My head is pounding when I wake, and though I try to open my eyes, I can only manage to squint. Dozens of spotlights are aimed right at me, and I can see nothing except pure white light and faint spectral arcs in my periphery that seem to be dancing and leaping.
I’m dizzy, and I remember being stabbed with a needle. Some sort of hallucinogen, I think, considering the way the world seems to be all wonky.
A moment later, I realize that I’m standing. I try to raise my hand to shield my vision, but it’s impossible. My wrists are strapped behind me, and my back is pressed to a pole. I try to step forward, but there are ties on my ankles as well as one around my waist.
It’s the one that encircles my neck that terrifies me the most.
I don’t know where I am, but I do know who brought me here. And that certainty makes my blood run cold.
“Adele,” I say, though the name is only a whisper. “Please. My mom. Where’s my mom?”
I don’t really expect an answer. I know how she works. She will leave me here for hours upon hours. Sweat pouring down me from the heat of these lamps. My mouth dry with the need of water. My muscles aching and trembling. My stomach clenching, and my head woozy from fear and hunger. She will push me to the edge, and when I am close to tumbling over into insanity or death, she will bring water. Bread. Maybe boiled meat.
And then the horror will start up again.
Or maybe not. Maybe this time she’s tired of her games. Maybe this time she just wants to kill me.
What was it her text message said? That she could have done so much worse?
This, I think, is worse.
“Adele, please…”
And then I hear her heels. Those damned stilettos she always wears. They click across the concrete floor, and if I squint I can barely make out her movement to my left. She steps to one side so that she is blocking one of the spotlights.
Now I can see her silhouette against the light. I can’t make out her face, but I’m sure that she is smiling, simpering and cold and crazy.
“Please what? Please make this fast? I don’t want to make it fast. You’ve made me suffer for seventeen years. I don’t think you’ll be able to hold on for that long, but I’m willing to try if you are.”
“I thought we were friends, Adele,” I say. Not because I believe it but because I am desperate. “Why are you doing this?”
“Darling, we are friends. Or I thought we were, too. You stayed away from him, just like a friend should stay away from another woman’s man. I don’t hold a grudge about what you did when you were young—teenagers can do such foolish things—but once you grew up, you understood. You left. And, Janie darling, you were right. You even got married, you totally cleared the path. And then,” she says, the soft edge of her voice turning as sharp as a blade, “then you twisted it all around.
“You want to know why I’m doing this? I’m doing it because you started it. Because you left me no choice. Because when someone tries to take what is yours, the only option left is to fight. And, darling Janie, this is a fight I promise you I’ll win.”
I wish I could see her face. I want to see the crazy in her eyes. I want to face down the monster who’s been haunting us all this time.
But all I can do is talk to the shadow.
All I can do is pray that Dallas finds me in time.
Because I don’t need to see her face to know that if she has her way, I’m not getting out of this room alive.
