From the looks of it, they’re listening.
***
We find ourselves pulling out chairs and sitting by the two beds. The boys introduce themselves in low, raspy voices that remind me too much of Zane’s voice after a night of bad dreams.
Quint is the first boy who spoke out. He seems to be slightly older than the others, or maybe just more self-assured.
Sawyer is the only blond of the boys, with the darkest eyes, and a scar across his collarbone he won’t talk about. He’s the one who said he wanted to hear what Zane has to say.
Beside him sits Niko who has the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t say much, but his gaze is hard, and the white lines around his mouth tell me he’s in pain. Nobody has talked about the boys’ injuries and I make a mental note to ask Officer Delaney later.
Jericho’s face is bruised, his gray gaze hard. His earlobes are encrusted with blood. Looks like he had earrings that were pulled out. He hasn’t spoken a word yet, but he keeps glancing at the last boy sitting next to him, Tanner.
Tanner is more talkative. He tugs on his short chestnut curls as he tells us that he was the third boy Kenneth Shaw brought into the basement, after kidnapping him from an abandoned lot where he’d been practicing football moves on his own one afternoon.
From the bits and pieces contributed by all boys, we find out that the basement door opening inside the house was bolted shut by Kenneth Shaw after one of them—Niko—managed to get into the house one day and tried to get the attention of anyone passing by. He said a woman saw him through the window but didn’t seem to realize he’d been calling for help.
The house was locked so he wasn’t able to escape. Kenneth Shaw found him later, punished him, threw him down into the basement and blocked the door, leaving only the door to the yard so he could come and go, or throw down food and water bottles to them.
I’m squeezing Zane’s hand, just as a fist seems to be squeezing around my heart, but I doubt he feels it. On second glance, I realize he’s got a faraway look in his eyes I know well, and I lift our joined hands up, shaking them.
“Zane.” He blinks slowly, and I don’t think he’s seeing me—or anyone in this room. The crushing feeling in my chest grows. “Come on, Zane.”
I kind of expected this to happen, but I’d been hoping it wouldn’t. Flashbacks are tricky, as I’ve found out. Triggers are tricky. Sometimes you can predict them, sometimes you can’t.
“What’s going on?” Tanner asks, glancing from me to Zane and back. “Why are you calling his name?”
Megan looks up from her sleeping baby. “Sometimes his mind flashes back to the past,” she explains calmly. “Sometimes it can’t distinguish the past from the present.”
The boys seem to think about this.
“Like time traveling?” Quint eventually says.
“Not exactly.”
“Like dreaming with your eyes open,” Zane’s gravelly voice says, and I jerk a little. I hadn’t realized he was back. “And having a really fucking bad dream.”
The boys kind of cough-laugh, but I can see on their faces that they don’t really find it funny. Not surprisingly, they appear to be mature for their age. They look… concerned.
And it warms me up inside. I hardly know them, but they seem like good kids. They didn’t deserve what happened to them anymore than Zane did.
Their concern, their sadness, their quiet manners, they’re tugging on my heartstrings. I think I could come to care for them, given time. After all, I’m used to having a huge family. What’s five boys more?
Chapter Thirty Two
Zane
“Did he lock you up, too?” the blond boy—Sawyer—asks and I force myself to focus. My mind keeps slipping into the past as the memories crowd in. “In a basement?”
“It was a goddamn attic,” I growl and have to take a deep breath before I continue. “An attic. He’d lock me up for hours at a time, sometimes days, but…” My voice is cracking, and I have to stop again. “But then he’d release me, and I’d be going around the house with the other kids.”
“Z-man, maybe that’s enough for today,” Rafe says, and I shake my head.
Not yet. These kids are craving this. They need to hear they weren’t the only ones this happened to. I owe them this.
“He locked you up alone? Not together with others?” That’s Nico, the one with the intense blue eyes.
“I was alone.”