I was still wearing my jeans and my dark green sweater from earlier, but my shoes had been removed; my bare toes scraped against the rough, cool cement floor.I could no longer feel the weight of my cell phone in my back pocket. My hair fell like a curtain in front of my face, blocking my view of the room around me. Unable to use my hands to push it out of my eyes, I tilted my head up toward the ceiling and tossed it in either direction until the hair draped back over my shoulders.
“Good,you’re awake.” He’d been here all along, standing on the far side of the room watching me slowly reenter consciousness. His voice may have held the dispassionate courtesy one might use when discussing opposing political views over tea, but his underlying hostility was visible beneath the mask of composure he wore.
Ernest “Ernie” Skinner, in the flesh.
His face had more lines now and his muddy brown hair had some grey strands mixed through it, but the eyes were the same. Dark, fathomless pits of brown-black, they stared back at me, tauntingly victorious. The one difference was that now they weren’t glazed with the aftereffects of too much cocaine – they were completely lucid and full of cool triumph.
I stared at him warily, unresponsive. My mind wasreeling as I tried to piece together where I was, and how I was going to get out of here. The alternative, that I wasn’t going to escape, was too terrifying to even consider.
The walls were dull gunmetal gray, and looked to be made of concrete or some other thick material. There was no furniture, with the exception of aset of metal folding chairs and a matching rusted table. Chains hung from steel rafter beams in the ceiling; I had no doubt that my hands were tied to the one running directly above my head. One bare light bulb swung from a wire, illuminating the dark room in a dim yellowish hue.
If I had to guess, I’d say I was in a basement somewhere.
“It’s good to finally see you, Brooklyn. Face to face, that is,” he laughed, a harsh unnatural sound coming from his lips. “Now that you’ve seen my little gallery, we both know I’ve beenseeing youfor quite a long time.”
He’d been standing about ten feet away from me, but now he began to circle closer with his arms clasped behind his back. I tugged at my wrists, trying to maneuver away from him, but the ropes binding my arms had been tied so tightly I couldn’t swing more than a few inches.
“You know, Brooklyn, you don’t look very comfortable.” He smiled. “I would cut you down, but something tells me you’d be less receptive to our little chat if I did.”
He stopped directly in front of me, an unruffled smile pasted on hislips as he reached up a hand to tenderly stroke the side my face. I tried to jerk my head away from his touch, but his hand clamped around my jaw with a bruising grip, stilling me. His sudden show of violence was at complete odds with his calm demeanor.
Now that he was closer to me, I could see he had agaping cut on his forehead, just above his right eye. It was scabbed over, as if it had been healing for about a month, and I knew immediately that it had been put there by my stiletto heel that night in the alleyway.
With one hand still wrapped around my jawbone, he brought his other up to savagely rip the duct tape from my mouth. I yelped as the adhesive tore at my lips, splitting the bottom one open and sending a trickle of blood leaking down my chin. As I gasped for air, I watched his pupils dilate in excitement – he definitely enjoyed the sight of me hurt.
His thumb brushed at the wound, smearing the blood all over my chin and lips beforehe released me and took a step back. He looked down at the bright streaks of red staining his fingers and smiled softly.
I whimpered in fear.
As soon as he backed off, I began screaming for help, praying that someone above ground would hear me and send for help. His smile remained in place as my cries grew desperate, my frantic voice hoarse with use. He was serene – unhurried and unconcerned, as if he had all the time in the world to toy with me. That in itself told me numerous things: either he was crazy enough not to fear discovery by neighbors and passerby, or we were in a spot so isolated, so far removed from civilization, that no one could hear me for miles.
“Go ahead, Brooklyn,” he said. “Scream all you want. There’s no one around to hear you.”
A chill raced down my spine as my suspicions were confirmed.
I was alone.Help wasn’t coming.
“Lexi.” My voicesounded weak; clearing my throat, I tried again. “Lexi will notice if I don’t come home,” I said, trying to reason with him. “If you let me go, I promise I won’t tell anyone about this. It’ll be our secret.”
“Oh, Brooklyn,” he said, shaking his headin a show of disappointment. “I wish you hadn’t lied to me. There’s a price for lies, you know.”
“I’m not lying,” I whispered.
Abruptly, his arm flew out from behind his back and he backhanded me across the face. The force of the blow rocked my whole body backward, it’s motion only stopped by the rope tether binding my hands. Stars swam in front of my eyes and tears leaked down my face as pain ricocheted from my smarting cheekbone to my ravaged wrists and back again. My wrist bones had nearly snapped under the strain of the hit; the skin felt raw beneath the ropes, chafed, bloodied, and stinging painfully.
“There’s a price for lies,” he repeated flatly, returning his hands to their clasped position. “Now, where were we? Ah, yes. I was just about to discuss our plans for the afternoon. You didn’t have anything scheduled, did you?” He chuckled.
I didn’t respond.
“I assume you didn’t, given the fact that Lexi is off with her boyfriend for the weekend and you’ve put an end to your own dalliance withFinn.” He sneered Finn’s name with contempt, the most emotion I’d yet to see from him; even when he’d struck me across the face, he’d seemed only clinically interested, his impassive nature untouchable.
He spoke with perfect annunciation and diction, his grammar perfect and his tone practiced, as if he’d rehearsed these words countless times.He probably has,I realized.He’s been planning this for years.
“I must say, Brooklyn, it made me very happy when you broke off that relationship.”
Well, he might’ve thought he knew everything about me, but at least he didn’t know Finn and I were back together.
Wait…Finn!