“Er, okay. I’ll just grab it and leave you to your evening.”
And just like that, social awkwardness and pre-planning have opened Lucinda’s front gate and then her front door.
The pair wander into the marble-floored hall of Lucinda’s beautiful townhouse, Maria catching sight of a staggering staircase spiraling up to the floor above and a glass one leading down to an open-plan kitchen and garden. Penny skitters in behind them and Lucinda closes the door.
“Garden’s through the kitchen,” Lucinda tells her, passing to lead the way. “Just down the stairs here.”
Maria follows. And at the top of the glass staircase, when Lucinda’s back is turned and Penny is following on behind them both, Maria pushes the woman’s body hard.
Lucinda only lets out a small yelp as she flies forward. It has in it a tight mixture of shock and anger, as if halfway through the act of falling she’s realized what an idiotic mistake she’s made—given who Lucinda is— inviting a complete stranger into her home.
Maria knows Lucinda could not have, in that second, realized who she is exactly, but Maria knows Lucinda understands she has made a fundamental error of judgment and in that split second she registers as much.
As Lucinda’s body tumbles forward, she flails for the glass balustrades on either side of her, but her fingers only graze the immaculate glass, leaving the faintest of smears as she slams forward into the midpoint of the staircase and slumps unconscious against its clear surface.
Penny barks twice from the top of the stairs before carefully walking down to meet Maria and lick her hand.
Maria waits a few more seconds to check there is no further movement from Lucinda before gently picking up the dog and continuing down the stairs to delicately step over Lucinda’s crumpled form, Penny in her arms.
At the bottom of the stairs Maria takes in the expensive open-plan living space that rolls out into a large well-tended garden. Then her eyes land on what she’s looking for: beside a large cozy Everhot range cooker lies a comfy dog bed. Maria heads over and gently places the slightly concerned Penny into it. Then she moves the dog’s water bowl close so that, after her walk, she will have what she needs close. Penny looks up at Maria with wide eyes, as if unable to work out if she is a threat or a savior.
Penny dealt with, Maria heads back to the huddled mass of Lucinda. She checks for a heartbeat, and there is of course a strong one. The fall was short; it was the impact to the side of her head that knocked her out. Maria does not intend to kill her. She needs Lucinda alive and able to talk.
She carefully unfurls her and, with arms under the fallen woman’s shoulders, drags her as gently as she can down the remaining five steps into the kitchen. Maria then lays her out flat and performs a jaw-thrust maneuver on her to prevent her from choking on her own tongue—Maria doubts a spinal injury, but it’s always better to be safe.
Maria estimates, from the severity of the blow, that she has a few minutes tops until the woman comes around, the loss of consciousness likely due not to serious trauma but to a mild concussion that will quickly pass.
Maria scans the room for her next requirement but can’t see it. She heads quickly back up the glass staircase and into the main sitting room, a large double room, one half of which appears to be Lucinda’s minimal home office. She sees the small tablet screen on a stand on a shelf behind the desk. On the tablet’s screen four boxes display various rooms in the house. The CCTV hub. She scrolls through the rooms and external cameras, the gate outside still annoyingly hanging open. She checks the kitchen footage where she sees Lucinda and Penny, where she left them. She disables the system, the room cameras each in turn going black.
In the bottom corner of the screen a small red dot is flashing. Tapping on it, Maria sees that it’s an alert of the external gate remaining open; Lucinda must have left it ajar expecting them to be in and out quickly. Maria cancels the alert then scrubs back through the footage from the past ten minutes and deletes all footage of herself. Job done, she wipes the tablet surface clean of her fingerprints and replaces it onto its stand.
—
BACK IN THE KITCHEN MARIA pulls cable ties from her coat pockets and proceeds to bind Lucinda’s feet and hands.
The plan is simple: Lucinda will wake up and Maria will get her to say who’s responsible for putting her in that house, who was watching, and why. There should be simple answers to these simple questions.
Maria will find out who did this to her and she will end whatever this has been. She isn’t interested in revenge, though looking at the way these people live, renumeration after the fact wouldn’t hurt her. But her primary aim is making herself safe again and, of course, not ending up in jail.
A groan rises from the body. Lucinda is beginning to come around. Safe in the knowledge she is no longer being filmed, Maria removes her cap and coat because in spite of her not overtly wanting revenge she does want to witness the moment when the other shoe drops for Lucinda. She wants Lucinda to know who she is and to be afraid, very afraid; as afraid as Maria was in the bowels of that house for six days.
Maria does not hear the men enter the house above her. She does not know that the alarm raised by the open gate has been picked up by the private security company. She does not hear them glide down the stairs behind her as she kneels beside Lucinda, whose eyes are beginning to flicker open. She knows nothing about it at all until Lucinda’s gaze flits momentarily away from her own to something behind and slightly above her. And then Maria knows nothing at all.
—
LUCINDA PACES BACK AND FORTH in angry strides across her open-plan kitchen, hands unconsciously rubbing at the skin where the cable ties left divots in her flesh.
Penny is awake but sleepy in her bed, her eyes following her human back and forth.
“I just don’t understand how it got this far? How she found me? Explain to me,” she says, hands now pressing down on the air as she stops in front of a man a good deal broader and taller than her. “Explain to me how she got here, how she got through all the layers of security we are supposed to have and made it into my actual fucking house.”
The man in front of her seems unfazed by the outburst. Behind him another man, a private doctor, pops medical items back into his bag, his face a mask of professional disinterest. “We’ll go back through the sequence chain and plug the gaps. I think you’re aware this is the first time a participant has made it off the island. Since the changeover, we have had four non-paying participants, and this has been the only incident. This is a special case. It will not happen again. They want you to continue.”
Lucinda splutters out a laugh. “I bet they do. I bet they fucking do. But what assurance do I get? What incentive do I get—because apparently, I’m not even safe now in my own home. God knows what she could have done before you got here. I’m lucky I’m not in a wheelchair after that fall.”
“She wanted you alive. She wanted information. She had medical training—trust me, she wasn’t trying to kill you. And you know it’s incredibly unlikely that anyone will ever get out again. You know that.”
Lucinda slumps down hard into one of her kitchen chairs to consider his words.
