Pretty Girls Dancing(52)

She’d made a point of studying her prison while she stretched before dancing. There were no wires to be seen. No telltale red lights that suggested a hidden camera. And why would he bother? The chain attaching her wrist to the metal barre was inescapable.

Breath hitching at the thought, she carefully lowered herself to all fours, running her fingers over the floorboards. If he had some way to watch her here without the computer turned on, he’d have punished her again for her discovery a few nights ago. But he hadn’t. Which meant he didn’t know.

She found the rough edge of the board she’d pried up before and hesitated. It hadn’t just been fear of her captor that had her rolling the papers up and jamming them back into their hiding place that first night. Whitney hadn’t wanted to read more.

My name is Kelsey Willard.

The flesh on her arms rose. She wasn’t the first the freak had taken. The knowledge had hammered inside her brain in the days since. Had twisted her guts into knots. It would be easier if it didn’t make a terrible sort of sense. The clothes she was forced to wear that were clearly not new. The routine she was expected to keep. The security of her imprisonment. Even the hated rules she had to recite every evening before he left her. All spoke of planning.

He’d done this before. And maybe Kelsey Willard hadn’t been the first. A shudder worked through her. Had he killed them? Why else had Kelsey expected to die? Had she tried to escape? There might be answers beneath Whitney’s fingertips. The question was whether she was strong enough to accept them.

Did Whitney want to know more? The dread curling through her stomach was its own answer. It was hard enough to try to remain hopeful that the freak was lying about her family’s death. Worse now that she’d found something that seemed to verify her worst fears about him and his intentions. She didn’t know if she was strong enough to deal with more bad news.

If someone’s reading this, I’m probably dead.

Would knowing be worse than uncertainty? She already knew the answer to that. It had driven her from the bed, finally. Maybe Kelsey hadn’t died at all. Maybe she’d escaped this prison. And the only way Whitney was going to be sure was if she read the rest of the pages beneath the floorboard.

The breath she drew in then sliced through her lungs. Before she could second-guess herself again, she applied the screw to the floorboard. Levered it out of place and reached inside for the tightly rolled pages. Drew them out.

She moved toward the window. The tiny glow around the curtain provided the only light. Her hands were shaking so much, it was difficult to unroll the pages. And then it seemed to take longer than it should to flatten them against the wall. Reposition them an inch at a time until a slant of light made it possible to read what was on them.

I was on my bike the day he took me. At least, I guess the monster keeping me here is the driver of the black van that was following me. By the time I realized he’d been behind me for a while, he was trying to hit me. He knocked me off my bike, and the next thing I knew, I woke up in this dungeon.

It was laborious reading. Every few words Whitney had to slide the pages to a new spot into the light. She paused now, though, frozen in place. A black van. Was that the vehicle that had been at the park? That had been the moment when she’d realized something was horribly wrong. When she’d made out the hulking shape at the rear of the park. A van. Everything happened so fast after that. She hadn’t noticed a color, but it had to have been a dark one to blend in with the shadows.

Something inside her howled at her to stop. To put the pages away and forget she’d ever found them. This wasn’t helping. Reliving someone else’s pain didn’t make hers easier to bear.

Knowing there had been a girl before her—who might be dead now—didn’t help, either.

But something made her go on. Even after a cloud must have shifted over the moon, blocking the tiny ray of light that poked through the curtain for long minutes. Her mom sometimes said she was as obstinate as a mule. Maybe that was the reason she didn’t move away from the wall, even when everything inside her head told her she should.

He told me my family was dead. Killed by a home intruder who had broken in to rob the place and found them home. I wanted to die then, too. What’s the point of surviving this place—him—if I have no one to go home to? Mom and Janie . . . my little sister. She needs me. She really does. She has a problem, and I can help her best. She listens to me, and sometimes I can help her with the fear that keeps the words locked up inside her. Hearing that was worse than anything else. Even the beatings. Oh, God, the beatings. Sometimes he’d whip me so bad, I thought I was dying, too.

And other times I’d break one of his damn rules just so he’d hurt me again. If my family was dead, shouldn’t I be in pain, too?

Whitney pressed the back of one hand to muffle the sob on her lips. Kelsey Willard’s family had died, too? No. There was no way it could have happened to them both. A tremulous ribbon of hope unfurled within her. Eagerly she repositioned the paper, squinting to see more.

He could be lying. That’s the only thing that keeps me going. Maybe he thought I’d be easier to control if I thought I had no one but him. And if he’d lie about that, what else is he lying about? It’s been a long time now since I was taken. Maybe over a year. I’ve decided I’m not going to give in. I’m not going to let him win. He can control everything about me except my mind. The way to beat him is to let him think he’s broken me, so I’m letting him think that.