Quicksilver

by Elise Noble

  CHAPTER 28 - CORA

  THE ONLY GOOD thing about being beaten black and blue was that when Radcliffe walked into the breakfast room and saw me—and I’d deliberately worn skimpy clothes so he couldn’t miss the mess—his mouth went all thin and he stormed out, muttering something about last chances and revocation of membership. According to Hallie, the psycho asshole had done the same to at least two other girls, but when Radcliffe last tried to show him the door, he got overruled by someone higher up. Paloma had overheard that conversation.

  Twenty minutes later, Radcliffe returned and peered at me as if I were a biological specimen floating in a jar.

  “We can’t let clients see you like that. You’ll have to stay upstairs in the evenings until the bruises fade.”

  Oh, hallelujah! I thought I was onto a winner, at least until Chad slithered over to me like the slug he was.

  “Radcliffe said clients couldn’t see you, not staff.”

  “He meant everybody, you sick freak.”

  “I see your mouth still works. Good. I have a use for it later.”

  Mierda. Where was Leandro? I really needed him to get me out of this tight spot, but I hadn’t seen him since this morning. And what should I say? How could I keep asking him to babysit me when it cost him his sleep? I had nothing to offer him. Nothing except myself, and I refused to go there. Leandro may have been kinder than the other apes, but he still willingly chose to work for a monster who imprisoned women and made them go through hell.

  I wanted to use him, but I didn’t want to be used myself.

  Late morning, I saw him outside in the garden, lying on one of the sun loungers as he read a magazine. Did he have a day off? It sure looked that way, because a while later, he stood and dove into the pool, stroking lazily up and down while the sun shone overhead. Not a care in the world. It was enough to leave me nauseous.

  But when it came to Leandro or Chad, there was no contest, and when Leandro walked past the window, I risked beckoning him. I wasn’t sure whether he understood or not, but after lunch, my door lock bleeped. For a moment I stiffened, worried it might be Chad, but Leandro quickly slipped inside.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Quite apart from the obvious? Yes.” I sighed. “Chad. It seems he finds the bruises a turn-on.”

  “Shit.”

  “And I hate to ask, but can I come and sit in your room tonight? You could just sleep. I promise I wouldn’t make a noise.”

  “You can’t sit on the chair all night.”

  “Even for a couple of hours? Except then you’d have to get up to bring me back here, and… Forget it.” I turned my back on him. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “No, you should. Chad’s an asshole, but I heard a rumour he’s related to Radcliffe. A nephew or something. So he gets a free pass on shit the rest of us would get fired over.”

  “What if you came up here?”

  “And then when he comes looking for you, he’ll walk right in and wonder why the hell I’m sleeping on the floor.”

  “I meant for you to have the bed. I can sleep on the floor.”

  “My point still stands.”

  Yes. Of course it did.

  “I’ll sort something out.” Leandro pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m working tonight, but so is Chad. I’ll come and get you right after I finish.”

  “Thank you.”

  His turn to sigh. “Just be ready, okay?”

  True to his word, Leandro arrived late in the evening, and I’d worn yoga pants, the loosest T-shirt I could find, and a pair of sport socks so I was ready to go.

  “Quick. Chad went to take a leak.”

  I almost giggled as we ran down the stairs, and if not for the seriousness of the predicament I was in, I would have burst out laughing. Chad would undoubtedly be annoyed, and I feared his anger would only build each time we outfoxed him.

  But this evening, we made it to Leandro’s room without seeing a soul, and in the dark, I almost tripped over as soon as I got through the door.

  “What the…?”

  He flipped the light on, and I looked at the pile of blankets I’d almost landed in.

  Leandro gave me a lopsided smile.

  “I told the housekeeper I was cold, and now she thinks I’m crazy.”

  “In this place, crazy is normal.”

  “You’re not wrong there. Here, hold these.”

  He passed me the blankets, then stripped the quilt off the bed to form a makeshift mattress on the floor and tossed a pillow down at one end of it.

  “You get the bed. Try not to snore.”

  Now I felt guilty, which was stupid considering I was a freaking prisoner. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

  “Catalina, you’re having the bed. What sort of gentleman would I be if…” He caught himself. “Forget it. I’m obviously not a gentleman.”

  “Sometimes you’re gentlemanly.”

  “It’s late. Just go to sleep.”

  “What time is it?”

  Knowing the time made me strangely happy now.

  “Almost one o’clock, and you get up for breakfast at eight. My watch alarm’s set for half past seven.”

  Leandro powered off his phone completely before he went to sleep and tucked it under the pillow right next to his hand. Not that it mattered. When I’d glimpsed the screen earlier, it didn’t even have a signal down in the basement. No, I wouldn’t be getting outside help tonight. But at least I wouldn’t be getting Chad either, and I had to be grateful for that.

  Screaming woke me. Not my own, although I felt like doing so most of the time. No, this was female, panicked, and getting closer.

  “Leandro!”

  I leaned over and nudged him awake. Seemed he slept like the dead, concrete floor or no concrete floor.

  “What?”

  “Listen.”

  Two seconds later, he sat bolt upright.

  “What the hell…?” He hadn’t changed out of his clothes last night, and now he pushed the blanket away. “Stay here.”

  “As if I have a choice.”

  He’d slipped out the door before I finished the sentence. The lock tumbled. Great. If the house burned to the ground or there was an axe murderer on the loose, I was a sitting duck. Unless… Could it be my brother? My heart skipped, then began racing. Had Rafe somehow tracked me to the pink palace? I pressed my ear to the door, listening for clues—gunfire, fists on flesh, the cries of dying men—but all I heard was the occasional sound of running feet.

  My nerves were stretched to breaking point by the time Leandro returned.

  “What? What happened? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” He slumped onto the bed, head down. “Shit. It was Kelsie. The housekeeper found her hanging from the shower rail.”

  “Joder.” The queasiness had subsided over the past few days, replaced with a heavy sense of resignation, but now it came back full force. “She killed herself? She always seemed troubled, but…”

  Had she given up? Lost all hope? Kelsie had rarely spoken, but Hallie said she’d been there for seven or eight months. Why take her own life now?

  Leandro’s mouth set in a hard line. “So they say.”

  “But you don’t think she did?”

  “There was a lot of bruising around her neck. Some of the marks looked like fingers.”

  Oh, fuck. I recalled Hallie’s comments about Chad’s predilections. And I’d escaped him last night by hiding with Leandro, which left Kelsie to suffer what should have come to me.

  “It was my fault,” I whispered.

  “How do you work that out?”

  I explained, and Leandro’s hands balled into fists.

  “That sick little freak.”

  “If I hadn’t come with you last night, Kelsie would still be alive.” And I might be dead.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “What if I angered him by hiding?”

  “He was choking women before you came along.”

  “But he ne
ver killed any of them.”

  The tears came again, but Leandro pulled my hands away from my face and gripped them tightly.

  “Stop blaming yourself. Even my colleagues can see Chad’s not right in the head, and…” He trailed off and shook his head.

  “What? Tell me.”

  “I didn’t want to worry you, but yesterday evening, I overheard one of the other guards telling Radcliffe that Chad seemed to be paying you a little too much attention. I’ve seen his type before—they always want what they can’t have.”

  “And he’ll keep going until he gets me.”

  “He won’t get you.”

  “Why? What will you do? Hide me in here every night?”

  “If it comes to that.”

  “Won’t Radcliffe think that’s weird?”

  “Maybe. But firstly, he spends half of his nights with Paloma, and secondly, I think he realises Chad’s a problem, but he doesn’t want to confront him. Radcliffe’s a coward at heart. I see it in his eyes.”

  “But—”

  “And he probably doesn’t want to admit there’s an issue to the big boss either.” Leandro suddenly seemed to realise he was still holding my hands and let them go. “I’ll keep an eye on Chad, and I’ll come and find you again tonight, okay?”

  “Thank you.” What else could I say? “What’ll happen to Kelsie? To her body, I mean.”

  “Someone mentioned a spade.”

  Oh, mierda. I ran into the bathroom and vomited, although what came up was mostly bile. Leandro held my hair back while I heaved, an odd gesture from a man whose job it was to make my life hell.

  “Hey, it’ll—”

  “Shut up. Don’t you dare tell me it’ll be all right. How can it be? What are you gonna do, smuggle me out?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Exactly.”

  His voice dropped so low it was barely audible. “Honestly? I don’t want to be here either.”

  “Then why don’t you just leave? They let you go in and out, right?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “No, Leandro. A PhD in mathematics is complicated. Unravelling the human genome—that’s complicated. Working here is vile.”

  He looked away, and at least he didn’t try to justify himself, because I’d probably have slapped him.

  “Time to go back to your room now, Catalina. I’ll come for you later.”

  CHAPTER 29 - CORA

  WHILE MY BRUISES healed, I settled into an odd routine with Leandro. Mornings in the lounge with the other girls, now one short. We’d discussed whether another victim would arrive to take Kelsie’s place, but with the halfway house—the warehouse—unavailable, she’d have to come straight to the pink palace. According to Paloma, who got more inside information than the rest of us by virtue of her “relationship” with Radcliffe, Radcliffe’s boss hated that. He was paranoid, not only about security but about health too, and while we were sitting in our little wooden prisons, we got screened for infectious diseases as well as temperament. Then he decided where we’d be sent—here, one of his other properties, or offloaded onto somebody else.

  To the big boss, women were meat, and the girls here at the house of horrors were tenderloin.

  After lunch, I’d go back to my room and read. What I wanted was Houdini’s memoir, but Leandro had brought me a handful of paperbacks, thrillers mainly. They were tame compared to real life. Perhaps I should write my story if I ever escaped? On second thoughts, nobody would believe it.

  In the evenings, Leandro came to fetch me, and we snuck downstairs to his room. At least, I thought we did.

  “What do you think Radcliffe would say if he knew I was coming down here every night?”

  “He already knows.”

  “What? How?”

  “Cameras. They’re well hidden, but they’re everywhere.”

  My heart stuttered, and I froze. “Even in our rooms?”

  “Not in the guards’ rooms or the client rooms, but there’s one in yours. In the light fixture.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me earlier?”

  “What difference would it have made?”

  “Well, I… I…” What difference would it have made? I suppose I could have got dressed in the bathroom, but most of the guards had already seen me naked when they retrieved me from the client rooms anyway. If I’d known the camera was there, I’d have felt even more uncomfortable, but… “I just like to see the full picture, that’s all. Is that another reason you brought me down here instead of staying in my room?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who watches the cameras? The guards?”

  “No. I think only Radcliffe has access, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they also stream off-site so the big boss can monitor things.”

  “Who’s the big boss?”

  “Nobody ever mentions his name.”

  “Every moment I’m here, I hate it more. I’m now at a level of hate I didn’t even realise was possible. Did you see the way Chad’s eyes kept following me around the room today?”

  Like one of those creepy, old-fashioned paintings. He’d stood on one side of the lounge and just watched.

  “Yeah, I saw. I’m trying to come up with a solution.”

  “Maybe you could bury him next to Kelsie?”

  “Tempting.”

  We also spoke about lighter subjects too, although rarely about ourselves. Neither of us wanted to rehash our pasts, and the most I gleaned was that Leandro grew up in Boston with his parents, his sister, and a dog named Bambi. His sister’s choice, apparently, and she’d sulked for weeks because her parents wouldn’t buy a pet deer instead.

  That week, mostly spent bored in my room or hiding out with Leandro, was bearable. Like a lousy vacation with that one creep who always stared at you by the pool.

  But on Friday, Radcliffe checked me over from head to toe and pronounced the bruises had faded enough for me to work again. I’d been bobbing around on the surface until then, but with his words, I sank back into the depths.

  My greying client was another suit, a hedge fund manager, or so Hallie whispered before he took me upstairs.

  “He’s okay,” she said. “Sometimes he takes a while, but that’s because he also takes Viagra. The packet fell out of his pocket once when he dropped his jacket on the floor.”

  “At least it wasn’t heart medication.”

  “No, that’s Radcliffe. We live in hope.”

  Hope? I’d all but given up hope by the time the old guy finished pounding into me, rolled off, and headed into the bathroom. Great. Now I had to listen to him pee. Still, Hallie was right—it could have been worse. I found myself glancing over at the pile of clothes on the floor to see if I could spot a stray packet of pills, but my heart suddenly lurched when I realised what else had spilled out of the guy’s jacket. His phone. His freaking phone!

  How long did I have? A minute at least. He’d have to wash his hands, unless of course he was totally unhygienic, in which case, I’d surely get caught. Quick as a flash, I padded across the room on bare feet and snatched up the phone. I could still make an emergency call, even if it was locked, right?

  But it wasn’t locked. The man had a basic phone with buttons rather than a smartphone, and it was wide open. Seemed he could handle money, but technology gave him a problem.

  My fingers shook as I typed out a message. I wasn’t about to make Izzy’s mistake and try a phone call. What if nobody answered? And even if they did, my “date” would probably hear me through the door.

  Trapped. Florida I think. Pink mansion near ocean. High wall, metal gates, fountain in middle of drive.

  The toilet flushed, and I almost dropped the phone. Send, send, send. Then delete, delete, delete.

  Water ran, and I’d just tucked the phone back into Mr. Viagra’s pocket and leapt back onto the bed when the bathroom door opened.

  “Why are you still here?”

  “I thought…”

  “You can leave now.”

 
With pleasure. I tugged my dress on and practically ran for the door, praying my plan had worked. I’d sent my text to Grandma since she seemed to be in this up to the hilt and I had no idea what had happened to my brother after the warehouse incident. If he’d been caught or worse, I had to believe she’d find a solution to my predicament. An anonymous tip to the police, maybe?

  “Oh, mierda.”

  The small glimmer of hope I’d felt died in my chest when I found Chad waiting for me in the hallway. Where was Leandro? He’d promised to be there.

  Chad smiled, not the hesitant, lopsided quirk I often got from Leandro, but a malicious grin.

  “Finally, we get some time alone.”

  “Get the hell away from me.”

  His fingernails dug into my arm as he gripped me tight. “No, bitch. That’s not how things work around here.”

  He may have been three inches shorter than me, but he was a whole lot stronger, and although I tried to resist, he propelled me forward towards the basement stairs. I screamed, but he cut the sound off with his other hand.

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “You can’t do this.”

  “After hours, you belong to me.”

  “I don’t belong to anyone!”

  I tripped over my feet, and only Chad’s hold kept me from pitching head first into the wall.

  “Yeah, you do. The second you stepped onto the boat in your shitty fleapit of a country, you kissed your freedom goodbye.”

  When we reached the stairs, I tried to grip onto the bannister, but Chad put his full weight behind me. With little other option, I let go, and we both tumbled to the bottom.

  “Oof.”

  Chad was winded, but unfortunately, his stocky little neck didn’t break. I barely got time to check myself for damage—twisted ankle, more bruises—before I scrambled away, but I didn’t get very far before Chad grabbed my wrist.

  “Let go!”

  His grip only got stronger, but then footsteps thundered past me on the stairs and Chad went flying, blood streaming from his nose.

  “Fuck.” Leandro crouched beside me in an instant. “Are you okay?”

  “Do I look like I’m okay?”

  “Did you hit your head?”