Speaking of things I didn't know, here's a nice list: how long I'd been there, when the last time I'd had water was, how the man had known about the money in the duffel bag, or what had happened to my Mustang, or any of the things in it, like the passport and the ID and the cell phone with Reign's number.
I was slowly starting to not know other things, too. My own name. The words to my favorite songs, which I'd been singing in my head to pass the few hours I was awake each day. The man, nameless and essentially faceless, seemed rather patient. He'd sit in silence, back to me, for hours at a time, only rising and facing me to give me another injection of the drug that knocked me out. I guess I sort of came to see him as a kind of savior as much as anything else: he bestowed onto me the only solace in the world I could have, which was sleep.
Those few hours I was awake each day were blurry at best, shot through with a constant anxiety and ever-increasing claustrophobia from the way he'd confined me. He never changed the rag that he'd shoved into my throat, and my tongue was raw and scratched from rubbing against the rough material. My nostrils worked double time to make up for the air my mouth couldn't suck in. The rag was soaked through at first with my own spit, but as I grew more and more dehydrated it dried out as well.
I'd lost track of anything that wasn't right in front of my eyes. My time with Reign seemed like a distant memory. My life with Jeremy, even more distant.
There was just the darkness of sleep, the pain of waking, the fear, the silent and solitary man with his back to me, sitting patiently, endlessly patiently, waiting to kill me or set me free.
And the longer I was there, the more I felt sure the latter would never happen.
This is how I die, I remember thinking. This is how Gabriella dies. At least it's exciting. At least it's worth a story in the paper.
And when I wasn't thinking about my own mortality, I was putting my brain to even less use. If I'd never let Reign talk me into staying that extra day, if I'd decided to stay even longer, if I hadn't pulled off in Ditcher's Valley, if I hadn't taken the money and run, if I hadn't gotten the job at the hotel, if I hadn't married Jeremy …
32
Reign stared at the desk, the items arranged in a neat row on the wood surface. His arms, laying on the table, created a perfect frame.
A photo.
A lock of hair.
And a toe.
Three days, three gifts.
Poised in the center above the collected evidence of Gabriella's kidnapping was the note, almost humorously cliché with its cut-from-magazine letters and words.
Come alone.
Amidst the directions for the drop-off and the demands, those were the words that stood out the most to Reign. Because, of course, he couldn't go alone. He wouldn't risk his neck like that, he wasn't stupid.
Except, maybe, he was stupid, because he wanted to go alone. The sane, safe, logical thing to do was bring some of his brothers, have them wait at a distance for the all-safe and storm the stronghold, kill the bastard who'd taken her, and ride off triumphantly into the sunset.
But what if that didn't happen? What if, instead of coming away the victor, he'd come away with Gabriella's blood on his hands because he couldn't follow simple damn directions?
It had been three days since he'd sent the club out to scour the countryside for Gabriella, but they'd all returned empty-handed. The following day, the picture had shown up in an unmarked envelope slipped under Reign's door.
The picture … Reign winced as his eyes fell on the poorly-lit Polaroid. Gabriella's beautiful face was bruised and beaten, bleeding from wounds that clearly needed treatment, her mouth forced open by a gag that seemed to cut into the sides of her lips.
Her eyes were half-open, but nothing in them said that she was alive in her mind. She looked dead behind those eyes. Her black hair stuck to the sides of her face. When Reign first saw the picture, it took everything he had not to tear it into a million pieces and running screaming onto the road. It had hurt him as though it was his face that had been brutalized.
And then the lock of her dark black hair. Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair: the lines from the poem had rung in his mind once more as he'd fingered each strand, tied together with a light blue ribbon. He'd even held it to his nose and smelled it, hoping to inhale the slightest scent of her. But all he'd smelled was pain and violence and fear.
And then the ghastly toe, a pinky toe, cut clean from the foot. He'd dropped it when he opened the oddly bulky envelope, which had come to his P.O. box, no return address. And then he'd been sick, not even making it to the bathroom.
Now, laid out before him, the three little souvenirs taunted him, told him there would never be another woman like her, that he would never save her, that she would suffer and suffer and then be lost to him forever.
Unless he did what the letter said.
Reign wasn't much for following orders. He hated anyone telling him what to do; this was no exception. But if it was the only way to get Gabriella back …
He lowered his head, eyes shut tight, knowing that each second that went by was a second that he needed to make a decision. The letter said that it was to happen at 8:00 pm that night. It was just past 6. It wouldn't take him long to get to the location described; he knew it all too well.
Oh, was it irony, or a cruel joke? The place Gabriella's captor demanded they meet was the very same oasis where they'd last enjoyed each other, where he'd told Gabriella his darkest secret, where she'd come to the sudden and surprising decision to leave.
Fuck, Reign thought, his hands shaking on his lap.
Reign was not used to feeling like this: indecisive, fearful. Usually, he was the one telling everyone what to do. Usually, he was the one making people quake in their boots. Usually, he knew how to twist the knife just right to get what he wanted.
Now, he was on the other side of that equation, and he didn't like it one damn bit.
He wished, not for the first time, that Gabriella had kept driving. They'd both be safer than. She wouldn't be bound and gagged and near death in a sadistic stranger's clutches, and he wouldn't have this hole in heart that threatened to swallow up everything else inside him, like a vortex. He wouldn't be sitting in that chair, the silence of his apartment broken only by the constant rattling of the air conditioner.
With a start, he jumped from the chair, letting it fall behind him in his rage. He strode to the air conditioner and, with a single mighty push, dislodged it from the window. It fell to the ground with a crash that would have been satisfying if anything could have satisfied him.
She probably doesn't have air conditioning, he thought, his anger taking control of his thoughts. So why should I get to have it?
The heat seemed to burst into the room from the open window, and soon Reign was sweating in his jeans, still standing in front of the window and staring down at the now-demolished air conditioner. His mind had gone blank. There was nothing left of him, only anger and need and guilt and desperation.
He'd do anything.
And if that meant dying, alone, in the desert, then so be it.
He'd get her back, he'd get her safe. He'd go alone. He'd bring the money. He'd do whatever that fuck wanted him to do. It was his only choice, and her only chance. He stormed into the kitchen and grabbed the box of Raisin Bran from the top shelf of his pantry. Setting it down with a thunk on the counter, he fished inside, cursing the jagged edges of the cereal against his skin, until his fingers grasped the gun hidden inside.
He kept it there for safe keeping, had another stashed under the bed and a third in a safe in his closet. But this one was his favorite, his lucky Smith and Wesson. Fully loaded and ready to go. He held it against his chest, fingers wrapping around the trigger lightly. He felt better holding his gun.
He wasn't going to fuck this up. Not like Miranda. He was going to be the hero for once in his sick little life, and nothing was going to stop him.
Not even himself.
33
Silas listened to her moaning. It didn't annoy him. He'd shut his brain off, pretty much, after doing away with the cop. As though remembering that he was out of milk, a little chime in his brain reminded him that the body was still buried under a very loose covering of dirt. It would need better hiding soon. Or not. It was hot as shit, the body was probably reeking to high heavens. Better to just burn the shack to the ground when he was finished. Nudge Jeremy's lifeless corpse towards the flames and let it all go down. Ashes to ashes and all that.
As for the girl, she might as well have been bound and gagged in another state for all the mind he paid her. Twice a day she'd wake up and moan for a while and, after an hour or two, he'd give her another sleepy shot and she'd go back to la-la land. If anything, he was doing her a favor by keeping her under.