“What the hell?” My heart thumped as I looked at the corner of the room. A large sheet was draped over something huge. It looked like a giant box. “Wh-wh-wh—?” I scurried backwards toward the door as Noah came bursting in.
“Sorry, I should have mentioned it.”
“Mentioned what?”
“Chloe.” He pointed into the corner of the room.
“Chloe?”
“Yes, Chloe. She’s in her cage.”
“Cage?”
“I have to lock her up at night, or she gets into trouble.”
“Uh . . . lock her?” I swallowed. It felt like an uneven rock sticking in the back of my throat.
“She’s always trying to escape when the lights go off,” he said, and then let out a chuckle which chilled me to the bone, like a raging arctic gale had just swept through the house.
“Uh.” I inched towards the door. It hadn’t occurred to me that Noah might be anything other than a nice, normal guy, but who the hell kept women in cages under sheets in his spare room?
Mind you, doesn’t everyone say that about serial killers? He was such a charming man, pillar of the community, instantly likeable . . .oh my God, textbook! I could see the vox-pop interviews with the neighbors on TV:Noah was always so polite, helped me with my groceries, a paramedic, even. . . and then the documentary filmmaker would cut to old, grainy, smiling photos of Chloe and me as little girls and hard-cut to black-and-white photos of where our bodies were found, police tape outlining the area.Clearly, I watched a lot of crime shows too!
“I think that maybe I should . . . uh . . . SHIT!” I pushed past Noah and ran, making a dash down the passage, and practically threw myself on the front door. “Shiiit!” I cursed when the door didn’t open. I looked around. I saw another door in the kitchen and I made another mad dash, but it didn’t open either. “Oh my Goooood!” My heart thumped, pouring pure fear into my veins. I was trapped in a house with a man who kept women in cages in his spare room! I was doomed. I was going to die. He was sure to kill me now—
“AAAHHH!”
Noah walked into the kitchen and I grabbed the nearest thing I could find, a spatula.
I held it in the air, “I won’t tell anyone that you have a . . . a . . .wait, what is that?”
“It’s Chloe,” Noah said, holding out his arm, where a gray parrot was now happily perching.
“Chloe is a parrot?”
“Yup. Chloe is a parrot.”
“Oh.” I placed the spatula back onto the kitchen counter. Noah looked at it, and then looked up at me and grinned.
“Who did you think Chloe was?” he asked.
“Um . . .” I was too embarrassed to answer that now.
“Did you think Chloe was a woman?”
I nodded.
“You thought I had a woman in a cage?” His grin grew and all I could do was offer up another feeble nod.
Noah laughed. It was the first time I’d heard him laugh, and it was totally contagious, or maybe I was laughing because I was so relieved to have discovered that I was not in the house with a kidnapping serial killer and the director was not going to cut to old VHS footage of Noah playing a game of soccer in the garden as a child and ask where it all went so wrong!
“I’m sorry you got a fright,” Noah said, when his laughter finally tapered off.
“It’s okay.” I stopped laughing and looked at the parrot on his arm. She was only a little bigger than myex-friend.
“She’s very friendly. You want to touch her?” Noah came closer and I stepped back.
“I don’t think birds like me. Or rats, for that matter.”
