the kind you could get at any big box store. The note was printed on a computer, no tell-tale handwriting.
You are my guest. You will be well fed and well cared for as long as you do exactly as I say. Disobey me, and there will be consequences.
“Do you understand?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Good. I want you to sit in the chair very still and not move again until I leave this room. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly. I’m not dumb.”
“No, you’re not. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have chosen you.”
She didn’t have time to wonder what he meant by that. He was moving toward her now, and she was busy trying not to cringe. He’d said sit perfectly still, so she held herself upright by pretending she was a soldier, chosen for the most important battle in a galactic war to save the world.
Her imagination had saved her many, many times in the past, and she counted on it to save her now.
He draped a cape around her, bright red. She pretended it was a Superman cape. It would give her special powers. If she wanted to, she could fly right out of this prison.
As he put one hand on top of her head, she fought the urge to claw her way out of the chair, scream, run. But the consequences loomed in her mind, a vise that held her perfectly still with her eyes wide open.
What came next horrified her. He was holding an electric razor, and he started shaving her head.
She cried silent tears as her hair fell onto the red cape. It was her one source of pride, a black mass of curls that proudly shouted her ethnicity, the one thing nobody could take away from her.
Except him. The man behind the mask.
When he finally turned off the razor, he ran his hand over her bald skull as gently as a mother soothing a baby.
“There now.” He carefully folded the cape around her hair and murmured, “Beautiful.”
Then he was gone.
Chapter Eight
The rain slashing against Lily’s windowpanes woke her up before dawn. There was no use trying to go back to sleep. Cee Cee’s disappearance and her own hopeless efforts felt like a rock on her chest.
Lily bathed and dressed then went downstairs. She needed a quiet cup of coffee. She needed to regroup.
Jack’s voice came to her unbidden. Lily, let’s go somewhere for a quiet cup of coffee and regroup. He’d said it when Griff walked out, when Lily told him there was no way she could go to college with a daughter to raise, when she thought her loan for Lily’s Designs wasn’t going to come through. And last spring after her mother’s funeral. In fact, Jack’s mantra wove through every crisis of her life.
She rounded the corner into the kitchen.
“You!” Toni said. She was huddled over her coffee cup, her hair a bedraggled mess and mascara streaking down her cheeks where she’d either been crying or had failed to remove her makeup before she went to bed. “I didn’t know I’d have an audience.” She wiped at her cheeks and only succeeded in smearing them more.
“Neither did I.” Lily grabbed a paper towel, dampened it under the faucet, and handed it to Toni.
The older woman swiped at her eyes then swabbed her whole face. She ended up going to the sink herself, wetting another paper towel and burying her face in its cooling depths. She seemed shrunken, reduced somehow from the woman Lily had first met.
Undecided whether to sit or keep standing, Lily finally poured herself a cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table.
“Toni, I’m sorry for those ugly things I said to you about the house. It’s your home, and I had no right to imply you were only a guest.”
Toni glanced over her shoulder, then sighed and moved back to her chair. “You’ve got spunk. I had it once.”
What did that even mean? In two days, Toni Allistair had shown more spunk than any six women Lily knew. Both of them sipped their coffee, occasionally sending a wary glance toward the other.
Finally Toni said, “I know you think I’m a monster for leaving my son for Clive to raise.”
“I could never leave Annabelle. But I didn’t walk in your shoes, so I don’t judge.”
Toni studied her so long, Lily began to feel uncomfortable. But she didn’t flinch. She wasn’t about to show any weakness in front of this fearsome woman.
Finally Toni said, “There might be more to you than meets the eye.”
What on earth do you