fifty-six

I wake smelling dirt, and I remember the bunker where I found Marty Lawson and for a second, I think I’m back there.

I am lying on a dirt floor. I feel it against my fingertips. But the smell is not the same. It’s just similar enough that I know I’m underground.

Why am I under…?

The house. The library. The panic room.

Jude.

I try to leap up, but my hands are bound behind me and I don’t realize that until I move. My stomach lurches from the chloroform and my gorge rises, and that’s when I realize I’m gagged. I’m gagged, and I’m going to throw up, and if I do, I’ll choke on my own vomit.

I squeeze my eyes shut and breathe as deeply as I can until the wave of nausea passes. Then I take a moment to assess my situation. Gagged. Hands behind my back. My legs aren’t tied, but if I stand, I risk toppling face-first, unable to brace myself.

I blink hard, hoping my eyes will adjust, but there’s no light to help. One of my feet brushes a wall behind me. I manage to brace against it and rise onto my knees.

Then I stand. That takes time and effort. I put my back to the wall, my bound hands behind me, fingers outstretched. I feel around, hoping for an edge I can rub the rope against.

I take one sliding step sideways. Then another. My fingertips move over the concrete wall like blind spiders—searching for a rough edge.

Another step, and my foot hits something soft. At a nudge, it falls against me, and I stumble away, a scream muffled by my gag as I thud down. I rise to my knees, wincing. Then I try to touch whatever fell, but I can’t do it like this. I crouch and brush it with my leg. It’s soft and yet unyielding. And there’s that smell, the one that reminds me of the bunker, and it’s more than must and dirt.

I hunker down with my back to the object. Then I reach, fingers behind me, and feel around. I touch something like leather. I rub it between my fingers. Thinner than leather. Fabric? I twist my hand until it hurts and I reach and my fingers close around…

A hand. My fingers close around what is unmistakably a hand, and I know what that smell is, what I’m recognizing.

A body. I’m down here with a body.

I scramble away. Something jabs my arm. It’s a stick. A sharp stick with a broken end and jagged edges. I close my eyes and try to calm my pounding heart.

Don’t think about the body. You can freak after you’ve gotten this rope off.

I rub my bound hands against the jagged end of the stick. It’s not easy—the wood is sticking from something and the base isn’t stable, so I have to grip the stick awkwardly as I rub. I can feel strands breaking, though. Slowly, very slowly, one snapping at a time. Sweat beads on my forehead and my wrists scream from holding them at that angle. The wood splinters as I work, and those splinters dig in like needles, drawing blood, which only makes the rope slicker and harder to—

A thump sounds in the distance. Footsteps. I rub frantically, but there’s no way I’ll get this rope off in time. Then there’s a light, just a little, as if a distant one turned on and filtered under a door. I see that I’m in some kind of basement room with dirt floors and concrete walls and…

A body. The one I’d bumped into. It’s a girl. A long-dead girl, little more than a skeleton in a filthy dress. I instinctively back away from the corpse, and I hit that stick again. I twist and…

It’s another skeletonized body.

The stick I’d been rubbing against was a broken bone.

My gorge rises, and I squeeze my eyes shut as tight as I can.

Don’t lose it, Winter. Don’t lose it.

I turn away and open my eyes, and now I see…

She’s lying in a crumpled heap, as if tossed there. Her eyes are open. Dark brown eyes. Open and unseeing. Her long blond hair is half gathered in a ponytail. She wears jeans and ankle boots and a cropped leather jacket.

So, what do you think? New boots, new jacket. Am I ready for New York City, Winter?

Edie.

Oh, God, Edie. No. Please no. Tell me this is someone else, and I’m sorry for whoever it is, but it can’t be you. It’s someone else with your hair and your jacket and your boots.

But it isn’t. I see her face and there is no question. No question at all.

This is Edie.

Edie is dead.

I start to sob. Not just cry—I sob against the gag until I can’t breathe and don’t care. I hear a sound. The muffled groan of someone wearing a gag.

Jude. Lennon.

I scramble toward the sound. When I see a shoe—a heeled pump—I stop. I wriggle up beside Elysse Bishop. She’s bound and gagged and blinking hard, as if she’s just woken. She’s struggling to focus. When she sees me, her eyes go wide. Then they shut. Squeezed shut tight, and she lets out an odd little noise. Her eyes fly open again, wider now, frantic as she tries to speak.

Her mouth is covered in duct tape. A corner of it has come loose. I twist, trying to rub that corner, and she jerks back, as if I’m lunging for the kill. I glare at her and try to motion with my head, and I’m sure she doesn’t understand, but she lies still and I twist around, get hold of that corner with my fingers, and pull. There’s a gasp, and then, “Jude,” she says. “Tell me he doesn’t have—”

I shake my head. I don’t care if it’s probably a lie; I see her panic and I need her calm.

I wave my bound hands and she says, “You’ve almost broken the rope. Oh, thank God. Yes, let me…”

She wriggles until we’re back-to-back, and she’s pulling at my frayed rope.

“You’ll be okay, Winter,” she says as she works. “I’ll make sure of that. I swear it. These girls—” She inhales sharply and there’s genuine pain in her voice, and I turn to see her staring at Edie’s body. “I…I knew Kendrick had…urges. When he was young…There was a girl who disappeared, the daughter of a housekeeper, and I thought it was Kendrick, and our father hired an investigator who said it wasn’t. I believed him. I wanted to believe him. Told myself my brother had problems, but he’d never do that. Never actually…”

There’s a noise to my left and we both jump as light floods in. I’m twisting to see the door and Mrs. Bishop gives a half-stifled cry. And then I see Lennon.