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“Okay.”
She pulled in a breath and let it out slowly. “My mom ... she was a really great listener. She had this ability to read between the lines.” That slight eye flare again, there and gone, and followed by a casual shrug. “And then after she listened, reallylistened, she gave great advice. She had this way of sprinkling just the right words in to get her point across in the simplest way. It was like music, the way she did that. Her message always felt so perfectly strung together.” She looked away on a sigh as though picturing her mom. The skin on the back of Evan’s neck tingled. What she was saying ... it sounded reminiscent, but there was something else mixed in there. Was she sending him a message? Saying something secretive under the guise of sharing memories of her mother? “I miss her,” Noelle said. “I still talk to her in my head. These private conversations.” She let out a small embarrassed laugh. “I guess that’s hard to understand.”
She read between the lines ... sprinkling just the right words in ... like music ... perfectly strung together.
Evan stilled, understanding dawning.
The song. He’d thought she had forgotten words and was inserting the wrong ones to make up for what she didn’t remember. But no. She’d been inserting words for him to pick out and string together. A secret way of speaking that would be just between them. Because she believed, as did he, that they were being watched and listened to. “No,” he said, meeting her eyes. “I do understand. Perfectly.”
Their gazes held, his head tilted so he could see her clearly out of his one good eye. “I’m so glad,” she said, her voice slightly choked and a tempered excitement shining in her eyes.
He searched his mind to recall the words that had stood out as wrong to him, the ones he’d chuckled at as she’d sung. He couldn’t remember them now because he really hadn’t paid much attention. Songs became such background noise. It was why he’d started singing when she’d asked him to create noise. The mind naturally drifted into its own thoughts, in essence tuning out the specific words of the music.She was fucking brilliant, and despite his aching body, he felt momentarily elated. And he suddenly remembered one word he’d picked out as she’d murmured the song he knew well. It was another one his own mother had once hummed to him as he fell into dreams. Aplan. Noelle had put the wordplaninto the song.
She’d been telling him they needed to come up with a plan.
He had no idea what remote options they might have, but he did understand that if they were going to implement anything at all, they needed to be able to strategize discreetly.
And though he had no access to pain medication or soothing salve, for the moment at least, his discomfort faded to the background as his thoughts took flight.
CHAPTER NINE
It’d been a week since the Collector had logged on and checked on the contestants. The boy. The girl. Evan. Noelle. He’d had a work commitment that couldn’t be delayed and, because of it, had been away from the computer in his home office where he watched the game. He felt a small buzz of excitement but tamped it down. He never allowed his emotions to control him. He’d had many long years of practice, and he used it still. He’d found that, in all matters, both consequential and not, a much cooler head prevailed when one could remove their own feelings and sympathies. Not everyone could master the ability, but it came naturally to him. It always had.
He sat down, turning on the monitor and going through the many steps necessary to join them where they were, locked in a building, in some room that had been prepared just for them. From what he understood, the locations were chosen months in advance and set up not only for the purposes of the game but in such a way that if it became necessary to disassemble them, it could be done in record time. In this business, he supposed, all sorts of contingency plans were necessary. The point of the game was thatanythingmight happen. The more unlikely, the better, as that’s where players stood to make the most money.
The Collector steepled his fingers, bringing them to his chin as the live feed spread across the screen. They lay in their cages, arms stretched toward each other, two fingers linked as they—he leaned in and turnedup the volume slightly. Ah, they were singing those same children’s songs they sang to give the other privacy. Silly, stupid jingles that they half murmured sometimes. Some of them he recognized; some of them he did not. It was a comfort for them, he supposed. A coping mechanism. They’d found something else to share. Always helpful in the case of dwindling optimism. How many times had they been rented since he’d been away, he wondered. He regretted that he hadn’t been there to take note of the details.
When Noelle ceased singing, Evan picked up where she’d left off. The boy looked better. His swelling was down, and both his eyes were open, though his bruises had darkened, much of his face mottled in deep red and dark purple.
The Collector turned the volume down again, lightly tapping his fingertips together. He wondered if they realized that the stakes of the game were bound to increase. This was the first time the Collector had played, but he knew very well the gamers would become bored if the contestants were allowed to go on enduring rapes and beatings indefinitely just to save some fingers or an ear ... an eyeball maybe.
He’d be sure to listen in on a few more chats and see if he could glean more specifics about where this might go. But he was pretty sure he already had an idea. They’d made a vow toleave here whole, and so the creators would strive to break them of that notion. Silly of them to say that out loud, really. They’d freely doled out ammunition, and they didn’t even realize it. Pity. It’d make things less interesting, and he’d had high hopes that these two would be interesting indeed.
He paused, watching them, noting their body language, assessing their mental states, listening to her softly murmured singing voice. She had a lovely singing voice, and surprisingly, his wasn’t half bad either. At least not when it came to nursery rhymes. And the way they concentrated so intently as the other person sang ...
His brow dipped, and he turned up the volume, leaning in closer to ascertain if he was right about what he thought he’d just heard.
“Twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I wonder what fit bars.”
They sounded like two little kids in their playpen babbling. It reminded the Collector of the secret language of twins. He felt a small pang in his chest but ignored it, leaning forward and listening to a few more bars. No, theyweren’tmerely singing. He let out a small incredulous laugh. They were speaking in code, inserting words into the songs to form messages. She’d lowered the volume of the parts she’d changed, barely enunciating the words, and moved hurriedly through them, both to signal to Evan what to pay attention to and to make it more difficult for anyone listening to be able to note what she’d said. Even if they did hear it, it would be easy to assume she simply didn’t know all the words to that particular song and was throwing anything in there, as people often did with forgotten lyrics.
Yes, similar to twin language, indeed. No wonder he’d caught on.
He laughed again, delighted and intrigued. People rarely caught him off guard, but these two had. They’d been doing this for at least the entire time he’d been away, if not before. And even he, who considered himself a master at seeing things others did not, hadn’t noticed the subterfuge, simple as it was. But that’s why it worked. No one suspected it.Clever.“Well, color me impressed,” he murmured.
How much had they already conveyed in secret that none of the viewers had realized? What had they already said? How many had turned the volume down as they began singing so as not to get annoying preschool tunes stuck in their heads? Or because it was plain boring? He wished there were a way to rewind the video, but of course, there was not. Not for him, a mere player, anyway. It was a live feed, after all.
His gaze hooked on Noelle. She’d come up with it; he knew she had. He’d had this vague notion that she was mixing up the lyrics to whatever song she was singing the week before, not because he knew all the lyrics to that song but because of Evan’s bemused reaction as she sang. He wondered how long it had taken her to clue him in. Well, either way, they were clued in now. Secret languages moved quicklyonce both people understood the rules. Secret languages morphed and quickened and became more and more difficult for outsiders to understand. Smart. Very, very smart. Songs. A well-known language that could be easily and discreetly altered if the listener was paying attention.
His gaze stopped on Noelle once more, the outline of an idea unfolding. It was a long shot. A very long shot, indeed. But he knew now that her mind operated the same way his did. He knew now what a worthy contestant she actually was.
And the boy. Well, he didn’t think she would leave the boy unless she had to. Like secret languages, bonds formed extremely quickly, as well, if they were nurtured even the barest bit. He knew that personally. Regardless of his thoughts on the boy, however, it would require a team effort to make this work. And yet, even still, there was so much room for error, so much that might fail or go wrong.
And perhaps that was what made the choice for him.
Long shots were his specialty; he was here, after all. He logged on to another screen and spent an exorbitant amount of money for what he wanted. Then the Collector logged off, heading to his bedroom, where he opened his closet and began to pack another suitcase after he’d just unpacked the one he’d taken on his business trip. He packed a variety of items for different types of weather, since this time he had no idea where his destination would be.
CHAPTER TEN
