Kit looked far too familiar. Bishop had seen him somewhere before.
3
heat or hunger
Kit woke to a persistent buzzing. For a moment, he forgot where he was; he cracked open his eyes ready to swear at Uncle Ed for doing whatever-the-fuck when the sun was still out and Kit wanted to be asleep.
But his surroundings immediately reminded him of his perilous situation. He was in a tidy bachelor pad of a living room, curled up on an ancient, comfortable sofa—a murderer’s lair.
His sleep-blurred gaze fell on the chipped wooden coffee table, now bearing a grilled cheese sandwich and a tube of ointment. Then across the room, where Bishop was wielding a power drill at the window.
Kit’s voice caught in his dry throat. He pushed himself upright on the couch, knees tucked in front of him. When the buzzing paused, he asked, “Is there something wrong with the window?”
Bishop glanced back. “I’m fixing it so you can’t escape. I already locked the kitchen, so tell me if the sandwich is cold. I’ll nuke it for you.”
Kit stared, thrown off-balance by the sheer bizarre logic.
A sandwich. An offer. If this, then that. Doing one thing to prevent another thing. All perfectly sensible as long as oneaccepted that the goal was keeping Kit captive for a week—and feeding him. Bishop seemed to see no contradiction between drilling the windows shut and heating up Kit’s sandwich.
Unless the sandwich was part of Bishop’s sick games too.
“Is it drugged?” Kit asked.
The power drill buzzed to life again. “One way to find out.”
Kit swung his feet to the floor. Testing doors proved that Bishop was right; the kitchen was locked. So was the front door. And what Kit thought was a hallway. The stairs were free, but Kit ignored them for now and tried the windows instead.
The first was already screwed shut. And the second. The third—
Bishop seized him by the forearm, his broad hand fully circling Kit’s bones. The forceful heat drew Kit’s rapid pulse to the surface of his skin.
“I’m not done with that one yet,” Bishop said calmly.
Kit swallowed, dizzy with heat or hunger or something close enough to fear that he could justify it with that name. “You’re insane.”
Bishop released his arm and nudged him away from the window. “You’ll feel better after you eat your sandwich.”
Kit returned to the coffee table and picked up the tube of ointment. “What’s this for?”
“Your wrists,” Bishop answered, and resumed drilling.
Kit’s hand shook on the ointment. He looked down and only now really saw the red marks around his wrists. Felt the sting of abraded skin where he had pulled against the handcuffs. He thought about being stubborn. Rejecting the bullshit gestures of kindness. As if Bishop could assuage his guilt by feeding Kit and tending his wounds.
Stubbornness ebbed into emptiness. Kit felt only a numb disquiet.
In the end, his wrists did hurt. He rubbed the ointment into his wounds as he watched Bishop seal him into the house.
Then he ate his sandwich. And he’d never admit it, but he really did feel better after.
Three days in, Kit’s captivity wasn’t too different from staying at Uncle Ed’s place. Except Kit slept chained to a bed instead of in the bathtub. And there weren’t noisy people every night. Just him and Bishop. And yeah. Bishop stared at him, those piercing blue eyes tracking Kit’s every movement.
But the man hadn’t done anything to Kit yet.
Kit was free to roam downstairs, except for the kitchen and Bishop’s home office, and upstairs, except Bishop’s bedroom. Bishop only chained him up to sleep, and the rare occasions he left Kit alone.
However, Bishop had taken Kit’s phone, and wouldn’t let him near anything connected to the internet. Brutal. So, Kit lay on the floor reading home improvement magazines, in between zoning out into nothingness.
“Do you like pizza?” Bishop asked from the sofa. His laptop keyboard clicked, probably typing up some sort of vigilante manifesto.
