Mary Lou took a deep breath. “How long I’ve been here really depends on what year it is.” She was weary. Words and tone decades older than this girl in her early twenties was.
“It’s 2006,” Ri replied.
Mary Lou’s sharp intake of breath told Ri something. As did Jaclyn’s slightly maniacal cackle from the other end of the room.
“What?” Ri asked, even though she knew this was bad for her. For all of them.
A tear ran down Mary Lou’s cheek. “It’s been far too long,” she rasped.
“How long?” Ri probed. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to know.
Mary Lou took another sharp breath. “I was taken in 1997,” she whispered.
“2001,” Jaclyn called out. She shook her head, clicking her teeth. “Five years,” she muttered, then laughed coldly again. “Five fucking years.”
Sobs echoed from the corner where Patricia was still curled in a ball. Her body twitched with each one.
“Patricia was brought here a few months ago,” Mary Lou said.
Words and numbers were ricocheting in Ri’s mind. She couldn’t process the fact that these girls had been here, in this dank, dark place for years. That couldn’t be right.
“How is this even possible?” she said. “How could you have been here for so long?”
Ri had been wrong. Knowledge was not power. Now, she knew, her mind was falling apart, unraveling as the chain around her ankle tightened.
“Look around you,” Jaclyn said. “That’s how years could go by.”
“The walls are thick,” Mary Lou said. “We can’t hear when they’re coming down the stairs. We can’t hear them unlocking the chains on the other side of the door. Nothing travels.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. I stopped trying to figure it out years ago. Years,” she repeated, blinking rapidly.
Ri could see it now, where her threads were showing. At first, she seemed kind, as normal as a girl could given the situation. But she was lost too. Broken. Parts of her mind. Sanity. It wasn’t there anymore.
“What door?” Ri demanded. A door meant escape no matter what they said. They’d been here for too long. They’d given up. Ri had more fight in her. She’d get back to that perfect summer day. To that perfect kiss. This would all be a nightmare.
Mary Lou pointed at the wall Patricia was curled in front of. “Do you see the separation in the concrete? It opens there.”
Ri squinted, her head pounding and gaze unfocused, but she did manage to make out a definite crack.
“And you haven’t tried to attack them when they open it, when they come in?” Orion asked, and it sounded almost judgmental, though she hadn’t meant it to. “Fight back or something?”
Jaclyn scoffed. “Stupid little girl.”
“There are cameras in every corner of the room,” Mary Lou explained. “Microphones too. The door is heavy. They can barely open it themselves. They’re heavily armed at all times. There is a lot to this. They’re not your average kid diddlers. They’re organized.”
Ri followed Mary Lou’s gaze to the corners of the ceiling. Red lights glowed in dark corners, and Ri could make out the shape of a small camera.
“Fighting back does nothing but make things worse.” Mary Lou’s eyes darted in Jaclyn’s direction.
Ri didn’t know it then, but she would discover later that Jaclyn fought back often in the beginning, when her will was still strong. It wasn’t a surprise, considering how feisty she was. But when Ri found out how she was punished, she would understand why someone like Jaclyn would stop fighting.
Orion sat in silence for a long while. She looked around the room and took it all in. She thought of the John Sanford and Patricia Cornwell novels her mother loved so much, and the true crime books she devoured like her Pall Malls. Ri ended up reading those same books, because she needed an escape, and she didn’t have the money or resources to choose who authored her escape. She’d read all about men like this, who treated people as objects and life as disposable.
She had learned to love those books, and she wasn’t quite sure why. She knew it was weird to be so interested in the horrific murders of another, but the books exhilarated her nonetheless. And it was the only thing she shared with her mother, their only commonality. She became addicted to reading about lives that were much worse than hers. No magic carpets, handsome princes, or mythical creatures. She had loved the reminder that things could always be worse. A perverse way of not letting her miserable existence seem so bad.
Until now. Now she was living that worst-case scenario. Now she had become the victim in those tragic stories she devoured and obsessed over. She had been plunged right inside one of those crime books because she’d kissed Maddox for too long, lingered in a dream for too long, ridden home late. She was the pawn, controlled by sick needs, and it was all her fault. It’s all she could tell herself.