It doesn’t sound like windowpane glass. It’s solid. Dense.
Reinforced polycarbonate, my brain supplies. Bulletproof.
I look for a latch. A handle. A crank.
There is nothing.
The pane is a single, seamless sheet sealed into the steel frame. It doesn’t open. It isn’t a window; it’s a transparent wall.
I swallow a wave of panic and turn away from the window to run to the door. It’s solid oak.
I reach for the handle.
There isn’t one.
I stare at the smooth wood where the hardware should be. There is nothing but the grain of the timber. No knob. No lock. Just a flat, polished surface flush with the frame.
I press my palms against the wood and shove. It doesn’t budge. It’s as solid as the wall itself.
“Hello?” I scream. My voice cracks, scraping against my bruised throat. “Is anyone there?”
Silence.
I pound on the door with my fist. “Let me out! You can’t keep me here!”
My fist hits the wood with a dull thud that barely echoes. The room is soundproofed.
Of course it is.
A man who kills with a silencer wouldn’t build a prison that leaks noise.
I slide down the door until I hit the floor, pulling my knees to my chest. The reality of my situation begins to assemble itself, brick by terrifying brick.
I’m trapped in a fortress on a cliff, locked in a room with no exit, held by a man who murders people as casually as I arrange flowers.
Why am I alive?
The question gnaws at me. He killed the stranger instantly. I’m a witness—a liability. Why go through the trouble of kidnapping me? Why put me in a luxury suite instead of a dungeon?
Leverage.
He knows who I am. I told him my father was a Judge while I was begging in the back of the car. That must be why I’m still breathing. He is going to trade me. He wants money, or a reduced sentence, or a favor from the bench.
Except I didn’t tell him who my father was until we were already on the highway.
Why didn’t he put a bullet in my head right there on the marble? Why take me at all?
A new, colder terror slides into my veins.
He either thought I was someone else... or he already knew exactly who I was before I ever opened my mouth.
My father.
The thought is a lifeline. I grab onto it with desperate strength.
My father is the most powerful man in the judicial circuit. He has the ear of the Governor, the Mayor, and half the Senate. He can make the right phones ring.
If I’m missing, and Iammissing, he will know.
