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Carefully, I flip it over. A small picture of a young woman, probably my age or a little bit older, is taped to the bottom of this jar. She’s smiling intimately at the person taking the photo. Below that is a name—Delilah Portwood.
A feeling of dread comes over me, and my hands start to get slippery with sweat.
This can’t mean what I think it means. It would have been so much easier if there’d been an actual human hidden away in here, waiting for someone to rescue them.
I put the jar back on the shelf and pick up another. And another.
And another.
I’ve picked up all the jars that I can reach, and on the bottoms of each one. I place the last one back on the shelf and take a deep breath.
I have to get out of here.
Making sure there isn’t a trace of me in this room, I turn around to leave, but I scream when I see Judas and Micah standing in the doorway.
Chapter 24
MICAH
“What are you doing, little doe?”I ask as I take a step towards her.
She swallows audibly, and those big brown eyes fill with tears. She opens her mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.
“Well?”
Raine clears her throat and says, “Are you going to kill me, too? Put my heart in here with the others?”
I reach out and try to run my hand over her arm to comfort her, but she flinches away from my touch. My face stays passive; she doesn’t need to know how much that hurt me.
“Come downstairs and have breakfast, Raine,” I say harshly as I yank the keys out of her grip. She squeaks in surprise and practically flies out of the room. Dad and I follow behind her down the hall, but we keep a distance.
“How the hell did she get the keys, Dad?” I ask through gritted teeth, handing him the carabiner.
He takes it and shoves the keys into his back pocket. “How the fuck should I know? It’s not like I told her where they were. She must have gone snooping around.”
When we get to the kitchen, Raine sits at the breakfast counter and hugs herself. She’s not crying, but her eyes are watery, and her face is pale.
She really thinks we’re going to kill her.
Dad fixes our plates, and we eat in silence.
Well, Dad and I do. Raine just moves the food around on her plate.
When we’re done, we go into the living room and sit. Raine chooses an armchair by the floor-to-ceiling windows, right in the sun—the first sunny day we’ve had in weeks. She closes her eyes and curls into the chair.
It’s quiet for so long that I almost change my mind about talking to her, but then Dad breaks the silence.
“You must have questions, sweetheart,” he says.
She looks at us with blank eyes and chuckles, but the sound is emotionless. “Yeah.”
“So let’s hear it, then. What do you want to know?”
The t-shirt she’s wearing rides up as she shifts in the chair, revealing the smooth plane of her stomach before she pulls it back down again. All I want is to be balls deep inside her, but she’s terrified of Dad and me right now, so I doubt she’ll let me touch her.
Maybe I won’t give her a choice.
“Who were those people in the pictures?” she asks quietly.
