Even if they offered her a shower, she’d refuse. She had seen no female guards. Observed nothing to indicate that showering would be anything other than a danger. She could stand to be stinky. How much worse could it be?
Do you really want to know the answer to that question?
Drink.
Piss.
Sleep.
Stare.
A person could go mad in the dark. Could go mad from other things too. Her captors seemed to be hitting every note on the psychotic hit parade. She could slowly feel her stability slipping away during each moment she grappled with chronic pain. Her crippling loneliness threatened to snap her last remaining string of lucidity. They were going to win. She couldn’t go on like this much longer. They knew exactly what they were doing with their trifecta of insanity.
She tried singing showtunes and jazz standards to lift her spirits, but that depressed her more. She yelled at the walls, hoping that she shattered the eardrums of the men watching on the cameras and listening in through the cell door. She screamed herself hoarse, cursing at the guards, at the government, at Santos, at the world in general. She prayed to be put out of her misery.
Caroline did the last one silently, lest the guards grant her wish.
The line between reality and imagination blurred. Did that shadow move? Did she hear a noise? She talked to herself, undoubtedly entertaining the guards even more. Half the time she didn’t know if she spoke out loud or just had entire conversations in her head. She had the interior of the room memorized. No more fumbling around. A nice little skill. She’d add it to her résumé the next time she updated it.
Can find her way to the sink and the shitter in pitch black darkness without assistance.
It would make her much more marketable. Of that she was certain.
Caroline tugged at her hair, hard enough to hurt. Her broken bones kept her in touch with her senses but fresh pain kept her right smack in the real world, where she needed to be.
Hope. The thing with feathers. She always hated that fucking poem. She’d briefly considered an English degree in college, but switched to history once she realized that all the other people in her classes were pretentious literary assholes.
Keep hope alive. Keep your head up. Keep dreaming. Keep pushin’.
What a crock of shit.
Jack will find me.
That thought often crowded her mind. Drowning out the fear she’d only voiced once. To Bob. Her feather, when her optimism started to fade. Jack was out there. She knew he was out there. And he’d come for her. Soon.
Jack will find me.
She said his name aloud, once, twice, three times. Maybe that would help.
“Jack will find me,” she whispered.
My husband will find me. Someone will find me.
Maybe if she thought about it long enough, it would happen.
Chapter Sixteen
The Fed
Was it morning? Caroline couldn’t tell. A low light buzzed in the hall and she recognized the voices echoing back and forth. Shift change. It had to be morning. How many mornings had there been? Two? Three? More? Probably more. Definitely more. Maybe she should have found a way to keep tally.
Her body hurt from being curled up on the bed. But things could always be worse. She could have her period. She could be knocked up. At least she had an IUD so that neither one of those things could happen.
Are you kidding, Gerard? That is some seriously fucked up glass half full bullshit. Pregnancy is the least of your worries right about now.
The low light went out and it was pitch black in her cell again.
She made a mental note not to tell the guards how much she hated extreme darkness. Unless they already knew. Which they probably did, considering how often they left her without any light.
The lights came back on, brighter than she remembered. Caroline could hear footsteps coming down the hall and tried to straighten up. The door swung open and Fischer and another guard, one she didn’t recognize, came in.
“Stand up,” the other guard said.
Caroline did as he said, then scowled at herself. Christ, a few days in this place and her responses to their barked orders were Pavlovian at times. How disgusting.
Fischer cuffed her wrists. “We’re going on a field trip,” he said.
“But my parents didn’t sign my permission slip,” she mumbled.
Fischer grinned. She could tell he was trying not to laugh. “Such a shame,” he said. “Wasting all that humor on someone like you.” He shoved her down the hall,