Like a kid deciding which wing he’s going to pull off a butterfly first.
Foreboding wakes, nausea rolling low in my belly.
“You know what?” Carrson says, stepping into my space. “I changed my mind.”
With his free hand, he reaches up and snaps one handcuff closed.
Clink.
Then the other.
Clink.
The metal clamps painfully around my wrists, locking tight.
Uh-oh.
“This might actually be a fun game.” He grins at me, wide, all teeth, then turns to the table and picks up the knife. Tilting it, he slides the sheath free, exposing the clean, curved gleam of the blade.
His smile widens.
Oh shit.
Dread coils low in my gut, and, for the first time, I wonder if I’m going to make it out of this room alive. And yet, some traitorous part of me can’t stop thinking about what was done to him down here, how it shaped him into this.
Still smiling, he lifts the knife high, like he’s showing it off.
With his other hand, he grabs the torch off the wall and presses it into the stone at his feet.
The flame dies instantly.
Darkness crashes down around us.
Right before it swallows everything, I hear him say,
“Let’s play.”
Chapter twenty-nine
Heart Attack
Becky
I’m blind.
No light. No movement.
For one stretched second, I don’t know if he’s already close enough to touch me. Then I hear it. A step somewherein front of me, impossible to place. My pulse stops, then spikes, my muscles straining to track him, but the dark consumes everything.
I can’t see him. Can only sense him moving closer, the shift of air, the whisper of movement.
“You’re shaking,” Carrson says, his voice low and closer than I expected. “Afraid of the dark?” he asks, his tone mildly curious.
“No,” I bluff. “Are you?”
A husky chuckle. “Oh no. I was born for the darkness. Bred for it.”
He’s in front of me now.
