Justin:Get some sleep.
Heather doesn’t reply.
Tossing my phone onto the table, I rotate my shoulders to work out the kinks. Kane blew it when he selected Heather for the job. Odds are, she’ll quit before the end of the week. At the thought, I feel strangely disappointed. What is it with this woman? She occupies way too much space in my brain. Although she isn’t my type, her innocence intrigues me. Which isn’t a good thing. I’m not up for a fight with my baser instincts. It’s a fight I always end up losing.
27
AMY
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Wednesday, July 14
The idea of escaping whispers its way into my head while I’m staring at my dazed reflection in the bathroom mirror. Jill is muttering a circle around me as she gingerly picks up the stained clothes I’m shedding as fast as my trembling hands will allow.
“You all right?” she asks curtly, raising her voice to be heard over the water pouring into the bath.
I nod, tolerating the hypocrisy of her concern because I can’t afford to antagonize her. I don’t miss the irony behind the fact that it’s Jill—and not Kane—helping me now. I’m still reeling from my misjudgment of him.
“Why do you have to push him?” she asks suddenly, fiercely. “Why can’t you keep your mouth shut and do as you’re told?”
I stare wordlessly at her, knowing that anything I say will only endanger me further.
“You had to force him to pay attention to you,” she continues. “You had to get him to notice you as a woman.” As if aware she’s revealed too much, Jill falls silent. Giving my naked body a last, surreptitious scan, she turns off the water and stalks out of the room.
I glance again at my reflection. Kane notice me as a woman? Only in Jill’s twisted world. I barely recognize the face suspended in the glass: the dull skin, trembling mouth, the traces of vomit in the tangled ends of my blonde hair.
Look at what they’ve done to me. Look at what I’ve let them do.
I slump to the floor and let the tears come. Despair swells inside me until I think I’ll drown in it. Alongside the despair, however, flows a longing to escape so powerful, I shake from the force of it.
My head aches and my eyes are swollen. I climb shakily to my feet and step into the tub. The water is so hot I gasp. Perhaps scalding my skin will burn away the memory of this night.
I close my eyes, the pictures from the slide show tumbling through my head. In spite of what Kane did to me, I’m forced to acknowledge how awful those pictures were. I can’t believe this level of suffering is happening in research labs, yet I saw the evidence with my own eyes. Can pictures be doctored? Can Kane’s allegations simply be emotional propaganda? What did he say, that it’s the same in my father’s lab?
A cold fingernail of suspicion scratches its way up my spine. I don’t know the details of my father’s work, but I know it’s important. It’s the one thing, apart from me, that motivates him to get up in the mornings. Although Dad never speaks about his work, claiming it’s too boring and technical for me, he’s always maintained that animal research is responsible for nearly every major medical and scientific advance, including antibiotics, vaccines, and insulin. I can’t remember them all, but I do recall an impressive list of achievements.
Working shampoo into my hair, I try to remember if I ever visited Dad at work. I’m disturbed to realize I’ve never set foot inside the Galen Research Institute. Whenever I met him for lunch, it was at a restaurant nearby because he insisted the cafeteria food at his work is dismal.
Only once had I asked to visit his lab, wanting to see firsthand what was keeping him occupied during the day and so preoccupied in the evenings. But he brushed aside my request, saying lab animals often carried diseases and he couldn’t risk my health.
I believed him. Now I don’t know who to believe.
As I towel myself dry and slip into my own clothes, news scraps of kidnappings gone wrong hiccup through my head—the Italian Mafia chopping off the ear of J Paul Getty III, Islamic militants beheading journalist Daniel Pearl...animal rights fanatics burying alive Amy Hutchinson, the professor’s daughter.
I have to escape. Overpowering either Kane or Jill isn’t an option. They’re both stronger than me. I felt the muscles in Kane’s arms when he grabbed me, the toned hardness of his chest when he restrained me against him. And Jill seems to be Kane’s physical peer. No, the only way to escape is to surprise strike first. To do that, I need a weapon and they’ve stripped the room of everything but the basics.
I stare at myself in the mirror, scheming, fretting, so scared I’m struggling to think straight.
The mirror.
I can break the mirror.
My stomach tightens as I realize what I’m contemplating, and what will happen to me if I fail. But if I stay? No, I can’t stay. Not after what they did. Not risking what they could still do to me.
Kneeling, I inspect the toilet. If I can somehow remove the porcelain lid, it’ll be heavy enough to do the job. It takes me a while to unscrew the nuts holding the bolts in place on the underside of the toilet, but finally the lid comes free.
To muffle the noise, I cover the end with a towel. Taking a steadying breath, I heft the lid in my hands, swing it back, and smash the glass.
