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“Calm down, Olivia,” I pep talk myself. “You can think your way out of this.”
There’s a part of me that knows that I can’t. It knows that I can’t break down this massive door, that I can’t fight off a grown man and run like hell from wherever we are.
“Fuck!”
I punch the wall. Then I promptly dissolve into tears. I hate that I’m crying, but I can’t stop it. I can only bury my face in my hands and try to breathe until the tears have had their way with me.
“Olivia?”
The door cracks open and I’m met with Emily’s cautious eyes.
She peeks in, still looking for that boogeyman she seems to expect in every shadowy corner. Now that I know her story—some of it, at least—I don't blame her; I'd be out of my mind if I were her.
Hell, I'm out of my mind as me.
"Emily!" I whisper. "You took so long?—"
"I needed to wait until the guards weren't around," she explains. "They went out drinking. One of them left a truck. I can't drive…"
"I can," I say, answering her unspoken question for her.
She lets out a gust of thankful breath. "Good. Because we're—we're going to steal the truck! We can get out of here quick that way."
I shove myself up, struggling with how stiff my body is. Every joint screams out in protest. "Do you have the keys?"
Emily nods, reaching into her pocket and withdrawing a car key. She holds it out to me in the palm of her hand.
I take it and give her a grateful smile. We’re so close.
I’m coming, Reese. I’m coming.
Then Emily turns and tiptoes out of the room. "Up here."
I follow her up a rickety set of stairs. She moves quietly, even though there's no one in the house. I can only imagine that this is how she's spent her life living with Holly. Needing to tiptoe. Always having to be cautious about what her next move is.
That's no life for a little girl.
"We have to go through the house and out the front," she explains to me. "Holly made it so all the windows don't open anymore and the back door's been jammed shut."
I take a deep breath and steel myself. One way in and one way out. You can do this, I whisper in my head. Then I nod and we venture out into the main space.
The place is an utter pigsty. Boxes, trash bags, shit stacked up almost to the ceiling absolutely everywhere you look. I try not to brush up against everything—making it out of the basement cell just to get crushed to death by Amazon boxes would be a cruel end to my story.
"Holly likes to buy things," Emily explains quietly.
Dotted amongst the clothes and shoeboxes are dozens and dozens of half-drank bottles of wine. The smell of stale alcohol makes my stomach curdle. I don’t have time to stop and vomit, though, so I sniffle and continue forward.
We’re marooned out in the middle of the room when suddenly, we hear a noise from the front of the house.
Footsteps crunching on gravel.
I shake my head. No. No. This can’t be happening. We’re supposed to be?—
"EMILY!"
It's a deep, booming male voice that carries through the house like thunder. Emily immediately shrinks back, pressing her back to the wall as a look of complete and unbridled terror flashes across her eyes.
"EMILY!" the voice rips out again.
