“Wait!” I scramble to my feet. “There’s nothing to do and it’s driving me crazy. Do you have a spare TV you can put in here?”
An incredulous laugh bursts out of him. “Forget it. I’m not bringing you a TV.”
“But—”
“You want to guess how Jill will react when you’re lounging in here watching your soaps?”
“But you’re in charge,” I persist. “If you say it’s okay, what can she do?”
“Don’t,” Kane warns, his tone hard. “Don’t play us against one another.” The despondency must show on my face because he exhales in irritation and says, “I’ll bring you some books.”
I grimace. “I’m not really the bookworm type. What about magazines?”
There’s a long pause. Finally he asks, “What sort of magazines do you read?”
“Cosmopolitan, People, Heat. No car magazines though, and no handyman or parenting ones.”
There’s another long pause. I start to wonder if he has some sort of speech defect.
“I’ll find something to keep you occupied,” he says at last.
“Thank you...Barry.”
His reply is soft. “Call me Kane.”
So Jill’s slip didn’t go unnoticed. My tongue is so dry it scuffs the roof of my mouth. I don’t even have it in me to pretend ignorance. “I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”
His eyes bore into mine with an intensity that stirs a nervous flutter inside my stomach. “Never make a promise you have no intention of keeping.”
Not waiting for a response, he leaves the room. While I wait for him to return, I put the various pieces of furniture back in place. I’m sitting on the bed, sipping warm water, when Kane walks in holding a stand-up fan in one hand and a bulging bag in the other. He upends the bag and a pile of books and pamphlets fall onto the bed.
I frown. “What is this?”
“Non-fiction,” he replies, plugging in the fan and switching it on. “It’ll be a new experience for you.”
Relishing the cool breeze on my face, I ignore the dig and pick up a book. Boredom might push me to read anything, even non-fiction. I glance at the title.Slaughter of the Innocent. I frown. I would prefer a more light-hearted read, like a celebrity biography. Turning thebook over, one sentence catches my eye: “The first book to expose vivisection as a scientific fraud.”
Oh, no, he isn’t.
I search through the rest of the books and pamphlets spread out on the bed, the titles jumping out at me—Free the Animals. Animal Rights and Wrongs.Animal Dissection: Counterfeit Science. Xenotransplantation.
Anger bubbles up inside me. “What have you brought me?”
“You want me to explain what a book is?”
“You know what I mean. What are you trying to do—indoctrinate me?”
“Think of it more as an enlightening.”
“My mind is fine as it is.”
“You know, Amy, there’s a world out there beyond Prada.”
I stiffen. He’s so full of self-righteous judgment I wish he’d choke on it. He doesn’t know me; he doesn’t know anything about me. Anyway, why am I getting myself so worked up about his opinion of me? In two weeks’ time, he’ll be in a cell fighting it out with hundreds of other prisoners awaiting trial. Let’s see how superior he feels then.
Kane picks up one of the books and fans the pages. “Afraid of what you might read in here?”
“No.”
