They brought the new hostage in during the middle of the night. When the door opened, Sabrina awoke with a jerk and gasp. Then she heard rattling chains that were not her own. In the darkness the source wasn’t visible, just those rattling chains, like one of Charles Dickens’s ghosts.
A battery lantern clicked on and she saw them in the doorway: Eli Pate and Garland Webb and, between them, a handcuffed, dark-haired woman who looked like she was drunk, eyes open but unable to support herself.
Not drunk, though. Drugged. The woman was seeing exactly as much of the cabin as Sabrina had when they’d brought her in here—nothing.
Sabrina sat up on the air mattress and pulled herself back against the wall. Eli Pate set the lantern down by the door and it spread Garland Webb’s massive shadow against the wall, a towering shape. He held the woman with ease when Eli released her, supporting her entire body weight with one hand.
Eli said, “Sorry to disturb your rest, but we have unanticipated company!”
His genteel tone was as steady as ever but Sabrina had the sense that it was taking more effort than usual for him to achieve it, that his actual mood was many shades darker and that the new woman was a problem, not part of the plan.
Garland dropped the woman without interest, like a bag of garbage, and then he unfastened one of the handcuffs and clipped it to a free bolt in the wall and snapped it shut. The dark-haired woman followed the motion with her eyes, but too slowly. She was looking at the bolt in the wall several seconds after she’d been chained to it.
Eli knelt and put two fingers under Sabrina’s chin and turned her face to his.
“We’re in the midst of an acceleration. Unanticipated and undesired, but, as they say, man plans and God laughs. Do you believe that?”
It was clear that he wanted an answer, so she said, “Yes.”
“I do not. I believe all that man needs to do is listen. We’ve lost that ability. Most of us. Fortunately for you, Sabrina, you’re in one of the few places on the planet where there is a man who both listens and hears.” He paused. “It will move fast now, Sabrina. How reliable is your husband? How skilled?”
“What are you doing to Jay?”
“The only question that matters, Sabrina—how much does he love you?”
She didn’t answer. Eli looked into her face for a long time and then nodded.
“I hope you’ve pleased him, Sabrina. I hope you’ve been the wife of his dreams. He needs that inspiration now.”
The cabin door opened again. Violet, with a bottle of water in each hand. She looked questioningly at Eli and he nodded and stepped aside. Garland Webb had moved away, the obedient guard dog in the shadows, and Sabrina couldn’t bring herself to look in his direction.
Violet crossed the room in the slanted lantern light and set two water bottles on the floor, pushed one to Sabrina, kept the other in her right hand. She used her left to force the new woman’s head up. Violet tilted the bottle and splashed some water on her face, and the woman blinked and spluttered.
“Drink, dear. Drink.”
But she didn’t drink. Instead, she blinked, and recognition came into her eyes for the first time. Not just of the circumstances, but real recognition, and Sabrina, watching in astonishment, thought, She knows Violet.
Violet didn’t seem to know her, though. She exhorted the woman once more to drink and had the bottle pressed gently to her lips when the woman spoke.
“Your son lied.”
Violet lowered the water bottle, her face stone still and pale. “What did you say?”
“You talk to him,” the new woman slurred, her words thick. “You talk to him. And he lies. He left me for them. For you. He knew you were coming. And he left.”
“You’re mistaken,” Violet said. “I have no…”
Sabrina was waiting on her to say son or family, and she would have accepted either. To picture this woman as a mother was both difficult and disturbing. Violet fell silent, though, the sentence unfinished, and then the new woman spoke again.
“Markus.”
Violet dropped the water bottle.
Eli Pate had been standing near the door, watching, but suddenly he was on them again, kneeling just in front of Sabrina but with all his attention on the new woman.
“You were with him? With Markus?”
Violet said, “Don’t ask her that. She’s confused. She’s not—”
His stare silenced her. He turned from her back to the new woman and reached out and slapped her, a hard strike that triggered another blink and a refocusing of the eyes.
“You came here with Markus?”
“You know that,” she mumbled.
“That is a lie,” Violet said. Her usually distanced, daydreamer eyes were nightmare-focused now, staring down a monster.
Eli said, “Where is he?”
The new woman said, “With you.”
The impenetrable calm he usually wore was obliterated now, his frustration clear. He looked like he wanted to hit her again but didn’t. Instead, he turned to Violet.
“She believes it,” he said. “You can see that. She’s half out of her mind now, but she remembers him. Because he was the last one with her. We know she was not alone. Not during the day. It was him.”
Violet shook her head. “I haven’t spoken to him in years. You know that.”
“And yet he’s here,” Eli said.
“Then he came for him.” She pointed at Garland Webb.
For a long time, the cabin was silent as the three of them stood staring at one another in the dim light, completely ignoring the two women handcuffed to the wall beside them. When the silence was finally broken, it was by Eli.
“If he came for Garland,” he said, “then he shall have him.”
Violet said, “You promised me that no harm would come to him.”
“Does this look like a place of harm to you?”
Violet looked at the two women chained to the wall, one with fresh blood trickling down from a split lip, and said, “Of course not.”