Her position didn’t help anything, either. She was on the bed, both arms above her head, tied to the metal frame, her hands enough of a distance apart that she couldn’t reach the other wrist. So she used friction to try to get the knots loose, rotating her arms back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
The skin rubbed raw at her wrists, and still she kept going, her eyes on the sun as it worked its way across the floor.
There was nothing in the one-room shedlike cabin to hint at its owner. The bed was the only furniture, the walls were bare, the windows small and higher than normal.
Molly thought there should be pain now—the wetness of her own blood trickled down her arms in an excruciatingly slow slide—yet it felt like there was cotton in her body, dulling anything other than the knowledge that it was happening at all.
When the rope finally relented, just an inch, endorphins surged in, taking her higher. She kept up with it, back and forth, adding a twist now that she had the taste of freedom. It took a long time—so long that she could tell the sun had risen in the sky—but she had enough of a gap to bend her fingers to the edge of the rope and pull.
She didn’t realize at first when the rope gave even farther, enough to slip her narrow hand out of its restraint. Molly just kept working at it, until the signals from nerves in her hands finally crawled through the molasses of her thoughts to get her to stop.
Once one hand was out, the other was simple. Her fingers were all but numb, but she stared at them until they cooperated enough to get the knot to loosen. Then it was her ankles, and then she was free.
Free. Her legs were wobbly, a colt testing its ability to stand for the first time. She stumbled, just like it would have, toward the door.
Her brain whited out when she went to turn the knob and the wood rattled against the gold dead bolts that held the door shut.
You knew it would be locked. You knew. Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic.
There was no glass on the door that she could break through, but there were windows, high up on the walls. She eyed them and for once in her life was grateful that she was tall and skinny.
She dragged the metal frame of the bed to the closest one. The windows were all glass, no wood frames separating the panes. That would make it easier.
On the small chance that it had been left unlocked, Molly first attempted to open it. As expected it didn’t budge. Painted shut.
She pulled off her shirt and wrapped it around her fist, pain flaring up along her arm when the fabric brushed against the tender wounds on her wrists.
Molly ignored it, breathed deep, and then punched the glass. Her fist bounced back, and for a heartbeat she didn’t feel anything. Then the agony of vulnerable bones meeting an unmovable object took her to her knees.
The mattress squeaked, metal coils digging into her flesh, but they only distantly registered. Molly used all her concentration to fight off the blackness that threatened, drawing in oxygen through clenched teeth as she cradled her arm close to her chest.
Time passed. Maybe. Or maybe she was dead and this was hell and time didn’t actually exist anymore. Her parents had always told her she wasn’t pure of faith. Told her she was too easily wooed by temptation and the devil—and Eliza, even. She’d always pictured hell with more fire, but maybe it was just a cabin in the woods with just enough freedom to try to escape and not enough to actually accomplish it.
You’re losing it.
She squeezed her eyes shut, tight, tight, tight, the reverse image of the metal bed frame a slash of light against dark lids.
And that was it.
She shifted to stumble off the mattress, onto the floor. Metal, there was metal. Metal could break glass.
Molly scooted far enough under that she could see the workings of the frame. It was simple, just three pieces interlocking together. She pushed herself back out and then dragged the mattress off with her good hand. Then she yanked at the frame until the smallest piece of it came off. It was still heavy and unwieldy. It was meant to hold up one side of the bed, after all.
Breathing deep, she slowly uncurled her shattered fist. The knuckles were already purple and swollen, brutally ugly but fascinating at the same time.
The drugs had burned off, and so had most of her adrenaline, and she could actually feel her heartbeat in all the aching places. Still, she gripped the end of the metal piece and swung at the small crack she’d already made in the glass.
The impact nearly sent her down again, but she wouldn’t let it. She wouldn’t let it.
She swung again, and again, and again, until the crack became a spiderweb that covered the entire window. At the bottom left was its underbelly, the weakest spot that she’d been aiming for with each blow.
Sweat had turned her palms slippery, was stinging against her eyes. Pain had become a constant, just like the darkness had been in the bunker. She sank into it, just like she had then, using it, letting it power her swings.
One more, one more. That’s all she needed. She lost track of the times she told herself this. And then it became true.
One more.
The glass all at once surrendered, falling apart into glittery shards that cascaded onto her shoulders and arms. The euphoria kissed the little cuts, though, made them better, and carried her through reassembling the bed frame, positioning it beneath the window so that she was at chest level with it once again. She used her shirt to clear away most of the glass but didn’t waste time with the pieces still sticking up. As long as she didn’t catch an artery, she would be okay.
Using a strength she hadn’t known she possessed, Molly boosted herself up and through the window. The sharp edges caught on her exposed torso, but the thick skirt she was wearing protected the vulnerable skin at the top of her thighs. She didn’t even try to stop the fall once she made it mostly through, her weight and gravity doing the work.
Molly hit the ground hard, rolling enough that she landed on a shoulder and not flat on her face. Every bruised part of her sang out, but she breathed through it. When she thought she was capable of standing, she pushed to her feet, gave her shirt one shake to get the glass out, and then slipped it on as she took off running.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
LUCY THORNE
Now
The throbbing in the back of Lucy’s head pulled her out of the darkness.
There was light. She blinked, saw the patterns of it on the backs of her eyelids.
Her tongue sat heavy in her sand-dry mouth. A hacking cough wrenched through her body, sending the pain at the base of her skull crashing through her ribs, down into her pelvis and thigh bones.
What had she been . . . ? Where?
Lucy licked her chapped lips, looking around, taking stock. Her gun was gone. As expected. So was her phone, not that it would have done her any good, dead as it was.
She was in a shed, like plenty that she’d seen over the past few days. Bigger than the glorified closets found in suburbia, but not quite a barn. It wasn’t empty. There were shovels lined up against the wall, a broken-down lawn mower tucked into the corner, heavy bags of mulch stacked not far from where she sat.
That was odd. Not empty, not stripped bare. Why was that important?
Lucy flexed her hands. They weren’t tied.
Again, her instincts screamed. This mattered, this mattered. Her hands weren’t tied.
She looked down at her feet. Kicked them out once, twice to test that what she was seeing was true. They weren’t bound, either.