“She left shortly after.”
Left here means… died. The girl died shortly after.
A chill skates down my spine.
“I’ve been here way longer than she was,” Lila continues. “She was making lots of trouble, so they got rid of her faster.”
I blink.
“Anyway, I wonder when they’ll give us something to eat…” Hailey says.
I go stiff for a beat, not sure what to do with any of it. They have to be terrified. They have to be traumatized. But it soundslike things have been bad for so long that numbness is the only way they can breathe. They talk like everything is fine, like we’re swapping gross stories at lunch instead of surviving in the back of a moving cage.
I turn to the window again. Canopies of trees blur past against the pale sky. We’re completely out of the city now, and the thought hooks into my ribs. Does that mean the man really did change the tire?
I can’t stop fixating on it. I need to know. Part of me wants to believe he didn’t, wants to believe we’ll have to stop somewhere, that my guys will have more time to find us and drag us out of this. But what if he did? How much longer will this last?
An indefinite amount of time later, we jolt over a rut hard enough that my teeth click. The vibrations get worse, less constant and more uneven, like we’re on some forgotten dirt road, except the slight curve of the van’s floor says otherwise.
I think the rim is actually giving out.
Somewhere outside, behind the hushed voices of Hailey and Lila, a grinding metallic shriek cuts through the air. It’s that nails-on-bone sound, a shrill scraping of aluminum against asphalt. A smell starts seeping in, too, sharp and bitter like burnt metal. Then a loud pop. The van jerks sideways so hard my shoulder slams into the metal wall.
“What happened?” Hailey asks.
It carries on for another couple of minutes, and then he kills the engine. The quiet drops in instantly.
That’s it.
It’s true.
The rimdidgive out.
My breathing turns quick and shallow.
“A miracle happened,” I reply.
Cassian was right. If only he were near me, I’d kiss him right now. I feel the door up front open, and I know the driver is out of the van.
With the amount of space the three of us have back here, there is no way he keeps his tools in the front. That has to be what those cabinets are for. Whatever he needs only sometimes, he stores back here, and the locks are there because he is not worried we will find a way to reach them.
I can’t know for sure, but I am willing to bet he will open the back to grab something. Which means if I can make it look like I am still tied up, and I pick the right moment to strike when he is close, I can free myself for real.
My heart rages in my chest. I shoot a look at Hailey and Lila.
“Don’t snitch me out,” I whisper. “I’m going to save us.”
I hurry to the spot where I woke up when Rhea first appeared, find the shredded remains of my plastic zip tie, and loop it around my wrists so it leaves a dark line on my skin. Then I tuck my knees in close and pray he is too focused on the tire to notice the tiny detail that the ties are not biting down hard enough to hurt.
I can hear the girls breathing. I can hear my own heartbeat. I can hear the faint plink-plink of cooling metal.
This is it. This is it. This is it.
Then the hatch opens. The man repeats the exact same thing he did yesterday, sliding the gun in first.
“Don’t you dare fucking move,” he grinds out.
Hailey and Lila freeze, and so do I. This time, though, he doesn’t seem to have as much patience. The threat lasts only a moment before he pulls the gun back out, shuts the hatch, and then opens the door for real.
