39
Alice
My chin drops,brushing against my chest, jolting me back to reality. The urgency in the air is palpable.
Keep your eyes open. Sutton’s coming.
Desperate, I cling to hope like a lifeline. My tongue, dry and cracked, sweeps over my parched lips as I watch Ernest pace in front of me. I’m so thirsty. My thoughts are muddled, as if I’m trying to solve a problem that makes no sense.
As if coming to a decision, he trains his gun on me and crosses to where I sit slumped in the metal chair. His fingers wrap tightly around my bicep, his thumb brushing over my sensor. He wrenches my arm behind my back, making my shoulder scream.
“What is this? Are they tracking this?”
Ernest rips the sensor off without waiting for my answer.
“What else do you have on you? Goddamn that useless fucker, too scared to touch a woman that he can’t even give you a proper pat down.”
Ernest yanks me out of the metal chair and folds me face down onto the wooden table. Panic swells inside me, the position too vulnerable for rational thought. My toes brush against the concrete floor. He finds the pod on my abdomen and yanks that off too, crushing my lifelines beneath his boot.
He jerks me upright. “You need those to live, don’t you?”
The edges of my vision blur as my eyes flit between his, finding them devoid of humanity and hollow.
He laughs, the sound satisfied like he can’t believe his luck. “I can read it on your face. Good. Maybe I can keep my hands clean after all.”
“Please let me go. I won’t say anything. I’ll say it was all Jake.”
Ernest barks out a laugh at my plea, shoving me back into the chair. “That’s what they all say.”
“You’ve done this before?”
He scratches beneath his chin with the barrel of the gun as I wish it would accidentally discharge.
“Nope. First time, actually.” He grins, venom in his voice. “Never had to shut up a conceited bitch before.”
I blink slowly, exhaustion weighing down my eyelids. “I didn’t do anything to you.”
His expression shifts, anger twisting his features. He swings the gun at me. “There. There it is again. That fuckin’ tone. You think you’re so innocent, but you’re exactly like your brother.”
“So you’re going to kill me?”
He shakes his head. “I won’t have to kill anybody. You’re going to do what I tell you, and let’s just say that natural order will take over.”
Ernest fumbles with the microphone on the table, carefully arranging one in front of me and the other in front of himself. He checks the red LED indicators on both, ensuring they’re properlyset up. With one hand gripping the microphone, he trains the gun on me with the other.
“State your name,” he demands.
My voice comes out in a raspy whisper. “Alice Jane Thompson.”
“Age.”
“Thirty-two.”
“Location.”
My heart constricts as I name the only place that’s ever felt like home. “Fairview Valley, Minnesota.”
“Now tell the listeners, law enforcement, judges, and jury. Have we met?”