“I didn’t.”
“Who did?” she pressed.
I shook my head. “Not part of the story.”
“You’re telling a story?”
“Tryin’ to but the audience keeps interrupting.” I glanced to the right, and this time, I caught her looking at me. She didn’t appear embarrassed, though. More annoyed.
“Maybe they wouldn’t interrupt if you got to the point,” she grunted. “What are we doing down here, Casper? If you really wanted to know how I got out, I could have drawn you a map or you could have spent a little time exploring it on your own. You don’t need me here with you.”
“I could have.” I lifted another shoulder. “But I enjoy the company. Plus, it’s not as much fun telling the story to myself.”
“Right, the story.” She rolled her eyes. “The one where you’re the main character?”
“Always. Wouldn’t be much of a story otherwise.” I stretched my arms high over my head, popping each back into their sockets, crammed the rest of the candy bar into my mouth, then dropped my hands to my sides. I let the wrapper flutter wherever it landed. “Anyway, as I was saying, never really came to the basement.”
“Because of the chair,” Bellatrix chimed in.
“Exactly.” I nodded. “Until one day, I did and discovered a shit-ton of patients they kept down here. They’d been here for a while too. Longer than me. Most of 'em didn’t have names or charts, and they were tied up or chained down. Holed up in cages or inside the cells like the ones you saw back there.”
“That’s not really a story, though. I remember reading about it in the papers. It was all over the news for weeks… after the mass?—”
“It wasn’t a massacre,” I was quick to interrupt her. “That’s just what people liked to call it. To make themselves feel better for what was really going on under their noses. It was a coup. A regime change.”
“With Dr. Adrian Lambert leading the charge?” Bellatrix quirked a brow. I didn’t bother answering her. We weren’t here to talk about him or any of the other shit that was public record. We were here to talk about these tunnels.
“What wasn’t mentioned in the papers were the girls…”
“The girls?” she parroted.
“They just appeared one day. A few at a time. They weren’t patients, though. They never came through the front door, didn’t leave that way either.”
“How do you know?”
I shot her a look that saidreally?Without saying anything. And Bellatrix rolled her eyes again.
“Point is… I think I know how they got there now. I just don’t know where they came from or why.”
“And suddenly that matters? However many years later?” she asked.
“Aren’t you the tiniest bit curious?” I threw back at her.
She stepped up in front of me, with an extra little pep. “I’m always curious.”
“Me too, babe.” I grinned, flashing the light over the way her ass cheeks jiggled in her tac pants each time she swayed her hips.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
BELLATRIX
“Dare you to eat it.”
Casper glanced down at my hand, then back up at me and grinned. “You first.”
Without hesitation, I popped the cockroach into my mouth and started crunching it against my teeth. Loudly.
I could be annoying too. Just ask Gabby.
