‘Please, mister. Please! I won’t say nothing, just let me go. I just want to go home. I want to see my mom …’ said the once pretty girl with a whimper. She awkwardly clutched the bars of her crate.
Ed squatted before her and cocked his head.
‘I won’t say anything, swear to God I won’t!’ she pleaded.
He shook his head. ‘We all know you don’t mean that, darlin’.’
‘I do! I do!’
‘You don’t! You don’t!’ he mocked, in the same snivelly voice. He was getting a headache. He didn’t have as much patience with them as Derrick. If they played good cop/bad cop, he always assumed the role of the bad one.
‘I have a mom who needs me, mister. She’s sick. I have to take care of her. I’m all she has.’
‘I had a mom, too,’ Ed replied. ‘Everyone has a mom. Don’t make you special.’ He lit a cigarette.
‘I won’t say anything!’
‘I’ve heard that before.’ He looked around the candlelit room and sighed with annoyance. He thought of the blonde bitch as he fingered the lock.
‘I want my mom!’
Ed studied her for a long, long moment. ‘How old are you … ah, what’s your name again? It’s like a Christmas carol, right?’
‘That’s right, mister, it’s Noelle. Noelle Marie. My mom is religious, you know. She believes in God. We’re both very religious!’
He rolled his eyes. ‘Not working in that place, you don’t believe in God none.’
‘Seventeen! I’m only seventeen!’ she cried.
He nodded. ‘That is young. Youngest yet. You got a whole life in front of you. Soooo … I’ll tell you what. You convinced me to take a chance on you … kind of. Let’s play a little game. It’s called Trust Me. I’m gonna see how good you are at keeping your word. If you’re better than the others, if you’re honest, maybe I’ll let you walk out of here. ’Cause being honest means a lot to me. I’ve been burned before. And it hurts.’
‘I won’t burn you! I’m not like other girls. I’m very loyal,’ she whimpered. ‘I’m not like the others. I can keep a secret. I’ve kept the worst kinds.’
‘Now that is interesting. Well, I suppose it’s not fair to judge you by the sins of the sisters who have come before you. I’m not loco, you know? I’m not unreasonable. So I’m gonna take off those cuffs ’cause they probably hurt and I’m gonna open up your crate and then I’m gonna go out, Noelle. I’m gonna walk out that door. And I want to see if you’re right here, right here in this box when I get back. I might be gone five minutes or five hours or five days. But if you are right here, right where I left you, when I get back, then I’ll know you can be trusted and I can let you go. We already had our fun, you and I. If you don’t tell nobody about it, and I don’t get in trouble none, then I can live with us keeping a secret.’
She nodded, crying. She looked away from the wall that was in front of her, but he knew she had seen the manacles and tools. He knew she had a pretty good idea of what might have happened to those lying, disloyal sisters who came before her. ‘I’ll be right here. You can trust me, mister. I swear.’
‘We’ll see now, darlin’. But you can’t move so much as an inch out of your box. That’s your den, ya hear?’
She nodded furiously.
He did as he had promised and opened the padlock on the crate and she held out her hands. He unlocked the cuffs and rubbed her raw wrists. He kissed her on the head. ‘Now don’t disappoint me, Noelle With The Name Like Christmas. I’m expecting big things from you.’
Then he got up, blew out the candles and left.
To her credit, it was almost two hours before he saw the front door slowly start to open. He checked his watch. If it was him in there, he’d’ve hightailed it out the second the room cleared, but then again, Ed knew what he was capable of. He stubbed out his cigarette before she could spot the glowing ember in the otherwise pitch-black darkness. He watched with a grin through the night-vision scope on his crossbow as she looked frantically around. Then she took off down the rickety front porch steps like a bat out of hell in nothing but a shirt. He let her get to the edge of the cane field, then took her down with an arrow to the leg.
‘No! No!’ she screamed as he picked her up and slung her over his shoulder.
‘Ain’t no one gonna hear you, darlin’. No one. You’re all the same, you know,’ Ed groused as he headed back up the creaky steps and kicked the door open.
‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I won’t say anything!’
‘Can’t trust the lot of you. But this time I did the lying, so don’t feel too bad, darlin’. You see, I was gonna kill you anyway,’ Ed said as the door closed behind them and the blackness enveloped them. ‘I was just gonna make it hurt less.’