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)
She leaned up, grimacing at the multiple points of pain in her head, neck, and shoulders. Her arms were numb from having them restrained in the same position for so long. She didn’t want to look at her lower body, but she forced herself to. Her legs were splayed out, and she was only wearing underwear. Despite her internal and external pain, she looked normal from the outside. What had she expected to see? She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that she felt changed in a way that should be visible. The fact that it was not both relieved and panicked her. It didn’t seem right that anyone should be able to cause so much invisible pain to another.
When a tiny clink sounded near the wall, Cami froze in the act of lifting her thigh to bring her legs together. What was that? Slowly and carefully, she pulled herself higher, blinking down at where the minuscule noise had come from. Oh my God. She saw the edge of the compact she’d used to try to signal Mrs. Willoughby. It hadn’t dropped all the way to the floor—it had been caught in the quilt, where she hadn’t been able to see it from a completely supine position. Her breath came quicker as her heart rate jumped.
It must have been there through the night, and she’d been unaware. If it hadn’t moved despite Trig climbing on and off the bed, it was probably pretty stable within the folds of the quilt, but Cami needed to access it now. It was all she had.
She heard Trig’s and AJ’s voices more clearly now as they moved into the breakfast room. They sounded anxious, voices grittier and terser. Their sick version of partying through the night had obviously left them feeling rough. Bastards. She began scooching her body down the bed, reaching her toe for the mirror.
“We shouldn’t have let it go that far.”
“Damn it, this is because of you. I told you we had to stay sharp, and you bring powder.”
“Fuck you. You wanted it too.”
“They’ve seen our faces.”
“Yeah, no shit. This is fucked. And now we gotta fix it.”
“Think, think, think,” one of them said, and there was a soft, repetitive thump, as though whoever had uttered the words was banging his head on a surface.
“We’re gonna have to make it so they can’t talk,” the other one said.
She couldn’t tell their voices apart now—whether that was because her head was pounding, or their voices both had the same hoarse, hungover quality, she didn’t know.
She inched her foot off the side of the bed, holding her breath when she lowered her toe and touched the compact. It was too risky to try to grab it with her toes from there, especially since she didn’t have a good angle to see exactly what she was doing. Instead, she bent her leg and then slid her foot down the wall in front of the compact so she could come up from underneath it, hopefully using the quilt to hold it steady as she lifted it.
She moved slowly despite the escalation of their fight. Or maybe because of it. They were obviously having regrets now that the sun was rising and reality—and sobriety—had reared its head. Whatever the two monsters downstairs had planned, they hadn’t stuck to it, and now they were coming up with plan B.
And if they hadn’t taken off in the car with the rattly muffler she’d heard them drive into the garage the night before, then her family was still part of whatever was going to happen next.
She’d successfully lowered her foot between the bed and the wall, and now she straightened it slowly and then began to lift it. The quilt moved, and she heard the compact scrape very lightly against the wall again. She paused, her breath stalling. Then with a slow exhale, she began raising her leg again, one millimeter at a time, until the compact came into view.
Cami tilted her foot, the compact shifting slightly so that it was now against the side of the bed. Slow and steady wins the race. You got this. Her leg was trembling, but still she moved as slowly and precisely as possible so as not to lose the precious tool. She brought it up high enough and then, with a quick sideways movement, lightly kicked beneath the compact so that it landed on the side of the bed. The tape pulled at the skin of her wrists painfully, and she grimaced.
Now what?
She needed to break the mirror inside the compact. Make it sharp.
He has a gun. You can’t even hold a weapon with hands that are restrained, much less use it.
She cast her eyes to the side again and looked at that small, lifted corner of tape. Then she tucked the compact under a fold of quilt with her toe in case they came back into the room and lay all the way back down. Cami turned her head to the side and began rubbing her cheek over the pillow in an effort to remove more of the tape. She rotated her head faster and faster, lifting her cheek slightly so as to expose as much of the sticky surface to the pillowcase as possible. She gritted her teeth as it came off her skin, taking the top layer with it. I don’t care. I don’t care. It made her work harder and faster, her head spinning with the effort. Of all her wounds, this one was welcome. This one she controlled.