The first thing Dani saw when she opened her eyes was Jason. Her head was bowed forwards and turned to the side. She was sitting on the cold hard floor of the basement, her legs out in front of her. She tried to move, to fully sit up, but realised she couldn’t. Her hands were behind her, linked together – metal handcuffs? – and wrapped around a hard object of some kind. A metal pole, was Dani’s best guess.
She tried to pull her head up to look around the room but it was heavy, and even moving a few millimetres sent a searing pain through her neck and down her spine. Was that because she’d been sitting in the awkward position for so long, or was it the after effects of the taser?
Dani’s eyes remained focused on the forlorn figure of Jason. He was lying on the ground in front of her, his eyes closed, his body hog-tied; wrists and ankles clasped together with plastic cable ties. Two sets, no, three, all linked together. He had a large gash up above his eye; the smear of red blood on his face glistened in the electric light.
The light. It was so bright.
Dani fought through the pain in her body and lifted her head as best she could to survey the room she was in. Was it the same basement still, or a different room altogether? She could just about make out the shelves, a workbench. A single overhead bulb, like before. But that was emitting only a dull orange glow, yet there was a piercing white light in front of her that was almost impossibly bright to look at, like staring into the sun. It was so bright and glaring that Dani couldn’t even see where exactly in front of her it was coming from, and she could see nothing of what lay beyond.
‘Jason,’ Dani murmured, looking back at him, her tongue and lips struggling to form the word. She focused, tried again. ‘Jason. Can you hear me?’
She saw the slightest of twitches from him. Heard the slightest of groans.
Then she heard a noise from across the room in front of her. Dani’s head whipped around and she cringed in pain.
‘Who’s there?’
Nothing. Silence.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ Dani screamed, finding a strength that surprised her.
She heard a long but calm sigh. Then movement. The first thing she saw were the shoes. Shining brown loafers. Because of the position of that bright spotlight Dani could make out nothing of the figure the shoes belonged to. Not until he took two more steps forwards. Finally his whole body was visible, the spotlight now on his back and creating a long shadow that swept forwards onto Dani.
She looked up into his eyes. She’d never met him in person, but she’d seen enough pictures of him to recognise him instantly.
It was Ethan Grant.