He grunts, and I snap my attention back to his face in time to see a scowl form on his lips, growing into something stronger. It savors of disgust.
I’d be disgusted too if I saw what Ford did to me from the outside looking in. Obviously, the diviner had seen enough to know the truth of it all. I can’t stand the sick feeling roiling in my gut at his reaction.
I want the serene glow of the diviner’s smile to return and wipe out this nagging feeling of dread growing in my belly. I tug my hands, trying to break contact.
The diviner holds tighter, his brows lowering as though he’s focusing hard on something.
“Um,” I murmur, tugging again. “Could you…could you let go, please?”
His fingers press harder, his grip turning painful.
I pull again, another cold sweat blooming over my chest. The hairs on the back of my neck rise.
Beseechingly, I whirl to the door and the blind-covered window, praying to see Silva’s shadow outside, but there’s nothing. Unbroken light filters between the slats.
“Let go,” I beg, the chair falling to the floor behind me as I rise too quickly, eyeing the closed door.
I didn’t see anyone lock it. If I can just get my hands free…
The diviner releases me suddenly, and I fall back, off-balance, and land hard on my tailbone. My elbow knocks painfully into the upturned chair.
“Damnit,” I curse, clutching my screeching funny bone.
Tearfully, I meet the diviner’s gaze, but the instant our eyes lock, he looks away. All traces of disgust are gone from his face.
“I apologize,” he says robotically, moving to right the chair I knocked over but leaving me to lie awkwardly sprawled on the thin carpet. “If you’ll just wait here a moment, I’ll retrieve Officer Silva.”
The door swings open and the door swings shut. The diviner leaves without another word.
Cautiously, so as not to upset my aching backside, I roll to my knees and stand, using the chairback for support.
That was weird.
Why do I get the feeling something isn’t right?
Was the diviner simply overcome by everything he saw? It’s possible, but then why didn’t he say something?
Like, I don’t know, maybe: I’m sorry your life has been shit.
Or: Don’t worry, you’re safe now.
Why don’t I feel safer?
Why do I suddenly feel like this is the least safe I’ve ever been?
My disheveled hair brushes over my eyes, and I push it back from my face, smoothing it down.
The bead and leather bracelets on my right wrist rattle as I pace the small section of floor. I twist them round and round, the repetitive motion bringing me back a measure of calm.
“Are you sure?” Silva’s voice filters in through the door, and I have to resist the urge to rip it open and beg to be taken home. I want my bed. I want to feel my weighted blankets on my shoulders and let them pool heavily in my lap. My room is my safe place. The only safe place.
I don’t want to be here anymore.
Ford was right, I shouldn’t have left the house.
“Undoubtedly,” the diviner replies. “I don’t know how he managed to keep her here undetected for so long.”
Officer Silva’s sigh is so loud I can hear it clearly through the wooden door.
There is an electronic sound and a beep and then Silva speaks again, this time to the backdrop of a staticky radio. “Silva here. We have a 66-17. Ready transport and send back-up to my office.”
The pop of a button precedes the sound of steel brushing thick fabric. Silva’s shadow outside the window creeps slowly toward the closed door to her office.
“You can go, Remi. Thank you,” Silva says tersely, and the diviner’s tall shadow chases his soft footfalls away from the office.
I back away from the door, breaths bursting from my lungs.
Running footsteps pound up the hallway outside, and I hear a radio blare to life.
“Transport ready,” the garbled voice says over the thudding footfalls.
My back presses hard against the wall as though I can seep into it and hide. A wave of vertigo almost has me falling to my knees, but I remain standing. I’ve done nothing wrong.
There’s been a mistake.
The door bursts open, the hinges straining against the force of a male officer’s forceful kick.
A group of faces I don’t recognize swarms into the room, filling in all the gaps, closing me in. In the sea of moving bodies and raised weapons, I glimpse Silva’s face.
“Officer Silva!” I shout, my voice shrill even to my own ears as I shrink into myself, making my body as small as I can.
I am the girl who chased the white rabbit to Wonderland, eager for adventure, hungry with curiosity, only to be given nonsensical stories and be treated as the villain.
I am a field mouse before a pride of lions.
Perhaps I am dreaming. I don’t dare to hope.
“Officer Silva!” I call again, the words choked off by a crackling sob.
Her hazel eyes hold no mercy. There isn’t a trace of the woman who sat opposite me in this very office barely an hour before. Her kind, considering gaze is now sharp and uneasy with the strain of regret.
“Get it out of my office,” she sneers, leaving me alone with the five other officers in the tight room as she storms out.
A shriek peals from my lungs as the men crowd me and something is pulled over my head. A dark sack blinding me, a cord tightening around my neck.
Rough fingers jerk my hands behind my back, and I fall face-first onto the carpet, blood bursting over my tongue and stars shattering behind my eyelids.
Something hard presses painfully into my back, and I cry out.
“What are you doing? Get off me!”
The words are unintelligible even to my own ears.
The bite of cold metal around my wrists has me trying to jerk my hands free, but they are bound so tightly all it does is cause the thin skin beneath to ache from the hard edge of steel.
I am lifted from the ground and onto my feet, head spinning from the quick, jerky movement. I stumble back, hitting a solid body behind me. A rough hand catches my elbow, the hard press of fingers making the already bruised bone throb.
The pain brings with it a moment of clarity. Reflexively, I throw my head back, rewarded with a hard knock of aching pressure on the back of my skull and the distinct sound of crunching bone and cartilage as a nose breaks.
His hand slides free of my arm and I dart forward, trying to make a beeline for the exit.
A strange crackling sound makes me freeze. I know that sound.
No.
It’s my last thought before a white-hot stab of agony tunnels into my back and thirty-thousand volts of electricity send me careening into oblivion.
5
I awake to the smell of stale piss and a man’s voice shouting somewhere in the distance. My body aches as if it’s been jabbed with a thousand needles—the muscles beneath my clammy skin weak and trembling.
The shouting man draws nearer—or maybe it’s me who’s drawing nearer to him—his words become discernible through the muffle of the thick black cloth still covering my head.
“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me!”
I groan and something shuffles beside me.
Vaguely, I begin to realize I’m in a moving vehicle. Maybe the back of a truck? I can feel the rush of wind over my sun-warmed bare arms, and inside the black bag, it’s stifling. Sweat trickles down from my hairline and drops from my chin.