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“What?!”
“I had to run some errands. Cookie, it’s almost eight in the morning.”
“You had to run errands at eight in the…why didn’t you take me to Holly’s? Did you call her?” I immediately read the guilty ‘no’ on his face. “My God Quade, she must be frantic,” I attempt to yell, though my head still won’t let me.
“You’re a grown woman Fiona. Since when do you have to call home to somebody?”
“Quade, I’ve been living at Holly’s for over six months now. I live there…don’t you get that? She could think we drove off a freaking cliff or something.”
“Well…we do live in a town surrounded by cornfields, so…no real likelihood of that,” he says with what looks like the beginnings of a smirk.
Just when I want to slap him for being such a smug ass, the screwdriver in my head twists itself again and I flop over in helpless agony.
“I’m sorry,” Quade says under his breath.
“Sorry for…what?” I ask, barely recognizing my own voice as the words drip out of me like tiny, molten droplets of wax.
“Nothing,” he says, tears welling up again. “Just everything.”
As I slowly turn my head to face him, I hear the thunder of heavy footsteps coming up stairs. They sound massive, yet somehow distant. Like this house must be amply spacious.
“Who is that?” I manage as my eyes close again.
“I have no idea,” Quade says irritably, apparently not ready to have our space intruded upon.
“Well geez Quade…it’s probably Levi or someone… coming to find out why I never made it home.”
“Sounds about a hundred pounds heavier than Levi,” Quade whispers nervously, as though we have reason to fear.
And he’s probably right. The footsteps sound nothing like Levi’s, yet…everything in me wants this random intruder to fling open a door and discover us. As I open my eyes and gaze around woozily, I find that I was right last night in the darkness. There is no door. I have a million questions about this mysterious, impossible space we’re in, but not enough energy or even clarity to form them into words. Does it make any sense that I’m hoping some random, unwieldy burglar will come bursting into this bizarre claustrophobic room? Not in the slightest, yet somehow I’m not at all rooting for our continued privacy.
The enormous steps slowly make their way closer, sounding as though they’ve stopped in each room and opened every door. Clearly there is either an attempted burglary taking place, or Holly’s got the police searching for me. I glance at Quade, and his eyes meet mine with breathless intensity. He looks like a scared rabbit. For the longest minute, we remain locked in a stare-down…Quade’s eyes telling me not to make one single sound, mine somehow giving away the fact that I’m thinking about it.
On a wild impulse I attempt to holler out, but Quade’s hand seizes my mouth in an instant.
His face distorts into a grimace as his fingers dig painfully into my cheeks. A moment later, our strange island is surrounded by a confusion of noise…the muffled sound of hands frantically tapping and searching the outer walls.
“Fiona!”
Quade tightens his grip when I try to respond to the oddly familiar voice. It must be the cops, and for some reason Quade does not want them to find us.
“Fiona!” I hear again.
This time I let out a squelched scream through Quade’s palm. It rumbles from the back of my throat, rendering it raw. Combined with my still persisting headache and general wooziness, my mind begins to play tricks on me. I have the most ridiculous notion that the stranger on the other side of the wall is Bo Thompson. I guess the cop’s voice did sound a little like Bo, but why I would choose now to indulge in absurd fantasies is beyond me.
Quade whips his head around with a panicked expression, perhaps searching for a quick place to stash me, then releases me all at once when a leg the size of a tree trunk kicks through the drywall. My relief combines with utter shock as a huge man ducks to step into the perfectly rectangular cutout he kicked in the wall…apparently a pre-cut panel that had been invisible to me before. Once his face appears in the opening, I’m certain I’m going to pass out again.
My consciousness swirls into a spiral of confusion as I struggle to fully awaken. If all of this is a dream, then where am I actually sleeping? I should wake up any moment in my bed at Holly’s, but something feels so real about the present. I decide I should try to stay in the dream forever when Bo Thompson stomps over and picks me up off the bed like a ragdoll.
And it’s the darndest thing. Bo doesn’t introduce himself to Quade, doesn’t question him or his intentions, asks nothing about why I’ve been trapped inside a non-existent room. In fact, I’m positive Bo doesn’t even so much as glance down at quivering Quade…because he maintains eye contact with me the entire time he’s carrying me out of the hole and into what appears to be a large attic space.
My heavy head supported in the crook of Bo’s arm, I continue to stare at him, entranced, as he navigates our way out of a sizable house. After several turns and two flights of stairs, I feel a blast of frigid air as he opens the door and continues carrying me to his truck. He lays me gently in the back and turns on the ignition, aiming the vents in my direction, but I’m still feverishly hot from my time in that room and…whatever illness I’ve come down with.
Unable to form words, I lie still…staring and blinking in and out of my delirium. Bo returns to the back seat, propping me against a lush, full sized pillow he’s leaned against his thigh. When my head and neck relax into the softness, it feels like heaven. If there even was a pillow on last night’s bed, I never found it in my state of exhaustion.
“Princess,” he says, stroking my cheek and gazing down on me with clear, stern eyes. “What’s happened to you, my love?”
“Bo,” I whisper, reaching up to touch the face I couldn’t believe was real only moments ago. “I don’t know…I…my purse…we have to find it.”
