Chapter 31
Chapter
Thirty-One
BLAIRE
Ididn’t remember leaving Winder’s bed but I must have at some point, because I was so cold. The floor was itchy, and I didn’t like it.
Where was Winder? Why was it so dark?
Shit. The floor rose, and I smacked my head onto the ceiling.
Wait. Floors didn’t move.
Another bump, but this time I was prepared.
I was beginning to realize I wasn’t in Winder’s room at all, but in a car, a moving car.
The memories came back to me all at once.
A man, dressed all in black, grabbing me when I walked to the kitchen for a glass of water.
The way I tried to scream, right before they gagged me, pressing a sweet-smelling rag to my face.
Everything went blurry after that. But now, I was almost able to open my eyes, if I squinted.
It was dark, but it wasn’t the pitch black I originally thought it was.
I sat in the backseat, next to someone in black jeans.
I stretched out my foot, and I could just barely touch the door handle.
If I didn’t draw any attention to myself, I might be able to get the door open, and roll out—provided they weren’t driving at an excessive speed.
I was almost there. Another inch.
“Fuck! She’s awake.” The man sitting next to me grabbed me, holding me still. Shit.
My mouth still felt frozen, and I couldn’t make any words come out.
“Already?” a voice from the front seat called.
“Maybe you got your dosage wrong. Pass me the fucking rag again.”
I tried to fight the best I could, but my body didn’t feel quite like itself. He held me down without much trouble, and the rag covered my nose and mouth. “Bedtime, bitch.”
Then, there was blackness.
I must have been dreaming. I was in a house with a man I’d never seen before. He smiled at me, but I didn’t like the way his smile made me feel.
Like my organs were nothing but slime, sloshing around inside my skin.
He said something to me, but I couldn’t make it out. Everything was grainy, filmy, like an old movie.
I turned away from him, and he grabbed me back, too hard.
Looking down at my wrist, and back up at him, the slime in my core hardened to something else. Something solid, and tangible.
Didn’t he know not to touch me like that?
I opened my eyes again, trying to hold onto reality. This was real. It had to be real. When I told my arm to move, it moved.
It didn’t work like that in the dreams. There, I did what I was told.
The only problem was, when my one arm moved, the other moved with it. A rope wrapped around my wrists, binding them together. If I followed it with my eyes, it knotted around a pole, keeping me put.
Not a great situation. Not the worst I’d been in either. I scoped out my surroundings. It seemed like I was in a warehouse of sorts—very similar to the one I’d recounted in my dream journal to Winder. A small square of space surrounded me, built by rows of wooden storage crates.
Winder.
Where was he? He had to be so worried about me. He had to know where I was, right? I described the warehouse to him. He knew the one I meant. As long as it was the same one, that is.
“Lunch time.”
A masked man kicked over a pile of crates that built my tiny wall, carrying a tray of gray-looking food.
He put it down on the floor in front of me, then flipped open a pocketknife, cutting through the bindings on my wrist. “Don’t even think about running away. Those drugs are still pumping through your system, so catching you won’t be a problem.”
I looked at him, then down at the plate, where the unappetizing sandwich sat.
“Eat. That’s an order.”
I glared at him. “Why are you doing this to me? If Conrad wants me dead, tell him to come kill me already. Unless he’s not man enough to do it himself.”
My guard laughed. “Sweetheart, you’ve killed a lot of Conrad’s men. A quick death is not something he’s going to give to you. He’s gonna drag this out, real slow. By the end of it, you’ll be begging for him to kill you.”
My blood went cold, goosebumps breaking out along my bare arms.
“I’d eat if I were you. This might be the last time he offers you food.” He kicked the plate closer to me.
With one last look past him, at the wall of crates, I knew he was right. Trying to flee at this moment was futile. I needed to plan out my next steps, and doing that while running on zero fuel was stupid.
Reaching for the sad sandwich, I took a bite of the chewy bread and meat, and realized how hungry I was. Before I knew it, I had polished off half the sandwich, despite the gummy texture.
Food. Planning. Take care of Conrad. Escape.
Problem was, I couldn’t remember what Conrad looked like. Damn blackouts. I should’ve asked Winder before it was too late.
My fingers were starting to tingle, a funny feeling racing up my legs. “I don’t feel so good,” I stuttered.
The sandwich must have been laced with something. Shit. I needed to stay awake. I couldn’t fall asleep again. No. No.
No.
My eyes closed of their own volition, and the last thing I heard before I drifted off was the heavy footsteps of the guard walking away.
It was getting harder to tell dream from reality. The lines blurred, images bleeding one into the next.
Winder. There he was. His eyes were so worried. He almost looked like he had been crying.
I didn’t want him to be sad. I wanted to wipe his tears away, to hug him. He was here now, and that was all that mattered.
But here wasn’t the warehouse. Here was a living room, a screened door separating us.
I reached up to touch my face, my hands coming away wet. Tears. I was crying. There was so much I wanted to say, and none of the words would come.
Stay. Don’t go. I love you.
In the silence, Winder gave me one last look. Then he walked away and didn’t turn back.
“Wakey, wakey.”
Someone kicked my foot, sending a twinge of pain up my leg. “Fuck you!”
There was no gentle wake up. There was only the immediate sense of fear, my eyes flying open, my hands coming up to protect myself. Someone must have bound my wrists again while I was unconscious.
“Conrad said you were feisty. I didn’t think you’d be this much fun.”
I looked up from the floor to see another man, with another ski mask covering his face. “Fuck you,” I repeated.
He hauled me to my feet by my arm. “Conrad is ready to see you, as long as you cooperate. And if you don’t, I’ve been given this.” He patted his pocket, where a syringe was just visible.
No. No more drugs. I didn’t want any more. I just wanted to go home. Home to Winder.
Was he looking for me?
“Put these on.” The man shoved a pair of running shoes toward me, sans socks.
Maybe he was expecting me to save myself.
I wasn’t even sure how long I’d been gone for.
It could’ve been days or weeks. Hopefully the former.
I took the running shoes from the guard, and did my best to take stock of my situation.
Bringing my shirt to my nose, I tried to see how long I’d been wearing the same clothes for, but I couldn’t tell.
My hair clung limply to my cheeks and the back of my neck.
The shoes were big, but not too terrible, all things considered. If I needed to run, I could.
“This way,” the masked guard said, pulling me away from my tiny space.
If Winder was expecting me to save myself, then I needed to give it all I could, so I could get home to him. Using all my strength, I stomped on my guard’s foot as hard as I could. It made a satisfying crunching sound beneath me.
“Fucking bitch! I’ll show you.” He squeezed my arm hard enough I thought he would break it, using his other hand to bring the syringe to his mouth, biting off the cap.
“Don’t you fucking touch me!” I screamed.
My words were useless, and he jabbed me in the arm with the needle. “Maybe next time you wake up, you’ll be a bit more cooperative. Or maybe not. If I’m lucky, Conrad won’t care about your state of consciousness.”
His words began to run together as the room swirled around me, until it disappeared all together.
Real. Fake. Lie. Truth.
They were all just silly little words, weren’t they?
Was this a dream? Or a memory?
Maybe it was a lie masquerading as the truth.
Maybe it was the truth, convincing me it was a lie.
I was in a living room again, one I had seen before. I remembered it. This time, instead of a dead body with my hand print in front of the fireplace, a television played a reality show. Quiet conversation drifted from the kitchen. I looked down at my hands, where I held a set of keys.
I wasn’t supposed to be home. Why wasn’t I supposed to be home?
I tiptoed toward the kitchen, straining to hear the conversation happening. Even so, I could only make out every other word.
“Are you…she…know?”
“Pos…no...”
I pressed my body flush against the wall, shuffling closer. Almost there. Beneath my foot, the floorboards creaked. Shit.
The conversation died. Then, “Blaire, is that you?”
Cover blown, I rounded the corner into the kitchen. I recognized the men standing there. Men from my dreams. Ones I killed, or saw dead. They all kind of blurred into the next.
But the one in the middle was the most striking. I think it was because the last time I saw him, he was bleeding out on the floor, telling me he was sorry.
Blood. Everywhere I looked was blood. I didn’t want to be here, back in my nightmares.
Except they weren’t nightmares. They never had been.
A part of me knew it all along.
I remembered this one. I dreamed about it multiple days in a row. A kitchen, tiled in green. It was quiet, nearly silent, except for the moans coming from the floor.
I held a butcher’s knife in my hand, dripping already.
My victim looked up at me, panic widening his eyes. “Don’t do this. Please. I can get you whatever you want. I can give you a new life, far away from here. Or a hook-up for a cut of the action. No one has to know. Please.” He held his side, where blood oozed around his hand.
Time wasn’t his friend. Neither was I. The words I spoke felt like they came from someone else’s mouth, someone else’s mind. “The only thing I want from you is the truth.”
I knelt next to where he lay, starting to gasp for air.
“Your lungs are filling up with blood. You might have time, if I were to leave and call an ambulance right now. You know what I want.” Brandishing the knife toward him, I gripped it tight in my hand.
Something flashed in his gaze, a flicker of realization, and he dropped his hand from his wound. “I can’t tell you the truth, because you’ve always known. You just didn’t want to admit it to yourself.”
You’ve always known.
What was it that I knew? If I reached back in my thoughts far enough, I could almost see a glimpse of it, and then it was gone.
You’ve always known.
I could barely open my eyes enough to see I was still in the warehouse. Everything hurt, so goddamn much. I didn’t feel this awful last time I opened my eyes.
Maybe this would be the end of me. With Winder, I had wished for a time machine, and maybe this was my wish coming true, wrapped up in burlap and chains.
Sleep was overpowering me again, and somewhere in the distance I could hear someone yelling about overdosages. They must have meant me.
It would be so easy to take advantage of their fuck-up, to slip away, to just float on the soft blackness that surrounded me. I could close my eyes and never wake up. Death might ease my aching joints, bring back the things I’d lost. Except.
Except Winder. Winder believed in me, even when I didn’t. When I couldn’t remember, he carried the memories for me. He shouldered the weight, and only ever showed me love. If I gave up now, he’d have to carry that burden as well.
I couldn’t give up. I owed it to Winder. I owed it to myself. After everything, I couldn’t let my brain be my downfall. I couldn’t make it easy for Conrad.
I could bend, and I could crack, but I couldn’t break. Not yet, not now.
I needed to believe in myself like Winder did.
The urge to close my eyes and fade away was so strong. But I couldn’t.
I wouldn’t.
My hand weighed half a ton, and lifting it took all my energy, but I did it anyway. One hand, then the other, until I was on my hands and knees.
Memories or no, I’d finish this. Conrad fucked up when he tracked me, took me, drugged me. He wouldn’t get the satisfaction of watching my last breath, or hearing me cry out, begging for my life.
You couldn’t kill someone who had already come back from the grave.