“I said he was strong,” he’d told her. “That he was at war with a loss no father should ever have to endure. It tore him down. Herallied against it. In the trenches, he fought. It raged. He prevailed. Every breath he took, every beat of his heart, was a victory. I said I admired that, strength in the so-called broken. Truth is, he saved himself. I just threw him the rope.”
Amelia had listened to the tale in breathless wonder—nothing so riveting had ever happened to people she knew—but her father’s remarks slipped through the slats of her ribs and burrowed in her heart. It was there she preserved his words, even after the story itself faded away. A part of her knew she’d need it someday.
Someday had come.
“I need to work,” Ivan said ominously and popped his neck.
The men vacated the room but left Richard behind. Amelia came undone with a gasping sob and her heart thundering in her chest. She tried to gain her feet and scramble after. They weren’t her saviors but still the only hope she had left. When the door closed, Amelia collapsed to the floor with that same cry, the one like before. It still sounded like someone else; someone already broken, though Ivan hadn’t yet started.
He hauled her back to the mattress by her bound wrists. Writhing and screaming, Amelia fought, her body contorting so violently she was certain bones might break. She tried to bite him and almost succeeded in the vicious tussle, but Ivan’s hands squeezed around her throat as he forced her to her back. Amelia thrashed beneath him with what little strength she had left until Ivan’s ice pick hovered dangerously close to her eye.
“You will die tonight. That’s already certain. But if you don’t stop, I will make your death slow agony.”
With a knife, Ivan sawed through the binds at Amelia’s ankles. Only then did she begin to pray. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of her spoken words, so she kept vigil within her heart. She thought of Gio’s prayer card and the Virgin Mother.
Amelia prayed to her, but not to be saved. She was too far down this path, so she prayed instead to float away; for some part of her to drift with the stars until it was over. And if it was goingto end for good, she prayed it would be quick and that her mother would come fetch her.
Float away. Just float away.Amelia closed her eyes and willed it to happen.
True to his word, Ivan was the only God with her tonight. He answered her prayer but only because he craved slow torture. He left Amelia unscathed on the mattress and seized on Richard instead.
“Watch,” he commanded.
Amelia refused. She had no choice but to listen, though. Time wore on at a glacial pace, and she couldn’t say how long it lasted as Richard screamed through the assault. Too petrified to move, Amelia laid against the mattress, her cheek pressed to the damp fabric. Only once did she crack her eyes open. That’d been a tremendous mistake. Ivan stared at her as he thrust into Richard and had probably been watching her the whole time. She squeezed her eyes shut again and cried just to drown out the noise.
When he was done, Ivan pulled over the rusted rolling chair from the back of the room and sat. With his lanky limbs crossed, he chain-smoked cigarettes but didn’t speak. The pain in Amelia’s shoulder spread to the base of her neck where a headache grew until it throbbed in her temples, and her eyes ached despite the drab light.
“Let me go,” Richard wept on the floor and coughed up spittle flecked with blood. “I brought her to you. You can do anything you want with her. Just let me go.”
Ivan crawled from the chair and laid down beside Richard with his cheek to the floor. “Of course, I can, but you don’t get to decide that. I do.”
With each intermission of Ivan’s attention on her, Amelia studied the room and committed its layout to heart. At the back, where the fluorescent light didn’t reach, was a white door. No one had come or gone from it. With no locks or chains, it lacked the hardware of an important egress.
The toolbox was next to Richard. Before the assault, Ivan hadinventoried the tools again and selected his favorite, the ice pick. A heavy-bottomed ash tray littered with cigarette butts sat at the base of the chair. Across the room, a pipe—a foot-and-a-half and dense by the looks of it—was propped against the wall.
“Richard,” Ivan said and pushed from the floor, “you were Larry Bickford’s defense attorney.”
Out of tears, Richard pressed his nose to the ground with a dry heave.
“He was a suspect in Mindy Cartwell’s murder,” Ivan continued as he paced with the ice pick pressed against his index finger. “You reviewed the evidence and said Larry was an amateur, too inexperienced and stupid to pull off something that heinous. Whoever did those things to her was smart, capable, an expert at their craft.”
Ivan stalked to the mattress and knelt beside Amelia. With a frantic whimper, she writhed away.
“Expert at their craft,” he repeated mindlessly but seized Amelia by the throat and squeezed hard enough a bone popped.
Float away.Pressure immense, her windpipe crushed. Another pop.Oh, God.Nothing numbed. No amount of self-talk could pull her from her body. Mouth agape and panic absolute, Amelia choked for a breath. She kicked her legs and clawed at his hands.
Ivan released his grip. Her first full breath powered another sob. On forearms and knees, Amelia scrambled from him. The ropes seared into her skin, but she ignored the pain. Ungainly in her effort, she managed mere inches.
“Listen to this.” Ivan yanked her toward him and jabbed the ice pick at the base of her neck. “Just listen.”
Belly down, Amelia laid still. Her master plan went to ashes.Float away.It didn’t work that way. She felteverythingjust like he knew she would. Ivan crawled on top of her again and licked the tears off her cheek.
“Baby, don’t cry,” he soothed in a mockery of Emory and had even perfected his voice. It crushed her, the heaviness in her chestdiabolical. Ivan would violate her, but why did he have to break her heart?
Float away.He wasn’t coming for her.Float away.He wouldn’t make it in time.Please let me die now. I think I’m ready.
Ivan flipped her to her back. Amelia didn’t try to fight and couldn’t tell if that frustrated him. He grimaced and called out to Richard.
