I turned to find her holding out a dust rag and a spray bottle of furniture polish. When I took them, she pulled a vacuum cleaner from a closet in a dark hallway off the kitchen, then disappeared into another room. A moment later, the vacuum cleaner turned on, and the sound echoed throughout the house.
Alone, I stared around the cavernous kitchen, as bewildered as I’d been terrified moments before. Then I ventured toward the front of the house and found a curving staircase leading up from the lavish entry. Was I actually supposed to dust? Who spends an obscene amount of money to hire a cryptid that doesn’t even look like a cryptid to dust the upstairs bedrooms?
With the vacuum cleaner masking the sound of my footsteps, I climbed the stairs to a landing in the middle of a hallway branching to either side. To the left were three closed doors and on my right I counted four.
Exactly how many rooms would I be dusting?
In the first bedroom on the left, I sprayed the dust rag with the cleaner and began wiping down the furniture, careful not to turn my back to the door. There had to be more to the engagement than dusting, and if the vacuum cleaner would cover my steps, it would cover someone else’s too.
The dresser, both nightstands, all three bookshelves and the sleigh bed frames were all spotless and free of dust. But I dusted them anyway. Then, when no one came looking for me, I went through the drawers.
Hers held a well-worn paperback novel, a bottle of lotion, a pair of fingernail clippers and a hospital ID badge identifying her as Dr. Sarah Aaron, trauma surgeon.
His held a handful of change, a comb, a wad of receipts and a wallet, confirming my terrifying suspicion that the man of the house was still home. His Virginia state driver’s license identified him as Bruce Aaron. Age forty-two. Organ donor.
I used some of Sarah’s lotion—an expensive, silky formula I couldn’t have afforded in my life before captivity and an unparalleled indulgence under my current circumstances—then put everything back the way I’d found it and headed into the hall. I had one hand on the doorknob to the next room when something thunked from within it. A cry of pain followed, too high-pitched to be drowned out by the low hum of the vacuum.
I pushed the door open, assuming someone had fallen. Inside, I found a child’s bedroom full of toys and small furniture. A large man in a white button-down shirt stood with his fist raised over his head. At his feet sat a little boy clutching his side in pain. Finger-shaped bruises ringed the child’s arm.
Thefuriaeperked up like a cat catching a whiff of food. She stretched inside me, and my fingertips began to tingle as my nails reacted to her touch. She blinked, and my vision sharpened as she took control of it.
The man turned, his face a mask of fury. “Who the fuck are you?” His fist fell to his side but remained clenched. He stomped toward me, each step aggressive and pronounced, like a bull about to charge.
Thefuriaeblinked at him through my eyes and smiled at him with my mouth. She was practically daring him to touch her, and he didn’t see it. He didn’t know...
The father grabbed my arm and hauled me into the hall. His grip hurt, but thefuriaefelt only righteous anger. The man slammed his son’s door and grabbed my other arm, lifting me onto my toes. He looked down into my eyes, and I could see that he expected to find fear. That he craved it.
What he found instead were the empty, black-veined orbs my eyes became when thefuriaetook control of them.
The man choked on a startled gasp and let me go. He backed away, but the living anger coiled up inside me wanted much more from him than fear. Much more than remorse.
I grabbed his arm. My needlelike nails sank through his skin, and the man’s mouth fell open as he stared at me. As my rage poured into him. He seemed to be screaming, yet he made no sound.
All you need is a little discipline.The words floated through my head, and I couldn’t tell whether they were his or thefuriae’s.You’ll thank me when you’re older.
When the rage abated, I let him go. He blinked once, then gripped the frame of an open door across the hall and slammed his head into it. Wood creaked beneath the force of the blow. The man stood upright, and a trickle of blood ran from the gash in his forehead down his nose, then dripped onto his shirt.
He smashed his head into the wood again. And again. And again.
Thefuriaepurred inside me, then curled up to watch the show as my vision returned to normal and my hair settled around my shoulders.
The father pounded his head against the door frame over and over and over. Blood poured from the ever-widening gash and smeared on the dark wood. When the frame became too slippery to grip, he stood up straight, and a flash of bone peeked through his torn flesh. Then he turned and gripped the other side of the door frame and continued slamming his head into the wood.
“Dad?” a soft voice called from the boy’s room.
Shit.
I opened the door and peeked inside, careful to shield the child’s view of the hall with my body. He stared up at me from the floor, still clutching his side, and my gaze traveled over the cobblestone pattern of bruises climbing his arms and legs, in varying shades of old and new.
“Stay here,” I said. “Your mother will be back for you very soon. Do you understand? Don’t go into the hall.”
The boy nodded. I forced a smile for him, then I turned on the television set up on his dresser and closed the door. I turned my back on the man still beating himself against the door frame and walked down the stairs as calmly as I could, clutching the railing. Trying not to panic.
When Vandekamp found out what I’d done, he’d kill me. Or he’d hurt Gallagher. Or he’d kill me after he made me watch him hurt Gallagher.
Downstairs, I raced for the back door, trying to figure out how to tell Pagano that I’d messed up. That we needed to go. That someone needed to go see about the poor boy crying in his bedroom. Then call an ambulance.
I skidded to a stop in the kitchen when I saw the boy’s mother standing in front of her island, gripping the edge of the dark granite countertop.
