Stealing Faces - Michael Prescott [106]
“That’s what you want, I’m sure. A way out. To flee all this, to be liberated. What’s the alternative? Only to linger in this sunless, airless room for months and years and decades. And you know what will happen in that case, don’t you?”
He bent lower, his eyes locked on hers.
“You’ll go insane.”
A shudder ran through her, a spasm of the fear that seemed to come out of nowhere at times and harass her. Involuntarily she shook her head.
Cray smiled. “No? You don’t think so? But it’s true, Kaylie. It will happen. It’s happening already. Isn’t it?”
He released her chin and stepped back, but even now she could not look away from him, because he had named it just then—named her real terror.
Not death. Death was nothing.
Insanity.
“You know I’m right,” Cray said. “You’ve been hearing voices, haven’t you? Perhaps seeing things that can’t be real? You try to think, but your thoughts are all tangled. After so many years of telling yourself you’re not crazy, it turns out that you are.”
I’m not! she wanted to scream, but she heard Anson’s low growl: Who are you kidding, girl?
Anson, who’d deserted her. Anson, who was in her head, calling her names like bitch and whore.
“You’re losing your mind,” Cray said, and Anson echoed him: Losing your mind, that’s for sure.
“Not true,” she muttered, and finally she found the strength to break eye contact with Cray. “Not, not, not.”
Cray paced before the bed, remorseless as a shark. “Of course it’s true. You’re sliding into the precipice, and who’ll save you?”
She squirmed farther back on the bed, until she was pinned against the wall, Cray before her, roving, roving.
“Will I?” Cray asked. “Will anyone? No one can save you, Kaylie.”
At the foot of the bed, he stopped abruptly, his voice dropping to a hush.
“Unless you save yourself.”
She listened, rapt.
It was so tempting to think that somehow she could save herself ... that she was not powerless ... that there was something, anything, she could do.
Cray folded his arms. “You’re interested, I see. Good. Then let’s talk about your escape.”
She won’t escape, Anson said cruelly. She’s right where she belongs.
A new voice seconded the thought. That’s for damn sure.
Justin’s voice.
Oh, God, was he here too? Was he inside her?
He couldn’t be. He was dead. She’d killed him. She’d shot him, watched him die....
“You’re a clever girl, Kaylie. You’re good at getting out of a jam.”
Which one was that? Anson? Justin?
No, it was Cray. Live and in three dimensions, not a disembodied voice. She focused on him, because he was real.
“Now you’re in the worst jam of your life,” he said, “and you’ll need all your cleverness to see your way clear. Last time, as we both know, you escaped via an air duct. An air duct similar to that one. See it?”
Her gaze followed his pointing finger to a rectangular aperture in the ceiling.
“But that option’s foreclosed in this instance,” Cray added sadly. “I’ve told the staff to check the vent cover daily for any sign of tampering. Last time, as you recall, you spent many nights loosening the screws by hand. Such a slow, tedious undertaking. What patience and determination you showed. Admirable, really. But not to be repeated, Kaylie. We’re more vigilant now. At the first indication that you’ve been at work on the vent, you’ll be in a straitjacket—or strapped to the bed. Do you understand me?”
Kaylie nodded. She knew it was true. She’d seen the orderlies check the vent cover with a flashlight every morning since she’d been unstrapped from the bed.
“So you can’t get out that way. As for the door, it’s always locked, of course. And there’s no window. No exit, then. Or so it appears. Still, there is one thing a clever girl could do to free herself from this predicament. Surely I don’t need to spell it out for you.”
Did he expect her to solve this riddle unaided? She tried to reason her way to an answer, if there was one. Vent, door, window ... another way ...
“Oh,