“I tried calling and texting you a thousand times and you didn’t answer,” Anstice replied. “Damien was over your way, so I asked him to stop by the gallery. I told him where the key was hidden because I was worried.”
“Well, I don’t like him.” I heard a snort and looked up at Damien who muttered ditto. “I have the flu, so I didn’t open the gallery today. You can tell the Neanderthal to leave.”
“I’m coming over to check on you.”
“No. I don’t want to see you.”
“Too bad,” Anstice replied. “See you soon.” Before I could respond the line went dead.
I pressed the End button and passed the cell back to Damien. “You can leave now.”
“Yeah, that’s not happening,” he said and pocketed his cell.
I was about to argue when a sharp cramp hit my stomach. I leaned back against the headboard, closing my eyes as I felt a drip of sweat trickled down my forehead to my cheek.
“You look like shit.”
“No fuck, Sherlock,” I said while clenching my teeth. “You’re a real genius.”
“Listen, baby doll, I don’t want to be here anymore than you want me here, so cut the sarcasm and we’ll be able to tolerate one another until Anstice gets here. I do have more important shit to do.”
“Then leave. I’m not stopping you. And call me baby doll one more time and I’ll—” A spasm of pain sliced into my abdomen and I curled my legs up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. Jesus. It had to be food poisoning.
I thought he was leaving when he started walking away. Instead, he disappeared into my bathroom and I could hear him shuffling through my cupboards. The sound of my things falling into the sink pierced my ears, and I raised my hands to cover them.
“Take these,” Damien said, now standing beside the bed.
I couldn’t speak any longer, so he placed three tiny white pills in my mouth and poured water down my throat. I coughed and sputtered, water dripping down my chin, and then I began tossing again, clutching my stomach as the pain became continuous.
Maybe I was dying. I thought I heard a phone ring minutes later, but deciphering sounds become too much to bear. I closed my eyes and slipped into the darkness of my mind.
“Let me out!” I gripped the bars of the iron cage. “Jesus Christ, get me the hell out of here.”
I yanked on the door. It rattled but refused to give way. The cage was hoisted three stories in the air, dangling by a chain that was attached to the ceiling of some sort of cave.
Shit, I was underground. In a goddamn cage like an animal.
I peered down at two men standing beside a steel table. The room was dark, except for an enormous stone fireplace that gave off an orange glow.
I heard a grunt and my eyes went back to the table. Oh, God—a man was shackled there.
“Who the hell are you people?” I yelled. “What do you want?” Neither man paid attention to me.
The last thing I remembered was a group of men grabbing me in the alley. Anstice? What happened to Anstice? And Keir? He was being attacked and then . . . nothing.
I paced the five-by-five-foot cage, my fear escalating. Who the hell were these psychos? Shit, what did they want from me? Some fetish they wanted to live out. God, I prayed not.
A loud crack sounded.
I scrambled to the side of the cage and grabbed the bars, looking down. My eyes widened, and then I screamed, horror ripping through me. Oh, God. No. Jesus. No. A sledgehammer came crashing down on the man’s leg again and again.
They were torturing a man. I wanted to look away, but I was frozen, staring at him. His eyes were open and he didn’t even flinch as the sledgehammer came down on him. Was he dead already? How could he just lie there?
Was I next?
I staggered backward, my spine banging into the bars. I had to get out of here. But there was no escape, even if I managed the impossibility of getting through the bars. I was twenty feet in the air with nothing to break my fall if I jumped. I covered my ears as the crack came again.
Crack.
The man grunted.
Crack.
A groan.
Laughter.
“Stop! Stop it,” I screamed.
I slid down the cage bars to my butt and curled my legs up to my chest, put my hands over my ears, and rocked back and forth. Tears leaked from my eyes as the reality of what I faced came hurtling at me.
Whoever these men were, they enjoyed the suffering. They were laughing. Oh, God. What would they do to me? What did they want? Why were they doing that to him?
My head snapped up. Chains clanged as another cage was hoisted upward. I scrambled to my feet and looked down again.
A man dressed in all black cranked a lever and another man walked across the room and then disappeared behind a pillar. I heard the creak of a door opening and closing.
The cage came to a swinging halt a foot away from mine. I sucked in air as I saw the man they’d tortured lying on the metal floor, his leg in an odd position. His jeans were ripped; his black T-shirt was torn across his chest where blood seeped from two deep gashes. The scream inside my throat pulsated, threatened to emerge at the horrific sight. I swallowed several times, trying to keep the vomit from rising.
“Mister. Hey, mister.”
His broad shoulders jerked and his head shifted to the side, his eyes still closed, his face pale and haggard. God, how long had he been here? I heard the sound of water crawl through pipes and then watched as it trickled into a device on top of his cage. It sprayed water onto him, and then stopped. A few minutes later it sprayed again.