Blandly, as if I hadn’t noticed the emotion he didn’t want to feel, I went on. “Us? You have brothers and sisters?”
“Yeah. Younger than me. Twins. Kyle and Kayla.” I think he didn’t want to say their names, but they forced their way out and made his face wince, his lips tremble. He was not used to thinking about his family.
I intuited that he had survived the past two years by not thinking about his life before being abducted, not thinking about his family, and not thinking about his own future either. No goals or dreams or plans. Numbing his mind and emotions just to survive day to day. What had once been normal wasn’t anymore, not for him; he had to survive in a new normal, and he did so by functioning like a robot.
My only chance—and his only chance—depended on coaxing or jolting him out of robot mode.
What should I say now? My mind raced. This wasn’t any ordinary conversation, not with me lying shackled in a spread-eagle position and him hovering over me, poking a junk food sandwich into my face. Instead of saying something conventional, maybe asking whether his twin brother and sister looked alike or what color their hair and eyes were, I said, “I bet Kyle and Kayla are supersmart.”
His hand about to offer more sandwich stopped in midair, his other hand lifted to his nose as if I had punched him, and he stared at me. “How’d you know that?”
“Because you’re very intelligent.”
“What makes you think that?”
“You’re alive, aren’t you?”
His hands slowly lowered. “I figure that’s because I’m a wuss.”
Kind of grinning, I shook my head. “I can be the biggest wuss in the world and Stoat’s still going to kill me, isn’t he?”
Justin’s jaw dropped, I guess because I was willing to say it.
“Which will make you his accomplice,” I added as an afterthought, “so then he’ll have even more power over you.”
“Shut up,” Justin whispered.
“Why am I still alive? What’s he waiting for?”
“Shut up.”
“Tell me, Justin—what would you do if Stoat got his hands on your brother or your sister?”
His face reddened and contorted with such fury—accumulated fury he’d swallowed during the past two years, maybe—that he threw down the sandwich, lunged up from the bed, and for a heartbeat, as he loomed over me with his fists clenched, I thought he might hurt me, sparing Stoat the trouble.
Instead he rammed out of the room, slamming the door behind him. He had forgotten to put the gag back in my mouth, but I didn’t yell anything after him. I stayed quiet all afternoon. I was still hungry, I was thirsty, I needed the bathroom but had hours to go before any hope of that; my body ached more each minute from its forced immobility; fear of death weighed stony on my chest and tried to make me weep; I could barely keep from sobbing. But I managed to stay as still as a windless day because I hoped that, somewhere in that peacock blue shack of a prison, Justin was thinking.
• • •
Extracting a dog hair from a crack in one of his ridged, splitting fingernails, Ned Bradley thought: I’m getting old. He used to be able to pat his dog, for God’s sake, without getting hair stuck in his nails. He studied his own hands, dry and taupe like winter leaves, as he held Oliver and stroked him. Oliver, small enough to heft yet big enough to provide a warm and reassuring weight in his lap, felt like a grandchild—but Ned knew that was wistful thinking. What little family he had didn’t want anything to do with him. That was what came of being an alcoholic, taking no responsibility, losing job after job, deserting his wife and kids. Going for a geographical cure instead of for sobriety.
Well, he finally had sobriety now, starting right after his ex-wife had died, shocking him into taking a hard look at his own mortality. He’d stayed at the same address in Birmingham, same apartment, for almost eight years now. He had a steady job, and he had Oliver, named after Oliver Twist because his puppy eyes had constantly begged, Please, sir, may I have more? That was last year, when Ned had found him shivering in an alley. Now Oliver had plenty to eat, and he was Ned Bradley’s own very special spotted mutt and cherished companion.
“Time to get down, woofhead,” Ned told the dog with a final pat, standing up. Lacking a lap, Oliver decamped. Ned took a few long-legged strides across his apartment to the computer, drawn like a moth at twilight to the white light of its screen. He never took part in Birmingham’s Southern-fried bar scene anymore; now this was his evening ritual. Once online, he went directly to the Web site dedicated to the search for Justin Bradley.