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“Since when did you give a damn about family?” I hissed.
Foolish perhaps, but despite the fierce and unrelenting fear that was twisting my insides, the rage, raw and visceral, was still there. It was not just emotional; it was deeply biological, the hypothalamus orchestrating a symphony of stress hormones, flooding my bloodstream with cortisol while my prefrontal cortex struggled to maintain its grip.
His finger paused against the edge of my jaw, and his other fingers joined it there, gripping tight, forcing my head up higher.
“Perhaps, you’re right,” he said while his eyes grazed over me, making my skin writhe like there were insects beneath it.
I caught sight of Amadeo out of the corner of my eye. He was nodding at me, as if encouragingly.
“Scream,” he said. I think he was mouthing the word by the slightly odd movement of his facial muscles.
That I could do.
I opened my mouth and let out a short burst of the terror that was lodged in my chest. It actually felt good to make noise I could hear, something other than the chilling silence.
The spider-man’s eyes widened, and his grip on my jaw tightened painfully.
“You want me to gag you, do you?” he said as he dropped his hand. He was about to turn away, to go in search of a gag, no doubt, but I couldn’t let that happen. Not now.
Because Amadeo was moving.
He no longer stood trapped against the post across the room. He was coming toward us, moving slow and carefully. If the spider-man turned around now, he’d see him.
Amadeo would lose the element of surprise.
So, I did the first thing that came to mind and brought my knee up hard and fast, slamming it into his groin.
He cried out as he doubled over, stumbling back, but he only made it one step before Amadeo was there.
He moved like lightning, so fast his hands were a blur as he wrapped them around the spider-man’s neck from behind.
The man struggled, shoving his elbows back into Amadeo’s ribs, but whether by accident or intent, Amadeo was compressing the man’s carotid arteries, and it wasn’t ten seconds before his eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped, unconscious, in Amadeo’s grasp.
Rather than releasing him, Amadeo dragged the man across the room, dropped him to the floor, and shackled him to the same post where Amadeo had been trapped just a moment ago.
“You did good,perla,” he said as he stood up.
All signs of the malevolent smile from earlier were gone, but the look in his eyes was wrong, like something had taken all the light out of them.
Without another word, he crossed the narrow room. He had something in his hand. It looked thin, a bent piece of metal. A bobby pin, perhaps, though it looked twisted out of shape now.
I looked at it, then back at him. “Where on earth did you find that?”
“Never leave home without it,” he said when he was right in front of me. “It took time to shape the pin,” he said, his jaw clenched tight. “I couldn’t carry it twisted into the right shape—it would have been too noticeable.”
Without touching me, he circled around me and then he was working on the cuffs. The tiny metal pin scraped against the cuff, sending vibrations through my wrist.
It only took a moment, and then the shackles were gone; my wrists were free.
Free.
I let out a cry of relief, but when I went to throw my arms around Amadeo, that same worrisome look in his eyes brought me up short. It felt like he was holding himself distant. There was a wall between us now, one it felt like he didn’t want me to cross, so I wrapped my arms awkwardly around me instead.
His gaze perused me, lingering on my chafed and bloody wrists, then the narrow slice down my chest from the tip of Jasper’s knife. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. He reached out like he intended to take my hands in his, but then he dropped his hands to his sides.
“I’m—” he started, but then closed his mouth and shook his head.
“Time to go,” he said instead. He glanced up at the door, but the movement was unhurried. Without looking, I knew there was no one there. For now.
