His Ransom 6(3)

“A mile.” I whispered the words, as though I didn’t believe them. I didn’t want to believe them. “Jake?”

Then I felt his arms come around me, and I wept into his chest. The pain and stress and worry all came gushing out in a torrent of sobs. He kissed the top of my head, and my hair. Strands wet with tears stuck to my face. And he was kissing that too, kissing my cheeks and taking my face in his hands, cupping my mouth up to his.

“Lacey,” he said, and even though it was too dark to see his face I could see exactly what he looked like in my mind. The dark features, those emerald eyes…

Then, without warning, the face I was imagining changed slightly, morphed, and I was looking at Sean’s face.

No. Not him.

Reeling, I gasped and clutched at Jake’s chest.

“I’m sorry,” I said breathlessly. “I’m sorry, Jake, I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry too, Lacey. But it’s okay now. It’s going to be okay.”

“Jake, was that really your brother—”

“No. Lacey, not now. Let’s talk about this later.”

In the dark, my face contorted into a frown.

“But he—”

“We need to get out of here, Lacey. God, I can’t express how sorry I am. And I will make it up to you—”

“It’s not your fault,” I said.

Guilty, he always felt guilty. I thought of what Jake had told me when I’d first heard about his family. His dad had fallen asleep with a cigar still burning, he said. The whole place caught on fire, and he was the only one to escape the flames.

My father killed them, he had said, but I was the one who let it happen.

Now, as Jake turned away from me and led us through the tunnel, I felt the same strange misplaced sense of guilt emanating from him. It wasn’t his fault that I’d been a hostage. If anyone was to take the blame, it should be me.

“Ah!”

I stumbled again over a rock, and Jake’s grip on my wrist was like iron. Stepping forward, I hit my knee on something that toppled over. The clanking noise of the bones made me realize what had happened—I’d knocked over one of the piles of bones on the side of the tunnel.

Bile rose in my mouth. I could hear one of the bones still rattling as it rolled over the stony floor in the pitch black darkness.

“Sorry,” he said again. “I’ll slow down.”

I choked down my cry and continued on.

It was miserable going. The darkness made every move slower, and Jake stopped several times to comfort me when I accidentally brushed against bones. I was too scared to breathe.

“Jake…” I said. “Jake, I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know—”

“It’s alright, Lacey,” he said. He pressed both of his hands to my cheeks and kissed my forehead.

“It’s not alright. There’s dead people—skeletons of dead people—and I can’t see anything, and I can’t breathe, and… and…”

“Shhh.” His body was warm against mine, and I rocked against him.

“I don’t want to be in here,” I said. “We’ve been going for over a mile, I’m sure of it. And we’re not out yet!” I hated the whining tone in my voice, hated the scared little girl that I saw coming out of me now. I was a tomboy, wasn’t I?

You’re a scaredy-cat.

I was starting to hyperventilate. I couldn’t see anything around me, and maybe the walls were getting narrower. Maybe that’s why I had run into the pile of bones. Maybe the walls were closing in, and Sean had sent us down a tunnel that had no end at all, it just went on and on and—

“Lacey?”

“Jake!” My voice was ragged in the air.

“Here.” He pulled his hands away, and for a split second I didn’t touch him at all. I didn’t know if he was there; I was frightened beyond belief. I reached out and touched his shirt fabric, gasping for breath amid my fright.

“Here.”

He drew his hand up along my arm to my neck, then my face. I felt the smooth fabric of something—a tie?

“I’m blindfolding you,” he said. He pulled the fabric across my eyes.

“W—why?”

“Trust me.”

As his fingers knotted the blindfold at the back of my head, I understood. A sense of relief came over me. I couldn’t see anything, sure, but this was something familiar. This was something I understood. The mere sensations were able to transport me back to the last time Jake had blindfolded me. Back to New York City, to the room with the mirror, where Jake’s hands guided me through everything and had always made me feel safe and secure.

I couldn’t see, sure. But with a blindfold on, it made it easier.