Cellar Door

Which makes me question if I can actually go through with any of this.

Instead of hardening me, she’s made me weaker.

I have to let her go. It’s time. I can put her somewhere safe for a few days, hide her away. That should give me enough time to do what I need to do and disappear.

If I don’t die in the process.

After that, she’s on her own. If she never accepts the veracity of her situation, then that’s on her. I’ve tried to show her. Like the damn soup I ladle into her mouth, I’ve been feeding her answers for the past week, just waiting for the truth to catch fire and light up those dark eyes. Her unresponsive state won’t matter to the people looking for her. Once I’m gone, they’ll descend, closing up the last of the loose ends.

“I need to understand.” Her voice comes low and throaty. It’s fragile in its unused state. If I make a sudden move, she’ll retreat back within herself.

I remain still, where I am. “What do you need to understand, Makenna?” I’ve stopped calling her Mak. It was cruel to call her by the nickname Hudson gave her, and I used that to my advantage.

She doesn’t look up. She’s curled against the wall on the cot, staring at her knees. Her hair is still damp from the shower, and the dark strands drape her face and bare legs. She tucked herself into an oversized T-shirt before she resumed her station on the cot.

“Ask me…everything,” she says. “Interrogate me.”

Locked inside her own mind, she’s been working out the details for the past two days. All right. Mentally healthy people might call this processing. I call it detachment. If she comes across a particular fact she can’t accept, she can withdraw again just as quickly.

“Why did Detective Hudson take you to the ravine?” I’ve asked this before, and her answer then was honest. But it was also defensive.

“I was being set up,” she says. “Royce Hudson brought me to a place where he knew I’d lower my guard, where I wouldn’t be anticipating…” She trails off, a shiver racks her body. “Where I’d be vulnerable. I’d gotten too close to uncovering players in a local sex trafficking organization that I’d been investigating. That was a threat to him. I was a threat. He was one of the main players known to the racket as Watchdog. His job was to protect—”

I hesitate, waiting for her to continue, to make the connection. Then: “Makenna?”

She closes her eyes for a prolonged beat. “His job was to protect these men. Not to protect me.”

I swallow down the ache in my throat. I’m not a sentimental guy. But witnessing her make sense of a life full of lies is a wicked sort of pain. The Phiser group didn’t just destroy girls—they destroyed everyone they came into contact with.

I’d never thought of Makenna as a victim until now.

All that rage and bravado she was full of… Layer and layer is being stripped away as she uncovers the truth of herself.

Then again, it could be a farce. I’m not that practiced when it comes to female hostages. Unlike the men I hunt, that’s not my specialty. A fact that will be to my detriment.

This could be her practicing aloud, testing out the theory. If she wants her life back badly enough, and she has enough evidence—her files; my files—maybe she can make it happen. With or without her partner’s remains, she could tarnish a cop’s reputation. That never goes over well with other cops. Does she understand the risk?

“Why did Jack Keller murder Milton Myer?” I ask.

If she’s worked out the answer to this, her acceptance of the cellar will make more sense. She’s safer in here than outside this room.

“Jack Keller is a hired hitman.” Her eyes meet mine. It’s the first time in over forty-eight hours she’s really seen me. “The person in control of the sex trafficking organization is trying to clean up.”

I take in a giant breath. Waiting for her to make the full connection.

She picks at the edge of her bandage. I checked her hands just yesterday. They’re healing, but I kept the bandage there to prevent her from damaging her hands further, if she lost control again. I don’t like not knowing what’s going to happen next. She’s unpredictable, and that worries me more than five hired hitmen.

“I wasn’t supposed to go inside the office building,” she says, as she unwraps her hands. “I was hired to investigate, to watch. That’s what PIs do. But the gunshot. Jack Keller didn’t use a silencer. This was done on purpose to draw me out of my car. I went after the shooter.”

“What does that mean, Makenna?”

She drops the used bandages off the side of the cot, then pushes her back flat against the wall. She knows what this cellar is made of, and yet she’s not averse to touching these walls. Maybe she feels closer to Hudson here. It’s a disturbing thought, but we search out comfort even from those who hurt us. Sometimes, we crave it from them the most.

“What does it mean,” she repeats on a sigh. “It means, I was sent there to die.” She pushes onto her feet, unsteady, and I almost go to her, but I let her gain her balance on her own. “Myer, and possibly a number of others involved, had deviated. They’d taken local girls. A couple even wound up dead. That wasn’t going to be tolerated. It was a threat to the higher up, the person in charge.” She paces, thinking it through aloud. “That’s why Keller killed Myer. And why I was planted there. Not to be a witness as I first thought, but to be killed in the crossfire. That same person in charge found out about my investigation and wanted me gone, along with anyone else asking questions or—” She looks at me. “Seeking revenge.”

I nod slowly. “Who put you there?”

“Jennifer Myer. The wife of Milton Myer,