My scream slipped out hot and ragged, sharp as a blade in my throat.
I stopped myself as soon as I could, clamping a hand over my mouth, and in the silence that followed there was only Bethany.
Bethany, who had flopped forwards out of the cupboard where she shouldn’t have been.
Bethany, whose eyes were shut and whose body was slack and whose wrists had been bound together in front of her waist with the scarf that she’d been wearing around her neck.
She didn’t stir when her body hit the floor.
She was completely out of it.
I bit down on my lip so hard it burst inside my mouth with a hot splash of blood.
My scream raged on inside my head, getting louder, more desperate.
I pressed my other hand over my mouth, flattening my lips against my gums. My entire body shook with the effort of holding it in.
But it was already too late.
Footsteps on the attic stairs, thumping upwards, hard and fast.
‘Bethany.’ I took hold of her shoulders and shook her. ‘Bethany, please.’
I whipped my head towards the doorway as Donovan rushed in and skidded to a halt. He eyed me carefully, then swung his head towards the open cupboard door, switching his gaze between me and Bethany, assessing, reassessing.
‘You weren’t supposed to see that.’
Her, I wanted to yell at him, but instead I hurriedly checked that Bethany’s airways were clear, swept her hair away from in front of her face, put my cheek next to her mouth.
She was breathing shallowly. Her chest was rising and falling. I could see a rapid flickering beneath her eyelids.
‘What did you do to her?’ I asked.
He didn’t answer me. I felt around her scalp, tilted her head from side to side.
‘Did you hit her?’
‘Move away from her.’
‘We need to get help. We need to—’
‘I said move,’ he told me, and strode towards me so fast that I let go of Bethany and scuttled backwards until my spine and shoulder blades butted up against the metal frame of the daybed, my backside grazing the floor, my fingers twisting in the carpet pile.
‘Stay away from me,’ I told him.
He looked at me without saying anything for a few seconds. There was an ice pack in his hand. He must have taken it from our freezer. I’d stocked up on ice packs after Sam had suffered one DIY mishap too many.
‘Don’t scream again,’ he said. ‘Don’t shout. I can’t be responsible for what happens if you do that.’
My chest juddered as I looked at Bethany on the floor in front of him. I couldn’t see any obvious signs of bruising or abrasions. There was no blood. No swelling.
He must have drugged her, I thought, and then I looked down at my arm again, at the spot of blood on the inside of my elbow.
A cold shudder rippled through me.
‘Breathe,’ Donovan said. ‘Do not freak out.’
He ducked abruptly from the waist, setting the ice pack aside and slipping his hands under Bethany’s armpits.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked him.
He manhandled Bethany into a seated position, grunting and gasping as he slid her body back inside the cupboard. I could see her handbag in there. Her phone had been in it. I realized too late that I should have tried for the hammer when I’d had my chance.
‘Stop this.’
He ignored me, folding her legs in after her, swinging the cupboard door shut against her feet, forcing it closed.
He’d put both his gloves back on, I noticed, and I had an awful feeling about it. Gloves meant no fingerprints, no forensic evidence.
I was still reckoning with the implications as he straightened into an upright position, towering over me.
Too big. Too close.
I didn’t look up past his shoes and legs. I shrank back further.
Was anyone outside on the street, I wondered? Had they heard my scream?
I didn’t know, but I did know that the houses on either side of me were currently empty. The Taylor family was on holiday. I’d seen John walking away down the street.
And I was in the attic at the back of the house. We were in the attic. Where sound might not travel very far. Where my scream had probably been contained and trapped.
Like me.
I shuddered, looking down at my arm again, at the spot of blood on the inside of my elbow.
Had he injected me with the same drug as Bethany or something different? Perhaps he’d given me a smaller dose and that was why I was still conscious.
‘Here.’ He dropped into a squat in front of me, reaching for the ice pack and tossing it onto the floor between us. ‘For your head.’
The pack landed with a wet crump, the ice inside crackling.
Like the thump I’d heard from downstairs, I thought.
Did that mean Bethany had collapsed immediately or had she tried to fight back?
‘She’ll be fine in a few hours. Provided you cooperate. I don’t want to have to hurt either of you.’
As if he had no control over that. As if hurting us would somehow be my fault.
Somewhere inside my mind I could hear the distant rush and gurgle of water. I could feel fast hands grappling with my throat, pushing me down.
It’s happening again.
It’s happening now.
‘Lucy?’
I shrank back even more, feeling a bloom of heat from the scar running along my arm, worrying what the needle mark might mean, what was going to happen next.
I kept looking at the cupboard door, thinking of Bethany on the other side of it, wondering if I’d be like her before long, if either of us would get out of this alive.
‘Stay with me.’
But it was a struggle to marshal my thoughts. They were tumbling into one another. Hazy memories and the present moment were overlapping, duplicating, getting scrambled, mixed up.
I almost choked on the slick of warm blood spilling from my lip.
‘Why?’ I whispered.
‘We’ll get to that. I’m going to explain everything to you.’
Everything.
As if there was more to this than what he’d done to Bethany and my own terror and confusion.
‘Try the ice pack,’ he said again. ‘I need you thinking straight. It’ll help.’
With what, I wondered?
Not with whatever this was, or whoever he was, or with anything that was happening right now.
And anyway, the pain in my head was one thing. A diminished thing. Whereas Bethany and her well-being were everything.
‘She could choke,’ I said. ‘She could get sick or stop breathing or—’
‘She won’t.’
He sounded so controlled. So certain.
‘You can’t just leave her shut in there. You have to let me help her. You have to—’
‘Why don’t you stop worrying about Bethany and start focusing on yourself?’
Oh God.
‘You’re going to have questions,’ he said. ‘I understand that. And that’s OK because I have questions too. There’s a lot we need to discuss.’