CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 22
AT LEAST THE LIGHTS ARE STILL ON.
Of course, that hopeful thought was all it took for them to shine brightly for one final, glorious moment, searing an image of the area in front of Ness into her brain, before they went out. Not a slow fade, but an immediate plunge into the darkest dark she’d ever known.
“Oh, come on,” she moaned. She tried to orient herself from memory. Stepping tentatively forward, she immediately smashed her knee on the chair the now-dark camera rested on. Or had rested. She heard it clatter to the ground, and when she took a teensy step to the side to try to locate it, she managed to kick it farther away.
“Son of a . . .” She rubbed her leg, took a deep breath, and tried again to get to the wall, even more slowly this time. If anyone had happened to be watching with night vision, they’d have seen something very akin to a sloth crossing a road. A very cold sloth. Ness tried to enjoy the feeling of being chilled, a novelty after days of near-constant sweating, but the circumstances weren’t ripe for casual gratitude practice.
One mincing step at a time, she moved forward and to her right until her palm hit the wall, scaring the heck out of her, despite having expected it any moment. She took a steadying breath and tried to slow her pounding heart before inching along in what she really, truly, deeply hoped was the way to the stairs and not off some cliff she hadn’t clocked coming in.
Wind whispered through the cavern, but it was impossible to pinpoint where it originated, or if it was in fact simply wishful thinking. Sounds bounced off the walls and echoed back. If Ness had believed in ghosts, she’d have sworn there was a whole gang of them behind her. Actually, now that she thought about it, she wasn’t 100 percent sure ghosts weren’t a thing . . .
When her icy toes finally made contact with the bottom step, she nearly wept with relief. As she edged her way up, she prayed, against all logic and common sense, for the door to be open. Maybe whoever had been down there needed to make a sneaky getaway and was now feigning sleep with the others.
Was this Bradley’s secret hideout? She had to admit, it was an excellent villain’s lair, though she couldn’t really picture him choosing to stay somewhere so uncomfortable for any length of time. He was more of a feather pillow and cold-pressed coconut oil guy.
Or had Ian somehow followed her without her noticing? She’d been pretty focused on what was ahead of her, as opposed to what might be creeping along behind. If he hadn’t, what would happen when he woke up and found her missing?
Ness had no idea what she’d do once she got out, but, you know, one step at a time. She stifled a hysterical giggle-turned-grunt as she stubbed a toe on a riser.
The door, of course, was closed. And locked. And, obviously, no one answered her screams for help. They were probably passed out for the night, their stomachs full of python meat and spiteful rage. She wished them aggressive indigestion and eerie dreams.
Was this Libby’s way of getting rid of her . . . permanently?
Do snakes like cave-dungeon-basements?
Minutes or hours or years later, throat raw and knuckles scraped from pounding against the heavy, probably soundproofed, door, Ness sat on the steps. She rested her chin in her hands, elbows on her knees, and tried to project a bored nonchalance that might convince her animal-brain that there was no reason to freak out. She was definitely not going to die here, never to be found because, undoubtedly, someone would tear down the house in the not-too-distant future and her corpse would be forever lost among the rubble.
She really didn’t want to have to haunt the island.
And of course no one would believe she was a criminal mastermind, charting a course to this godforsaken island with ill intentions, who had then fled in the night to avoid the consequences of her actions. That would be ridiculous.
But was it? Libby had made it pretty clear that she, at least, found the idea plausible. And really, Ness could see how she got there. It hurt, but she could understand it.
Despite what her nonexistent publicist would probably call “challenging optics,” she did have faith that Hayes would still believe in her and come looking. Coco wouldn’t be easily swayed by Libby’s and Tyler’s opinions, and Ness had to hope that she could cajole and woo Daisy onto her side if necessary. It helped to believe she’d mended enough fences that the group as a whole wouldn’t shrug off her sudden disappearance and move on with their lives.
She shifted her weight and tried to get the blood flowing to her numb rear end. The stone steps were far from comfortable, but the idea of navigating back down in the dark was even less appealing.And really, what was she going to do down there? Fall in the pool? Sit in the sex throne? No thank you.
Thinking back through her evening, Ness figured she’d come through the door around ten. It couldn’t have been more than an hour since then. Probably less, despite her feeling like she was already turning into Gollum.
“I don’t even have a precious,” she muttered dejectedly.
Leaning back against the door, she tried to remember the moments when she’d first come down the stairs, searching for any clue that might reveal who had been in the dungeon with her. She came up empty.
Ian shadowing her was the easiest explanation. She groaned and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. This was so messed up.
And she was so tired. And hungry. And how was this her life?
Her heart galloped wildly and she tried to pry her thoughts away from, well, everything, focusing on breathing. Just breathing.
* * *
All through that night she startled constantly, convinced someone was looming over her, about to go in for the kill. Eventually, a sliver of dim morning light became visible under the door, trickling through from the outer room’s window.
Ness took this as her cue to resume escaping.
She gave the screaming and door-kicking another shot, but all she got for her efforts were additional bruises on her knuckles and palms to go with her dehydration headache.
She turned to stare down the stairs into the unrelenting darkness.
There was nothing appealing about going back down there. The stairs were barely visible, and Ness was almost certain she was destined to fall and break an ankle. Unfortunately, she couldn’t seem to come up with an alternative. Her breath was ragged in her ears and her pulse throbbed at her temples. The longer she stood there, achieving nothing, the faster her heart beat and the closer she came to folding into the fetal position.
A drawn-out groan escaped her lips, but down she went, reverting to the hand-on-wall method.
The cavern was only a slightly less intense shade of black, inching toward what could be labeled on a paint chip as “Wet Iron at Twilight,” “Charcoal in a Darkened Room,” or “Shadows of Doom.” She couldn’t tell where the scant light was coming from, but maybe light meant an exit.
Ness squinted into the gloom, desperate for a sign of anything that signaled an alternate way out.
She needed light.
Shuffling her feet to avoid tripping, she made her way to the right, trying to remember where the shelf of, erm, accessories had been. Eventually, she walked directly into it, bouncing her face off something firm, cylindrical, and rubbery. It thudded to the floor, and bounced.
“Gross,” she whined, but she kept a hand on the shelf. Feeling her way across, she skimmed her fingertips over metal, latex, and something cold, damp, and furry.
Moving down one shelf, she started the process again. No flashlight, lantern, or glow-in-the-dark sex toy revealed itself, but her hand closed around a metal cylinder the size of a can of hairspray. She slid her hand to the top, felt the lip of a lid, and popped it off. With the can held at arm’s length and hopefully not pointed at her face, she tested the nozzle, giving it a quick jab with her forefinger.
She heard a hiss, and the air around her filled with the scent of citrus-scented disinfectant.
“That’s something, I guess.”
Ness clutched the canister to her chest and found the wall again. Continuing along to the right, sliding her free hand up and down the surface, she prayed she had remembered the layout of the room correctly. It was all such a blur, like playing one of those memory games where someone shows you a tray of items—in this case, BDSM-themed—and you have to remember as many as possible.
Her nail jammed into the crack between a metal bracket and the wall, bending painfully backward. Ness fought the urge to stick it directly into her mouth and settled for deep, calming breaths instead. It was not effective.
More carefully, she slid her hand along the wall again until it hit the bracket. She grabbed the thick-handled whip that resided there. The handle tapered, wand-like, before the tail began. Ness waved it through the air, testing its strength. It was weighty but balanced in her grip, and she could see how, in different circumstances, someone might enjoy the feel of wielding it.
The leather had moldered a bit, and where the pieces flaked off under her touch, Ness could feel the wood it was wrapped around peeking through. She hoped it was damp enough for what she had planned.
Stripping her T-shirt off, she sat cross-legged with her supplies in her lap. She carefully wrapped the shirt around the top of the whip’s handle, then secured it by twining the tail around the fabric and knotting it as many times as the length allowed. Balancing the whole thing on her feet, she sprayed the disinfectant in short bursts until she’d figured out where the opening was, then blasted it at the T-shirt and tried not to inhale too deeply.
Shifting to one side, she reached into her back pocket and pulled out the matchbook she’d been carrying around since the first fire on the beach. Her confidence waned.The cardboard was damp. The remaining two matches felt moist.
Keeping her makeshift torch gripped between her feet, Ness shimmied her body until the gentle, constant breeze was at her back. She ripped one match free and felt for the rough strip on the back of the package.
She held her breath and struck the match.
Nothing.
She tried again. And again. And seven more times, just in case. By that point, the flammable head of the match had completely disappeared and Ness was forced to accept that her fate rested on the nonexistent shoulders of the final, shitty match.
She sat quietly for a moment, composing herself. Looking up at the ceiling, she spoke to both no one and everyone.
“If I get out of this, I will always carry waterproof matches. I will learn to swim at a professional level. I won’t care so much about what other people think. I’ll adopt senior dogs and give them joyous last days.” She inhaled, deeply this time, the residual spray burning her nostrils only slightly. She coughed.
“I will learn to trust people.At least, the ones who earn it.” She carefully ripped the last match free. “Whoever put me in earth’s butthole gets zero good vibes henceforth. Straight to the no-trust zone.”
Gripping the match firmly between shaking fingers, she pulled it through the folded cardboard book.
Schnick.
A delicate flame flickered into existence. Ness drew in a careful breath and cupped her hand around the tiny spot of hope. She dragged her feet closer, bringing the chemical-citrus-scented T-shirt within reach, and lowered the flame until it was touching.
There was a drawn-out moment where she was sure that the match was going to burn out. That the shirt wouldn’t catch. That she’d be right back where she’d started, in the dark with no plan.
She let out a sigh of frustration and froze as the flame dimmed to a glowing red ember. Then, with a satisfying and only slightly alarming whoomp, the shirt was on fire.
Ness scrabbled to her feet, gripping the handle tightly. She had no idea how long the thing would last, or if the whip tail would melt and drop a flaming piece of fabric onto her, or . . .
As she circled the panic wagon, someone coughed. The sound echoed through the chamber, making it sound as if it were populated by an army of pack-a-day smokers.
“Ahhgggghhh!” Ness staggered backward and collapsed against the wall. She’d always assumed she’d be a natural fighter in this type of situation, grappling with the enemy to the death (ideally not her own), but it turned out she was more of a “curl into a protective ball and hope they don’t see me” prisoner.
Dimly, through the terror, she heard a voice.
“Who’s there? What’s happening?” Scuffling came from across the cavern, followed by, “What is this place?”
Keeping with the theme of avoiding attention, despite the flaming evidence to the contrary, Ness didn’t answer. Her brain knew that voice, but in her current state of dehydrated, sleep-deprived near-hysteria, she couldn’t place it.
The mystery person spoke again.
“Listen, we can work this out. I’m sure it’s all a misunderstanding.”
One tiny degree of movement at a time, Ness raised her head from where it had been pressed to her knees.
“Bradley?”
The clank of metal on stone rang out from the other side of the cavern.
“Ness? Thank god. Come get me out of here.” A thunk now of something heavy against the floor.
She started across the smooth, dark floor, then stopped.
“What are you doing down here?” she asked suspiciously. She’d been locked in the dungeon for hours, making no shortage of noise, and this fool was just announcing his presence now?
“Jesus, my head is killing me. Um, I don’t know what I’m doing here, Agnes. Or where here is.” A pause. “What are you doing here?” His tone indicated that he thought knew exactly what she was doing here, and it wasn’t anything good.
Ness crept closer until she was standing outside the second doorway she’d noticed when she’d first gotten down there, what felt like a lifetime ago. She edged forward, flickering torch aloft, until she had a relatively clear view of Bradley, backed by a wall of empty wooden racks, semi-circles cut from the planks.
Huh. Ian had been right about the wine cellar after all. Too bad it had been cleared out. The occasion really called for any and all liquid numbing agents.
She dragged her attention back to Bradley.
He was strapped to what could loosely be described as a chair. It had a metal frame with padded sections at weight-bearing points. The leg rests were separated enough for another person to stand between his knees. The real defining feature, though, was the multitude of restraints that held him in place. Wide black straps were wrapped around his upper arms, wrists, chest, stomach, thighs, calves, and ankles. There was even one across his forehead.
Ness watched as he shifted his weight to the left and then quickly to the right, rocking the entire apparatus. It slid half an inch across the floor, scraping metal against rock. That explained the noise.
He glared at her from the corner of his eye.
“This is a new low, don’t you think? Kidnapping, Ness? Really?” The muscles in his arms strained as he tried to rip free.
While it seemed pretty unlikely that he’d managed to secure himself to the chair, Ness wasn’t in a particularly trusting mood, and she kept her distance.
“Why would I do this?” she asked, hurt, but genuinely curious. “Actually, how could I even have done this? What do you weigh? Two-ten? I appreciate your ridiculous overestimation of my strength, but come on.”
His eyes narrowed in consideration as he judged her upper-body musculature and found it lacking.
“Fine,” he allowed, then added, “but maybe you’re not in it alone.”
“Ugghh. Who, Bradley? Who on this rock is jumping into criminal collusion with me? Plus, I’m in the same boat as you, friend. Don’t you think I’d have something other than a handcrafted chemical torch if I’d planned this?”
The torch in question was still going strong, giving off fumes that left Ness’s head pounding even more than it had been earlier.
The silence dragged on, punctuated only by small grunts of effort as he continued to strain against the straps holding him in place.
“Yeah.” He sighed. “Yeah, alright. I guess it’s unlikely you could pull something like this off.” He shifted the entire chair structure again. “So untie me already!”
“Someone locked me in a pit,” Ness explained. “You can understand why I’m feeling a little wary.”
He rolled his eyes, then winced. “Ow,” he groaned. “Well, that makes two of us. I was heading to bed and Daisy asked if I’d refill the bathroom buckets. I got back and was brushing my teeth when I heard a weird noise. Long story short, I investigated, found another secret passage in that bedroom of ten thousand reflections, and came down here on my own like a schmuck.”
Ness made a noncommittal sound, not wanting to draw attention to her own schmuckery.
“I slipped on the stairs, hit my head, and woke up like this, which, to be honest, was pretty fucking concerning.”
“You’ve been unconscious for twenty-four hours?” The skepticism came through loud and clear.
“No,” he said tightly. “It was, fuck, I don’t know. Maybe a few minutes? I woke up strapped to this . . . whatever the hell this is, and had a drink.” His chin jerked slightly to the human equivalent of a hamster water bottle suspended from the ceiling by a metal rod. It was off-center now, but Ness assumed it had been directly over his face before Bradley started shuffling the chair around.
She eyed the chair in question, unsure she should even call it anything so innocent. It was as explicit a piece of furniture as she’d ever seen. How long could, uh, biological samples exist on a surface? Gloves would be so, so great right now. She kind of wished she’d reserved a supply of the disinfectant spray.
“And then I passed out again.” He grimaced. “The water must be laced with something. It tasted terrible, but that seemed . . . not surprising. I have no idea how long I’ve been here.” His eyes locked expectantly on Ness’s, but she wasn’t ready.
“What about your argument with Libby?”
“Which one?”
“You were upstairs, asking for help, and she didn’t seem inclined. I don’t think you ended on great terms.”
“It’s none of your business.”
Ness gestured to their surroundings. “I think it’s entirely my business if you’re in some dire financial straits and have gone to some pretty dicey extremes.”
“Do you hear yourself?”
Ness raised an eyebrow and waited.
“Fine. Fine. I made a bad investment. Put all my eggs into one basket to get a movie made and . . . it didn’t work out. You’d think people would be more into a biopic about the greatest body painter who ever lived. I asked Libby for a loan.”
She considered. It sounded like a very Bradley move.
He strained against the strapping again. “Now will you please get me off this thing?”
A wall-mounted sconce provided a convenient holder for her torch, and as Ness worked her way through the straps, she braced herself for the fallout and told Bradley about the letters, the python, and how she’d ended up in the abyss with him.
She made sure to cover the invasion-of-privacy portion first, while his arms were still tied down. It would have been easy to skip over that part until they were free, but it had been weighing on her, and she wanted to be the one to tell him what had happened. Borrow-stealing necessities was one thing (and still not a great thing), but reading something so clearly personal and precious made her stomach turn—not to mention the whole “and then Libby read them” thing.
The outrage she’d expected didn’t surface. Instead, Bradley seemed relieved.
He flexed his fingers and rotated his wrists, getting feeling back into his joints and digits as Ness worked her way through the last of the straps.
“I’m glad it’s out,” he said. “It’s a heavy thing, keeping the happiest part of my life hidden away like some dirty secret. They deserve better.” He looked down at her. “Honestly, I’m pretty surprised you told me. That was brave.”
Ness felt the tips of her ears burn. She was just as surprised as he was, but it felt good.
“I, erm, thought the letters meant you were behind . . . all this.” She waved her hands vaguely at their surroundings. “You wrote about a plan for financial stability. It seemed to line up. What’s more lucrative than holding the secrets of everyone on this island?”
He scoffed. “I’m taking over for Richard Garvey, hosting Survive the Night.” He pitched his voice low and raspy. “Only one thing stands between you and glory. All you need to do is survive the night.” He shrugged and spoke normally. “It’s a steady paycheck, and the chances of them canceling it in the next few years are slim. Audiences love watching people being terrified, I guess. It’s the closest I’m going to get to a normal full-time job.”
Bradley setting aside his dreams of blockbuster fame to embrace a reality TV career was almost as hard to believe as the idea of him as a doting father, but the mixture of resignation and pride on his face sold it.
“You’ll be great,” Ness assured him, covering parenthood and career change in one fell swoop. She thought she sounded pretty believable. “And hey, I have a stellar location pre-scouted for you.”
The light from the torch suddenly dimmed. Ness turned, and watched, crestfallen, as the fiery remains of the T-shirt fell from the handle, landing on the ground in a smoldering pile of uselessness.
In the last of the barely present light, Bradley swung his legs down and tried to stand, but staggered, catching himself on the chair. His head drooped, chin nearly touching his chest. His breaths were as ragged and borderline panicked as Ness’s. For some reason, that made her feel marginally better.
“Whoa, there, big guy.” She put a hand on his damp, sweaty back. “Take it slow.”
“I think I might puke.” He was slightly hunched over, hands braced on the seat of the chair as he took deep breaths. Unfortunately, the air was filled with chemical-laced smoke from the spent torch.
“As long as it’s not on me. Come on. We’ve got a door to break down.”
She looped his heavy arm over her bare shoulders and was bracing herself to take a portion of his weight when they heard the squeal of the door opening, and a thunk as it closed again. Footsteps echoed as someone came down the stairs.
She stared at Bradley, still visible in the dying light, wide-eyed, her mind racing. He stared back with a decidedly glazed look to his eyes.
Moving quickly, she pulled him along to the barely glowing T-shirt and stomped out the remaining embers. Then, using her now well-practiced wall-guidance technique, she moved them around the perimeter of the room until their backs were pressed to the wall just inside the doorway. If anyone looked straight in, even with a light, they wouldn’t be visible.
The bright glare of a flashlight flitted across the doorway, carried on past it, and then came back. The light was now pooling on the empty chair.
There was an indistinct, throaty noise, followed by a soft thump and a man’s voice quietly cursing. He came around the corner, the light bobbing as he hobbled in.
“Are you kidding me right now?” Bradley’s voice was strangled, steeped in offended disbelief.
The shadowy figure jumped, letting out a small, high-pitched scream at the sound of a voice coming from directly beside him. The flashlight fell to the floor and rolled until it clanked against the metal base of the chair.
“Why is it so dang dark?” Tyler demanded, hand pressed to his chest, still standing on one foot like an oversized, petulant flamingo. “Nothing can ever be easy. Oh no,” he muttered, kneeling slowly to pick up the flashlight.
Ness leapt forward and grabbed it first, pivoting to aim the beam directly onto his sunburned, peeling face.
He raised one hand in apparent surrender, sighing.
“It’s not what it looks like.”