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“You looked great up at the cabin,” she went on. “Couldn’t help but notice, even though you were trying to kill me. You looked pretty fine the day you killed my father, too. Killing seems to agree with you. But you look like crap. You must have lost twenty-five pounds.”
“I said,shut up!” Zoe’s voice was cracking around the edges as she jerked Lily upright, making her sore shoulder joint blaze.
“You ought to get that jaundice checked out,” Lily barged on. “Liver function issues really trash your complexion.”
“Shut…up!” Whack. Zoe whacked Lily across the face, slamming her into the wall, from whence she bounced down to the floor. Lily huddled there, her hand pressed against her throbbing face.
Zoe bent at the waist, hands braced on her thighs and stared at Lily. She panted, jaw sagging. A muscle twitched prominently in her bony jaw. Everything showed in her face; veins, tendons, bones, all in sharp relief, like a skull that had been dipped in yellow wax.
Zoe squeezed her eyes shut, eyelids twitching. Veins pulsed visibly in her temples. She dug into the pocket of her cargo pants, and yanked out a small envelope. She peeled the sleeve of her shirt back with her teeth. Small sheets of paper covered with red dots fluttered to the ground. A dot was already stuck to her wrist. As Lily watched, she peeled the last dot off one card, and stuck it in the crook of her elbow.
She sagged back against the wall, breathing hard. Then she reached down, keeping narrowed eyes on Lily, and scooped up the rest of the fallen papers. She tucked them back into the envelope.
Her breathing was slower, veins no longer popping on her forehead. Her crisis was passing. So Zoe was some kind of a junkie. How very unsurprising. “What the hell is that stuff?” Lily asked.
Zoe’s purplish lips stretched in a sneer. “Mama’s little helper.”
“Would you give me one?” she blurted, for no reason she could fathom. “I could use some help.”
Zoe let out a short, contemptuous laugh. “One dose of this stuff would kill you. You’d die of convulsions on the spot.”
“But it doesn’t hurt you?” she asked.
“I’m different,” Zoe said loftily. “We’re a different order of beings. You wouldn’t understand. How profoundly we’ve been changed.”
“Deformed.” The words popped out.
Oof,Zoe’s boot connected with her belly and jackknifed her into a moaning vee. “Mind your manners,” Zoe said. “Get up.”
Lily struggled up. Zoe jerked her arm, twisting until Lily squeaked and writhed into a pretzel shape to ease the pain, but there was no escape. The pain jangled on through every nerve.
She shuffled, dragging her feet until Zoe yanked open the Lily’s door and flung her inside. Slam went the door.Click, clunkwent the locks. Lily huddled, curled into an ball. She crawled to the wall, shook her hair down in a tangled veil, itchily aware of the camera’s constant regard. She touched the bottom of her bare foot. Peeled off the grubby piece of paper stuck to it. Stared at it, behind the veil of her hair.
One of Zoe’s drug patch papers. A full one. It held sixteen of the little red dots, four rows of four, and a protective sheet of plastic film on top. Lily held it concealed in the palm of her hand, palm down.
She had no clue what to do with it. At least she had a suicide tool, but that had never been an option in her mind. She’d always been so angry at her father for trying it. But things looked so different now.
She started to cry. In shock, that she’d scored even that tiny victory. Terror, at the thought of daring to use it to defy them. Grief for her father, fear for Bruno. Too many reasons to count.
She curled up, clutching her prize, and gave into the storm.
* * *
It wasan exercise in self control. The agonizing, sweat-popping kind, never a talent upon which he had particularly prided himself. The driver of the bronze BMW, who’d confided that his name was Julian, had pulled over after ten blocks or so, offered him a bag to put over his head, and told him to lie down in the backseat. Bruno stared at the bag dangling from the man’s hand. Black, lined, drawstring at the border. He’d as soon lie down into his own grave. After a few seconds, Julian just shrugged, pulled out his phone, held it up to his ear.
Oh, no, no, no. Bruno promised to be good. He put on the bag, and lay down on the seat. The new-car leather stink made him queasy. He was claustrophobic anyway, and not being able to see or breathe fresh air made him frantic. It would have been easier to bear if he’d been bound with rope, duct tape. But it was just fear that held him.
The car got on a highway. He tried to estimate the time, but anxiety skewed his perceptions. The best he could figure when the car got off the highway was more than one hour, less than two. Julian had tuned into Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, at high volume. The melody of the bouncy, shrill violins grated on his nerves like a car alarm.
After fifteen minutes, the car stopped, the window whirred down. Some muffled conversation, a shiver of cold air, and off they went again. The car moved at a sedate pace. It came to a stop. Doors, popping.
He was dragged out by more than one set of ungentle hands. Three people, from the sounds. Someone jerked his hands back, put the zip ties on, yanked them tight. Sounds echoed, hollow and booming. Indoors, but the air was still. Very cold. A big garage?
They gripped him from either side, dragging him off his feet, however hard he scrambled to keep his feet underneath him.
The first tract was a well sprung wooden floor, and then he was shoved into a smallish elevator. A sliding cage slammed shut. It was so small, one of his captors had to stand right in front of him. He caught a whiff of perfume. One was a woman.
The thing made a surprising amount of jerking and grinding as it went up. Antique. He was in an old building. It didn’t go far. One floor.
