Emory glanced at Zulu. The kid shook his head with a forlorn smile. Nothing. They had nothing.
“I’m sorry, Emory,” Liam said with premature condolences and a pat on the shoulder.
Emory was thankful for the night, if only for the way it obscured how he unraveled. There was no relief in the release. The loss came down swift and heavy and with indiscriminate cruelty.
Yet again, he’d deal with the loss of something he never had in the first place and wasn’t his to keep—the life he’d like to lead and the one he wanted in it.
THIRTY-SEVEN
AMELIA
Awarm breath on her cheek roused Amelia from the dreamless dark. The grogginess receded enough that skull-splitting pain set in next. She cracked her eyes, and a cinder block wall came into focus. A shadow hovered over her but retreated when she wheezed with a dry cough. Amelia rolled over on a thin mattress crusted in filth and mottled with stains.
In a small, humid room, brackish light seeped from a single fluorescent bulb. The one-eyed man sat cross-legged on the floor next to the mattress. Tall and sinewy, he didn’t move, only stared with disturbing vacancy. Chin-length black hair framed a gaunt face of sharp bones and papery skin. His one eye looked like a black marble, and the lids of his missing eye were fused together in a line of puckered skin that’d healed glossy pink.
It’s just a nightmare,she tried to console herself, but why then did the scent of mildew and damp rot fill her nostrils?And the blood.She tasted it in her mouth from a busted lip and, when she recoiled, thin rope cut into her bound wrists and ankles.
The man patted his knees before standing and crossed the empty room in airy shuffles. Amelia opened her mouth to scream, but her sandpaper throat produced only a yelp.
In a dark corner of the room, the man fussed with something then returned to the mattress with a metal toolbox. He placed iton the concrete floor and crouched in front. The toolbox groaned on its hinges when he tossed open the lid.
He stared at Amelia as he did it.Look away.She couldn’t.Look away.His maniacal gaze wouldn’t allow it as he pulled out tools.
Pliers. Hammer. Wrench. Ice pick.
Fear slid like an icicle to settle in Amelia’s heart, and cold dread gutted her next. She licked the tears off her lips and dry heaved at the saltiness. The violent urge to be sick sat at the back of her throat but went no further.
The man placed the tools in a neat row then settled back on his knees. With a hand propped beneath his chin, he surveyed the assortment. His fingertips were grimy and caked with what looked like either dirt or dried blood.
I can’t breathe.Amelia eyed the windowless metal door behind him and struggled in her binds. She could come out of her fucking skin. Itchy. She couldn’t scratch. Crawling. The mattress and its filth.And this man. This man.
Amelia whimpered. He didn’t respond, just admired his tools. Each and every one. The cold abandoned her, so Amelia burned alive right before his eyes. Her chest on fire.Her wrists ablaze. That nauseous heat. She came apart so predictably.
“Please,” Amelia cried. It was too polite. Why couldn’t she produce the panic turning her insides to pulp? “Please.” Too thin. Too breathy. Toofuckinglate. She was never strong enough. “Please!”
Her scream echoed damply in the room. The man shushed her with a finger to his lips and shook his head. As he did, the dim light carved shadows beneath his cheeks and eye sockets.
“Not yet.”
Like a cruel echo, the rasp of his voice wrecked in its familiarity. It wasn’t just his voice, though. There was the slope of Emory’s nose, the shape of Mirabelle’s eyes; jet black hair and bronze skin.
Ivan.
He didn’t have to say his name. She already knew and, withthat silent knowledge, came a foggy memory.She’d left a note for Mirabelle. Emory had undoubtedly seen it, and maybe he’d resigned himself to letting her go.No one is coming for me.
Amelia squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face in the dirty mattress. A sob escaped her. It sounded unearthly and foreign to her own ears. She’d never heard that sound; not from anyone, let alone herself. But then there was another sound; the ice pick scraping across the floor. Ivan jabbed the sharp end into the hollow beneath her chin and forced her to look at him.
He studied her face with cold fixation. It stirred something sinister, but Amelia couldn’t place what it was; hatred or desire or some abomination of both.
“I can see why he likes you,” Ivan said as the ice pick sunk painfully into her skin. “Get on your knees and pray.”
Amelia shook her head. It wasn’t defiance. He’d gotten her confused with someone else, someone brave. He’d tell her to put up a fight and make it count.I’m not polite. I’m not brave. I’m not who he thinks I am. I’m not.
“I’m not,” she muttered, but the nonsense didn’t phase him. He smiled because he expected it and had done it all before, so clearly a master at his craft.
Her eyes darted around the room. Mold. Light. Dust. Dirt. She was smart but only focused on stupid things. The pipe in the corner. A chair in the back. The rest distorted at the edges like a fever dream. Maybe she wasn’t so smart.
“You’re not what?” the man asked and narrowed his good eye. He expected an answer and would wait for it all night.
