Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 128083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Of course, she might think the flashing was nothing, just the reflection of something inside that had picked up the light. Maybe she figured that her mother wasn’t answering her phone because they didn’t want to be disturbed, or that she’d missed them leaving with someone else, and they weren’t home at all.
And even that doubt might keep her from alerting the authorities, at least with nothing more than a flashing light and what might be a gut instinct that things were off next door.
There were so many possibilities more likely than that the entire Cortlandt family had been tied up inside by psychopaths.
Please be nosy, Mrs. Willoughby. Come check on us. Or would they hurt her, too, if she showed up at their door? No, if they did, Mr. Willoughby would know where his wife had gone. When she didn’t come back, he’d call someone to check on her. Unless he wasn’t home.
Cami’s thoughts pinged in one direction, and then in another, bells ringing inside as though her brain were a pinball machine.
But the phone was quiet now, and there was no one at the door. The two men torturing them didn’t know that the woman calling her mother’s phone was just next door, but that wouldn’t help them anyway if she’d returned behind her walls.
Cami’s gaze went to the mirror, where she could see Mrs. Willoughby’s empty garden. The sun had almost set, the cobalt sky broken by bands of gold. For a moment she was there, free, drifting among the clouds, unbound.
And then Trig returned, pulled the shade, and hid the sky. He stood above her, his eyes moving down her body and then back to her face. She felt that gaze. It was greasy and foul, just like him. Then he reached in his pocket and removed a small white envelope. Cami’s pulse jumped and she shook her head. No no no. Please, no. “Shh,” he said, and she tilted her head, watching as he poured the substance out on her bedside table and then scooped it onto the outside of the envelope and rolled it up. She shook her head again as he turned back to her. “I was gonna save this for later. For after all this. But why cut the party short now? Come on. This is gonna make it better for you. Trust me.” He bent down and used one hand to hold her neck and stuck the straw in her right nostril and then before she could move an inch, he let go of her throat and reached up and pressed on her left nostril. She inhaled sharply, the sting of chemicals making her eyes burn. She blew out of her nose but only managed to spray snot across her chin.
Trig snickered and used her sheet to wipe her face off and then poured some more of the powder onto her nightstand, bent, and inhaled it. “That’s it,” he said, tilting his head back. “That’s nice. I’m gonna be nice, Cami girl. I’m gonna be real nice.”
He knew her name. How did he know her name? Where had he seen it? A dozen places in the house maybe . . . on their family calendar or a piece of mail. She hated that he’d said it. If felt like one more violation. She hadn’t given it to him. He’d taken it.
He unbuttoned his jeans and knelt on the bed, taking himself in his hand, and Cami closed her eyes and drifted even as tears poured from her eyes. The drugs made it easy to disappear. Her thoughts blurred as they hit her system, warm blood rushing under her skin.
She heard her eyeballs moving behind her lids, and she felt feathers tickling against her bones. She was numb and detached, and she knew she cared even though she couldn’t form the why. And the drugs did make it better for her, though she understood that they hadn’t been given as a kindness but as another way to control her. She understood this, and yet the feelings attached to the knowing floated behind a gauzy cloud, separate. She could see their outline, but the details were obscured.
She pretended she was floating, moving along the ceiling of her room, and that worked for a while, but then the cloud dispersed, bobbing away in opaque remains, and she saw what she’d been trying to pretend wasn’t there. She watched the girl trapped beneath the bucking, heaving man. She listened as he called that girl names and debased her in ways that Cami promised to forget.
The room grew dark, and that made it better and worse. The chemicals inside her began eating away at her brain, shapes moving and shifting in the darkness, around her, on her. The monsters she’d feared all her life had crawled from their hidey-holes and were eating her alive. But not only her body, her soul. She watched it happen and couldn’t do a thing but survive. And it was better than nothing but only barely.