“Doesn’t look like it. That definitely helps. I’ll keep up the texting—should be easy.”
I took the phone back from him and turned it over in my hands.
The case was warm from Ben’s grip. I could feel the weight of Cove’s life in it. His photos, his messages, his connections to a world that wouldn’t—hopefully—realize he’d faded away.
17
Cove
The hours did not pass in the way I recognized from my previous life, the one that seemed, even now, to belong to someone else entirely—a version of myself with the luxury of time, appetite, and a functioning autonomic nervous system. In here, the air was thin, the light insistent, but I had at least felt the incremental fade of my original abject terror into something more muted and sustainable. Technically, I was alive. But I felt like a wounded seabird stranded on some uninhabited rock in the middle of the ocean, wing broken, left to consider my odds of survival.
For a long while, I could do nothing but lie on my side and listen to my own heart beating. It thudded like a body hammering at a locked door. I heard what felt like every sound outside this dumb room—the barely audible whir of air being exchanged, the distant claps of doors closing elsewhere, the softtread of footsteps on epoxy flooring. Each time, I went still and cold and tried to shrink myself into the cot, as though being closer to the ground might render me invisible, or at least less consequential.
The fear did not abate so much as it reorganized itself. It found new places to pool. Under my sternum, in the fine ligaments of my flexor tendons, in the cartilage that lined my ribs. I could not stop myself from imagining, again and again, the sight of Tobias and Ben dragging a wet, dead body from a tank. Even now, I did not want to believe it. My mind tried to edit the memory, to make it a fever hallucination, to conjure some other explanation for what I had seen.
Somewhere outside, a clock must have been keeping accurate time, but within the confines of that windowless, chilly cell, the minutes lost their meaning. I lay on the cot and tried to count my breaths, to see if I could wrangle my own animal panic with the same tricks I’d used on panicked fish or agitated snakes. The results were inconclusive. At some point the terror at least became boring, and I let myself spiral into a fugue state, drifting in and out of shallow, dreamless sleep.
That first time the lock disengaged, my whole body snapped awake as though electrified. I sat bolt upright, my hands already braced to push myself backward, farther away from the door, as though there were any meaningful distance to be gained. The comforting blue glow of the tanks filled the small room almost instantly, and the silhouette in the doorway resolved itself into a two-part apparition—Tobias in the foreground, carrying something bulky, and Ben standing farther back, arms folded, expression unreadable.
My throat closed up. Every animal instinct in me screamed not to make a sound, not to move, not to give away my position. Tobias crossed the threshold slowly—so slowly it almost made the whole thing worse—and laid his cargo on the floor justinside. Only when he stepped back did I see what he’d brought: a bundle of bedding, actual sheets and a comforter, all neatly folded. The linens were a shade of blue, the color of a deep lagoon, and there was a single, enormous pillow on top. I stared at it, not processing. I kept waiting for the trick, for him to reveal a weapon hidden in the stack, or for Ben to rush me from the side.
But nothing happened. Tobias just stood there, surveying the room, eyes flicking from the cot to the floor to me. There was something different about his face, a tightness at the corners of his mouth, a sheen of fatigue on his skin, but I could not look at him for long enough to decode it. Every time I met his gaze, I felt the metallic taste of dread surge in my mouth, and I had to look away.
“Would you like this on your cot, or here?” he asked, his voice so gentle it might have been addressed to a child.
I stared at him, disbelieving, and then at Ben, who gave the smallest possible shrug, as though apologizing in advance for whatever was about to come next.
When I didn’t answer, Tobias knelt and arranged the bedding himself, not touching me, not even looking at me except in the periphery of his vision. If I had been any less paralyzed, I would have asked him to leave it on the floor and go. But the words couldn’t get past my teeth. I stayed curled, a twist of blankets on the far side of the cot, and watched him tuck the pillow into place with the same precision he applied to all his work.
He stood again, checked that the edge of the comforter was straight, and then retreated.
“I want to get the rope off of him,” Tobias said, so softly and sadly.
Ben looked back at him like they were having an entire silent argument I was not invited to understand.
“Give it a bit more time,” Ben told him, quickly glancing away when he noticed I was watching him.
“What if it’s cutting off his circulation?”
“I didn’t tie it tight enough for that. He’ll be fine,” Ben replied, eyes darting over to me once again, as if to check if I was still watching—and I was—then darted away, unable to face what he’d done.
How thoughtful.
They quickly left, the door closed, the lock hissed, and I was alone again, with a cot that now looked like a hospital bed dressed up in luxury.
The shame came then, prickling over my skin with more heat than the fear. I was ashamed of how quickly I had assumed the worst. Ashamed that some desperate part of me had wanted him to bring food, or a first-aid kit, or even an explanation. Ashamed that I had let myself be so easily manipulated—not just by Tobias, but by my own traitorous hope that something about this situation could be fixed if only I cooperated well enough, or made myself small enough, or did anything other than what I had already done.
But when the next round of footsteps came, I was ready.
I sat up, legs folded beneath me, hands in my lap. I tried to look as nonthreatening as possible, as if I were applying for a job as a hand-reared, well-behaved pet. I told myself it was a tactical posture, but the truth was, I just didn’t want to be caught off-guard again.
The second time Tobias came in, he brought water and a tray of snacks full of crackers, fruit, a protein bar, a small container of nuts, and, because apparently the universe had a sick sense of humor, a bottle of the iced coffee from the mini fridge in my office.
He had placed the tray on the little folding table beside the cot and said, “You should try to drink.”
I’d stared at him, raising my bound wrists. “I’m tied up.”
His jaw had clenched as though the reminder hurt him.
