My words said,fine, you winbut my tone saidyou’re sounding a little hysterical, Ethan.
Which was probably why he sounded so dissatisfied when he spoke again. “I’ll give you twenty minutes to run. You should thank me. You only get three minutes with the Butchers’ Hunt.”
I said nothing, and he stalked toward me and grabbed my arm hard enough to make me wince.
He hauled me to the open door of my cell and Anton and Mr. Skinny took a few steps back. I didn’t know if it was because they were afraid of me or because they were afraid of Todd, but the possibility of the former energized me. I might still be screwed, but I’d thrown them off their game. I’d hurt Anton with my kicks to his bad leg, had planted seeds of doubt in Mr. Skinny, had picked at the scab of Ethan Todd’s insecurity, a gaping wound under all his big talk, which was usually the case with incels and misogynists.
“What are you waiting for?” Todd looked at his smart watch. “Run.”
11
MAEVE
There wasnothing to light my way: no red lights, no digital clock, no flashlight on my phone.
Once I ran past the sickly fluorescent lights outside my cell, I was surrounded by utter darkness.
I hadn’t expected it, and I stopped cold, edging toward the walls, feeling my way along the cold, slimy stone as my eyes adjusted. I hated losing the time, but falling would only make things worse.
And after a while, my eyesdidadjust. Not enough to make everything clear, but enough that I could make out the tunnel complex stretched out in front of me. Enough that I could see a few feet in every direction.
I picked up my pace, sticking close to the wall in case I missed something in my path and stumbled.
The tunnels were different than the ones under Blackwell Falls. Both were made of stone, but the ones under Blackwell Falls had been built in the 1920s. The stone was cold but mostly dry.
This stone felt as old as time. My skin crawled when I brushed against the rough, slimy surface. The smell of rot was strong, and I half expected to stumble upon a dead body or ten.
Had Todd done this before with other women? Or did the smell come from something older?
I thought about the catacombs under Paris. I’d never been, but I’d read about them, and it was easy to imagine long-dead bodies buried in the dungeon around me.
I fought against the instinct to slow down, or better yet, to stop altogether. I was terrified of running into something or stumbling over one of the aforementioned dead bodies, but I couldn’t afford to slow down. I had no idea how much time had passed but I knew twenty minutes was going to pass all too quickly.
I was so busy looking ahead that I didn’t see the object in my path on the ground. I stumbled and went down hard enough to make my teeth ache, something sharp biting into my right palm.
A coiled shadow came into view on the floor, and I scooted quickly away as my mind went to snakes and other things that slithered in the dark.
But it wasn’t a snake: it was a chain. I’d tripped over a heavy metal chain like the ones used to chain girls to the walls in the tunnels under Blackwell Falls. Except this one was even older and bigger, even more rusted.
I used the wall to get to my feet, then wiped my bloody hand on my sweatshirt before bending to stretch the chain across the path in the tunnel. The chain was too heavy to use as a weapon, but it might trip up Todd and his flunkies. At the very least it would make some noise, alert me to their presence if I was still close enough to hear them hit the chain.
The rusted metal clanged against the stone floor, but I wasn’t worried about that. Even if Todd could hear me, he’d have no way of knowing where I was in the tunnel or what I was doing.
I moved past the chain quickly, unsure how much time I’d burned. Other chains lay on the stone floor, scattered along with milky broken bottles in different colors, and horrifyingly, bones that may or may not have been human.
I picked up one of the bottles, a small flask-shaped bottle made out of burgundy glass. The bottom third was shattered, leaving jagged shards of broken glass. I wrapped my hand around the undamaged spout and kept walking.
My cut hand burned, my fear overwhelming.
I was afraid if I stopped I would shut down completely, sit again the stone wall and accept my fate at the hands of Ethan Todd.
After what felt like an hour but might have been five minutes I came to the remnants of an iron door like the one that had kept me confined in my cell. It stood at the top of a narrow stone stairwell leading downward, and I hesitated at the top, trying to see into the darkness that lay below.
I only had two choices: go back the way I came or keep going. Going back toward my cell was an option — at least I knew there was an exit in that direction — but only if I could find somewhere to hide while Todd, Anton, and Mr. Skinny passed me by.
So far the tunnel had been a straight shot, which meant I had to keep moving.
It seemed impossible that I could travel any deeper underground — and I definitely didn’t want to — but there was nowhere else to go, so I descended the stairs even though every instinct in my body screamed for me to go back.
