Innocent Prey

But there were only retreating footsteps.

And the knowledge that she wasn’t alone anymore. There was someone in here with her, sitting on the floor now, making muffled but urgent sounds.

She turned toward the sounds, knew there were tears streaming down her own face, and felt horribly guilty for hoping it was another captive like her. “All right, all right. I’m coming.” Holding her hands out in front of her, Stevie moved slowly closer, until her hands bumped against a head. She turned her palms inward, running them lower, down the sides of a face, and felt the blindfold around the eyes, the tape over the mouth, and then lower, as the poor thing sat perfectly still, shivering. It was a girl. Had to be a girl. Stevie got to the hands, zip-tied together behind her back. The Asshole, as she’d taken to thinking of the kidnapper, had cut the zip tie partway through. She bent it back and forth until it gave and the newcomer’s hands pulled free.

The girl whipped them around fast, and Stevie stepped backward, waiting for her to remove the tape herself. “What the fuck is this?”

Stevie said, “I don’t know. I’ve been here... I don’t know, a couple of days, maybe.”

“Bullshit. This is bullshit.” The other girl went to the bars, and just as Stevie had done when she’d arrived, she shook and screamed and pounded and pulled. She didn’t beg or cry the way Stevie had. She sounded strong, sure of herself, confident. Everything Stevie wasn’t.

Eventually she stopped fighting the useless door, and paced the cell instead, back and forth.

Stevie was sitting on the bottom bunk hugging her sweater around her and waiting until it felt like time to talk. Eventually she tried. “My name’s Stevie. Um, Stephanie.”

The pacing stopped. She felt the girl looking at her. Eventually she said, “Lexus.”

Stevie nodded. “How did you get here?”

“Fucker grabbed me right off the damn street is how I got here. Threw me in a van, tied me up and tossed me here.” She shuffled a little. “You?”

“Same.”

“He come in here? He do anything to you?”

“No. Nothing. He shoves food through the bars every little while. Never says a word. It’s creepy. I’m not even sure if it’s a man.”

“Oh, he a man all right. I grabbed him by his balls before he got me bound and gagged, put a hurt on him he won’t forget. Piece’a shit. I get the chance again, I’ll rip ’em right off.”

“I’d like to see that.”

“Don’t look to me like you see anything,” Lexus said. “You blind, girl?”

Stevie nodded.

“Shee-it, you get all the luck, don’t you?”

“Looks like.”

Lexus came to the bunk, sat down beside Stevie. “A’right, then. We look out for each other, you and me. We got no one else. We got to get out of this shit, you follow?”

“I do. Maybe between the two of us we’ll find a way.”

“Ain’t no maybe about it, girl. We will.”

Stevie felt a rush of relief. There was no doubt in her mind that Lexus was older and wiser and stronger than she was. She’d been reassuring herself that her father had enough clout and connections to be turning the planet upside down to find her from the outside. Now she had help from the inside, as well. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, immediately clapping a hand to her mouth.

“Yeah, that makes one of us. Not how I ’spected to be spending my eighteenth, you know?”

“Your eighteenth...birthday?”

“Uh-huh.”

She wasn’t older, then. Maybe stronger, maybe braver, but not older. She was just a kid. Stevie’s conscience gave her a needle-like jab. She should be comforting the teenager, not leaning on her. She was almost three years older.

Hell. Okay, all right, might as well show her around the place and see if she came up with any ideas. Stevie got up off the bunk and pulled the box from underneath. “This is everything we own. Pitcher, glasses, spoons, some washcloths and some hairbrushes.”

She felt the other girl come around to crouch beside her, heard her pawing around in the box. “Four glasses. Four spoons. Four hairbrushes.” Lexus paused, took a breath. “Four beds in here. Four blankets.”

“I didn’t realize... Lexus, do you think...?”

“I think he’s gonna open that door at least two more times, Stevie-girl.”

Stevie nodded. “Okay. Okay, then we’re gonna have to figure out how to take advantage of that the next time he does.”

* * *

Even though we had Myrtle with us, we didn’t go to a drive-thru window for lunch. We headed instead to the Park Diner, ordered take-out and took it with us to a bench nearby with a view of the Susquehanna River. I liked that I could hear its rushing flow from where we sat, and I liked even more that I could see it. Bodies of water had fascinated me since I’d got my vision back. I live across the dirt excuse for a road from a lake—okay, a reservoir, but it looks like a lake—so I get plenty of time to study it. Rivers were an entirely different creature. The countless colors, the eddies and swirls, the constantly shifting patterns, the frothy bits and the way the sunlight reflects like diamonds when it hits just right.

I sat there, relishing my club sandwich with added hot sauce and sipping my Diet Coke, staring at the water until a paw on my leg reminded me I was not alone.

“Sorry, Myrt.” I tore the other half of my oversize sandwich into Myrtle-sized bites and fed her one of them. “Good, huh?”

Myrt swallowed it whole and whacked my shin again. And I knew what she was saying with her sightless brown eyes. How would I know if it’s good? That bite wasn’t big enough to tell. More, please. And by please, I mean now.

I sighed. I hate depriving her of people food when she likes it so much.

Mason was ripping the cellophane wrapper from the pack of styluses we’d picked up at the drugstore. “You should carry dog food,” he said. “Diet dog food.”

“Shut up. She’s not fat.”

“The vet said—”

“The vet is partial to skinny dogs. Greyhounds and Chihuahuas. For crying out loud, he owns a whippet.”

“Is his whippet good?”

I had broken off another bite and was handing it down to Myrtle, but I stopped in midmotion to send him a grimace. “That was terrible.” I didn’t tell him that I’d made the same joke in the exam room.

“I liked it.”

“Snarf!” said Myrt.

Mason smiled at her. “See? She agrees with me.”

“No. She wants her sandwich.” I obliged my dog, then said, “That’s all, Myrt. It’s all gone.”

She tilted her head to one side at the words all gone. Her least favorite words in history, besides go to the vet. Then she sighed heavily and collapsed, because bulldogs don’t lie down, they just drop. I knew that she knew I was a liar, and she knew that I knew that she knew it.