Pike (The Pawn Duet #1) - T.M. Frazier Page 0,33
body without being too tight. Being clean and dressed again gives me an all new resolve. The hot water from the shower has made the tingling in my arms and legs dissipate, and now, they’re just sore, but it’s nothing I can’t manage.
By the time I walk back into the bedroom, I feel sharper and more like me than I’ve felt in days.
The bedroom itself is not what I expect for Pike. Although, anything besides a dungeon with fire-breathing dragons and a chain-ball collection wouldn’t be what I expect for him. It’s block on all sides, painted white to give the room a more open and modern feel. The bed is a simple queen with a grey duvet and two simple white pillows. One of the nightstands is nothing more than an upside-down wooden crate, housing an assortment belts and change along with an empty bottle of whiskey. The other nightstand is actually not a nightstand at all, but a safe with both digital and combination locks. The electrical switches are the kind that are connected to metal tubes housing the wiring that runs up the walls and around the ceiling.
When I’m done scanning the room, I close my eyes and take a deep breath.
Often, the picture in my mind stands out clearer than the visual I get with my eyes, and if I have any chance at escape, I need to see everything.
In my mind, I see the window and realize it’s been painted shut. The walls of the room are mint green faded paint over concrete block. Several cracks run down the seams from floor to ceiling. The door is…wait. The walls. The cracks.
I open my eyes and race over to the wall where one of the blocks has cracks surrounding it on all sides. It’s the only one in the room like it. I push on the block and send out a silent prayer in thanks to whatever deity made this possible when it shifts. I wiggle my fingers through the cracks and pull on the block on one side until it slides far enough where I can reach in. I pat around finding only dust until I reach a little bit further and my fingertips graze something cold and metal.
I slide it back and wrap my fingers around it, retracting my hand until it’s free of the wall.
I look down and smile at the knife gleaming in my hand.
Pike’s kitchen is small, too small for two people to work in at the same time, but clean. The walls are white but a dim white as if the years of paint colors beneath are trying to fight their way through to be seen.
It’s a galley style kitchen with a small window at the end of the narrow walk space that lets just enough light in to make out the shadows of the bars covering it on the other side. Framing the window are a pair of matching yellow, brown, and orange plaid drapes tied together with tassels faded only on the inside facing the sun, telling me the curtains are always in the same position.
On one side is a half-moon shaped table pushed against the wall, its brown paint chipped at the edges. Three backless stools with deep orange cushions faded in the middle from wear are pushed underneath. The other side of the kitchen is lined with dark, stained butcher block counters topping yellow faded mustard color cabinets housing a small refrigerator, a one basin stainless steel sink, and a black countertop microwave. Hanging above the mud colored tile backsplash is a pair of out of place white contemporary cabinets, complete with a horizontal sliding obscure glass door on one side.
The living room walls are a deep orange. Two fake potted plants sit on a round table with a broken leg beside the large window. A futon takes up the majority of the wall beside it, covered with a simple grey duvet and a painting so dark I think it’s just a framed piece of black canvas.
An air conditioning unit sits inside the window, blowing around yellowed lace curtains like a dirty ghost haunting the place until someone spared it with some bleach.
The far wall is a flat screen TV, which I assume one of the fifty remotes on the coffee table are for, and a bookcase lined with hundreds of titles and two shelves of records, each covered in plastic.
“What were you expecting? A hole in the ground?” Pike asks, startling me out of my