Caged

Chapter 9

Shade sent a fearful look toward the door, worried that Ethan might come back any minute. "Cage the chains are too thick, you'll never break them!"

"I'm not trying to break them."

"Then what are you doing?"

"I'm trying to pick the lock," he told her as he used a small piece of wire he'd found on the floor to pick the lock.

"Do you even know how to pick a lock?" she asked.

"Don't think so but that doesn't mean I can't get lucky."

There was a small click from the lock and he grinned at her as he pulled the wire free of the lock and tugged on the manacle. It didn't budge. "Dammit, you stubborn hunk of metal!" The monitors across the room flared to life.

"Guess we know what that noise was now," Shade muttered.

They watched the screens. The cameras showed the same podium from the previous press conference. Police officials were taking their places around it.

Cage scowled. "Great another press conference. I bet that bastard will be there playing the sad parent."

"Good afternoon. Currently, there are no updates on the case. We're still following leads and looking for witnesses. We're asking the community to remain vigilant and report anything suspicious to the tip line. The number is on the screen. The parents would like to say a few words before we conclude the press conference."

He stepped aside and their parents stepped up to the podium. Ethan stood beside his mother as she spoke.

"Whoever you are, wherever you are, if you're listening please return our children to us. They haven't done anything wrong, they're innocent. Please, just send them home to us safe. I'm begging you. I simply want my son back, he's my only child, he's all that I've got." She broke down and began sobbing. Ethan pulled her into his arms and spoke quietly to her as he drew her away from the podium so Shade's parents could speak.

"Look at him acting as if he cares about her pain. Can you believe it?"

"He does care, Cage. He has said he loves her." Her reply was absent as she watched her parents step up to speak. Her mother opened her mouth, stopped, and wiped at the tears leaking from her eyes before she broke down. Her father wrapped an arm around her and held her as he spoke. "We want our children home safely. Please let them go and send them home to us. Our Sandirah is all we have and Cagney is all the Chambers' have. There is no need for any of this, for the pain and suffering that we've been put through. Please! Just let them go!"

"Sadi, everyone calls me Sadi! Sadirah," she murmured the name several times.

Cage grimaced. "Sadly, I wish I didn't remember mine."

She giggled. "Aw come on, it isn't that bad. Hey, I'm still your girlfriend despite the name, right?"

He leaned in and gave her a peck on the cheek. "Yes, you are. Thanks for that by the way. I still wonder what my mother was thinking when she christened me with that name."

"You know exactly what she was thinking. She named you after James Cagney the actor."

"Yeah, she loves his movies. She could have named me James but no, she wanted to be different. At least we know where Cage came from."

"Ethan probably thought it was funny."

He snorted. "Nothing about that asshole is funny. And why call you Shade?"

She shrugged. "Who knows, maybe he thought it was close enough to Sadi to be some sort of a joke."

"I suppose so. This sucks." His eyes went to the screens as another official representative stepped up and took the place Shade's parents had vacated. The woman gave them a profile of the perpetrator before she took questions from the gathered reporters.

"That profile is so far from Ethan it's laughable," Cage said. The bastard was right, the randomness was the key to not being caught. He had sent the cops down the wrong trail exactly as he had planned. The police were looking for a lone abductor, possibly someone who had simply been passing through and happened upon them where they had broken down. Their profile was of a middle-class man who had probably abducted young people before. There was talk of sex trafficking or the man being a pedophile.

"You're right, they got that very wrong."

Cage sighed and nodded. When Ethan killed them, he'd toss their bodies off the beaten path, probably in the wilderness where only the coyotes would find them. "We need to get out of here somehow. We need to get free and tell someone what really happened," he told her.

She rattled the chains that bound them. "How do we do that?"

"I wish I knew."

"Cage, I appreciate the effort but I don't think it's like in the movies. You can't just suddenly know how to pick a lock. I think we're out of luck. I'd say pray someone stumbles on this place and finds us, but it's not likely. We're too far outside of town."

"We could hope he has a heart attack and doesn't come back to finish the job," he told her with a grin.

"Yeah, as fun as that is to imagine, then we'd starve to death," she replied.

"Right, that didn't occur to me." He sighed. "I don't think I'm the kind of guy who thinks things through beforehand." He reached for the wire to try to pick the lock again.

"You are, Cage. At least, that's what little I remember. You like order." Her eyes went to the press conference that was still on the screens.

The lady from the police was done answering questions and gave the hotline number again for anyone to call in tips. Their parents stood in the background with tears in their eyes silently begging for their return. It was probably her imagination but it seemed as if Ethan was smug about the situation. It was awful to see how well he was doing at fooling everyone. Evil that despicable shouldn't be allowed to exist. Yet it did and it reared its ugly head every day.

She glanced sidelong at Cage and a tiny smile somehow found its way onto her face as she watched him bent over the lock. His brow was scrunched in concentration as he tried to work the lock free and the tip of his tongue peeked out between his lips. It gave her a small reminder of why she loved him. Once he set his mind on something he followed it through no matter the outcome.

He wanted to save them so badly. To get them free and home to their families. To see Ethan pay for his treachery.

If fate had other ideas for them, well, she supposed there was no one else that she'd want to spend her final moments with than him. They had their ups and downs in their relationship. It wasn't perfect, but whose relationship was? They cared deeply about one another and had been through a lot. In the end, she knew that no matter what came and went in her life she could always depend on him to be there.

Even if the thingthat came to them was death.