There has to be a way out. Methodically, tamping down my rising hysteria, I turn to one side and then another, patting and pressing each wall, searching for anything, a gap, a weakness, but find none. When I follow the wall down to the seam where it meets the floor, I collapse, wrapping my arms around my knees. My body shakes and I can’t control it. I can’t control any of this.
No light. No air. No space. I try to force my rapid breathing to slow down. Tiny muscles in my body are still spasming. I groveled. I pleaded and cried in front of that woman, that stranger. This is not who I am.
I have never known fear like this, fear that could make me break. It fell out that the woman was captured by a wicked witch and she thought that all was lost. But it wasn’t; the story never ends this way. Every fairy tale starts with a person who undergoes trials and struggles, before reaching a triumphant conclusion where virtue is rewarded and evil punished. Without her dog and her weapon, that woman won’t have any power over me. Right now I may be weak and scared, but I’m remembering how it feels to be angry. That will be the thing that saves me.
I close my eyes and focus. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Time passes, and I spend it huddled up, conserving my waning strength. My body is weak, but I feel my mind getting sharper. I am an ascetic, fasting in the desert, waiting for a vision. First I will determine who this woman is and what she wants; then I will figure out my escape.
When the door finally opens, I’m not prepared. It’s painfully, blindingly bright. Before I can recover and hurl myself forward, something has been dropped inside and the light is gone again. The lock snaps shut.
I grope along the floor and discover a rectangular shape in a wrapper. Food.
Against the wall I find a smooth plastic bottle. Almost frantically I unscrew the top, a distant part of my mind registering the comforting snap of the plastic seal being broken. I gulp the water down, feeling it slosh in my empty stomach, until the last drop is gone.
There isn’t enough—I should have saved some, made it last. I am beyond hungry, but eating whatever is in this packet will make me thirsty again. I have made a mistake. These people have made me so stupid.
I turn the bar over and over in my hands, considering. The water has cleared my head enough for me to start forming a narrative. First, food and water mean this woman isn’t going to kill me yet. Second, she knows my name, so this is not a random crime. But finally, she’s a stranger, and I have to believe she’s working with someone else, someone closer to me.
One of the worst things about being a writer is looking at your life like a story. If this were a story and a rich woman had been kidnapped, I’d think the husband had done it. Everyone would. My cheating first husband Beckett could be taken as proof that I’m not good at reading men. But Glenn knows I would give him a divorce the second he asked for one, because I wouldn’t want him if he didn’t want me.
Plus, my cold inner voice adds, surely there are easier ways to get rid of me. My heart twists. I love Glenn more than I let myself believe, and I long to curl back into a ball of self-pity, but I refuse and stamp those feelings of weakness down hard. There’s productive thinking and then there’s obsessive thought, and I choose the former.
Now I’m composing a plan for survival. There’s nowhere to hide my bar of food, but I am going to save it. If there is more water, I’ll eat the bar before I drink anything. And I promise myself I will save some water too. The empty bottle and the bar go beside me, so I can grab them.
The next time that door opens, I am going through it.
Time passes. Minutes or hours. The darkness makes it all the same. Asleep is the same as awake. My mind throws out images like a projector on a screen: Glenn backlit by the sun. The window over my own desk. Even the cover of my last book with its glossy green leaves. And Zoe facing me in a frame of jagged glass shards.
The last time I saw Zoe, she hated me, and I have a scar on my forehead as proof. Maybe I deserved it. Maybe I even deserve this.
The darkness is everything. I blink to make sure my eyes are still open. Now my stomach twists with hunger. I grope for the bar and pull back the paper. The first bite overwhelms me. The darkness is full of sounds, gulping and tearing. Clutching the torn wrapper, I bow my head. I have nothing. No reserves. An empty water bottle and an empty food wrapper. I am failing.
Zoe probably still hates me. I can imagine a scenario where she wanted me afraid and weak, but not one where she methodically planned all the details of a kidnapping. This plan isn’t like her; any plan is not like her. Zoe is all impulse and attack. And it’s been three years since we’ve seen each other, three years she’s been living in Texas. Of course I found her; I’m the queen of research. If she were the one who’d gone missing, I could have found her. After all, she wasn’t in any trouble at all and I tracked her down. I could have rescued her, even if she didn’t deserve it, but now I’m the one who’s been taken, and even if she wanted to find me, she isn’t equipped. It’s just not who she is.
I drift in and out, my dreams and thoughts all mixed up. I am conserving my strength. I have no strength.
When there’s a noise, the door banging open, I’m not prepared and I don’t run. Instead someone stands, silhouetted in the door; then it is slammed shut. Now we are together in this too-small space.
A blow to my cheek. Pain lighting up the dark. An elbow in my side. My nails against skin. We are battling against nothing. Against each other.
Panic makes me flail and punch. He is fighting too. He is bigger than me. I slam against a wall.
“Stop!” My throat hurts. “Stop!”
And he does. We are still too close. I can smell sweat and something else, something I remember on a visceral level. “Who are you?”
“Who are you?” he asks. “What do you want?”
Maybe this is a crazy trick—someone put in my cell to gain my trust, someone to use as leverage, someone to tell all my secrets to—but nobody’s even asked me any questions.
I press myself into a corner. “Sit down.”
But he is still standing. “I’ll sit down if you sit down.”
“Who are you?”
“Who are you?” he asks again, more desperately.
We are both here, two of us, locked in this tiny space, and there’s something about him, something so familiar. I have nothing to lose by telling the truth. “Ava.”
Then he reaches out and finds my shoulder. “Ava?”
And I recognize this man.
My first husband. Beckett.
CHAPTER
10
AVA
THE RELIEF OF being with another human being overcomes any awkwardness I might feel about it being this human being. My ex isn’t some dashing prince who’ll slay a dragon or defeat a giant with grace and aplomb; he’s more a languid, ethereal Romantic poet, although right now he’s absurdly solid, bumping into me with every breath. His hands seem to be bound in front of him, and he’s using them like a billy club.
As a bonus, we’re jammed together in this far-too small space, and Beckett won’t stop talking, firing off questions and working himself into a frenzy.
“Are they going to keep us here?” he pants.
“I don’t know.”