“What do you think, Lee?” Kandace asked, trying to pull me into the conversation.
“Sorry, girls, I’m not in this one.”
“Traitor,” Anna grumbled.
As fun as it seemed, I had more important things to take care of. With two bolts now loose, I was working on number three. For the last few days Anna had been asking me what I was doing, but I didn’t have the heart to tell them. Not even Anna. I didn’t know if this was going to work, and after what he had said, I didn’t want to give them hope that it might.
“You lying bitch,” he screamed upstairs.
I knew he was talking about me. I hid the bobby pins and screwed the bolts into the wall, leaving them loose. We were all silent as he ran down the stairs—not even bothering to turn off the music—and unlocked the door. I stood up and readied myself for the beating I knew for sure was coming. He unlocked my door and it flew open.
“My mother’s an art teacher,” he said in a mocking tone, walking in and slapping me across the face. I fell to the floor and covered my face as he continued to slap me. “I don’t have a father.” Slap. “But what about your brother, Lilly?” Slap. “Your brother, the cop!” Slap. “Walking around my town asking questions!” he screamed, slapping me one more time.
I tried to put my hands up to block the strikes, but he just pushed them away, hitting me harder. He picked me up and threw me at the wall. I bounced off it and landed on the floor with a thud. I heard him start to unbuckle his belt as he walked toward me. Everything was happening so fast that I had no time to protect myself, or even acknowledge the pain, before he was coming at me again.
“You have no respect, Lilly,” he growled, wrapping his belt around his fist. “But trust me when I say that today you will learn never to lie to me again.” He took me by my hair and proceeded to hit me so hard my vision blurred and my ears rang.
I woke up feeling a pressure on my chest. I was so dizzy that when I tried to lift my arms to push it away, they fell back down beside me. The more I started coming to, the more I realized my surroundings. My shirt was torn and my legs were bare except for one calf, which was tangled inside my jeans. The smell of sweat, blood, and stale cigarettes hung in the air, and a low moaning sounded in my ears. But the most horrifying thing of all was that he was still here, and he was on top of me.
Dear God, help me, he’s inside me.
“No.” The word sounded slurred as I tried my best to move. He just laughed and continued doing his business. “Nooo . . .” I whispered this time, tears welling up in my eyes.
He moaned. “Oh, yeah. Cry for me.”
I don’t know what it was about what he said, but it seemed to revive me. With all the strength I could muster, I reached up and scratched him, dragging my dirty nails deep and long across his cheek. He yelled, looking down at me with intense hatred in his eyes. He reached behind his body, and out of the corner of my eye I saw something shiny. Before I had a chance to react, he pressed the knife to my cheek and sliced it open.
“Now we match, whore.”
With the blade pressed to my throat, causing me to go completely still, I didn’t dare to do more than breathe and just lay there, letting him have his way with me. Within minutes—which felt like hours—he was done, moaning and grunting before resting his weight on me as if we were lovers.
“Not bad, Lilly,” he said then kissed my uncut cheek. “Not bad at all.”
He got up and moved off to the side, zipping up his pants and brushing himself off. “Here’s a little something to think about while you’re down here.” I refused to acknowledge him while he walked over to the door. “If your brother, or one of his asshole friends, questions anyone about me again, they’re dead.”
I looked over at the door in horror as it slammed shut.
I wrapped my arms around my ever-thinning body, attempting to grasp some sense of the person that used to be there. The person with a life outside these hollow walls, the person with other people besides the four women who shared similar cells. The person who loved. A person, I hoped, who wasn’t lost forever.
After telling the girls I wanted to be left alone, we all sat in silence. I couldn’t bring myself to care if I hurt their feelings or not. I’m sure I wasn’t alone when thinking how uncharacteristic it was for him to be playing that irritating song while he was down here with us, but for once I welcomed the noise that disguised my soft tears. Curled in a ball, still facing the door, I promised myself something I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep.
Never again.
Never again would he touch me, and I was prepared to do anything to make sure I kept that promise to myself.
Twenty Days Missing
—Richard
Twenty days. Almost three weeks. Four hundred and eighty-some hours. Twenty-eight thousand, eight hundred plus minutes . . . I couldn’t even think about how many seconds. Each one was just another reminder that Lee was still gone, still not in my arms, still suffering God knows what. My heart felt so hollow, but yet so heavy every time the phone rang. It was all in vain. That phone never had the voice I needed to hear.
Thomas Reed checked out. After telling Noah our idea, he agreed that it was something to look into. He talked to Agent Chase and they both went to Thomas Reed’s home to question him. He explained that he shared a home with his brother, David, who worked long hours as a security guard up at one of the abandoned mines. He explained that David offered to house him because he was rarely home, and it made his brother feel better knowing there was someone watching over the place. Noah said that, from the looks of it, he seemed to be telling the truth. The trailer home was small and, although the property it sat on was large, all they found was a small shed behind the house that held tools. I guess Adam didn’t see that during his little drive-by.
Noah and Agent Chase even went around town asking a few questions about Thomas Reed, and everyone said that he was quiet and shy, but a very polite young man. Even the local police said they’d never had any issues with the Reed brothers.
I felt defeated hearing that. I was convinced that this Thomas kid had to be our guy; it all seemed to fit. My head was telling me to trust Noah’s words, but my heart couldn’t. There was something about him. I couldn’t explain, but I knew he had to know something.
Luke, Adam, and I took shifts watching him. We followed him around everywhere, when he was working, grocery shopping, or going to the drive-thru. I wanted eyes on him twenty-four seven. Luke and Adam tried their best to show interest in the guy, but I knew they felt the same way Noah did. I stopped asking them to follow Thomas after the third day. I didn’t deny that I had become obsessed with watching him, but I refused to give up. He knew something, and I would be there to catch him when he slipped up.
“When was the last time you ate?” Emma asked. I had Thomas’ schedule memorized by this point. I was never at the apartment, and when I was, it was always very late at night when I knew Thomas was asleep. I would drive home to shower, change, and head back, hoping to get a few hours’ sleep before the sun rose. I would always park my car down the road, along the street, as the high brush camouflaged my car.
“I got a coffee and a muffin at the campus cart this morning,” I said. I typically didn’t answer my phone when I was watching Thomas, but he was eating lunch at the moment, so I was outside smoking. Seeing it was Emma, I answered because I thought maybe she might have heard something new about Lee, which wasn’t the case.
“Richard, where are you? I’m sending Adam over there to switch places with you.” She sighed. “You need to eat and get some sleep.”
“Don’t, Emma, I’m fine.” I stopped paying attention to Emma when I noticed Thomas get up from his chair and throw his trash away. “I gotta go, Emma. Talk to you later.” I hung up the phone, not caring what she was about to say. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Adam or Luke—I knew they would help if I asked. I just didn’t trust that they believed me when I said this was the guy.
I maintained my di
stance, as always, trying to seem inconspicuous while continuing to follow him. Thomas went through his normal routine at work. He assisted the coaches with paperwork, set the fields up, and helped put equipment away. I stood behind the bleachers, as always, adding to the ever growing pile of cigarette butts accumulating at my feet. I choked on the one I was smoking when Adam came up behind me.
“Dude, seriously?” He laughed, looking down at the mess at my feet. “I hope those weren’t your so-called coffee and muffin this morning.”
“No,” I replied, stubbing out my cigarette and turning my attention back to Thomas.
“Why don’t you let me take over for a while, Richard?” Adam said, patting my back and glancing over at the field. “Go take a shower and get some good food in your system.”
“I’m fine, Adam. I’ll come home later on tonight and eat.”
“When? At two in the morning?” he snapped. “Just so you can get back here by four after maybe two hours of sleep?”
I was taken aback for a second by his sudden change in attitude, but masked it and turned my attention back to Thomas. “This isn’t a debate, Adam.”
“No, it’s more like an intervention.”
I was growing annoyed. I’d already had a similar encounter with Luke about this, and I wasn’t about to deal with it again. “I understand you’re all worried, but I don’t have time for this. It’s been twenty days, Adam—”
“You think we don’t know that?” he bellowed, pushing me against one of the metal pillars. “You think you’re the only one that misses her? She has a mom and brother at her apartment that are in agonizing pain.” He slammed his hand against his chest. “Friends who are worried that they will never get the chance to tell her how wonderful she is.” He pushed me again, forcing me to look at him. “A best friend, your sister, my girlfriend, who cries herself to sleep every night because she feels that she didn’t just lose a sister, but a brother as well.”
I couldn’t help but let a few tears fall. Adam was right. I had pushed everyone away in my need to find some form of solace with Lee being gone. Adam pulled me into a hug and allowed me to cry. “All we’re asking for is a few hours.”
“How many?” I asked, trying to steady my breathing.
“Eight hours.”
I pulled away, shaking my head. “That’s too long,” I argued.
“For us, or for you?” he asked.
For me. “For you.”
“Look, I’ll take the first four and Luke will take the last. You can relieve him from watch at”—he looked down at his phone —“two in the morning. It gives you enough time to eat, shower, and get a few hours of sleep.”
I sighed and caved. He was right, again, but he knew that. Adam had always been the voice of reason in any situation. And when we did find Lee, I didn’t want her coming home to a mess of a boyfriend. “Thanks, Adam. You know—for everything.” I smiled.
“Yeah, yeah.” He chuckled. “Go home and get some rest. I’ll have my phone on if anyone needs to reach me.”
I walked to my car feeling anxious. This would be the first time in days that I’d have to confront the realization of what was going on back at the apartment. The darkness that seemed to consume that place was haunting. It was as if Lee was the light, and with her gone we were blind, surrounded by constant darkness. My motivation to keep going was to find Lee, and to find the monster who took her. I turned around and looked at Thomas one last time.
I swear to God if you have my girl, I will make you pay.
Chapter 10
Day Twenty-Three
—Lillian
He hadn’t come down in a few days again. I found it comforting that he wasn’t around, but a few of the girls were getting scared that we would end up starving to death.
“We would die of dehydration first,” Sara said.
“Thanks a lot, Sara,” Kandace yelled. “I appreciate the biology session. Now shut the fuck up.”
I hadn’t talked much since the attack. I would talk to Anna a little bit, but that was it. As much as I knew that the other girls understood how I felt, their words fell on my ears like faint whispers. My mind wasn’t there. It never was. My mind was on Ruth and Nina. I could feel it in my bones that I was next. It was just a matter of time.
I had been able to get three out of the four bolts loose, but number four was being a bitch. My hands ached from the bobby pins cutting into them. It also didn’t help that it was getting colder and I was always shivering. My tattered shirt had been useless to keep me warm, so I ripped it into strips and wrapped them around my hands to stop the bleeding. I tried everything to get that fucking plaque off, but even with just the one bolt holding it in place, it held on to the wall like a champ.
Fatigue was also starting to become a problem. Due to the lack of food and water, it was harder to keep up my strength.
“Can I just state the obvious for a minute?” Anna grumbled. “I’m fucking starving.”
“You think something happened to him?” Linda asked.
“You mean like maybe he got caught?” I answered, pulling at the plaque again. “I doubt it.”
“Why do you say that?” Linda replied. “And what are you doing over there?”
I sighed, walking away from the loose plaque, stretching my arms. “If he was stupid enough to get caught, he would have been arrested a while ago.”
“Okay, I’ll buy that Lee, but what are you doing?” Linda asked again.
I didn’t want to say anything, but I knew I had to tell them sooner rather than later. “Girls, I have something to tell you, but I don’t want you to get excited. Not yet, anyway.”
“What’s going on?” Anna asked.
“You know that plaque on the wall, the one holding our chains?”
“Yeah?” four voices replied.
“Well, I’ve been getting the bolts loose off of mine.”
“What?” Kandace yelled. “How the fuck did you do that?”
“Well, Anna gave me some bobby pins a while ago, and I’ve been using them to loosen the bolts on the plaque.”
There was an unnerving silence among them that seemed to last a lifetime.
“What are you going to do if you get loose?” Sara asked, breaking the silence.
“Bash his fucking head in, I hope,” Anna hollered. We all kind of laughed at that.
“To be honest, I haven’t thought about it.” I sighed. “Right now plan A is to just get this fucking chain off the wall. Plan B I’ll figure out once I get there.”
“You’re going to get yourself killed, Lee,” Kandace snapped. “When he comes down here and sees what you’ve done, he’s gonna kill you just like Nina and Ruth.”
“He has to show up first,” I grumbled.
“Have you thought about what this means for the rest of us?” Kandace asked. “He might think we can all do it—that we’re all in on it. He’ll end up killing us all.”
I never thought about it that way. Maybe I was being selfish. I had to be honest with myself; I was thinking about getting myself out of this room. Before, it was about getting all of us out, but when he threatened my family, my motives shifted. It was about getting out and helping them. There was no way to change what I had already done, but I had to fix it.
“I won’t let him, Kandace. I swear.”
“Oh, really?” she scoffed. “And how do you plan to do that?”
“Because if I get this plaque off, and he’s in the room with me, he’s not coming out.”
“Lee, just please be careful,” Anna whispered. I looked down at our little hole, walked over to it, and stuck my hand through. She must have seen my hand because she took it.
“I will, Anna,” I promised, gripping her hand. “I’m gonna get out of this room, and the first door I’m breaking down is yours.” I kept my voice low, not wanting the others to hear me.
“Can I say something and not sound like a sap?” she said with a slight sniffle.
I couldn’t help but smile at her ques
tion. “Sure, what is it?”
“Even though I have never seen you, I feel like you’re a sister in a way. Like we’re some twisted, fucked-up family down here. I just want you to know, if I don’t make it, that I love you.”
“I love you, too, Anna,” I whispered.
I wasn’t just saying that to make her feel better, I had honest love for her. I loved all of them, but there was little comfort coming from such a truth. The last annoying bolt in the wall was causing some serious problems with my confidence. It was as if it was mocking me. No matter how hard I pulled, tugged, and bled, it wouldn’t budge. After the first bolt had popped off, the others seemed to come off like a breeze, but not that one.
I felt Anna’s hand become loose in mine and I realized she had fallen asleep. I stood up and stretched. My body was still recovering from the latest attack, and I was more than confident that if I were to look in a mirror I wouldn’t even be able to recognize myself. My right eye was still swollen, and looking down I could tell that one of my ribs was fractured.
Time was running out for us. I could feel it. It was as if there were a giant guillotine blade over my neck, just waiting to fall.
The sound of footsteps coming down the stairs woke me. I rushed over to the plaque on the wall and screwed the bolts back in place. I’d be damned if I was going to get caught now. A few locks turned and the door squeaked open, and then shut. I felt myself tensing up, but that receded when a voice spoke.
“Everyone turn around and face the wall, your back facing the door.”
It wasn’t him. It was someone different. This man’s voice was softer. His footsteps were softer, too, I realized. But I did as I was told and stood in front of the wall, my back to the door.
One by one I heard the doors opening and then shutting, with nothing being said. No crying, screaming, or whimpering. Finally, he came to my door. It opened, and I heard a small hiss escape his mouth. I wrinkled my nose at the faint smell of cheap cologne, but then there was also something else. Something familiar that I couldn’t seem to place. My door shut, and he left just as fast as he had arrived. I turned around to see a bag of food, two bottles of water, and a small pile of clothes left just within my reach.
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