Page 183 of The Contract

No rescue.

Hiking trails carve like arteries into the woods, and I’m free to use any of them, and I have. I’ve wasted entire days out there only to realize it never freaking ends.

Remember The Shining?

Yeah. Exactly like that.

Snow maze optional. Axe murderer probably included.

I cross to the window and stare out. Big, pillowy clouds drifting across a bruised gray-blue stretch of sky.

Other than the groundskeeper, his exhausted wife, and their three kids playing somewhere out on the grounds, there’s no one here.

Just us—and enough electronic security to rival Fort Knox.

Which reminds me.

I flip off camera number three—one of four mounted like smug little gods in every corner of the room.

A knock at the door snaps me out of the spiral.

“Come in.”

The man enters with quiet efficiency, sets the daily flower vase on the nightstand with the reverence of holy offering.

Today’s are peonies. Deep red, nearly black.

Fitting.

“Will you be going anywhere today, miss?”

He knows me so well.

Technically, I can come and go as I want—within a specific radius known only to my captor, while flanked by two guards and him. The grounds keeper. Or maybe house manager is more correct?

After my eighth escape attempt—maybe my tenth, it’s hard to keep track—and all of them to find Mila, the necklace was… reimagined.

Now?

It’s my own personal ankle monitor.

I cooperate, I get books.

I don’t, I get clouds.

Freedom, gift-wrapped in surveillance.

Fancy.

“I will,” I say. “The same places, please.”

Yes, I say please.

Because unlike my lord-of-darkness captor, I’m not an asshole.

And because his hand is a mess of old burns—twisted flesh and shiny scars, the kind that pulls tight when he grips anything at all—I will be kind.

I don’t need to give him another reason to clench.

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