He dabs it against my hand, right where a wound is from banging on the glass. It burns so much, I hate the feeling, but I’m also wondering why he’s doing this.
I watch him like a hawk as he picks up a Band-Aid and sticks it around my hand, right on top of the wound.
“There,” he says, holding my hand in an eerily soft way as he checks it for more scratches.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” he says.
He makes it sound as if he’s doing me a favor.
As if I owe him something when, in fact, he was the one who took something from me.
My freedom.
“Now …” He pulls the wheelchair so close to him I wanna sink back. He picks up something from his desk. Photographs. “I want you to look.”
He holds them out in front of me, one by one.
All the pictures are of girls.
“See them?”
I nod.
He places them back on the desk and scoots even closer to me. So close, his disgusting breath seeps into my nose, making me cough.
“Remember those faces, Ella,” he says. “All four of them.”
Who are they?
“Wanna know why you have to remember them?” He narrows his eyes, clutching my arms. I feel sick from his touch. “They’re the girls who came before you …”
I swallow as he says the words, the realization of what it means hitting me like a brick to the face.
“Let’s just say they didn’t go back to their families.”
I want to puke.
I can already feel the bile rising.
Shit.
“And you …” He points his finger at me and chuckles. “You’re pushing it too.”
This isn’t just a warning. It’s a threat.
I might disappear.
I stare at the pictures of the girls, wondering where he buried them. But he grabs my chin and forces me to look at him.
“Do you want to end up like them?” he asks.
I vehemently shake my head.
“You’ll stop banging the glass until you bleed. You will do exactly what I ask you to. No objections. Got it?”
I nod harder than I ever have in my life.
No matter how much I hate this man for ruining my life, I don’t want to die.
He cleans up the stuff he used and returns the items to the drawers. While he’s busy, I secretly look around again, and my eye catches a bunch of papers lying on the corner of the desk. The top one has my name and photograph on it.
“Oh … you saw that?”
I pretend I wasn’t looking at it, but of course, it’s too late now.
Shit, I’m caught.
“Yes …” he says, deviously smiling at me. “I did my research. You were perfect.”
Perfect for what?
Suddenly, he walks away, leaving me alone in this small office that feels more like a closet than anything else.
Panic rises to the surface, and I feel the urge to break free from my bonds, but no matter how hard I try, it’s no use. Despite having regained a bit of energy that I lost to the gas, it’s not nearly enough to work out of these leather straps. And I can’t reach them with my teeth either.
Dammit!
The stomping behind me stops me immediately. He came back with a smile on his face … and a dress in his hands.
“Like it?” he asks.
It’s a navy blue, floral dress that looks like it belonged to a girl similar to my size.
“I think it’ll fit.” Graham places it on my lap with something else. Lipstick.
I want to shove it off and erase their mark from my body because I don’t know how he got these.
What if these belonged to one of his victims?
It makes me want to scream.
“Tomorrow’s a big day,” he says, his underlying tone twisting my stomach.
Tomorrow. What’s happening tomorrow? Something I’d need a dress for. A dance? Or is he taking me outside?
The questions are killing me, but then he grabs the wheelchair and spins it around.
I can’t make eye contact with him, despite wanting to so desperately. I need to know what he meant by ‘tomorrow.’ What will happen? Why did he give me the dress and lipstick?
Right before we exit the room, he grabs a piece of cloth and stops to tie it around my head. Not being able to see makes me nervous. I want to know where we’re going and if I need to prepare for something, but not seeing anything makes that impossible.
He brings me somewhere … comes to a stop … and I hear a soft beep. We wait. A rattling of metal. He pushes me again and stops. Something closes. It must be an elevator. I know for sure when I feel the familiar sense of gravity intensifying for just a second. We’re going up.
It doesn’t take long to come to a stop again. He pushes me out again and keeps going. It feels like forever until he stops again, and a clicking noise is audible, followed by a creak. The wheelchair lifts and is pushed over something. A loud bang behind me makes me jolt in my seat.