“I don’t know anything!” Tommy shouted, and his voice actually broke and cracked on the last word.
“Stop lying to us, Tommy!” Fiona shouted back, walking closer to him. She saw him shrink before her, and some little piece of Fiona—a horrible, hateful piece—cherished his fear. That part of her felt satisfied, like causing somebody pain was the one thing she’d been waiting for all these years.
“We can help you, Tommy,” Gage said, obviously playing the “good cop” to Fiona’s “bad cop.”
“Just tell us the truth,” Fiona said, stepping ever closer to Tommy. “Just tell us.”
But then, Tommy suddenly stomped his feet and his dogs began growling, circling Fiona’s body like sharks in the ocean.
“Get ‘em, Porkie! Get ‘em, Donnie!” Tommy yelled, running to the other side of the room.
Fiona tried to stay calm, looking from one growling, snarling dog to the other, but her legs started shaking, so hard that her knees gave out, sending her tumbling to the ground. Get up, Fiona’s inner voice insisted. Get up. You can do it. You can get up. You can survive this, just as you’ve survived everything else. You can get out of this alive.
But her body wasn’t cooperating. No matter how hard she concentrated, she couldn’t budge a single inch. It was like her body had already given up, slipping away from her like the dogs had already torn her apart.
Fiona shut her eyes, letting the darkness overtake her. It was always waiting for her, after all these years. It was fitting that it would end this way.
“Here, boys! Here, boys!” Gage’s voice pierced through the darkness like a flaming sword, cutting apart all the fog that seemed to clog Fiona’s panicked brain. He must have yelled at the dogs from the other end of the room. “Come here, come here. It’s okay, babies, come here!”
For one long, eternal, terrible moment, there was total silence. Nobody made a single noise. But a second later, Fiona heard the rapid pitter-patter of the dogs’ paws against the shiny hardwood floor, scurrying off toward Gage and away from her.
At first, Fiona just curled into the fetal position, keeping her eyes shut even as her other senses returned to her, gradually filling her brain with new perceptions. The dogs were panting now, whining a little bit, and their paws kept scratching against the floor. They obviously weren’t angry anymore.. They must be…playing, Fiona thought. Playing with Gage.
That’s right, Fiona thought as she slowly pried her eyes back open and lifted her head to see Gage laughing down at the dogs. His family had dogs, lots of them. She remembered from the first time she stopped by his house, the week after the trial ended. The dogs jumped up on her then, and she almost had a panic attack right then and there, but Gage talked them down, convincing them to stay away from her. He was always good with dogs.
Maybe for Gage’s sister, Abby, the kidnapper’s dogs were a comfort in the darkness of the basement. For Fiona, they just tortured her even more, giving her a glimpse of sweetness and softness that she’d never get to feel again. It was like holding a single drop of water above a starving man in the desert, just a cruel reminder of what was being snatched away from her. But for Abby, it must have been a reminder of her family. Maybe even a reminder of Gage.
Fiona was torn back to reality by the sound of Tommy’s weeping on the other side of the room. “What do you want from me?” he cried out. Fiona turned to see him sitting on the floor, hugging his knees to his chest.
“Tori Greenwood,” Fiona said, her voice squeaking at first but slowly restoring itself with each subsequent syllable. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know!” Tommy said. “Honestly, I don’t. She just disappeared. Nobody knows where she went.”
“That’s awfully convenient for you, Tom,” Gage said from the couch on the other side of the room, still petting the dogs and letting them lick his hands. “We got evidence that says that she was scared of you.”
Tommy blew out his breath, staring down at his own lap. “I tried to get with her, okay? But she turned me down,” he said a moment later.
“And by ‘tried to get with her,’ you mean you assaulted her?” Fiona asked, suddenly feeling sick to her stomach as she pictured Tori’s bright, smiling face.
“No, no! I just…I didn’t know she meant ‘no,’ at first, that’s all,” Tommy said, but Fiona still doubted him. There was a part of her that wanted to launch her body across the room and smash this little shit into the ground, beat the truth out of him until she got something that she could use.