A sliver of light cuts my eyes as I pry them open, revealing a world that is upside down and swinging slowly from side to side.

The backs of two jean-covered thighs fill my vision, and my side throbs as we—me and the man whose shoulder I’m flung over—continue ascending a narrow staircase. I blink to better clear my vision, but the light is dim and my head screams at me to stop.

A few steps down a creaky hallway, I hear a door wrench open, and I’m lowered and dropped onto a hardwood floor. The impact is so sudden that I cry out.

“Wakey, wakey, little girl.” It’s Blue Eyes. He bends down, and I can feel his sour breath in my face. I try to turn away, but he grabs my chin in a crushing grip and forces me to face him. “I hope you don’t tell the investigator anything when he gets here. Because then I’ll be the one who gets to make you talk.” His fingers force my mouth to open. “First thing I’m gonna do is pull every one of these pretty teeth out. Two hours, maybe less, and you’re mine.”

“Move,” another voice says, and I hear the difference in his steps as Blue Eyes backs away to make room. There’s a subtle metal clang that tells me it’s the bounty hunter. The light is so dim that all I see is his silhouette and the outline of a body over his shoulder.

Malcolm.

I don’t know if I say his name out loud, but I whimper when he drops down beside me without so much as a twitch. I don’t breathe when I press my fingers against his neck until I feel the steady beat of his pulse.

Unconscious. Not…anything else.

And then the door is shut, and a blackness surrounds me that’s so complete I can’t stop my hands from digging into Malcolm’s chest.

In the impenetrable darkness, my other senses fire to life: the damp, musty wood from the floor or the walls, the slight bite of metal lingering on my fingers from the railing in the stairway at Silver Living, and the increasingly rapid breaths from Malcolm. He’s practically shaking.

“Malcolm?”

Lurching from the floor, he flings himself at the door, pounding and rattling the knob in a panicked frenzy. The door is solid oak, and the hinges are on the outside—I remember that much from before the light went out—so there’s no way we can break it down. Even if we could, we’d just barrel right into the bounty hunter and Blue Eyes. My tongue instinctively runs over the teeth he promised to pull out, and I can’t think of anything I want less than his hands on me again.

Malcolm has abandoned the door and is now ricocheting from one wall to the next, like a trapped animal, not caring what he crashes into or if he hurts himself. My hands find him easily in the small space, and I lock on to his shoulders.

“Stop. We need to think.”

His movements halt, but his breathing remains frenetic. “I never used to be afraid of the dark. I feel like I’m back alone in my trunk. Tell me I’m not.”

His muscles are flinching under my hands, and I squeeze. “You’re not in the trunk. And you’re not alone.” We’re so close that even though it’s blacker than pitch, I’m aware of his head when he lowers it as if to look down, because I feel his too-fast breath on my upturned face.

“I can’t see. Can you see? I can’t—I can’t—”

“Here.” I slide my hands down his arms to his hands, shift us to what I’m approximating is the center of the room, and lift his arms with my own. “Feel the space?”

His fingers extend under mine, and for a second they intertwine before his greater reach surpasses mine and he’s not encountering anything else. His breathing steadies some, but not all the way, so I shift his arms straight up, my hands on his forearms because of his extra height. “What do you feel?”

“Nothing,” he says, in a full-body exhalation.

That’s the moment I feel his awareness shift—from the claustrophobic space to the inch separating our bodies. He breathes in again, this time not to calm himself. I don’t know how I know it’s different, but I do. He lowers his arms a little until his hands are touching mine again, until a finger slides across my palm and I shiver and pull away.

“Are you okay now?”

“No,” he says. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to freak the hell out again as soon as you move away.” He very deliberately reaches for my hand again. “So don’t, okay?”

There’s a tremor in his voice that lets me know he’s not just saying that as an excuse. The warmth from his hand seeps into mine, and my muscles begin to tense. I can’t just stand there and hold his hand. There are too many things that I don’t want to think about. Too many things that I can’t think about. I swallow and hope he can’t hear it. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Okay, that’s not helping. I’m trying not to think about the fact that we’re locked in a dark room barely bigger than your closet.” His breath starts to speed back up, and I force his arms high again.

“See? Space. More than you remember. You can’t even touch the ceiling. If you could reach,” I say, “all you’d feel is—” I stop. “Wait, what did you say?”

I’m still touching him, so I feel it when he goes utterly still. The darkness takes on a new weight, and suddenly it’s like it’s pressing in on me, constricting.

“You told me before that you were in my house, in the hall outside my room, but that you refused go in. So how do you know what my closet looks like?”