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I pound on the door, but there is no answer.
I try to break it down, but it is too well made. It’s reinforced because that’s how I’d wanted it back when I built the house. Back when I didn’t want druggies to burst in on me in my sleep, because that was the kind of company I used to keep.
I stride across the room, and find that the windows have been nailed shut from the outside.
Whoever this is, they’ve thought everything through.
I sit on the bed.
A video nursery monitor is on the nightstand. A note is taped to it.
Turn me on.
I do.
A grainy black and white picture pops up on the screen, of Zuzu’s bedroom down the hall. She’s tucked into the bed with her tiger. She’s less than a hundred feet from me.
She’s safe.
For now.
I breathe out, then in, then out.
She’s safe.
She’s in this house.
But I can’t get out of this fucking room.
A paper is pushed under the door.
I pick it up.
It’s 1:00. Time for your medicine.
I stare at the door.
I can’t do this. What if they kill Zuzu anyway?
But what if they don’t? A voice reasons with me in my head. They don’t want Zuzu. They want me. It doesn’t matter what happens to me as long as I keep her safe.
As long as I behave.
I sit on the bed, pull out the mirror, and do the line of cocaine.
18
Chapter Seventeen
Mila
I race back to Zuzu’s room to see if there are any clues there, anything at all, and there isn’t. Her bed is rumpled from where her little body had been sleeping in it. Her windows are closed, and I don’t know how they got into this house. It makes me feel vulnerable, out in the open, and I grab Zu’s favorite blankie and inhale it.
It smells like little girl, and my eyes flood with hot tears.
She’s out there, and she’s alone, and she’s probably crying for me. God. My stomach clenches and contracts, and I feel like throwing up.
I glance around her room, at the little tea table she’d set for tea with her teddy bears, and the castle that she’d played prince and princess in just today. I was the princess, Pax was the prince, and she was the baby who was magic.
