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Immediately, the same tired house servant appeared, summoning me with a gnarled hand toward the outer hallway. Glancing back at my sister, I caught her eye, but Dahlia quickly returned her gaze to the table when she realized that she was the center focus.
“Don’t even think about running, Bianca,” Jesse called out in a singsong voice as Alanah and I moved into the hallway. “The guards in the house are trained to shoot first and ask questions later.”
Goosebumps almost raised the skin clear off my body. I believed him.
Silently, the maid led me toward a small powder room off the kitchen, but as she turned away, I grabbed her arm. Startled, she drew back.
“Help us,” I whispered. “Help us get out of here.”
She shook me loose, shaking her all-gray head vehemently without uttering a word. She whipped around with an agility I wouldn’t have expected from a woman her age and marched in the opposite direction, leaving me to wonder if I hadn’t just signed my own death warrant by asking her.
My desperation reeked, but it was all I had left.
* * *
The bedroom door creaked here,but I wasn’t sleeping when it opened, despite the blackness that overtook the entire bedroom.
I swallowed, lying perfectly still as I waited for Jesse to bark out an order or approach with his usual lewdness, but after a moment, I recognized that it wasn’t him. The being in our room was not even a male.
“Alanah!” I gasped, sitting up fully, my blonde hair falling over the shoulder of my nightgown.
I pulled a blanket around my chest as she came into full view. She still hadn’t spoken a single word to me, but she pointed toward a discarded pile of clothes.
“What’s going on, Bee?” Dahlia mumbled. “Alanah? What is it?”
Alanah turned and did the same to my sister, dumping a skirt and blouse onto her blanketed lap as she, too, sat up. Dahlia’s confusion was as thick as mine, but the mute house servant offered us nothing except gestures as she urged us to dress.
Excitement spiked through me.
“I think she’s trying to help us,” I whispered, daring to believe it. Alanah nodded curtly, turning her eagle-like head toward the door nervously. “Get dressed. Hurry!”
Dahlia made a noise that was a cross between a whimper and a cry, but when she caught my gaze across the room, she obliged. This might be our only shot.
In seconds, I’d wiggled into a too-tight dress that Jesse had picked out and jam my feet into my old running shoes. I wasn’t about to wear a pair of heels that might be heard over the ancient hardwood.
I instructed my sister to do the same, but it was unnecessary. Dahlia wasn’t an idiot.
Once we were dressed, Alanah peeked out of the door, waving us into the unknown darkness beyond. I didn’t understand the layout of the house well enough to know where she was taking us, but she was sure-footed. She had clearly been around for years, and I inherently trusted every step.
“Why is she helping us?” Dahlia hissed in my ear, her hand locking with mine as we stole through the shadows. “This could be a trap.”
I ignored her. Why would Alanah go through the trouble? Jesse already knew I had no interest in being there. He didn’t need proof that I wanted to leave. The house maid was putting herself at risk to save us for her own reasons. Maybe Alanah had been a girl herself when she’d been brought there, or perhaps she had a daughter of her own. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t questioning it.
At least not until we found ourselves in front of a wall where the old housekeeper stopped abruptly. I cocked my head curiously, but before I could utter a word, she pushed on a panel, and the wall gave way to reveal a hidden tunnel.
“Oh, no,” Dahlia mewled. “I can’t go in there.”
My sister’s dislike of confined spaces had definitely grown since being tied to the trailer for so long.
“It’s just for a few minutes, until we get out,” I reminded her, touching the pocket where I’d put the cash from Atlas. “Then we’ll be free, Dahlia. Just keep your eye on the prize, okay?”
Alanah scowled at us, pressing her weathered index finger to her lips, but she didn’t step forward. Instead, she nodded at us to go inside.
“You want us to go?” I asked dubiously. “Where does it lead? Where will we end up?”
She shrugged, and I paled.
“Is it going to take us off the property?”
