And he’d put me underground.
I took inventory of my body to make sure everything was working, made note of the pounding at the back of my head, and tried to remember if anyone had hit me.
Not that I remembered, but I’d definitely been drugged, and the headache could be a product of whatever Ethan and whoever had been with him had given me. Plus, I had no idea how much time had passed (my phone was gone, no surprise), how long it had been since I’d eaten or had any water.
I got carefully to my feet, wincing at the dull throbbing in the back of my head.
I felt a little shaky, but my legs worked, and I walked the room, looking for opportunities to escape. The room was a hundred square feet, more or less, a box with three stone walls, the fourth wall made up of rusted iron bars with a door that was locked.
Like a jail. Or a… dungeon?
I leaned against the bars to look and saw a long stone hall, several other cells — empty as far as I could tell — opposite my own. Dim light shone from lamps on the wall, not the old-fashioned kind I would have expected in such a dungeon-like space but industrial fixtures that hummed and cast cold white light over the stone hall.
“Hello?” I shouted.
My voice echoed off the stone.
I was alone.
I thought about the Butchers. I had no way of knowing what had happened during the invasion of Ethan Todd’s compound, but Ethan obviously hadn’t been there.
He’d been stalking the loft, waiting for his chance to take me.
I wondered if Bram, Poe, and Remy had found Ray when they got home, wondered if Ethan had tossed my phone there or somewhere else, wondered if the tracker the Butchers hadinstalled would give them any clue about where Ethan had taken me.
I was so deep in thought, my hands curled around the iron bars of my cell, that I practically jumped out of my skin when a crackly voice sounded from behind me,
“There’s no way out. You might as well settle in.”
I knew that voice. I turned to follow it and realized it was coming from high on the wall.
A small red light blinked from the camera installed near the ceiling.
My fear turned to a kind of cold, quiet certainty. “You’ve made a mistake.”
“You’re the one in the cell,” Ethan Todd said from the camera’s speaker. “Looks like you’re the one who made a mistake.”
I shook my head and slid to the floor. “They’re going to kill you.”
“They have to find me first.” There was a note of humor in his voice. He was having fun.
“They will.” I felt suddenly calm. “And when they do, you’re going to wish you’d never taken me.”
I almost felt sorry for him.
Actually, never mind. I didn’t feel sorry at all. I hoped the Butchers tore him limb from limb.
I hoped they’d let me help.
2
POE
The loft was almostunrecognizable when I returned with the donuts from Marv’s. The sofa had been returned to its rightful place, the coffee table upright again, but the living area was filled with people: Aloha, Rafe, and Bram on laptops at the dining room table, Lilah in the kitchen, Remy and Jude conversing on the sofa over another laptop.
Through the loft’s old factory windows, I could see Nolan standing on the balcony, talking on the phone.
I felt almost guilty for leaving, but I’d needed the fresh air. It was too hard to be in the loft without Maeve, too hard to know she wasn’t with us where she belonged.
