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“I’m getting bored,” Micah says to me. “You break so easily, I haven’t been able to play with you in days. I don’t deal well with boredom. So we’re going to play a little game. It’s called Who’s Going to Die Today?” His eyes are glowing with unholy glee.
“Micah. You’re angry at me, not them,” I say, keeping my voice very steady and calm.
“I can kill your best friend, Heather, right here and now, or I can kill Astrid. You get to pick.”
Shock jolts me. He couldn’t have just said that, but he did.
He promised he wouldn’t hurt Astrid and the girls.
I’m a fucking idiot for believing the promise of a sadistic lunatic.
Heather stumbles back with a shriek and almost falls, and he catches her by the arm. He holds her with an iron grip as she tries to yank her arm from his grasp. “You’re lying!” she whimpers, her eyes huge with fright. “You wouldn’t kill me, you wouldn’t!”
“No!” Julie screams.
“You promised! You said you wouldn’t hurt us!” Robin cries out at the same time.
Darlie just goes stiff with horror. Her skinny body shakes violently, and tears start pouring from her eyes, but she doesn’t make a sound. Astrid steps in front of her girls, her eyes blazing.
“I told you the rules,” Micah says, flicking a bored look at the woman he’s threatening to murder in front of her children. “And you disobeyed, Astrid. You smuggled in a cell phone and tried to make a call.”
Color drains from Astrid’s face. “That…that was months ago,” she whispers. “I didn’t even know you knew. I never tried again.”
“Doesn’t matter. You broke my rules. You suffer the penalty.”
“Ah,” I say, nodding and keeping my voice calm even though my heart’s hammering against my ribcage in panic. “I get it now. You let me hang out with Astrid and her daughters for a while so that I’d get to know them a little bit and it would be that much harder for me to make the choice, right?”
“What? You’re going to choose me!” Heather screams. “I’m your best friend. I’m only here because of you. Choose me! You don’t even know these people!”
I don’t even spare her a glance. I just stare straight at Micah, keeping my face blank as I consider my next move. This is it. It ends today. We’re going to have to gang up on him, and some or all of us will die.
Goodbye, Joshua.
“I must say, your poker face is superb.” He smiles at me. “Or maybe you don’t care about any of these annoying little bitches. Maybe my brother and I found you so appealing because like calls to like.”
“Please, don’t flatter yourself.” A surprising calm descends on me, and I start to understand Joshua a little better. So this is how he feels when everything’s crashing down around him. Cool as ice. “And it’s an easy decision, given that Heather has been working with you all along.”
Micah raises his eyebrows in polite inquiry.
“No, I haven’t!” Heather whines. “That’s crazy.”
I rake her with a scornful look. “I’ve had a lot of time to think since I came here. Nothing but time. I’m actually embarrassed it took me this long to figure it out. Micah recruited you to help him throughout this whole scheme. From the very beginning, back in New York. You only made friends with me because he asked you to. That’s why you kept trying to push me to make a pass at Joshua. It was like you were freaking obsessed with it.”
“You were the one who was obsessed! I was trying to help you! I was being a friend!” Heather’s face goes bright red.
I ignore her. “It really didn’t fit your personality. You were entertaining and all, but you were totally self-absorbed and vain. You didn’t give a damn about what I did with my life other than that. You know, I should have figured out that you were working with Micah when he came to pick me up and had you tied up in the van. I was a little foggy at the time, but I figured it out eventually. There would be absolutely no reason for him to bring you. It would increase his risk of getting caught, transporting someone he’d kidnapped all that distance. You were his partner, not his prisoner. And when I woke up here, actually, you looked pretty damn healthy. Not a mark on you. You looked way too good for someone who supposedly was abused by a psychopath for the last six months.”
“No!” Heather howls. “You’re freaking crazy! None of that’s true! You can’t let him kill me, Tamara, you can’t!” She looks at Micah, who is watching us with interest.
Astrid’s girls are huddled behind her, sobbing.
I shift where I’m standing, and wince. It’s all right. All my pain will be over soon.
“It explains a lot of things. Like why you kept trying to interrogate me about how Joshua would find us, and how when I tried to tell you to be quiet, you yelled louder. You’re a decent actress, Heather, but you’d never win an Oscar.”
“But he beat me up!” she snivels. “He Tasered me! You’ve seen what he did to me!”
Astrid and her daughters stare with horrified fascination. A gentle smile is curling Micah’s mouth. He’s enjoying this.
