It wasn’t real. Her hands swiped out around her desperately. There was no coffin. Just a cavern. And there was an exit somewhere.
And Tanner would be back. He would wait, wait until she was completely hysterical before he came back. He would try to soothe her. To make it better. Then while she was weak, broken, he would ask her questions. He would probe.
She didn’t try to stop the tears from falling. She was fucking terrified; hysteria wasn’t that far away—there was no way to fight that. She knew her weakness, and so did her father.
The dark. Complete darkness, restraint, though at least this time her hands and feet weren’t tied. She was mobile. Hysterical, but mobile.
“You bastard!” she screamed. “You son of a bitch. You think burying me alive is going to get you something I don’t have to give?”
She laughed. The sound was sharp, desperate and disintegrated into sobs.
She really, really hated the dark.
Tanner dropped from the opening in the tunnel’s ceiling before reaching up and pulling the stone cover carefully back into place.
The lights blinked on, activated by the motion sensors hidden in the stone, providing a faint glow to light the way through the tunnels.
The motion-activated lights allowed for greater freedom of movement as well as an early warning system if the tunnels were ever breached.
Small pinpoints of warning activation would now be lighting through every tunnel, cavern and cave that Callan had wired. The tiny red sensors would emit a pulse of sound, similar to a hum of electricity.
He flipped open the panel at the side of the wall; the fake stone hid a small digital keypad that he punched his password into automatically. The hum would evaporate and the cavern’s motion-activated lights would flip on as he made his way to the main cavern.
Scheme was obviously still sleeping. He had left the sensors active there when he left. If she had awakened and gotten out of the bed, the lights would flip on. Once she got into the bed, they would dim and within an hour extinguish, just as the lights and television had the night before.
He had just spent longer than he would have liked fielding several very heavy suggestions from Callan Lyons that he return to oversee any potentially harmful media that arose from the disappearance of one Scheme Victoria Tallant.
That middle name never failed to make his lips quirk, whether in disgust or amusement he was never certain.
As he turned to the next tunnel, Tanner paused, a growl rumbling in his throat at the sound of an almost animalistic keening echoing from the cavern.
There was no way anyone could have invaded the caverns without him knowing. Jerking the electronic remote to the sensors from the holder at his side, Tanner deactivated the automatic lights before crouching and moving quickly toward the main chambers.
He could smell terror, thick and cloying. Scheme’s terror.
The small, guttural sounds of uncontrolled hysteria sliced through his soul and brought the Bengal lurking just beneath the surface to violent life. Tanner could feel his lips peeling back in a silent snarl as he tested the air, but found no scent other than Scheme and her terror.
His night vision picked up the area, if not perfectly, then with enough clarity to be certain no enemies were lurking or waiting for him.
A frown pulled at his brow as he slid silently into the cavern.
“I don’t know anything,” she sobbed. “Please. Please turn the lights on. Please, Tanner…” Her weeping was strained, exhausted. Hysterical.
“Scheme?” Tanner moved quickly across the room, finding her huddled in the middle of the cavern floor, naked, her hair and arms wrapped around her body as she curled on the cold stone defensively.
Kneeling next to her, he reached for her, his fingers curling around her arms when she erupted.
Clawed fingers raked his cheek as her cry shattered his senses. There was no sanity in that cry. There was only pain, fear and the need to escape.
“Scheme. ” He gripped her wrists, jerking her to him, trying to hold on to her as she fought like a wildcat. One small fist found the side of his head, her knee came impossibly close to his sensitive balls.
Fractured sobs echoed around him as he restrained her. He wrapped his arms around her from the back, locking her to his chest as one powerful arm held her and the other reached for the button of the remote at his side.
Soft, gentle light filled the room as she suddenly stilled. And then he got his first look at her face.
Deathly pale, her brown eyes nearly black, her face streaked with tears. The sight of it was heartbreaking. Enraging. This was not a normal reaction to being caught in the dark.
“I don’t know anything,” she cried again as he allowed her to jerk away from him, rising quickly to his feet as she stumbled back to the bed. “Leaving me in the dark won’t change that. ”