She hesitated before going down the stairs. “Are the other guards down there?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No. Night and Day guards have different quarters. I think it’s so we can’t talk together. And Granger is out on duty, doing our checklist.”
The no nonsense guard’s name was Granger. “You guys were given a checklist?”
“No. We made it for ourselves. We weren’t given anything but a uniform, a role, and a threat.” He put his hand out to guide her down the stairs.
She turned and followed the wall down the spiral staircase, yet another nook in this labyrinth. “This is creepy,” she whispered back at him.
“The problem with this place is that there’s always a way in, and no way out. It’s easier to keep tabs on people that way. And you don’t know where there’s a camera. Sometimes they’re obvious, sometimes you can’t even tell if they’re there or not.”
She moved out of the way while he leaned forward, unlocked the door, and pushed it open.
She entered and saw two camping cots on opposite walls, with a desk in between. There were no windows—like the rest of the rooms in this place, except for the white loft of course—and the small room reminded her of the dorms she was forced to pay $900 per month to live in when she was a freshman.
“Why did you bring me here?” she asked.
“You need to clean that off you. I saw the scene. Nobody deserves that.”
She looked down. “He wasn’t a good guy. But he came here for me. And now he’s-that was horrible. You’re right. Nobody deserves that.”
He gave an airy laugh. “You’re right. But what I meant was, nobody deserves to see what you had to see.”
She looked up at him. She couldn’t imagine the way Troy must have looked, like straight out of a horror film, maybe, judging by the way her skin felt with his blood caked on it.
“Straight back there there’s a bathroom.” He pointed to the open door in the back. “You can shower in there. I’ll wait out here for you. But make it quick, okay?”
She nodded and went to door in the back of the room. She creaked it open. It wasn’t luxurious, that was for sure. But then again, it almost was. It was a private room with four walls. It was a shower with an actual shower head on it, not just a pipe or a skin-peeling jet. There was a sink and a private toilet. He was right, she’d most definitely prefer to be a guard, as opposed a prisoner.
She pulled off the stiff gown and dropped it on the floor. The knobs were standard, and she adjusted it to a comfortable temperature. Another luxury she’d taken for granted before. Water temperature. She had a choice. She stepped into the shower and pulled the sliding door closed. The moment the water flowed over her tangled hair and face, she closed her eyes and heaved a large sigh. She reached down and grabbed a bottle of soap. As she squeezed a small amount into her hand, the smell of spearmint and pine wafted her nose. It smelled masculine, but it smelled like something other than blood, sweat, and neglect, so she rubbed it into her hair.
If we act like there are cameras on us at all times, the Warden will never have an accurate depiction of human behavior. Even though this is as real as real gets, we’ll make decisions based on what we think he wants us to do, not what we would normally do. The whole experiment is skewed. Fixed. For the outcome that the psychopath wants.
She wrung her hair out with her hands. Soapy suds swirled around the drain at her feet. And though she wished she could stay in there longer and just let the water flow over her, the guard told her to make it quick. She was grateful for any amount of time she got. She turned off the knobs and pulled the fogged up door sideways. A gray towel hung on a hook. She grabbed it and patted her body. It felt nice to have something clean to dry with, and even though the fabric was thin and rough, she didn’t care. She dried off her body and put the towel on her head. She rubbed her hair and hung the towel back up on the hook.
Stepping out onto the concrete, she looked down at her folded up gown on the floor. It was stained with blood. Troy’s blood. Her stomach felt queasy as her exhausted eyes welled up once more. She couldn’t contain the weight she felt in her chest. No human deserved the fate that he got. And I thought he was lying about it, bluffing.
She reached up and swiped at her eyes, patting her tender cheekbones. Then she tiptoed over to the door and cracked it open.
“Hey-” It was then that she realized she didn’t even know the nice guard’s name. She just thought of him as “nice guard.” “Do you have any more uniforms out there? Mine’s um… “ She heard him stir.
“Yeah. Hang on.” More shuffling. “It’s not washed. Somebody else wore it before you, but it’s cleaner than yours.” He handed it to her.
She slipped her arm through the crack in the door and grabbed the gown from him, then closed the bathroom door again. She slipped it on over her head and looked into the mirror above the sink. This one hit her right at the knee, as opposed to the gown she had before, which was well up on her thigh. She preferred this one. She wouldn’t think about who wore it before her.
She leaned toward the mirror and looked at her face. She looked different. Her eyes were stony and grave. Her hairline was still bruised purple and blue, and her eyes bore sunken blue half moons underneath them. She reached up and touched her cheeks. Her lips were pale, and she wasn’t sure if it was her imagination or not, but her cheeks looked thinner—no doubt the result of eating cold mush for days.
She turned and swung the door open.
The nice guard was sitting on his cot.
“What’s your name?” she asked softly.
He looked up at her. “Perez. I’m sorry I didn’t share that with you sooner.”
“We’ve been mostly preoccupied.” She smiled at him. “So, you know this room isn’t bugged?” she asked, looking around. Surely he wouldn’t be comfortable being here with her if he thought he was being watched.
“I don’t think so. My partner and I have talked about stuff in here and there’s been no repercussions. I think he’s more interested in other things. I think he’s just satisfied to see us doing our duties up in the warehouse, he doesn’t care what we do in our free time, really. It’s almost ominous. Hey, grab that comb in the bathroom—I’ll brush your hair if you want.”
She was caught off guard. “You want to brush my hair?”
“I mean, I don’t have to. I just thought you’d like your hair untangled.”
She turned and went back into the humid bathroom, grabbed the comb off the sink, and returned. She walked over to the cot and sat in front of him. She did enjoy having her hair touched. The circumstances were unusual, but she didn’t complain. She handed him the comb and looked straight ahead.
He ran the comb through her hair, careful not to pull on it when he came to tangles. They sat in silence while he combed through each strand, smoothing it down her back.
She closed her eyes as he combed. It was another luxury. She felt chills when he grazed her ear.
He set the comb down on the cot and separated her hair into three sections at the scalp. “I used to French braid my little girl’s hair all the time,” he said, weaving her hair back and forth, and pulling other pieces of hair into the braid as he went.
“You miss her.”
“With every single breath I take,” he said. “Josie. That’s her name.” He finished up the braid. “Look. I brought you down here because I want to let you in on my plan. I think you’re my only hope of getting out of here. Of all the people I’ve seen come through here, I see it in you. You’re strong. Strong up here.”
She turned around to see him pointing to his head. “So what are we going to do?” she asked.
“I’m going to take you back to your cage. Tomorrow night, Megan is going to distract the Warden, and I’ll be able to drop the keys by your cell. You should be able to reach your hands through and grab them, let yourself out.
I highly, highly suggest you go alone. I understand you’ll probably want to rescue others. But the only way this can work—the only way we can slip through the cracks, is if you act alone.”
Her stomach flopped. Arie. “I don’t know if I-”
“Raine. It’s the only way. Please understand this.”
She closed her lips and looked down at the cot.
“At the end of the hallway upstairs, the last door at the end is a set of stairs that lead to the yard. Not the way you went last time, okay?”
She nodded her understanding.
“I’m going to unlock that door earlier, before I drop the keys. So when you pass by the door to these quarters, I need you to drop the keys inside the door. I’ll need them back, or else I’ll get burned for not having my set and he’ll know I was involved. Do you understand?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Can I trust you? If you want to save us, you have to get out yourself.”
“What’s in the yard? How do I escape from there?” she asked.
“Well I’m hoping there’s a fire escape up there you can climb down.”
She nodded. “Okay. I can climb.”
“Can you remember all the moving parts?” he asked, standing up and moving to the door. He motioned for her to follow. “I have to take you back.”
She stood, reluctant to go. “Yes. Tomorrow night?”
“Tomorrow night.”
It seemed so final. She hesitated. “I have one more question.”
He nodded.
“Why not you? You have the keys, you’re not locked up. Why don’t you run? It just seems so much easier.”
He was quiet a moment, and he leaned against the doorjamb. A crease appeared between his eyes and he reached up and scratched his chin. “I’ve thought about that, no doubt. You say I’m not locked up. Not physically, like you. But I am without a doubt imprisoned. I can’t risk my family. I just can’t take the chance of getting caught trying to escape, and the consequences of that. I’m sorry… that makes it seem like your life isn’t as important and that’s not true. But you stand a better chance.”
She watched him squirm. Somehow his body language told her that he’d been thinking about this question for quite a long time.
“Where my family keeps me alive, and the thought of getting back to them is everything to me, they’re also the reason I’m still here.” He looked away.
“I understand,” she whispered.
He put his hand on the doorknob. “My name is Brandon Perez. When you escape—not if, but when—can you make sure my wife and baby know that you saw me alive and that I love them? I think of them with every waking breath.”
Raine felt a tug of emotion behind her eyes. She nodded. “Yes. I’ll tell them Brandon. I promise. And I promise I’ll come back and get every last one of you out of here.”
He nodded and patted her on the arm before he turned and made his way back up the stairs.
Raine followed close behind.
TWENTY-FOUR
She watched as Perez walked away from her cage, and up the long aisle. She heard a low murmur between guards by the door before the voices, and the light from the hallway, vanished into the shadow. It was already nighttime in the warehouse. The darkness was to get their minds set that it was time for their biological clock to recognize rest or sleep. Though the constant fear loomed over them, that they could be woken up at obscene hours for drill exercises or surprise field trips to the other rooms in the maze prison.
Whenever the black overtook the warehouse and skewed her long distance vision, her other senses were heightened, and she could identify pipes knocking and air vents kicking on. She was grateful it was dark, so the other inmates couldn’t see her cleaned up. She was afraid they’d think she was getting special treatment again, or that perhaps she’d had to trade to get a clean gown. She didn’t like those thoughts either.
Though somebody else didn’t need to see her to know she’d gotten a chance to clean up. He spoke through the darkness, “You smell like Meg.” His voice was calm, quiet, and judgmental.
She didn’t respond at first. She wasn’t sure what he meant by that.
“Pine. Spearmint. Guilt.”
She inhaled as quietly as she could. What is he talking about? She felt defensive, and she recoiled back to the corner of her cage and drew her knees into her chest. He’s intuitive, she thought. She did feel guilty. Guilty that Perez had a plan for escape. Guilty that the plan did not include Arie. In fact, it purposely excluded Arie, if it was going to be successful.
“That’s not fair.” She finally spoke, her voice low. “You haven’t even given me time to think about what just happened.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just… me sitting in here and not knowing where they’ve taken you or what’s happening. Well it’s the worst feeling imaginable.”
She slumped again. “No, I’m sorry.” She turned around and lay down in the cage. She rested her head on the bars, and turned on her side to face Arie’s wall. She didn’t have to ask him to come close. She heard his breathing.
“Arie,” she whispered. She wanted to see if he could hear her.
“I’m here,” he whispered back. His face was just as close to the cage as hers.
She closed her eyes and smiled. “There’s a plan.”
There was a silence between them. “You know I’m always up for a good plan.”
When she heard the boyish grin on his lips, she knew there was no way around this. She knew that Arie was coming with her, and he’d be by her side the entire time.
After she was finished telling him the plan, and the fact that Perez told her it’d be unsuccessful if she didn’t act alone, the two of them lay in their cages, their hands through the bars, fingers laced together.
“Thank you for confiding in me, Raine. You didn’t have to do that.”
She smiled. “If I escape, you escape.”
“I like that better than ‘If I can’t escape, you can’t.’”
For the rest of the night, she ran the plan over and over in her head. It would have been smart to get as much sleep as she could so she would have a full and alert brain tomorrow, but she was too nervous to close her eyes.
As a therapist, she’d been trained to always be the one in control. This last week, or a week of which she could remember, was the biggest nightmare of her life. She was sick of being the one out of control and out of the decisions she was supposed to make for herself.
Tonight, would be the last night she’d spend at the mercy of the psychopath.
TWENTY-FIVE
So much for trying to get any sleep tonight, she thought as she lay awake in the cage and stared at the ceiling. She drifted for just a moment; a dreamless, restless sleep, before she jolted awake again, thinking she’d slept through the morning.
She hadn’t. It was still dark inside the warehouse. She lay awake and listened to Arie’s long, heavy breathing.
His breathing patterns were relaxing and it brought her into a sort of awakened meditative state. A chill crawled up her spine as she thought about lying on the table at the hands of the narcissistic psychopath. She inhaled and exhaled, focusing on her breathing and allowing her thoughts to explore different parts of her mind.
When she was on that table, he mentioned the will to survive, that it was ingrained in humans.
She imagined how heartbroken her mom and dad must be since they thought she died in the car wreck. To think of them coping with their reality of having to bury their child. The child is not supposed to die before the parent.
She put the palm of her hand on her chest to match her heartbeat up with the pace of Arie’s breathing. Though even that soothing pattern couldn’t comfort her, and a lump formed in her throat. Because of me, their entire lives were probably uprooted. What if Dad left his good job at the law firm, or stopped
his favorite pastime of gardening? What if Mom’s heart was so heavy she stopped eating and grew thin?
And her sister. Chloe. Chloe has always looked up to me. Looked up to my independence, and dedication. She talked about moving out to San Francisco once she got enough money saved up.
Maybe I should have gone back to Ohio when I graduated. Why did I have to be so far away from my family? She sighed.
I have people here that need me too. She was a life coach to many clients that needed guidance through the stress and anxiety that life could bring. Not only did she help them cope, but also they helped her. Here she was, a person who encompassed more paranoia and anxiety than even some of the souls that came to her for help. Her clients’ progress showed her that there was hope for her as well. She found fulfillment in seeing others succeed and not just survive.
She needed to succeed here too, succeed in escaping this prison and getting her life back.
Perhaps after she got out of here, she’d go back home to Ohio for a while and recuperate. Or maybe after this nightmare was over, she could go on a vacation, a getaway. Or maybe she should just go back to her apartment with her pup Viona, and live her life normally again.
Though she wasn’t able to comprehend how she’d ever be able to live her life normally again after what happened here. Raine was lucky that she met Brandon Perez, who claimed her from the guards from the start, which ultimately protected her from being harmed. Perhaps they thought he was taking advantage of her, or treating her the way the Warden wanted, but he was a gentleman. And he was ultimately going to be her ticket out. She was thankful for Arie, who had been there for her from the moment they put her in here. Arie represented her sanity. He was the reason she wasn’t falling to the wayside, or existing in her cage as a vegetable, the way she’d seen many other prisoners.
She thought about the other prisoners as well. She had never interacted with them. But each and every person, male and female, in those cages around her, had a story. They all led their own lives before they were stolen from them. The charade of keeping them in dog cages, for one, was pure torture. Depriving them of basic needs. Sleep, little to no food, basic comfort, privacy, choice. It’s no wonder the others were in a sort of coma. It was their defense mechanism. In some ways, it was smart. Comply. Blend in. Don’t bring attention to yourself.
The Altruism Effect: Book One (Mastermind Murderers Series 1) Page 12
