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“Maybe she already has a boyfriend?” the girl clutching her hair wondered with a playful yank.
“Asif,”Naomi countered.“Who would date a freak like her? I wouldn’t walk around so high and mighty if I came from a shithole like little Loren here. My dad knows the police chief from Ridgerton.”
Loren flinched at the name. It was a town a few hours north, and the focal point of most of her nightmares.
“I heard them talking about a case that occurred under my father’s friend’s jurisdiction. A certain case involving a woman who killed herself one day, leaving her daughter to be shipped off to an uncle who lived in town. From the outside looking in, everything had appeared okay at first. Until neighbors started hearing the screaming at night—”
No.Fear gripped Loren’s lungs, painfully squeezing out whatever air they contained.No.Shewouldn’tgo back there. Not to that house, or that room—God,not that room. Not to the stifling scent of cheap cologne, or the darkness, and pain…
“Naomi...” Minion number one took a step back. “This isn’t funny. Knock it off.”
“Why?” the blond demanded. “I was just getting to thebestpart. Apparently, this UncleBart—”
“Stop!” The other minion was shouting now, disobeying the unspoken cardinal rule of being one of Naomi’s “friends.”
Like sheep, Loren thought around a hysterical snicker. Naomi liked her friends like a shepherd liked his sheep. But Uncle Bart hadn’t liked it when she talked back, either.
He didn’t like it at all.
“No,” Naomi hissed.
Then she crouched before Loren so that they were nose to nose.
“They say a neighbor finally called a cop one night,” she continued. “Apparently, the girl wouldn’t speak. She just went to school one day andstopped talking.Clammed up. When they searched that house, the things they found there... Some on the force still talk about it to this day.”
Loren knew damn well what they had found. A room. One so small it seemed more like a closet. In fact, itwasa closet. Clothes had been kept there—sometimes, lying there at night, she could almost smell the mothballs.
Of course, what had caught everyone’s attention had probably been the chains. Long, they had stretched from a man-made post drilled into the wall. The perfect length for her to use the bathroom at night whenever her cell happened to be unlocked.
“The conditions were so bad that they relocated the girl to a different city rather than find a foster family in Ridgerton. With a father who hadn’t even wanted her in the first place.” Naomi’s voice was cold. Like the detached voice of a narrator on the evening news.
And the girl, whose name has not been released, was removed from the home. Rescued…
Only not really.
“Stillthink you’re better than me, Connors?” Naomi snarled. “Still think that, huh?”
“Naomi! We’re leaving,” Minions one and two announced, backing away as swiftly as their nice shoes could carry them. “We canwalkto school.”
“Fine. Leave then,” Naomi snapped. “But don’t think this changes anything. You’renothing, Loren Connors.”
But that was the whole point. Shewasnothing—hell, she strived to be nothing.
“But, hey,” Naomi added with a cruel smile of mocking perfection. “Like mother like daughter—”
Snap!
It was something internal. Some intangible muscle righttherein the pit of her stomach that cracked at the comparison. Like daughter, like…
Mother.
Her mother had been beautiful, happy, young, carefree—before life and sorrow beat her down. Loaded her with pain that she couldn’t bear. Couldn’t escape, except for one way out…
In the pit of her soul, Loren knew that she wasn’t like her mother.
She wasn’t brave.
She was weak. Too weak to fight. Too weak to die.
