Slow Agony (Assassins, #2)(53)

He turned away from me. “Doll, you have no idea what this man did to me. And now I have to face him? Fight him? I don’t know if I can.”

“Then let’s call the twins.”

He sank down on the couch and buried his face in his hands. “No. No, I’m not doing that.”

I sat down next to him. Gently, I patted him on the back. I tried to think. In order to know whether or not I was pregnant, I needed to get a pregnancy test, which meant going to a store. Griffin wasn’t letting us out of the basement, let alone the house. Should I convince him to let us do that? Or would we all be killed, like Marcel had threatened?

There was the soft sound of a throat clearing.

Both Griffin and I looked up to see Beverly in the doorway.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I shouldn’t be eavesdropping, but your voices woke me up, and...”

“Dammit, Ma,” said Griffin. “I don’t want you to worry.”

“Griffin James, I’ve been trapped in my own basement for the past week and a half. I’ve used all my personal days and there’s no end in sight, is there? You honestly think I’m not worried?”

He looked down at his hands.

“I don’t know who this Marcel person is,” said Beverly, “but I do know that right now he’s controlling us. He’s done that with fear. I was ready to do whatever he said because I thought he’d hurt Christa, but it turned out that he didn’t even have her. Now he’s threatened all of us, but we have no reason to think he’ll actually hurt anyone.”

“Sure we do,” he said. “He’s hurt people before.”

“I think you need to call his bluff,” she said. “If he were really outside this house, and he wanted to hurt us, don’t you think he could have done it already? He’s had a week and a half. He could have found a way in. He hasn’t.”

“That doesn’t mean he won’t, though,” Griffin said.

“You know,” I said, “he hasn’t been very truthful with us, has he? He asked you to show up at that rendezvous, and he didn’t show. He lied about Christa. Maybe your mother’s right.”

“No,” he said. “I can’t take the chance.”

“We’re running out of food,” said Beverly. “We need to eat. We need more toothpaste. Your sister needs tampons.”

Griffin made a face.

“And,” she continued, “it seems like Leigh needs a pregnancy test.”

“You heard that too,” said Griffin.

I looked away in embarrassment.

“I heard some things,” she said. “Most of it wasn’t my business, I don’t suppose. Of course, it’s hard for a mother to believe that anything involving her child isn’t her business, no matter how old her baby is.” She put a hand to Griffin’s cheek.

“Oh, come on, Ma.”

“Look at me, both of you,” she said.

I raised my gaze. I was thankful to see that she didn’t look angry or disgusted with me. Her expression was kind.

“It doesn’t matter when it happens, the idea of having a baby is always scary, even if no one is trying to kill you.”

I couldn’t help but smile.

“I’m not trying to oversimplify things here, but there’s no time when you’ll ever be really ready for it. There will always be something that makes it seem like a bad idea. But if it’s happening, then... well, I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t want a grandchild.”

I covered my hand with my mouth.

Beverly reached over and rubbed my shoulder. “We need to go to a store, Griffin. We need to get out of this house.”

He stood up. “We can’t.”

“You’d rather we starved to death in here?”

“Don’t be dramatic,” he said.

“I’m not,” she said. “If we don’t get food, we will have nothing to eat.”

He sighed. “Okay, look. We’ll do it in steps. Leigh and I will go out tomorrow and go to the store. You and Christa can walk around upstairs. If nothing bad happens, then we’ll all try leaving. Is that okay?”

Beverly nodded slowly. “Your sister’s not going to be completely pleased, but I’m willing to try that.”

He turned to me. “You think this is a good idea?”

“I think we have to do something,” I said. “I don’t think we can hide here forever.”

*

The back of the car was full of groceries, and we were driving back to Griffin’s family’s house.

“So, how long does the test thing take to work?” Griffin asked from behind the wheel.

“Three or four minutes,” I said.

“Oh, wow, it’s that fast.”

“Yeah.” I grinned at him. “What did you think?”

“I never thought about it at all,” he said.

“You’ve seen people take pregnancy tests on movies or on TV.”

“I don’t watch those kinds of movies,” he said.

I laughed. His cluelessness was adorable.

“So, if you were pregnant,” he said, “and assuming we don’t die, then we’d be doing this in Morgantown while we’re both going to school?”