Page 92 of Tell Me Why
“None of that, now,” he said. “You’re caught, fair and square, and that kind of behavior isn’t going to do you any good.”
“Stay away from me,” she said, and he sat a paper cup, like a fast-food drink, down on the floor just at the edge of where her intuition told her her range was. He stepped back and looked at her.
“You’ll drink that,” he said. “When you’re good and hungry.”
“Probably not,” she said, and he smiled.
It was grim, but not cruel.
“They said you’d have fight. Not sure why we’re taking you on, but please be assured, I’m very good at my job. You’ll crack and break just like the rest of them. Best if you learn to go along. It hurts less that way.”
He gave her a curt little nod, then left.
Tina looked at the cup.
Knew it was going to be every bit as undignified as she expected, but she walked out to the end of her chains, then knelt and lay flat, finding the cup with her fingers and bringing it in.
She sniffed it, just sating a curiosity, then she wound up and threw it as hard as she could against the opposite wall.
The night was very boring.
It didn’t mean that she sat there,feelingbored, as she anticipated whatmighthappen next, but in the end, sitting there was all she did.
The blood took abnormally long to dry, on the opposite wall, which meant that it was anti-coagulated, among other things, but it did eventually pool and dry out.
And that was all that happened.
As dawn came, the lights turned out.
Tina backed herself against the wall as best she could, feeling as exposed as she ever had in her life, and she waited.
The man camein after dusk again, looking over at the wall without even a trace of curiosity, then set down a new cup and left.
Tina sniffed it again after he was gone, then threw this one, too.
The second night actuallywasboring.
The third evening,the door opened, and Tina settled herself to deliver the tirade she’d spent the last forty-eight hours formulating, then stopped short as a man staggered in, falling to the floor in front of her. Another man, a big-bodied man with the air of someone who did this for a living, followed him in and dragged him by the shoulder to an opposite set of eye-bolts and chained him to the floor, then left.
“Tell?” Tina whispered.
He sighed.
“You’re alive,” he said without moving. “So there’s that.”
“Whathappened?” Tina asked, and he lifted his head, shaking himself like a beaten dog, then forcing himself up with his palms.
“What part were you there for?” he asked. “By the time I got loose to go looking for you, you were gone.”
“I was outside…” she started, then looked at the ceiling. “Do I need to be careful?”
Tell shook his head, looking weary.
“No,” he said. “These are cook-and-kill boxes. This is what would have been there, at the house, before it was renovated.”
“I was outside with Leonard, turning him down, and then something just… hit us and dragged me away.”
“Like a truck, like a stick, or like a net?”
