Page 45 of A Light in the Darkness
But the way Kent moves toward me tells me he absolutely saw someone there too, and his motion launches me forward.
I take the steps as fast as I can, pushing myself up as the tower curves higher, Kent right at my feet.
I want to yell for her to come back, to entreat her to return to me, but I can’t risk alerting anyone that we’re here. Our boots on the stairs already give us away enough, but we’ve both got our guns at the ready, prepared for whatever we face at the tops of the steps.
When my legs are burning and my chest feels like it may collapse with the panic and exhaustion, we finally reach the top of the steps and land in an empty room. Kent stops behind me, but I push forward, looking for her.
The gun slips from my hands, hanging by the strap around my shoulder, but it hinders my motions as I run to the other end of the room, looking for any place she could be hiding. I toss it to the ground, not caring right now if I get shot by some sneak attack.
She had to have come up here… there’s nowhere else she could have gone. “Claire!” I yell, my voice edged in hysteria even to me.
This can’t be happening.She can’t be here.
I just talked to Moose two hours ago—he assured me that she was safe, with Rhea. She’s supposed to be in Florida, not Mexico, but I know what I saw.
It was her.
“Claire!” I scream, pushing against the walls, looking for any sort of hidden door, any place she could be hiding. I scan every inch of the room, certain that she’s here somewhere.
“Boudreaux!” Kent calls, loudly enough that I realize this must not be the first time he’s called out to me.
I turn to face him, lungs full of panic that feel like they may drown me.
“You saw her!” I yell, not appreciating that he’s looking at me like a crazy person. “You saw her run up these steps! Where did she go?”
“I don’t know,” Kent says, scanning the room, looking for any sort of sign that may betray her hiding spot.
And, of course, he finds it… a trap door in the floor. His light flashes from me to the notch in the ground—just large enough to slip a few fingers into and lift. He raises a hand to his lips, cautioning me against saying anything else, but I can’t speak anyway. My chest is constricting, my lungs unable to take in air. Air isn’t what I need right now; I need her.
We move together, slow and steady steps, and then I drop to my knees, lifting the floorboards. They move on a hinge, letting light into the darkness below, but at first all I see is an expanse of empty space, void of light.
But then I catch a glimpse of her eyes shining in the shadows.
“Claire!” I jump into the space, unsure how large it is, and move toward her. As I step deeper, Kent moves behind me to help illuminate the space ahead of me, and for one second, I see her again. Lit by the beam of Kent’s flashlight, that blonde hair curtains her face, hiding her from me.
“It’s okay!” I tell her, moving slowly just in case she’s scared by sudden movement. I don’t know what the hell happened, but I’m assuming Moose lied to me, which means I have no clue how long she’s been here… or what sort of horrors she may have endured.
“I’m here.”
I’m reaching out a hand for her to take on her own when Kent’s light disappears, plunging me in darkness again. She moves as soon as it happens, knocking me backward so that my head collides with the bottom of the trap door as she scrambles past me, out into the space above. I recover quickly, getting a hand on her ankle, praying my touch won’t set her off.
I have no idea what happened, but I suddenly feel like I had a stroke or slipped into a nightmare. How she ended up here, what might have happened to her, why I had no clue she was here… it all evades me as I pull myself upward after her and trap her body against mine.
She fights me, thrashing back and forth, kicking her legs, trying everything she can to dislodge me, so that my continuous string of “it’s okay, it’s me” falls on deaf ears. She’s going to hurt herself if she doesn’t stop, and maybe she can’t hear me, so I brace one hand on the ground and the other on her shoulder, rolling her over to face me.
Her eyes aren’t as bright as they were the last time I saw her—they look empty, and they’re cold as I pin her wrists above her head, flattening her entirely against the ground to immobilize her as I promise her that everything is okay now, over and over again, a stream broken only by occasional apologies as she slowly begins to give up the fight.
I want answers, but I don’t even know which questions to ask yet… they flood my brain, and the adrenaline is leaving my veins, making room for the horrible reality.
Her eyes aren’t the only thing that’s different; there’s a scar on each corner of her mouth, a thin line curving upward, ending with an X on her cheekbones. The scar is faint, drawn by a thin blade—I probably wouldn’t notice it if we weren’t under this exact light, with me on top of her.
She holds my gaze, sees the horror in my eyes as I take in the scars—not new, but not quite old. My heart thunders and my head is dizzy with the implication that she’s been stuck in hell for farlonger than I’ve known about it. And why haven’t I known about it?
I reach out a hand to run a finger over one of the scars, and my heart shatters in my chest as she screams under me, her fight renewed.
She’s still beautiful—devastatingly so—but sad and scared and permanently disfigured. Her sweet face has been marred by someone who wanted her to suffer, not just when they held the blade to her skin, but every time she caught a glimpse of herself after.
“Who did this?” I demand, my voice shaking as I try to get her to listen to me, to relax, to realize that I would never hurt her.
