Page 91 of The Pleasure of Panic

Caleb’s Game.

CHAPTER THIRTY - ISSY

I slam the door to my house, looking around at the mess. My eyes immediately go to the floor where the broken frame was, and find it missing.

What the fuck? Did I put it somewhere last night?

I walk over to the kitchen counter, looking. Sift through the debris of scattered papers, and old mail, and some shards of cheap dishes and canned string beans that should be in my cupboards.

“Ow!” I slap my hand to my neck. There’s a stinging, burning pain in the fleshy muscle that stretches from the base of my neck to my shoulder. I grab a—dart?—and pull it out of my skin.

I look at it. At the fuzzy red stabilizer protruding off the end. The chamber, empty now, but presumably once filled with drugs.

And then a man steps out from the hallway.

A man I know. A man I saw on TV this morning. Declan Ivers.

“I will fucking kill you,” I say.

“You can fucking try,” he snaps back.

My hand is on the canned beans and it sails through the air, hitting him in the side of the head before he can even register what’s happening.

I storm him.

One chance. That’s what I teach my students in their self-defense classes. One chance to take them down when you have the element of surprise. I drill it into their heads. I make them practice the moves. And then I make them do it again, and again, and again until they no longer have to think about it.

It’s just instinct.

I chop him in the throat, releasing all the air in my lungs as I scream. He goes down, but someone else has my arms, then another has my legs, and the room is spinning, and my wrists and ankles are bound with zip ties, and the only thing I can think as they carry me through my house, out into the small backyard, into my detached garage, and place me in the trunk of a car is…

How ironic.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE - FINN

Consciousness comes slowly, but there is a rhythm that keeps time for me.

My head throbbing. My heart pounding. The ticking of a clock somewhere in the darkness, the sound of footsteps, the ring of a phone.

Where the fuck am I?

“Issy,” I whisper. I remember that much. They got her.

No. I brought her to them.

To Caleb, through this stupid fucking game I’m not even fuckin’ playing.

“Oh, don’t worry about her,” Caleb says.

I try to open my eyes. Fail. Then try again and see a sliver of blurry light.

“I’m gonna take real good care of Izett, Finn Murphy. Don’t you worry.”

“Issy,” I say.

“What?”

“Her name is Issy, not Izett.”