Hidden Pictures(77)

And I let the sentence trail off, because the word I want to use is “crazy.”

I realize I need to stop talking, I am sharing my conclusions with the wrong people. Did I really expect the Maxwells to agree with me? To come clean and admit everything they’ve done wrong? I need to leave right now, I need to go find Detective Briggs, and I need to tell her everything.

“I should pack,” I tell them, stupidly.

And I stand up, like they’re just going to let me walk out of there.

“Ted,” Caroline says in a calm voice.

I’m halfway to the door when glass shatters against the side of my head. I fall forward, dropping my phone. Wetness runs down my face and neck. I reach up to stop the bleeding and my hand comes away red. I’m covered in Kendall-Jackson merlot.

Behind me, I can hear the Maxwells bickering.

“It’s in the kitchen.”

“I checked the kitchen.”

“The big drawer. Where I keep the stamps!”

On his way out of the den, Ted steps gingerly over my body, taking great pains not to step on me, even though he’s just smashed a bottle over my skull. He walks right past my smartphone, facedown on the carpet. There’s an emergency button on my home screen—a single-touch app that will ping the Maxwells’ address to an emergency call center. But I’m not close enough to reach it, and I’m too hurt to stand up. The most I can do is plant the toes of my sneakers and push off, inching across the floor on my belly.

“She’s crawling,” Caroline says. “Or trying to.”

“One second,” Ted calls back.

I reach for my phone and realize my depth perception is way off. It’s no longer inches away from me—suddenly it’s halfway down the hall, a distance the length of a football field. I can hear Caroline walking up behind me, I hear her shoes crunching shards of broken glass. I don’t recognize her anymore. She is no longer the kind caring mother who welcomed me into her home and encouraged me to believe in myself. She has turned into—something else. Her eyes are cold and calculating. She regards me like I’m a stain on the floor, a blemish that needs to be rubbed out.

“Caroline, please,” I tell her, but the words don’t come out right; my speech is all slurry. I raise my voice and try again but my lips won’t form the proper shapes. I sound like a toy that’s running out of battery.

“Shhhh,” she says, holding a finger to her lips. “We don’t want to wake Teddy.”

I roll onto my side and I feel jagged shards of glass pressing into my hip. Caroline is trying to step around me without getting too close, but I’m sprawled across the corridor, blocking her way. I bend my right knee and thank God it moves the way it’s supposed to. I draw my right thigh all the way up to my body. And when Caroline finally musters the nerve to step over me, I kick out my leg, connecting the flat of my heel with the front of her shin. There’s a loud crack and she comes down hard, collapsing on top of me.

And I know I can take her. I know I am stronger than her and Ted combined. I have spent the last twenty months preparing for this moment. I have been running and swimming and eating right. I’ve been doing fifty push-ups every other day while Ted and Caroline sit and drink wine and do nothing. So I will not just sit back and give up. Caroline’s forearm lands close to my face and I clamp my teeth on it, biting hard. She cries out in surprise, wrests back her arm, and scrambles for my phone. I grab the back of her dress and pull and the soft cotton rips like paper, exposing her neck and shoulders. And in that moment I finally glimpse her much-maligned tattoo from college, the one from her artsy phase, when she was obsessed with John Milton and Paradise Lost.

It’s a pair of large feathered wings, right between her shoulder blades.

Angel wings.

Ted hurries back from the kitchen. He’s got the Viper in his hand and he’s shouting at Caroline to get out of his way. I bring back my leg again—I know it’s my only hope—if I knock him down, maybe he’ll drop the Viper, maybe I can—





27


I blink several times and wake in darkness.

Through the shadows, I can recognize familiar shapes: my bed, my nightstand, a motionless ceiling fan, the thick wood rafters over my head.

I’m inside the cottage.

I’m sitting upright in a hard-backed chair and my sinuses are burning. It feels like they’ve been rinsed with chlorine.

I try to stand, only to discover that I don’t have use of my arms; my wrists are crossed behind my back, twisted at painful angles and bound fast to my chair.

I move my lips to call for help but there’s some kind of strap pulled tightly around my head. My mouth has been stuffed with cloth, a wet ball the size of an apple. The pressure on my jaw is excruciating.

My muscles tense and my heartbeat races as I realize all the things I can’t do: I can’t move, I can’t talk, I can’t scream, I can’t even wipe the hair from my face. Take away fight or flight and there’s nothing left but panic. I’m so scared, I nearly throw up—and it’s a good thing I don’t because I’d probably choke to death.

I close my eyes and say a quick prayer. Please God help me. Help me figure out what to do. Then I take a deep sustained breath through my nose, filling my lungs to maximum capacity before letting it out. This is a relaxation exercise I picked up in rehab, and it helps to keep anxiety at bay. It slows my pulse and steadies my nerves.