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There was a tray on the shelf. A plastic wrapped ham sandwich, a banana, a bottle of water, a packaged square of brownie. A napkin, a wet-wipe, and a paper packet of Excedrin. So they planned to treat her drug hangover before they tore her limb from limb. How thoughtful.
There was a camera mounted high in a corner of the room. No trouble taken to conceal it. It stared stonily down at her. She looked back, tempted to say something defiant to it, but she decided not to give them the satisfaction. She wasn’t a circus animal, to entertain them.
Bastards. Washing her clothes, giving her a brownie, and headache medication? Twisted, sick bullshit. A proper dank, rat-infested, skeleton-strewn dungeon would be less offensive.
There was a small bathroom attached to the room. She stepped inside, took note of the camera there. So they wanted to watch her pee.
She took care of her business, and dressed. Her arm was bandaged, but still painful. The slash felt hot, and there were drops of old blood seeping through, and a halo of yellowish staining. Ugh. She peeked beneath. Huh. What do you know. Someone had stitched it.
Two possibilities. One, they’d decided to keep her alive just to torture her with fear and uncertainty. Two, she’d died and gone to hell. This was what she got, for all that bad attitude, all that mouthing off.
There wasn’t a lot of difference between the two scenarios, when all was said and done.
She stared at the tray of food. Hard to interpret whether her stomach was desperate for food, or repelled by it. It hardly mattered. Calories might help. And whether it was torture or hellfire that awaited her, it was unlikely that they’d go to all this trouble just to poison her.
She perched cross-legged on the cot, and devoured everything on the tray, including the Excedrin. She put the wrapping and the tray back on the shelf, and sat down on the cot again.
She tried to keep her mind blank. There was nothing constructive she could think about. Thinking about Bruno hurt too much. He belonged to that other world, that fantasy universe that might have been able to exist, if she’d rolled the right dice. But she hadn’t.
Tough shit. Here she was, here she’d stay. She stared at the wall, keeping her eyes open, flooded with light, as if it could overexpose her brain like camera film, wash it pale and blank. No thoughts, no feelings.
Time passed. The throb in her head eased down. Her inflamed arm felt hot. Her belly grumbled for more food. She couldn’t stop her teeth from chattering.
Dignity. Calm. Equanimity. This was probably it. She’d try not to snivel or whine. She’d had a good run. She’d bet money that she’d given them more trouble than they’d ever expected. It was the thing in her life so far that she was most proud of.
She thought of the drawing of her mother, and then of that sunset tinged view of forever with Bruno, and her heart caught, twisted—
Not good. Chilly and detached. Blank was better.
She didn’t have that long to wait. It was a half an hour or so before the door lock clicked and the door opened.
It was the fake nurse, in jeans and a Columbia sweatshirt, dark hair pulled back into a high, bouncing ponytail. Fresh-faced, wholesome. A girl from the varsity volleyball team. The furthest thing from a scheming kidnapper/killer that Lily could imagine.
She forced old air out of her lungs. Oxygen, for the brain cells. She repeated her mantra.Dignity. Calm. Equanimity.She waited for the other woman to speak first, leaning on the impulse to babble, to beg.
The bitch looked delighted with herself. Her dark eyes sparkled. She held up a steaming paper cup. “We thought you’d like some coffee,” she said. “Just how you like it. Dark roast, no sugar, real cream.”
Saliva practically fountained from her salivary glands. “How do you know how I take my coffee?” Her voice was a fuzzy croak.
“We know everything. Here, take it. It’ll make you feel better.”
Lily stared at the rising steam, trying to gauge how many notches of dignity, calm and equanimity she might lose by accepting. She concluded that any loss of points would be offset by the advantage of caffeine. She had to choke back the urge to thank that scheming fiend, just for a lousy cup of coffee. She drank it without looking at the woman, who was probably primed for a barrage of questions.
But Lily had already decided that there was no point in asking. They would tell her what this was about, or not. The less noise she made, the better. When the cup was empty, she placed it on the tray with the wrappings, and laced her fingers together.
The girl got impatient with the silence. “Come with me.”
Lily ran that hypothetical action through the dignity-calm-equanimity algorithm, but the woman let out an irritated sound before the results could crunch. “Come with me, or I will physically compel you,” she said. “I have black belts in eight martial arts disciplines.”
“Tell me where I’m going,” Lily said.
The woman’s ponytail bounced as she tossed her head. “King wants to talk to you,” she said. “What King wants, he gets.” Her blue eyes dilated almost to black when she spoke the name.
“So King is the name of the guy doing this to me?”
“Come with me, and find out,” the woman said. “If you don’t come willingly, you’ll still find out, but it’ll be more painful. As in dislocated joints, torn cartilages, snapped bones, missing teeth, broken noses, internal bleeding. Have I made myself clear?”
Data churned through the algorithm. Up she went, on her feet. The lure of information plus the avoidance of pain was a winning combination. The wooden floor was cold and smooth against her bare feet. Funny, how small and docile being barefoot made one feel. She supposed she should be glad they’d left her any clothes at all.
