trying to press the pressure out of my skull. Then a thought lands, sharp enough to cut through the fog.
“When did you wake up?” I ask.
“Huh?”
“When did you wake up,” I repeat. “Before or after I got thrown in here?”
“Before,” she says.
“What happened with the wife?” I ask.
Hailey’s gaze snaps to the sliver of window, like it might be listening.
“Don’t speak so loud, please,” she says.
“Okay. Okay. Sorry.” I drop to a whisper. “Just… was the wife with that fucker when he put me here?”
Hailey frowns, genuinely thrown. “No. He was alone.”
“Okay.” I breathe through the pounding in my head and force my mind to stay sharp. “When I was fighting him, his wife was out of the car.”
Hailey blinks. “Why would she—“
“It doesn’t matter,” I cut in, then immediately soften because her shoulders jump at the edge in my tone. “It was part of our plan, and we fucked up. All I know is I was fighting him, and he knocked me out in the middle of a parking lot. I don’t know what happened after that.”
Her mouth parts like she wants to ask something, but she just exhales instead and looks down at her wrists again.
“He was in a rush,” she says quietly. “Like… panicked. When he brought you in, he didn’t even check the locks like he usually does. He just threw you in and slammed it. Then the engine roared and we jerked forward. He drove off right away.”
And even in that state, the bastard still had the presence of mind to take my baton.
Terrifying.
I shift closer, lowering my voice until it’s barely more than air. “When he was throwing me in… did you hear police sirens outside?”
Hailey goes still.
Then she nods. “Yeah. They were close.”
My brain clicks it together.
He didn’t pick his wife up.
He just left.
“Okay,” I murmur. “That probably means he’s alone right now.”
“Alone?” she echoes.
“Yeah.” I swallow hard. “All we need is one good action. Us three against him.” I tip my chin toward Lila.
Hailey stares at me for a long moment, then shakes her head. “No, you don’t understand,” she breathes. “You don’t know what he’s like.”
“It doesn’t matter what he’s like,” I say. “What matters is that we’ve got a chance.”
Before she can reply, the car jerks and halts. I don’t hear tires screech, but I feel the stop in the vibration of the floor. The whole metal plate beneath us shudders.
My body moves on instinct. I throw my forearms across Hailey and Lila, bracing them the only way I can, because they’re zip-tied and they can’t even catch themselves. Hailey grunts when her shoulder bumps mine. Lila’s head lolls forward again.
“Fuck,” I breathe.
The engine drops to idle. Something shifts outside, some movement we can’t see, and all we can do is freeze and wait.
Then something happens right in front of us.
My head jerks up. Pain bites behind my eyes, but I force myself to keep looking.
A rectangle appears in the front panel, right where there was nothing a second ago. A flap of padding lifts, like skin peeled back. A thin, dirty slice of light spills onto the floor.
Something small clatters through the opening, then another. Two pale pills skip across the metal with a dry click-click, like pebbles tossed into a cage.
A man’s voice follows.
“New girl,” he says. “Take these.”
Hailey makes a strangled sound beside me.
“If you don’t,” he adds, “the other two don’t eat for two days.”
The words hit like a boot to the chest.
Hailey’s whole body tightens. She turns toward me, eyes huge even in the dim. “Please,” she whispers, frantic. “Please. Please take them.”
I shake my head once, sharp. No.
Her eyes fill with tears almost instantly. “It’s not… it’s not that bad,” she pleads. “It’s just… just so we can…”
My heart breaks for her, but she doesn’t understand. I can’t take unknown pills. I need to stay conscious. I need to stay capable. That is the only way we get out of here.
“No.” My voice comes out rough as I lean closer, so close my forehead almost touches hers. “You tell him I did. You lie. Okay?”
Her breathing stutters.
I squeeze her forearms.
Hailey blinks fast, then nods.
I move toward the slit in the wall where the pills wait. On my way there, I catch the murderer’s face in the thin strip of light. He is going to such lengths to keep his victims alive for an extended period of time, just to kill them eventually.
“Pick them up,” he says.
I reach in and pinch the pills between my fingers. I lift them toward my mouth and, right where I’m supposed to slip them in, I hide them in my hand instead.
“Show me,” the man says.
“What?”
“Show me they’re on your tongue.”
Fuck.
The slit of light feels narrower all of a sudden.
“I said show me,” the man repeats.
My pulse thunders in my ears.
“I took them,” I rasp.
“Open.”
I can feel Hailey’s stare drilling into the side of my face, begging and terrified at the same time.
The flap shifts. There’s a click, soft and mechanical, from the other side of the padding, like a lock being turned inside a wall. Then the rectangle widens by a fraction and cold air slides in, along with something else.
It’s black.
A gun.
“Do you think I’m fucking stupid?” he asks. “I know you didn’t take them.”
My throat tightens so hard it hurts. My whole body wants to recoil, but there’s nowhere to go.
I lift my hands. He can see the pills in my right palm.
“Now be good,” he says, “and put them in your mouth. Tongue out. When I tell you to swallow, you do it.”
My hand shakes as I bring the pills to my mouth. For a stupid, delusional half-second, I consider biting down on them, crushing them, spitting the powder right back through his precious little hatch like a curse.
But the gun twitches, and I simply slip the pills onto my tongue.
They taste chalky.
“Tongue out,” he orders.
I open my mouth and stick my tongue out into the light.
“Good,” he says. “Now swallow.”
The pills drag down dry, scraping a raw line through the bruise already living inside me.
“Again,” he snaps. “Open.”
I open my mouth again.
“Lift your tongue.”
I lift it. He keeps going with the instructions, one after another, making me open wider, then wider still, until my jaw clicks and pain spikes bright behind my eyes.
It’s humiliating, and it’s painful in a way my body remembers too well.
“Ah,” he says finally, satisfied. “There we go.”
And just like that, the hatch slams shut.
I breathe in through my nose and count each breath like a soldier, clinging to the rhythm, trying to steady myself. It doesn’t matter. The dark comes fast anyway. I black out soon enough, my head dropping to the ground before I even get the chance to see what he does five minutes later.
The funny thing about having died once is that I know exactly how much I don’t want to die again.
And I really, really don’t want to die again.