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He picked a singular peanut up gingerly and placed it on his tongue, crushing it on the roof of his mouth and moving it from side to side to extract the small amount of oil.Oh, that’s good.Oil. Salt.He’d never known how much pleasure could be contained in one peanut.
“What did you get?” Noelle asked.
“Peanuts,” he answered. “What about you?”
She plucked something from her tray and held it up. “A chocolate-covered strawberry.” She glanced down. “On a bed of artificial rose petals.”
“Romantic.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she murmured, and if she’d attempted to add some levity to her tone, she’d failed.
He’d scooped up the peanuts and begun counting them but now paused. “Yesterday you were given peaches, and then ... you ...” He paused, and she nodded.Thank God.He hadn’t wanted to say that out loud. “Is there a connection between these deliveries and what was done to you?”
“Like what?”
He couldn’t think of anything that made sense. “I don’t know,” he said as he continued to try to understand the situation they were in based on the new information.
“Did the man who ... do you think he’s the one who took us?” he asked her after a moment.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I don’t think so. He wasn’t very ... he wasn’t strong.”
“How do you think he knew about you, then? About us? Where did herentyou?”
She met his eyes. “A marketplace where you can buy and sell ... people. I ... I don’t know.”
Yes, he’d had the same dark suspicion. He’d even come up with the same word—marketplace. “Okay, yes, I agree. So then maybe these are ... gifts ... and are from the people who rent ... us?”
“Gifts?” she asked and then shrugged. “It’s possible.”
“Why, though? I don’t think wooing is necessary. We’re sort of a sure thing.”
“Not funny.”
“I wasn’t trying to be.”
She stared morosely down at her strawberry for a moment before using her fingernail to score the middle and then pull it apart. She reached through the bars, giving him half. “It doesn’t matter. Rejecting this food won’t get us anywhere. We need it.”
He took the strawberry and set it on his tray, quickly counting the peanuts and handing her half plus one on account of the one he’d already eaten.
They ate in silence, allowing the other to savor the food, especially the chocolate, which he continued to suck from his teeth long after it was gone. He knew she was as aware as him that it would be the only small pleasure they’d receive that day.
When they were done, they pushed their trays back in the dumbwaiters without being directed to, and the doors slid shut, the internal cart lifting to some unknown location above.
They sat there in silence for several minutes before she picked up the conversation they’d been having before their food arrived. “We’re being sold. But I keep coming back to ... why us? Why us in particular? Our connection ... it still ... it has to mean something.”
He couldn’t answer that. But like her, his mind kept returning to the same question. And if he could figure out what, maybe they would be able to appeal in some way to whoever was keeping them captive.
It wasn’t random. They’d been taken from two separate locations. It must be someone who knew them both, but he couldn’t fathom who. Maybe it was simply some sicko who’d followed the court case and had developed some strange fascination with them or their families or who knew what aspect of the case.
It had to be an operation, though. This wasn’t some singular deranged madman. There were at least a few more people involved, one being the lackey who’d escorted Noelle to the room upstairs. The man who’d threatened to take his fingers and appeared excited at the possibility. Another being the man who’d rented her. If they were being “rented,” then they were being advertised. On some black market, like she’d said. But where? He had no comprehension of that kind of thing.
He couldn’t even fathom the depth of evil he was pondering.
The kind of evil they were living.
“I think there were cameras up there,” she said after a few minutes. “I saw this tiny red light on the upper portion of the wall near the ceiling. I focused on it.”
“Cameras,” he repeated. “People watching as this man—”
