—
“Goddamn it,” Pauline whispered, then wondered why she wasn’t screaming it at the top of her lungs. “Goddamn it!” she yelled, her voice catching in her throat. She rattled the handcuffs around her wrists, jerking at them even though she knew the gesture was useless. She was like a goddamn prisoner at a jail, her hands cuffed, strapped tight to a leather belt so that, even if she contorted herself into a ball, her fingertips barely grazed her chin. Her feet were chained, the thick links clanking against each other with every step she took. She had done enough damn yoga to be able to bend her feet up to her head, but what good was that? What the hell kind of help was the inversion plow pose when your fucking life was at stake?
The blindfold made it worse, though she had managed to move it up a little by rubbing her face against the rough concrete blocks lining one of the walls. The scarf was tight. Millimeter by millimeter, the blindfold was forced up, shaving away some of the skin on her cheek in the process. There was no difference above or below the strip of material, but Pauline felt like she had accomplished something, might be prepared when that door opened and she saw a sliver of light under the blindfold.
For now, it was darkness. That was all she saw. No windows, no lights, no way of judging the movement of time. If she thought about it, thought that she could not see, did not know if she was being watched or videotaped or worse, she would lose her mind. Hell, she was half losing her mind already. She was soaking wet, sweat pouring from her skin. Rivulets tickled her nose as they slid down her scalp. It was maddening, made all the more worse by the fucking darkness.
Felix liked the dark. He liked it when she got in bed with him and held him and told him stories. He liked being under the covers, blankets over his head. Maybe she had coddled him too much when he was a baby. She’d never let him out of her sight. She was scared that someone would take him away from her, someone would realize that she really shouldn’t be a mother, that she didn’t have it in her to love a child like a child should be loved. But she did. She loved her boy. She loved him so much that the thought of him was the only thing that was keeping her from twisting herself into a ball, wrapping the chains around her neck and killing herself.
“Help!” she screamed, knowing it was useless. If they were afraid of Pauline being heard, they would have gagged her.
She had paced out the room hours ago, approximating the size at twenty feet by sixteen. Cinderblock walls on one side, sheetrock on the others, with a metal door that was bolted from the outside. Vinyl mattress pad in the corner. A slop bucket with a lid. The concrete was cold against her bare feet. There was a hum in the next room, a hot-water heater, something mechanical. She was in a basement. She was underground, which made her feel as if her skin would crawl right off her body. She hated being underground. She didn’t even park in the damn garage at work, she hated it so much.
She stopped pacing, closed her eyes.
No one parked in her space. It was right by the door. Sometimes she’d go out for some air, stand at the entrance to the garage to make sure the space was empty. She could read the sign from the street: pauline mcghee. Christ, the battle with the sign company to get that “c” in lowercase. It had cost someone their job, which was just as well, since apparently they couldn’t do it right.
If someone was parked in her space, she would call the attendant and have the asshole towed. Porsche, Bentley, Mercedes—Pauline didn’t care. She had earned that fucking space. Even if she wasn’t going to use it, she would be damned if someone else would.
“Let me out of here!” she screamed, jerking the chains, trying to wrench off the belt. It was thick, the sort of thing her brother wore back in the seventies. Two rows of riveted holes going the circumference, two prongs in the buckle. The metal felt like a wad of wax, and she knew the prongs had been soldered down. She couldn’t remember when it had happened, but she knew what a fucking soldered belt felt like.
“Help me!” she screamed. “Help me!”
Nothing. No help. No response. The belt was biting into her skin, raking across her hip bones. If she wasn’t so fucking fat, she could just slide out of the thing.
Water, she thought. When had she last had water? You could live without food for weeks, sometimes months, but water was different. You could go three, maybe four days before it hit you—the cramps, the cravings. The awful headaches. Were they going to give her water? Or were they going to let her waste away, then do whatever they wanted to her while she lay there, helpless as a child?
Child.
No. She would not think about Felix. Morgan would take him. He would never let anything bad happen to her baby. Morgan was a bastard and a liar, but he would take care of Felix, because underneath it all, he was not a bad person. Pauline knew what a bad person looked like, and it was not Morgan Hollister.
She heard footsteps behind her, outside the door. Pauline stopped, holding her breath so she could hear. Stairs—someone was coming down the stairs. Even in the dark, she could see the walls closing in around her. Which was worse: being alone down here, or being trapped with someone else?
Because she knew what was coming. Knew it just as certain as she knew the details of her own life. There was never just one. He always wanted two: dark hair, dark eyes, dark hearts that he could shatter. He had kept them apart for as long as he could stand it, but now he’d want them together. Caged, like two animals. Fighting it out. Like animals.
The first domino would soon fall, then the rest would follow one after the other. A woman alone, two women alone, and then …
She heard a chattering, “No-no-no-no,” and realized the words were coming from her own mouth. She backed up, pressing herself into the wall, her knees shaking so hard that she would’ve fallen to the floor but for the rough cinderblock bracing her. The handcuffs rattled as her hands trembled.
“No,” she whispered, just one word, shaking herself out of it. She was a survivor. She had not lived the last twenty years of her life so that she would die in some fucking underground hole.
The door opened. She saw a flash of light under the blindfold.
He said, “Here’s your friend.”
She heard something drop to the floor—a dank exhalation of air, the rattling of chains, then stillness. Then there was a second, quieter sound; a solid thud that echoed in the large room.
The door closed. The light was gone. There was a whistling sound, labored breathing. Groping, Pauline found the body. Long hair, blindfold, thin face, small breasts, hands cuffed in front of her. The whistling was coming from the woman’s broken nose.
No time to worry about that. Pauline checked the woman’s pockets, tried to find something that could get her out of here. Nothing. Nothing except another person who was going to want food and water.
“Fuck.” Pauline sat back on her heels, fighting the urge to scream. Her foot struck something hard, and she reached around, remembering the second thud.
She traced her hands along the thin cardboard box, guessing it was about six inches square. It had some heft—maybe a couple of pounds. There was a perforation line along one side, and she pressed her fingers against it, breaking open the seal. Her fingers found something slick inside.
“No …” she breathed.
Not again.
She closed her eyes, felt tears weep from under the blindfold. Felix, her job, her Lexus, her life—all of it slipped away as she felt the slick plastic trash bags between her fingers.