Her eyes, his lies

Chapter 22

It was dank, dark, and utterly claustrophobic. An irregular pattering was echoing through the basement, water dripping from an unseen pipe overhead. The floor was somehow even colder than the damp air, and it sapped the heat from Jane's legs. She whimpered, the only sound she could make from beneath the gag.

Tears were streaming down her eyes, wetting the cloth that had been stuffed into her mouth. It kept it in a constant state of dryness, giving her the feeling of constantly choking on something in her throat.

The voice had returned, with its scathing insults and sarcastic remarks, and Jane found that she did not have the will to ignore it any longer.

She knew this was coming, it said. She'd even imagined something like this would happen. She knew Beatrice was cunning, and dangerous, and likely to discover her little espionage project at some point. So why was she tied up in a basement, kneeling and shaking from cold?

The only source of light in the subterranean room was a tiny light bulb, hanging by a chain from the ceiling. Footsteps from the floor above caused it to sway dizzyingly. The shadows swayed in tandem with the light, further disorienting Jane.

Even with her limbs numb from the constriction and the low temperature, she knew that Beatrice and Joss had taken her phone, and most likely anything else in her pockets. There would be no calling for help, or breaking her way out.

Breaking her way out? The voice scoffed. She wasn't an action movie hero. She was just a dumb teenage girl that fell too far down a rabbit hole, and now she was paying for it. She'd poked the bear and now it was fighting back.

A stupid, dumb, anxious teenage girl. For all she knew, they could be seriously hurting Vicky right now, and it would be all Jane's fault. She couldn't bear the image of Victoria tied up in the same way she was.

She'd endangered her only friend, lied constantly to her own mother, and fallen for a boy that she'd been lying to this entire time.

God, she thought. She couldn't believe how stupid she had been with Ryder.

He had seemed so trusting to her, with his honest smile, and the vulnerability he had chosen to show Jane. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine them together again, stretched out in the grass, thin clouds drifting in the sky above them.

More tears streamed down her cheeks, pooling against the already over saturated gag.

The squeal of the door's hinges at the top of the staircase startled her, and she squinted as a shaft of light fell into the basement from above. The dripping of water sped up as the movement disturbed its flow.

Joss entered first, his bulky frame nearly blotting out the light from outside. Beatrice was following close behind, with an expression of predatory amusement adorning her face. Her skirt swished as she descended the steps, one hand wrapped around the handle of a suitcase, and the other holding Jane's laptop bag.

The mere sight of the suitcase unnerved Jane. Her imagination jumped to conclusion after conclusion, fueled by the various movie scenes she had seen.

What could possibly be in that? Various implements of torture? A blow torch? Alien brain worms?

Joss pulled something from the darkest corner of the room, the screeching of metal on concrete joltingly loud in the enclosed space of the basement. Jane saw, as he brought it beneath the lone bulb, that it was a rusty chair.

She was squirming now, though she could barely move. The restraints dug into her ankles and her wrists. The pain would have been unbearable if her limbs hadn't lost their sensation.