The Unseen

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

Brendan bolted after her, grabbed her around the waist. She flailed out at him, punching and kicking, but Anton seized her arm from behind, twisting her around, and both of them tackled her, holding her struggling and screaming between them, only Anton’s hand was clamped hard on her mouth and all she could hear was her own muffled grunting.

Brendan held her down on the floor as Anton duct-taped her mouth shut and tied her hands with some silky rope. The agony of having Brendan’s hands on her like that forced tears to her eyes and she clenched her eyes shut, clenched her jaw, her legs, her body…. She was sick with fear, that they would leave her upstairs, trussed and helpless, possibly to die. But instead of tying her to the chair, or a pillar, the two of them hauled her up from the floor and marched her down the narrow stairway. Brendan eased open the back closet panel at the bottom and they brought her through the dark closet, out the door into Paul Folger’s tiny, white room.

They muscled her toward the bed and she stiffened, fighting them.

“That’s right,” Anton told her. “I think you might be more of service to us here.”

Anton threw back the coverlet of the bed and for one terrible second her mind went to the worst…

No no God please no don’t hurt me don’t—

Then something at the edge of the bed brushed against her calf. She gasped and twisted in Anton’s grasp.

The horror she felt on looking down was instant and complete. Welded to the metal frame of the bed were three thick iron rings.

For restraints.

There were three identical protuberances on the right side of the bed, beside the wall—which was actually forcing the bed out several inches away from the wall, instead of it lining up flush.

Somehow it was those iron rings that made it real: Paul Folger’s long years of confinement. The room seemed to close in on her, with a rush of all that it had seen, all that it had absorbed, the sodden, stinking madness—the horror…

She bit back a scream. She wanted to scream, to scream her lungs out, but she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of her muffled, impotent howls.

Anton pushed her down on the bed and held her down. “Do it,” he snapped at Brendan.

“We don’t… have to hurt her,” Brendan mumbled.

“Don’t be a fool,” Anton said sharply, but his voice never rose. “Tie her.” And Brendan did, loosening the rope from her hands and, as Anton held her, looping it through the iron rings, fastening her arms by her sides, one on each side of the bed.

When Brendan stepped back, Anton straightened and looked down on Laurel with nothing like lust, or pleasure at her captivity—only the detachment a scientist would show a lab animal. “I trust your experience here will be illuminating. For you—and all of us.” He glanced around the room with an enigmatic smile. “I think we are in for an interesting night indeed. Perhaps even—life-altering.”

Brendan gave Laurel what seemed for a moment like a stricken look—ambiguous with misery—then the men moved away from the bed, and out.

She heard the lock turn in the door.

She was dizzy and gagging, fighting to breathe through her nose. Her eyes darted frantically around the room.

The room was stark and cold, the magnetic malevolence was heavy in the air.

Scream kick bounce shake make noise get them here make them help. Her mind was shouting at her, fast, panicked thoughts.

No.

Why?

Because Tyler and Katrina can’t help you, she found herself answering herself coldly. You’ll only put them in more danger. Shut up for now and figure out what you’re going to do.

She breathed through her nose, breathed through the heart-pounding panic, until her pulse slowed. Her eyes went again to the side of the bed, to the rings. So Brendan knew that, too, had known from the beginning that it was true, about Paul Folger, that they… they kept him here, that he was what they said he was….

Get hold of yourself. Now is not the time to freak out.

Brendan had lied to her, betrayed her. It’s worse than with Matt. That was just an engagement he broke off. This is jeopardy. This is criminal.

And then the anger came, and that was good.