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In front of me, lounging on a sofa, a woman with platinum-blond hair was sucking on a lollipop, glaring at the man sitting on the couch across from her.
“You’re such an asshole, Dice. You take all the good colors and leave the lime,” she said.
The guy wasn’t paying attention to her complaints because he and another man were too busy staring at me as I stood.
The girl finally glanced over at me and then looked back at her friends. “I’m not cleaning that up specifically because you took all the good colors. I don’t care if it’s my turn. You toss her.” She went back to sucking on her green lollipop, making noises of displeasure at the same time.
“Oh no, Cookie,” Dice said. “I’ll get you a bag of strawberry. I’m not cleaning this one up. The last one ripped my favorite shirt as I was tossing him.”
Tossing him? Gram had said something about getting tossed in the river. This couldn’t be real, could it?
No, I’d hit my head. I was dreaming. Now that I knew I was dreaming, I could wake myself up. Unless I was knocked out cold. What if I was in a coma?
“I did it last time. I’m not doing it,” said the other guy, the one whose shirt looked like it was going to rip apart under the strain of his muscles.
No one was looking at me much. I glanced behind me, looking for the bridge. If I was dreaming, then whatever I wanted would happen and therewouldbe a bridge. But all I saw was a door. I would’ve remembered coming through a door. I squeezed my eyes shut, telling myself that there was a bridge.
No bridge? Why was there no bridge? I’d been on a bridge. Then where was I? Had I fallen into some room attached to the underside of the bridge? Had I fallen and hit my head?
“Not only did I not eat the last of the good lollipops, I’m almost positive it’s not my turn. You two figure it out,” Cookie said.
“Fine. We’ll draw straws for who does it,” Dice said, looking at the muscleman.
They weredefinitelytalking about throwing me into the river. What else could they be talking about? Ithadto be me. But that would be insane, right?
The room looked normal enough, with some couches and shelves. It looked like a random family room that was a little dated, more than a bit worn, but pretty comfortable.
And the people, the ones who were ignoring me as they bickered, looked normal enough too. Well, sort of normal. The chick had a nasty-looking dagger strapped to her leg.
The guy she’d called Dice looked fairly normal too, with sandy brown hair and a friendly enough face. If it wasn’t for the gun holstered on his waist, his shoulders—another one on his leg…
The guy holding the straws had forearms the size of redwoods and looked like he spent his day chugging protein shakes. He could probably break my bones with a snap of his fingers, let alone toss me into a river.
Yeah, these people weren’t that normal.
“Fuck,” Dice said, looking at the short straw in his hand.
“You have the worst luck of anyone I’ve ever met. I don’t know who gave you the name Dice, because you shouldn’t ever be let near a pair.” Cookie was giggling.
Dice sneered. “Go screw, Cookie. Where’d you get your name? Not like there’s anything sweet about you.”
The insult didn’t seem to put a dent in her laughter, or the muscleman’s.
Dice walked over to me.
I stepped back.
“What’s your name?” he asked, chewing on the end of his short straw.
“Wilhelmina Adelaide, but I’m called Billie.” I answered before considering whether it was a good thing for this man to know my full name. I’d never had anything to hide before, though. When someone asked me my name, Ialwaystold them.
“Well, Wilhelmina Adelaide, Billie, whatever you want to call yourself,youare a trespasser. Unless you can offer a defense, you will be terminated, and your body will be thrown into the river. Do you have anything to say for yourself before this sentence is carried out?”
He went back to chewing on his straw as he glanced at his watch, the casualness of his demeanor not boding well for where I might end up. If this was some sort of sick joke, he would’ve tried to act scarier. This guy didn’t care if he killed me.
And he’d saidterminated. How many killers said terminated? They’d say something like “I’m going to kill you,” right? Gram had used the word terminated, too. Holy shit, Gram, where the hell was I? Was he reading me some twisted version of my Miranda rights? What the hell was this?
No. This was all too crazy.
