“I’m on it.” He whips his phone from the pocket of his joggers as he begins to back away to search the main floor again. “I’m calling in my father, too. This isn’t turning into a repeat. Not on my watch. Not Elle.”
I nod. “We’ll find her. We have to.” My voice cracks, and I hurry away, unable to say that I’m worried like fuck that we won’t.
THIRTY-THREE
ELLIOT
“Dane?”I gasp out, near tears. “Dane, if you can hear me, you have to wake up.” I shift in my chair to try to jiggle him awake. My hands are bound with rope behind me, yet I can’t quite reach him with my fingers to poke him. I don’t have a fucking clue why they have the chairs back-to-back like this, maybe they saw it in a movie or something. I hate that I can’t see Dane to get a read on how he’s doing, so maybe that’s the entire point of it.
Upstairs, on the main floor of the house, floorboards creak faintly. Please, please someone find us because I’m terrified there isn’t a way out of this. How long has Dane been down here? Since the afternoon before Cannon’s party? Kingston said he texted to ask for help with the grill, but shit… what if it wasn’t him responding? I frown. Except Zeke specifically said he saw him yesterday afternoon. My brows furrow in confusion as I try to process what’s happened and how we got to be in this situation.
“Elliot?” Dane croaks out my name, questioning whether it’s actually me. He sounds like maybe he doesn’t trust himself to believe I’m here, which makes sense, as I saw a bloody gash on the side of his head before they’d turned me around. But still, relief flows through me because when I first saw him, I thought— I give myself a mental shake.No. Don’t think like that.
“Dane, are you okay?”
He exhales heavily behind me as he attempts to move around, but it’s no good because he’s bound to his chair. “My head is killing me.” He lets out a low moan as he attempts to shift on the chair. “Yesterday—at least I think it was yesterday—I was in the basement playing pinball after class, and all of a sudden, I heard voices coming from down here in the cellar. Fuckers were discussing some shady shit, and they caught me listening in.”
And before I can ask whotheyis, he continues, “I’m so fucking sorry, Elliot.” He pauses, his breathing ragged. “I need to come clean to you in case we don’t get out of here.”
“Dane, no—”
“No, lemme say this. It was me leaving those fucking notes to you.” His voice catches, and he sounds as if he’s close to losing it. “I was trying to get you out of here.” The anguish-filled words strike me square in the chest. “Will would never forgive me if I let any of these guys hurt you. I didn’t know what else to do. But I-I see it now. I should have told you when you began to trust me.” He hesitates only a fraction of a second. “You were right, that day when we argued after class.” An unsteady breath billows from him. “Will and I were in love.” His voice hitches with sadness in a way that crushes my heart. “He was my boyfriend.”
“Why do you keep talking about him in the past tense?” And even though I know deep down that he might be right, I don’t want him to confirm my biggest fear because I don’t know if I can handle it.
Dane’s grief and heartache is a palpable thing. “Because I think they killed him. Got rid of him the night of his test at the end of initiation—but I don’t know if it was on purpose or an accident they covered up. Alec, Joel, and Stuart said they tied him up out in the woods, made him submit to all kinds of sensory deprivation kind of crap. I think they went too far. There’s more to it than that, and I don’t know how all the players fit.”
A shuddered breath escapes me as tears spring hot and heavy from my eyes.“No.”I can only imagine what that did to Will. And with his heart condition… Oh, god. What if—
“I’m so fucking sorry, Elliot. I know how close you were. I'd seen photos of you. I knew who you were the second you set foot in the house.” Openly allowing his misery to flow, he whispers, “I’m so damn sorry I didn’t do more, that I didn’t just fucking tell you. I’m not as brave as Will was. When the trouble started, I think it was because someone saw us together. And Will, he said, ‘So fucking what. Elliot would tell me to face them head-on.’ He said we deserve to love and be loved in return, and anyone who has a problem with it, that’s just it—it’s their problem. But—” He heaves out a breath, “Elliot, what happened last year wasn’t just Alec and his buddies being homophobic. Will took whatever they dished out, but I think that’s somehow a cover for something else entirely. It didn’t make sense that they’d go so relentlessly after Will, but not me. I’ve been terrified of what would happen if I told you the truth or did anything but keep my head down and mouth shut.”
I’m on information overload. “I’m so confused.”
There’s a creak from the direction of the stairs, and we fall silent. I peer at the figure, who appears to be pulling his sweatshirt on over his head… and then picks up his mask to put it back on, though he’s too far up the staircase for me to see his face. My gaze narrows. Why’d he take his shirt and mask off? And then it hits me—so he can move around the fucking house without looking like a stalkery abductor, that’s why. I knew I recognized the voice as belonging to someone in the brotherhood, and that only confirms it. But which of the jerks is it? “Who are you?” I huff. “Joel? Bridger?” I’ll keep guessing until I make the asshole flinch.
Behind me, Dane clears his throat. Taking it as a signal, I stop.Shit.I bet he knows exactly who it is, because I believe that’s what he was trying to tell me—he caught two people down here talking about something that disturbed him. My brain is so overwhelmed, it’s like I’m trying to think with a head full of cotton.
“Shut up. Both of you.”
I shake my head. “Let us go. I don’t know what you want, but I promise I won’t tell anyone. Neither will Dane. Keeping us down here like this won’t end well.”
“Not for you, it won’t. They’re already looking for you. And that means we need to move quickly.” I notice his fists are balled tightly. His gaze slides across the room, but I don’t have a clue what he’s looking at. He glances down at his wristwatch, then groans, clearly frustrated. “This is a fucking shit show.” He begins to pace the room, only paying us a modicum of attention.
A rapping sound from across the room catches me by surprise. “What the hell,” I breathe out as my eyes flick to the source of the sound.
Our captor hurries over to a small wooden door—it’s maybe half the size of a normal door—fits a key into a padlock, and pulls it from the door. The hinges protest loudly as the door swings open into the room.
Confusion slices through me, but then a person emerges, bent over. My eyes bug out because as he straightens, I realize my worst nightmares are all coming true. Nick is here, in the basement with us. And he has the most maniacal, dangerous look on his face I’ve ever seen. All the air whooshes out of my lungs, and my body involuntarily tries to shift away from him, but all I end up doing is ramming us backward, making the chairs scrape noisily on the cement floor.
He grins at me. “Hey, Ellie. Fancy seeing you here.” His dark eyes narrow on my legs and slide down to my bare feet. “Nice choice of clothing.”
There’s only one way to deal with Nick—it’s a shame I didn’t understand this way earlier in our relationship—and that’s not to back down. Stand my ground. “I didn’t see the dress code on my invitation.” The words come out with bite, just like I’d intended, and I fight hard not to let him see my lip wobble.
He walks over to me and cups my cheek, sliding his thumb under my eyes to collect my tears. “What’s got you crying?” I refuse to answer, shuddering at his touch as he grits out, “Whatever it is, I fucking like it.” He lifts his thumb to his lips and licks my tears from his skin.
I let out a hard breath, then clamp my mouth shut to stop the tremble. He’s not getting the upper hand here.
Except then he bends down, his hand roughly shoving at my thigh. “Yeah. I fuckin’ like the way that looks. Do your boyfriends like screwing you while my mark is so nicely carved into your leg?”
