this terrible awareness that the forces suddenly controlling her limbs are not the miniature chaos of a freak accident. They’re organized, human.
The pain throbbing in her skull sweeps down her spine, almost strong enough to mask the more focused sensation of a pinprick in the side of her neck. Then she feels a kind of timelessness that reminds her of waking up from surgery.
She’s lying flat now, and there’s a weight in the back of her throat.
She’s blinking against the force of a bright light. For a second, she assumes it’s the overhead fixture in her guest bedroom, but it’s too bright. If it’s not the guest bedroom ceiling, where is it? Someplace with a very hard floor, because whatever surface is under her back is not the soft carpeting of her guest bedroom. And that means the weight on her jaw isn’t the result of books spilled from boxes knocked over by her fall.
Not a fall, a rational voice reminds her, a throw. You were thrown.
Falls don’t pull you back and slam you against the wall a second time. Falls don’t make a pinprick in the side of your neck.
Something is on my face, she thinks with a dullness that suggests the pinprick she felt earlier released some sort of drug into her system, a drug that’s slowly wearing off. Something is on my face and it feels wrong. Then she tries to swallow and feels something lodged against the back of her throat. At first she thinks its phlegm, but the way it only slightly bucks at the force of her swallow sends fear jolting through her. The thing in her throat isn’t natural. It isn’t flesh. It didn’t come from her. And it’s very hard.
It was put there.
When a man leans forward into the light’s blinding glare, she recognizes him instantly. He’s the guy in the waffle-print coat and baseball cap who stopped to stare at her right as she exploded at her boyfriend in the middle of the food court, and he’s caressing her face. He’s got light stubble and eyes like knife slashes on either side of his big, broken-looking nose. At first, she thinks he’s whispering something to her, then she thinks he’s trying to soothe her, then she realizes that he’s shushing her with a gentle, sustained hissing sound.
“Easy,” the man says quietly. “Easy, Zoey Long. Your silence is your strength. Forget everyone who’s ever told you otherwise.”
II
9
Waxahachie, Texas
The first time she used the catheter felt like an unacceptable surrender; the second, the hazard of doing business with serial killers. She’s never had a nervous bladder, so unless her system’s been aggravated by whatever Mattingly drugged her with back in Richardson, both events suggest she’s been in this cellar almost a full day.
Charlotte’s still astonished she managed to sleep, but after he left and the blinding lamp shut off, plunging her into darkness, it seemed less like a choice and more like she’d been gassed. Maybe it really was the latter, but she doubts it. She’d feel groggier and out of sorts, not just thirsty and hungry.
The darkness is impenetrable. Whatever structure is sitting above the storm cellar is windowless, or the storm doors she heard open earlier are sealed down to the last centimeter. Not even a thread of light has appeared during the hours she’s been down here, not a single sound from the outside world has reached her ears.
Over the course of two operations, she’s never been confined for this long. She’s been tied up, held down, treated like a piece of meat, drugged. But she’s never been left in total darkness for what feels like hours on end. Throughout, she’s kept her mind occupied by trying to puzzle out what this phase of the process means when it comes to Mattingly’s modus operandi.
So far, she’s been able to stave off panic by reminding herself she’s not truly alone. Aboveground and close by, Luke is sitting in his armored Cadillac, awaiting a signal from Kansas Command. Much farther away but in a similar predicament to hers, Cole and his team are also underground, waiting for Mattingly to do something other than store her like cargo. Hell, for all she knows, Cole might have some technology that can brighten the images coming from her TruGlass.
It doesn’t matter. What matters is that she’s not alone.
She’s not her mother. Not yet.
Based on how far away the storm doors sounded when Mattingly opened them earlier, Charlotte figures the cell must be about ten or