Rules of Survival(68)

“A letter?” His body went rigid in the chair. “What else did it say?”

“Not sure, to be honest. I only had the chance to skim bits and pieces before I lost it. I saw your name and Patrick’s—and something about her last job going badly and that someone had gotten hurt. Also, something about…”

About what? There was more. What was it? I was so damn tired all of a sudden.

“Something about information… Information that needed to get to the right people. Do you have any idea what that might mean? Is it possible she had information to prove she didn’t commit the murder?”

I glanced around the room, letting go of another yawn. On the counter by the sink was something silver and blue. A ring. I dug deep into my pocket and pulled out the ring I’d taken from Mom’s safe-deposit box. It was almost identical.

Mick caught me looking and stood. He crossed the room and grabbed the ring, setting it down on the table in front of me. It was a large blue gem set in a thick silver band with the year etched into either side. “My class ring.”

I set hers down next to it. “It’s the same as Mom’s.”

Mick sank back into his chair with a smile. “That’s because we went to school together.”

Another part of Mom’s past I hadn’t known about. But that wasn’t what bugged me. What bugged me was how familiar the ring looked. It was the same feeling I got when I’d first seen Mom’s at the bank. “I’ve seen this before.”

“Of course you did,” Mick said. He tapped the table. Both rings wobbled and clacked. “You just said it’s the same as Melissa’s.”

“No,” I said. I shook my head and the room swam a little. “Somewhere else…”

There was a loud clink bedside me as Shaun set his glass down and took my hand. He stood, wobbling just a bit, before trying—and failing—to pull me up. “Kayla…”

I blinked. That was it. Just a flutter of my eyelids. When I looked at Shaun again, he was on the floor. Even more disturbing than that was that I was there with him and couldn’t remember falling. I nudged him with my knee. “Shaun?”

Shit. The milk. He’d put something in the milk. On the other side of the table, Mick’s chair scraped against the tile. There were footsteps, and a moment later, a dark figure loomed above me. I looked up and everything was kind of watery. In and out. Like opening your eyes after a long night of NyQuil-induced sleep. When it cleared, there was Mick’s face. Larger than life and right in front of mine.

That’s when I remembered where I’d seen the ring. The hooded man in the window.

Bengali wasn’t Jaffe. It was Mick.

His laughed echoed in my head. “You probably should have read the entire letter…”





Chapter Twenty-Two


Dripping water. It was the only thing I heard.

Drip-drip-drip-drip-drip.

At first it was comforting. Noise to banish the silence and make the dark a little less scary—but after a few minutes, I wanted to scream. The constant, methodical sound was like an annoying nature CD on skip. I almost would have preferred the quiet.

Almost.

I tried to move my arms and, of course, failed. I did manage to flex my fingers around and figured out my wrists—and Shaun’s—were wrapped with about two inches of smooth surface. Duct tape.

I shouldered him. “Shaun?”

No answer. Not so much as a twitch. He had drunk more of the milk than me.

I squinted in the darkness but couldn’t make out anything other than a large, nondescript shape on the other side of the room. We were in some kind of basement. At least, that’s what it smelled like. There was dampness in the air and the strong stench of mothballs and mildew that made my nose itch and my eyes water.

My head was fuzzy but starting to clear. Mick. My dad. He’d done this. Drugged us. How the hell had I been so stupid? I’d waltzed into his house, plopped myself down at the table, and totally disregarded the rules. Again.

I ticked them off, one at a time, in my head. It was completely pointless now, but they made me feel better. Never let your guard down. Don’t enter any place that you can be trapped. Don’t trust anyone… And why had I blown them off? Because he was my dad?

Mom should have warned me that applied to relatives.

Really though, I should have known. There was a reason she wasn’t with him. And I should have known if he was a good guy, she would have told me more about him. She’d been running all this time, and I was ready to bet all ten of my toes that it was him she had been afraid of—not Bengali. The letter had warned me. I just hadn’t put the fragments together correctly.

“Kayla…?”

“Shaun?” I twisted toward him. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Hazy, but fine. Are you?”

I nodded, fidgeting with the tape. It didn’t budge. “I think so.”

Beside me, he wiggled and squirmed. There were several moments of cursing and some grunting before he said, “I think we might be f*cked.”

I brought my legs up close to my body and tried to move them apart. Nothing. They were tied, too. Stretching, I tried to reach the tape with my fingernail, but the way he had us bound, it wouldn’t work.

“Shit,” I swore. “I can’t reach, but I think if we move together, we can stand. Maybe we can find a way out.”