I move away from him, gentle as I shift his head to the stone.
He doesn’t protest when I stand and walk, arms outstretched, zombie-like toward the wall. Cold and damp touches my fingertips.
“What is it, then?” he asks.
The book. “A cautionary tale, maybe.”
I feel carefully from as high as I can reach to the pebble-strewn floor. There won’t magically be a window between them, but I can’t stop myself from searching. Maybe there will be a hidden catch or a weakness in the brick.
Probably not, though I’m not ready to resign myself to my capture so quickly. But the existence of North dims my chances. Even injured, he’s stronger than me. More capable of fighting. If this place held him inside, I have little hope of escape.
Thankfully he doesn’t point that out as I shuffle along the wall.
“About brushing your teeth?” he asks.
I shake my head with a rueful smile. It’s enough to make me wonder if he’s deliberately distracting me. Well, maybe so. He doesn’t want a hysterical woman on his hands. And I’m on that knife’s edge to hysteria. I shouldn’t fight a distraction. “It’s not for very small children. It’s young adult. Teenagers mostly. And my tooth fairy isn’t… normal.”
“What’s your tooth fairy like?”
The stone wall ends, giving way to iron bars. I touch each joining with careful fingers. The stone has crumbled a little over time. The bars don’t move an inch, though. “She lives with her family in a castle made of teeth. They’re all tooth fairies, of course. It’s the rule of their kind to take the discarded teeth and stay hidden from humans.”
“A castle made of teeth, huh? A little macabre. I like it.”
“It’s a gleaming white trimmed in yellow, the plaque scrubbed away each evening.”
“Okay, a lot macabre.”
“Everything is made of teeth. Her bed is made of molars. Her chair, incisors. She watches the human world from her windowsill, which is also made of teeth.”
“Do kids have nightmares about teeth after reading your book?”
“Some of them. But kids are tougher than you think. They already imagine things. They already fear them. Sometimes it helps to see them in black-and-white text. It proves you aren’t alone.”
“Okay, so what happens to this tooth fairy?”
“She’s different because she’s interested in humans. While they’re sleeping, she pokes around their rooms, opening drawers and looking through their books.”
“The way you’re looking over the bars right now?”
I feel along each space, as if the answer might be contained in two square feet of air. “Like this, yes. She wants to learn about them, even though it’s forbidden.”
“I could save you some time and tell you there’s no way out.”
“I have to see for myself.”
“I assumed as much.”
I run my hands along the bars. They’re about five inches apart. Enough to shove my whole arm through, all the way to my shoulder. No way I could fit through here, even in desperation. My ribs would have to crack. My hip bones would break. The ends of the bars slice into a wood frame that feels sturdy. Maybe if we could create fire, we could burn the edges? With no ventilation we’d probably die of smoke inhalation first.
CHAPTER SIX
North
I’m strapped into a chair, wrists bound to its arms, coarse rope cutting into my skin. My face throbs from the blows. My lungs struggle to take in air. I have one thought: at least the woman isn’t here to see this. It’s a surprising moment of vanity, that I would care about a stranger witnessing my pain.
After a lifetime of beatings and battles, I would have thought I’d be past that.
“Where are the diamonds?” Adam says in a singsong voice.
The fucking diamonds.
I could be done with this mission if the US government weren’t greedy. I infiltrated this operation. I found out the key dates and players so that they could intercept the weapons after they were sold. That should have been the extent of my orders.
That wasn’t enough. They also wanted the diamonds that were used to purchase the guns.
Evidence, they called it. Spoils of war. That’s what they actually are.
I say nothing, and Adam nods to Peter. A blow lands on my cheek, making my whole head crack. My neck bends a way it shouldn’t, and I know I’ll feel that later.
“You want to answer me,” Adam says.
“I really don’t,” I manage between clenched, bloodied teeth.
He smiles, looking movie-star gorgeous. “Come now. This could be so easy for you. You tell me where the diamonds are, and I’ll let you walk away.”
There’s no way he’s letting me leave this damned church alive.
Another blow, this one to my stomach, and I cough red spittle across the floor.
“You already know,” I say, wheezing.
It was a week ago. Or was it two weeks? Time bleeds together in the cell.
We were using my contacts to sell the diamonds.
One in particular, a well-known master jeweler, had verified the authenticity of them. It was the perfect time to make the switch to my fake versions, to hide the real ones from Adam. But where to put the real ones? He would have noticed a sleight of hand. He’d definitely get suspicious if I sauntered into an alleyway and switched them there.
This is the pain point of working alone—no distractions.
And then the woman appeared around a corner.
Glamorous. And familiar.
I recognized her instantly, and my first thought—to my shame, my first thought wasn’t about how I could use her for the mission. My first thought was to wonder whether her sister was with her. But she was alone.
She noticed me staring. Her forehead puckered. “Do I know you?”
Confirm or deny? “Reims,” I say. “Eight years ago.”
She recognized me a second later. “You,” she says, a slow smile dawning on her beautiful face. “You’re the one who kissed my sister. The one she had a major crush on.”
“That was me,” I say, warmed by the mention of her.
She had a crush on me? No, she didn’t even know me. Not until the end.
The sister, London, puts a hand on her hip. “So how’ve you been the past eight years?”
A single moment.
A coincidence in a world of randomness.
It changed everything. Adam has always been a sucker for a beautiful woman. He couldn’t help but flirt with her. It was the moment’s distraction I needed. I tucked the real diamonds into her four-thousand-dollar Louis Vuitton tote.
In my palm there appeared a replica of the black velvet pouch.
Except instead of a million dollars in diamonds, there was only cubic zirconia. They would not hold up to inspection, but they could fool Adam when he took them from me. They fooled him for a few days, even. I was getting ready to sneak away, where I’d have to find the woman and her Louis Vuitton tote. That was when Adam got suspicious.
No one gets suspicious of me. I’m too good at lying.
Somehow Adam knew.
He smiles at me now, not quite hiding his frustration. I only have a few more days of torture before my body gives out. Before my heart gives up. He knows he’s running out of time.