Prisoner (Criminals & Captives #1)(42)

Chapter Twenty-Three




Abigail


I follow Grayson’s footsteps as he goes into some other part of the house. He’s leaving me alone with this other man. I should be thinking about escape, but it turned out so badly last time…

There’s a small knock, and then the light rumble of heavy glass over wood.

“Orange juice in front of you,” the stranger says.

I ignore him. I want Grayson back, perverse as that sounds.

“You should drink. You can’t think straight when you’re dehydrated.”

“Why should I trust you?” I demand. “I don’t know you.”

I can almost hear his shrug. “You don’t want to keep up your energy? To fight at a moment’s notice?” He has a deep voice. A nice voice.

“Is that what you think I should do? Fight you? Fight Grayson?”

He doesn’t answer, and I get the feeling he isn’t so comfortable with this.

“But you’re not going to help me.” The words come out bitterly. Grayson wouldn’t have brought me here if he didn’t trust this man.

“I’m not going to help you, no,” he says.

I wonder how he and Grayson met. I wonder what happened to make this man loyal to Grayson, and make Grayson trust him completely.

“How long have you known him?” I feel like a supplicant at his secret stash of answers. But I can’t help going to him, empty bowl in hand. Whatever truths he might give me about Grayson are food for survival, and I’m starving here—dying.

There’s silence, and I think he might not answer. But then he does, with the weight of reluctance in his voice. “A long time.” I feel each word drawn out of him, heavy with meaning. “Since we were children.”

“Did you go to the same school?”

“No,” he says simply.

“You were neighbors or something?”

“No,” he says softly, thoughtfully. “We…wound up together, that’s all.”

The darkness in his tone grips my belly with an icy hand, because I’m suddenly thinking about the rat. The basement. We wound up together. I assumed the rat story was a lie, created to get a message out. Grayson laughed and let me think it was a lie. Wasn’t it?

The sound of pipes stretching in the walls tells me Grayson is finishing his shower. I need more, in whatever minutes I have before Grayson returns.

“I get it.” I set my hands flat on the table so he can’t see them tremble. “The basement.”

The sound of a quick inhale fills the quiet. “He told you?”

I stiffen. It’s true, then? He didn’t make it all up? “Of course,” I say in as natural a tone as I can manage through the shock. “He told me.” Which is true. In a way.

He pushes the glass toward me. I can feel it cold against my knuckle. My heart pounds as I think through his vignette in this new light. Kept in a basement. They broke my arm.

“Just tell me one thing,” I say softly. “How long? You won’t help me. Fine. Just tell me that.”

“If Grayson didn’t feel like telling you that…”

“Oh, come on,” I say, trying to think what might sway this strange honor-bound friend of Grayson’s. “He told me the whole thing. Even the rat.”

I wait, straining to know so much more, to know everything. But I can’t ask too much. How long; that’s an easy question.

“Please,” I say. “I don’t want to hate him.”

I regret the words as soon as they’re out of my mouth—they feel too true, and I shouldn’t feel bad for him. Being trapped in a basement as a kid doesn’t give him the right to kill people and take people captive.

After a long silence where I think he won’t even answer me, he says, “Six years.”

My heart stops and then begins thudding wildly. Six days, I wouldn’t have been shocked. Six weeks would have made sense. There would have been time for him to go missing, time to have those cartons printed and distributed to schools, for other children, safer children to wonder over at lunchtime.

Six months…well, that hurt to think about.

I can’t even fathom six years. In a basement for six years. Captive for six years. No TV. No games.

The stranger’s laugh is rusty. “I’ve shocked you. And now I think…I think you let me believe you knew more than you did. Smart. Know your captor.”

“Is that what Grayson is?” I ask, and I know I’ve gone too far.

The air shifts. I feel the man moving away from me. “You’ll have to ask him,” he says.

Then he’s gone. But there isn’t time to contemplate an escape, because just as quickly, the kitchen is filled with familiar footsteps. I guess I already took the stranger’s advice, because I do know my captor. And even though I’m blindfolded, I know it’s him in front of me.





Chapter Twenty-Four




Grayson


Nate doesn’t quite meet my eyes when I pass him. He’s just outside the kitchen, checking his phone, well in my line of sight but removed. Separate. As if an extra four feet can keep him apart from what I’m doing to Abby in here. The way he’s acting, he must have said something about me, something I won’t like. But I’m not worried about it. We’d never move against each other. We’d kill for each other. We already have.