Page 72 of Swerve
“Madison said he talked in his sleep. Some crazy stuff, mumbling about beatings, maybe when he was a kid. Or maybe not. I don’t know. But there was a place he talked about.”
“What was it?”
“Some place he called the hotel.”
“What kind of hotel?” Knox asks.
“No idea.” He hesitates and then pulls a phone from his back pocket. “She sent me a video one night of him talking in his sleep. She thought it was funny. We were fairly open with each other about our love lives, its quirks and whatnot.”
Knox feels his heart kick up a beat. “Could we see it, please?”
His hesitation is only a flicker of a second, as if he realizes he’s come too far to turn back now. He taps the screen, opens the text app, scrolls down, and clicks once, handing the phone to Knox.
Knox taps the play button and holds the phone closer to Emory. She’s so still, he wonders if she’s holding her breath. The video starts, the headboard of a bed is the first shot on the screen. There’s no sound. The camera moves to a man, sleeping, flat on his back, one arm thrown up above his head. Even in the dimness, Knox can tell it’s the same guy on the festival footage, the same guy who ran out of Madison’s apartment last night.
A few seconds of silence pass, and then he mumbles something that isn’t a recognizable word. His head moves side to side. The camera remains still on him.Hotel California. Back to Hotel California.
A low giggle follows. Madison’s giggle. “You want to go to Hotel California? That’s kind of a long way.” And then the camera turns off.
Knox looks up at Jason. “Will you send this to me?”
“Keep my name out of it?” Jason asks.
“Will do.”
Knox gives him his number and waits for him to send the video, before saying, “Thank you. I understand not wanting to be involved, but you’re a stand-up guy.”
Jason smiles, and it’s clear that the compliment means something to him. “Thanks, man. I hope you find him. Madison was a good friend to me. She shouldn’t have died like that. No one should die like that.”
“No,” Emory says. “No one should. Thank you, Jason.”
They leave the store then, and it isn’t until they’re back in the Jeep that Knox plays the video again. They watch it five times, back to back before Knox looks at Emory and says, “Next on our list. Figure out where the heck Hotel California is.”
Mia
“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”
?Mahatma Gandhi
THEY’D LIED, of course.
She and Grace were not together.
Following her sanitization, Mia had been taken to a different room from the one she’d been held in before. This room was like a place where she would be living. Alone. There was a bed. A sofa. A bathroom. A closet with clothes in it that looked nothing like anything she would ever wear. There was a small kitchen with a refrigerator and food in it.
There was a door, locked from the outside. And there were no windows.
There was a TV with a remote. Flicking through, she noticed there were no news channels. Only channels featuring old shows, most of which she’d never heard of.
Mia sat on the edge of the bed, fighting an overwhelming feeling of claustrophobia, panic clawing at her throat.
She felt paralyzed with a choking combination of fear and fury. How could this have happened to her? To them? Where was Grace? Was she hurt? Was she even alive? Was that why they weren’t letting her see her? Had they already killed her?
Sobs rise in her throat, tears flooding from her eyes in a sudden rush. She’s trapped. The absoluteness of this hits her as it has not until this very moment. She has no way out. No way to fight back. No way to free herself.
She can only sit here, waiting for her fate to come, and she knows it isn’t going to be a good one, given everything that awful woman did to her over the past couple of hours.
Panic grips her like a vice around her throat. She knows without doubt that she wants to die. She will not sit and wait for whatever they have planned for her to come.
