Page 88 of Beneath Her Skin

A chain scrapes inside.

Judith jerks back. Her palms are slick with sweat.

Thatfuckingliar.

And her, a fool who should have seen the signs. She knows them well enough, doesn’t she?

“I left that behind,” she whispers, and her anger surges again, although this time it’s at herself.

Judith clenches her jaw and slices open the padlock. This one doesn’t fall to the ground, and she wrenches it off and hurls it at the wall of blades, making them clatter.

Inside the room, someone whimpers.

Judith heaves the door open. This time, she isn’t surprised by what the sickly yellow light illuminates:

A filthy cot. A rusty chain.

And a woman streaked with blood and bruises.

PART TWO

GLORIA

4

He’s back. I hear the twinkling clank of his weapons, even if his footsteps sound different, lighter and slower. He also doesn’t call out like he’s done the last six times, that mocking,Honey, I’m home!right before the padlock clicks open.

I slide back on the cot, clenching my teeth so I don’t cry out as pain shoots up from the deep, gouging wound in my thigh. He rattles around out there, although it sounds different. There’s no click of the padlock sliding open. Instead, I hear a snapthat reminds me of the sound of a broken bone.

“Please,” I whisper, squeezing my eyes shut. “Please, let it be fast.” I don’t know who I’m praying to. Certainly not God, who clearly doesn’t care about a whore like me.

The door scrapes open. I force myself to look at him because if I don’t, it will be so much worse.

But it isn’t him.

It’s a woman.

She’s the kind of woman who looks elegant on the surface but will attack you with a kind of viciousness not even the meanest of working girls can conjure up. The kind of woman who blamesyou because her husband paid fifty bucks for a blowjob and a fuck in a shabby motel, who’ll do anything in her power to see you destroyed just for trying to make a living.

She steps into the cell, and my whole body freezes. She’s holding something that looks like one of his weapons, letting it dangle at her side, beside her sleek dark slacks. She tilts her head a little, taking me in.

“Did my husband do this to you?”

I stare at her, not sure how to respond. This has to be a trap. One of his cruel little games.

“He’s not here,” she adds.

I swallow, my throat dry. I have water, sort of—he left a ceramic saucer underneath a pipe that drips with condensation. But it tastes metallic and stale, and I try not to drink too much of it, not in the three days I’ve been here.

I think it’s been three days, anyway.

“Who are you?” The question comes out shaky, my voice still raspy from screaming.

“My name is Judith Vale. Did my husband do this to you?” This time, when she asks the question, I hear the viciousness I’d expect from such a privileged woman. She spits the question out, as sharp as a knife. Curls her fingers more tightly around the weapon she carries. If it even is a weapon—I can’t see a blade.

“Probably,” I spit back at her, like we’re talking about a john and not a psychopath. “I don’t know who your fucking husband is.”

“He’s blond,” Judith says smoothly. “With grey eyes. A brown mustache. Only a few inches taller than me.”

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