Chapter Twenty-Three
“C’mon, Cassie!” Connor shouted over his shoulder. “Keep up!”
Barefoot, jeans rolled to his knees, he raced ahead, darting between trees with ease.
Cassie ran after him, laughing as she chased him through the woods. It was just after dinner, the last of the sunlight slanting gold through the leaves.
Up ahead, Connor vaulted over a fallen log, and Cassie tried to do the same—
not quite lifting her foot in time.
One second she was running, the next the ground was rushing up to meet her. Her hands shot out too late—her forehead cracking against the ground with a sharp, blinding jolt.
“C’mon, Cas,” she heard Connor say, his voice sounding far away and weird. “Open your eyes.”
“Cas,” he said again, his hand cool against her cheek. “Look at me.”
His voice sharpened, panic creeping in. “C’mon, kid—open your eyes.”
He shook her shoulder. “Hey—wake up.”
Grabbing her, he shook both her arms. “Wake up, Cassie—you hear me?”
“Wake the fuck up!”
Cassie’s eyes snapped open.
Pain bursting behind them.
Her head throbbed so violently she had to squeeze them shut, her stomach lurching as nausea surged through her.
Even so, the world kept tilting beneath her, like the ground itself was rolling.
For a long moment she lay there breathing through her mouth, trying not to throw up, though the smell did little to help—damp earth and mold, sour and stale all at once.
When she finally forced her eyes open again, she found her surroundings dim and dull, the kind of underground gloom that swallowed everything beyond a few feet. A thin shaft of daylight cut in from somewhere high above her head, slanting across the…dirt floor?
Where the hell—
Her vision swam as she tried turning her head, the movement sending another sharp pain pulsing through her skull.
She tried to reach for her head—
—only to feel her arm jerk short.
Her breath caught. Her pulse kicked hard, climbing fast. Her wrists were bound together with white plastic zip ties, cinched so tightly her fingers tingled. Her ankles—
She shifted to test them and the world tipped violently, nausea roaring back as her legs dragged uselessly against each other. Zip ties bit into her ankles hard enough that she knew she couldn’t stand.
Stay calm, Cassie. Stay calm and think…
She was in a root cellar. Or some unfinished basement. The kind Margie stored her canned vegetables in. A ladder loomed a short distance away, rising to a square hatch in the ceiling. The door above it was shut tight, not even a seam of light showing around the edges.
Holy hell, her head hurt. She lifted her bound hands, feeling blindly along the pain until her fingers found a swollen, throbbing knot.
Wait…had someone hit her?
She forced her scrambled thoughts into order. Wierswood. Maya. She’d gone to talk to Maya, only to be told Maya wasn’t there.
After that—
The Blue Rooster flickered.
That’s right—she’d gone back to the Rooster to ask Violet about Maya, who’d warned her off searching for the woman.
“You don’t wanna go pokin’ around them places alone,” Violet had told her. “Better off askin’ Ollie for help.”
But Cassie had gone looking anyway, because it had been barely the middle of the day and she wasn’t stupid or helpless. And because she’d figured she’d look around for a couple of minutes, and if she couldn’t find Maya, she’d leave.
The rail yard came back in pieces.
The smell of rotting trash with something sweet and chemical underneath it all.
Rusting, graffitied freight cars scattered along bent and broken tracks.
Burn barrels smoked in a few spots, thin gray columns twisting up toward the sky.
People sat around them on pilfered chairs and makeshift seats while others drifted.
Cassie had spotted Maya a ways apart from the others, slumped behind a battered, half-collapsed freight car, recognizing her first by the greasy blonde hair hanging in tangles around her face.
As Cassie approached, a flicker of awareness crossed the woman’s face, followed by a strange little giggle.
“You look like him,” she said, her voice slack, her words blurring into each other. “His eyes…so green.”
Cassie crouched in front of her, ignoring the nearly choking smell of her unwashed body. “Connor?” she asked gently. “You knew him?”
Maya’s eyes sharpened a little, like his name managed to reach some part of her the rest of the world couldn’t. “He’s dead, you know. Gone…forever.”
“He was gonna…get us outta here,” Maya had gone on, her head tipping back against the steel. “He was savin’…some…”
Her words trailed off.
“Maya?” Cassie leaned in a little, watching the woman’s eyes slip half shut. “Maya, what?”
Reaching out, she gave her arm a small shake. “What was he saving? Money?”
Maya’s lashes fluttered. Her mouth moved around something soundless. Then her gaze shifted, sliding over Cassie’s shoulder and fixing there.
Cassie started to turn—
Pain exploded across the back of her head.
And for one sick second she felt herself falling without understanding why—
—right before everything went black.
Cassie sucked in a slow breath, forcing herself back to the present.
Okay, so clearly someone had fucking hit her.
But who—and why? And where the hell were they now?
She strained to listen. No footsteps. No voices. No movement overhead.
Shifting her weight, she tried again to push herself upright, the motion sending her head swimming and her bound ankles tangling beneath her as she tipped sideways across the dirt floor—
—and jerked back with a strangled gasp.
Maya lay barely a foot away.
Wrists bound, eyes glassy and vacant, mouth hanging slightly open.
“Maya?” Cassie whispered hoarsely. “Maya, it’s me—Connor’s sister.”
Maya didn’t blink. Didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
A spike of cold slithered through Cassie, and she jerked backward, heels digging uselessly into the dirt as the zip ties bit into her wrists and ankles.
She hit the wall hard enough to knock the air from her lungs and stayed there for a second, stunned, staring across the cellar floor at Maya’s eerily still face.
Maya was dead.
Maya was fucking dead.
But the thought wouldn’t stick. She kept staring anyway, waiting for something to change, waiting for Maya to blink or take a breath.
Only she never did.
Jesus Christ—Jesus-fucking-shit—Maya was dead and here she was trussed up like a fucking turkey on the floor of some underground hellhole with no idea who had put her there, whether they were still nearby, or what they planned to do with her…
Panic surged so fast it nearly took her under. Cassie pressed her lips together, dragging in air through her nose, fighting the spin in her head and the wild, animal urge to start screaming.
Think, Cassie. Think!
She took in the rest of the cellar in quick, jerking pieces. Packed dirt floor. Low ceiling. A ladder that, even if she could stand, she wasn’t sure she could reach. She stared at it, trying to judge the height of the last rung.
No tools. No shovel. No rusted hooks, no glass to break. Nothing she could reach that might help cut through these goddamn zip ties.
Her eyes found Maya again, her jaw clenching hard.
She didn’t want to do it…but what choice did she fucking have?
Dragging herself across the dirt, more of a shove and wriggle than a crawl, and—without looking at Maya’s face—she started patting her down as best she could. Hoodie pockets first, dumping out the contents—a wad of damp napkins and a crushed pack of cigarettes.
“Come on,” Cassie muttered, voice ragged and pleading. “Come on.”
She fumbled over Maya’s jeans pockets next, searching the front, then the back. Nothing. Down her pant legs, she twisted off each sneaker. Nothing else. No knife. No key. Nothing sharp at all.
Goddammit. All she needed was something to cut or burn—
Cassie jerked back to the crushed cigarettes, ripping open the soft pack and spilling the contents onto the dirt floor—a half-empty book of matches tumbling out alongside several partially smoked cigarettes.
She snatched the matches up, fumbling the cover open and nearly dropping the whole thing before managing to pinch a single match free, her hands shaking badly enough that she had to stop and steady them.
With her wrists bound tight together, she dragged the match pitifully across the striker.
Swearing under her breath, Cassie adjusted her grip and tried again, pressing harder this time. The match flared suddenly to life, and she hurried to angle it toward the zip tie—
—only for the flame to burn down against her fingers before she got anywhere close enough.
Hissing, she dropped it and immediately fumbled for another, only for the next match to snap clean in half between her trembling fingers.
“Jesus Christ,” she whispered. “Jesus fucking—”
Her gaze darted back to the scattered cigarettes. Grabbing one, she shoved it between her lips and struck another match, lighting it before the flame could burn her fingers again. Holding it clenched between her teeth, she folded forward and pressed the glowing ember to the zip tie.
Instantly, heat bit into her skin, the sharp chemical stink of melting plastic filling the air.
She jerked back with a muffled cry, fighting to keep hold of the cigarette while smoke flooded her nostrils and stung her eyes.
One breath—then another—and she forced herself to press the burning tip back against the plastic… and her skin.
Slowly, and so fucking painfully, the zip tie softened and warped beneath the heat. Cassie twisted hard against it, forcing her wrists apart until it finally snapped loose, the broken tie dropping into the dirt.
Not wasting a second, she pulled the cigarette from her mouth and pressed the burning tip against the plastic at her ankles.
The second zip tie split, Cassie lurched upright too fast and nearly fell, catching herself on the wall. She sagged there for a moment, breathing through the dizziness and fighting the urge to collapse.