Careful not to react, I respond to Daisy:What was her???
Before I fell asleep, I’d grown used to the passing New Jersey factories and gas stations, but now, there are tall evergreen trees on either side, the road winding, twisting up, up. My eardrums pop.Where are we going?
My eyes slide over to Cecily, dread sitting in my stomach. Her eyes are focused on the road, and she’s driving fast. Too fast.
Daisy is typing…and typing…and my chest is growing tighter with every passing second. It can’t be…not Cecily…
Daisy:Naomi got the video. Cecily helped Matthew silence Lila. Cecily and Matthew were together then…And I think this entire time!
“Who is it?” Cecily asks, glancing over at me. Her voice is casual,but I sense a note of tension underneath. The top half of her face is in shadow, and her eyes, which were once blue, are now a steel gray.
I swallow, quickly tucking my phone by my side. I have to pretend everything’s fine. I can’t let her know what I’m thinking. Or what Daisy’s told me. A metallic taste fills the back of my throat. Bitter and sharp like blood. I swallow, hard. “Just Nate.”
“Nate?” Cecily repeats. “I knew he wouldn’t stay upset forever.” But she’s looking at me with an unreadable expression.
My pulse quickens and I try to calm myself, force myself to smile. Maybe if I tell her Nate knows I’m with her, she’ll take me home. She’ll have to.
“Yeah,” I lie. “He was…” But there’s something wrong with my throat. And my head is fuzzy and slow. It’s like searching for the words at the bottom of a murky lake, each slipping from my hands like fish. I swallow and try again. “He was…worried. I told…I told him…I was…you…with you.” I try to smile, but find it exceedingly difficult. I feel sick.
Cecily turns her attention back to the road and I exhale the breath I’d been holding. She believed me…for now.
But I need to know what Daisy found.
Suddenly, in a burst of clarity, I remember what DetectiveSimmons told me one of the first times we met:Your sister’s phone pinged a tower in Manhattan.A tower in Manhattan—Cecily lives in Manhattan. They’d learned Naomi was sleeping at her friend’s place downtown, but the tower had been uptown. Where Cecily lives.
I respond to Daisy’s text:HELP. I’m with her.
What I really want to know is:How? Why?
But I don’t have time. I need to get out of here.
If only I could call the police. Leave the phone on while I signal for help—isn’t that something people do? Pulling my phone up to my face, I concentrate hard on the screen until it becomes clear—one bar of service.Shit.The last message hasn’t sent, and my phone is almost dead. A horrible sinking: we’re in the middle of nowhere. She’s taking me somewhere remote—I shudder.
Cecily looks over again, and I try to smile, but it feels like I’m drifting, strong anesthesia haze pulling me under, the sides of my mouth stretched by an invisible string. It reminds me of a time when a nurse dispensed a strong sedative into my IV. Something is wrong. Something is very—
Stop. Think. There has to be another way.I concentrate on the road in front of me, trying not to lose myself in the winding pavement, the falling rain. Dizzy, I reach for the water, finishing the rest in a few gulps.
“More?” Cecily asks, offering me another bottle. I grab it from her and unscrew the cap, but the cap doesn’t click.
It’s already been opened.
I freeze, and my heart goes crazy.No, oh no, oh god.
“You okay?” Cecily asks, eyeing me. My neck is too hot. Sweat beads my forehead, the back of my neck. The glass bottle feels heavy, like a five-pound weight, in my hand.
I try to respond, to assure her nothing’s wrong, but my tongue is awkward and thick.
“I’m fine,” I try to say, but it comes out mumbled—something’s seriously wrong.She’s drugged me.
Cecily reaches over to grab the bottle as it slips from my grasp and spills onto my lap. “Oh no. Poor thing. Looks like someone drank a little too much tonight. You were always a bit of a lightweight.”
I lean toward the window, and my body crumples into it, headlolling to my chest. My breath grows shallow, fogging the window. Everything is wrong.
What the hell did she do to me?
I’m exhausted, my head heavy, so heavy, my eyelids tipping shut, and just before I feel it all slip away, one final thought lingers at the edge of my consciousness—How am I going to get out of this?
Chapter Sixty-Six
