He took her hand more gently than she expected—considering his anger—and took her to the large walk-in closet. Inside was a cage. He pressed a code into a metal box attached to the side, and the door opened. The cage was shorter than she was but wide enough to sit and move. Thick, black metal bars made up the walls and top. The bottom was solid.
“Inside,” Lindsay said.
Mina didn’t argue. She was too afraid of how much things could escalate if she tried to refuse her punishment. She was sure if she hadn’t disobeyed him that things would have gone much differently in his plant room. On the floor was a red button.
The metal door locked behind her.
“Push that button at your own risk,” he said. “It’s for emergencies only. You press it; someone will come. If they don’t like your reason for pushing it, you’d better pray to every god you’ve ever heard of.”
She wanted to scream that he was just like the others, but she was afraid to say anything. She was hungry, and she needed a cigarette. How long would he keep her in here?
He turned off the lights, closed the door, and his footsteps receded back to the main house.
Brian regretted demanding a day off. After seeing Mina last night downstairs, he wanted nothing more than to stay and hurt someone. His sleep had been more troubled than usual, the memories wrapping around inside his mind like twisting vipers, creating dreams he felt sure were more vivid than it had been in reality.
He needed to get out of the house, get some fresh air. Go into the city. Forget this place for a while. He slowed as he passed Lindsay’s office.
“Where is she?” Gabe asked.
“In the cage in my closet. Hold onto this. Go to her if she pushes the button.”
Brian didn’t have to see inside the office to know it was a black receiver box.
“When will you be back?”
“I have a few appointments. If I’m not back, let her out around noon.”
Brian continued down the hallway and detoured through the cafeteria. He took a secondary staircase to the second floor. Lindsay’s door was unlocked, no doubt so Gabe could reach Mina if necessary, but it also gave Brian access. His day off could wait.
As he approached the closet, he heard her crying. He slipped inside the darkness, shutting the door before she could look up. She went deadly quiet, like she had downstairs with him the night before. Did she know it was him?
She saw what he was in a way few others had. Sure, they were all afraid of him, but usually only after they’d been given a reason to fear: being sent down for a punishment, observing the reactions of other girls, rumors at the lunch table. By contrast, Mina had reacted like a frightened doe the moment she’d seen him—even when he wasn’t being particularly threatening. Her instincts unnerved him.
He’d thought he wanted her to be afraid, but the marks on her back were like a mystical shield of protection. It put her on his team. It made her his co-captive in need of justice and protection. Brian didn’t know what to do with these thoughts and feelings. He’d never had them before. He didn’t welcome them, but he couldn’t push them away. He couldn’t push her away.
When he managed to stop the circle his thoughts ran around, the darkness of the closet engulfed him, and for a moment the room went hot, and he couldn’t breathe. He was trapped under the stairs again. He gripped a shelf that held Lindsay’s casual khaki pants. Mina gasped at the sound, clearly working to hold in her own panic.
He tried to steady his breath, tried not to hyperventilate, tried not to be that weak, scared child again crying out in the dark for someone to help and protect him.
He’d wanted to come in under cover of darkness. He’d wanted to touch the side of her face and have her lean toward him through the bars, not knowing it was him. He’d never wanted a woman to come to him willingly, to trust him. He’d never cared and thought any woman who trusted him was foolish and deserved whatever she got. But Mina was different. He wanted to know what one moment of tenderness given or received could feel like even as he berated himself for the thought.
But the darkness swallowed him. He wanted to flee, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave her behind.
He took a slow, shuddering breath and flipped the light on. Just a normal walk-in closet. Everything was fine. He was large and strong. Six foot four. Broad. Even grown men walked the other way when he moved down the street. Nothing could hurt him anymore. He composed himself and turned toward her.
Mina scooted as far as she could into one of the back corners of the cage, which admittedly wasn’t very far.
He approached and sat cross-legged next to her. When she started to edge away, his voice stopped her.
“There’s nowhere for you to go. I’ll be annoyed if I have to chase you around the cage.”
She stopped her retreat, still trembling. “P-please, Sir… I didn’t push the button. I didn’t push it.”
“I know you didn’t.”
She wouldn’t stop shaking.
It bothered him more than he liked to see her huddled in the cage. Some sinister part of him rebelled, wanting to hurt her for whatever it was about her that made him feel compassion for a woman he didn’t even know. But the greater part of him—for possibly the first time ever—rebelled against that notion so strongly that the thought of it almost made him physically ill.
Instead, he found himself saying, “Do you need anything?”
Her face was guarded, as if she were looking for the trap. He didn’t blame her. If it had been any other girl, the trap would have been set and waiting. But there was no trap this time.
Brian raised his voice. “When I ask you a question, I expect an answer. Do you know who I am?”
“N-no, Sir.”
“No you don’t need anything or no you don’t know who I am?”
“The latter.”
Interesting. She still had no idea of his role in the house. Why would Lindsay bring someone here that was so damaged? Did he really think he could find someone suitable to buy her? This girl was too far gone—not fit for anyone. And she couldn’t be released back out into the wild. If Lindsay had wanted her for himself, he should have taken her, rather than engage in this charade.
“Do you need anything?”
“B-bathroom,” she whispered.
He input the code on the cage. When the door opened, he reached inside to take her hand.
She remained pressed against the corner. So still. The weird thing was, he was only now noticing she was naked. That should have been his first observation. Ordinarily he would have taken it all in and been gleeful about his find and all the depraved and sadistic things he could do—both sexual and non-sexual—to his captive. But with Mina, the overriding thought in his mind had been that she was in a cage, and he didn’t want her there. In fact, it began to irritate and grate on him, causing that burning itch that usually only hurting someone stopped.
“It would be better for you if you come out on your own.”
Mina considered this, then slowly crawled out. She hesitated before her lips brushed over his boot. She didn’t attempt to rise until he helped her up and led her to Lindsay’s bathroom.
“I’ll wait out here.” Another thing he wouldn’t normally give a woman here… privacy. What was going on with him?