The Other Side - J. D. Robb [32]
“Not really, not much. How long? How long have I been here? Sometimes he gave me something that made me sleep, and I lost track.”
“You’re all right now. That’s what counts.”
“He locked me in. In there.” Though she continued to shake, she lifted her chin toward the inner door. “This horrible, beautiful room. He brought me flowers and chocolates, and all these beautiful clothes. He’s out of his mind, out of his mind.” She dropped her head back on Eve’s shoulder.
“Did he touch you? Beata.” She drew the girl back.
“No, no, no. Not that way. I thought he would rape me, kill me, but it wasn’t what he wanted.”
She continued to tremble under Eve’s hands, but even as they streamed with tears, her eyes held fury.
“He said we would be together forever, and I would do what I was born to do: dance. Always dance. And night after night he would come and put on the costume. If I wouldn’t wear mine, he’d give me the drug, and when I woke I’d be in it. So I put it on rather than have him touch me. And I danced, because if I refused or if I fought, he’d tie me and leave me in the dark.”
“You did what you had to do,” Eve told her. “You did exactly right.”
“I called, but no one heard, and I tried to break the door, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I couldn’t.”
“Okay. It’s okay.”
“Every day I’d try to find a way out, but there wasn’t one. I don’t know where I am. How did you find me?”
“You’re in the basement of the school where you took classes. We’ll get into all the details later. We’re going to get you out of here now.”
“My family.”
“You can contact them.” Eve laid a hand on Beata’s cheek. “Your family is always with you, wherever you are, wherever you go.”
Beata closed a hand around Eve’s wrist, let her head rest in Eve’s hand. “That’s what my grandmother would say to me whenever I was sad or scared.”
I know, Eve thought, and helped Beata to her feet. “I want you to go with these officers now. They’ll take you out.”
“Aren’t you coming with me?”
“I’ll be there soon. There are things I have to do. Beata, did they know, were they part of this? Natalya, Alexi.”
“No. He said it was only us, our secret—that they wanted him to be calm, to accept, to live without me. Her, Arial, the one whose name he called me. But that he never would. He wouldn’t share me with them or the world. He wouldn’t lose me this time. He told me often.”
“Okay, go ahead now. Go outside. Go breathe the air.”
Eve knew what it was to be locked up, to be trapped and helpless. And to want to breathe free.
Eve shut off her recorder, looked at Roarke. “It’s not done. I hoped, when we found her . . . I have to find the others. I know where they are,” she said before Roarke answered. “They’re pressing on me. The dead. I know where they are, and I think—hope—I know what to do.”
“Then we’ll go find them.”
She turned her recorder back on, reengaged her mic. “I need a unit down here with tools. We need to take down a wall. And I’ll need Morris. I’m on the move. Key in on my location when I get there, and send a team down to process this goddamn prison.
“Let’s go,” she said to Roarke.
She didn’t have to ask him to hold her hand, to keep her close as they walked those dim corridors, or to talk to her quietly, soothingly.
“He must’ve built that place years ago,” she said. “And updated it, maintained it—down here in the bowels of the building. There were tools in that utility room we went through. A sledgehammer and—”
“I’ll get something.” She was pale again, he thought, feverish again. It had to end. “Are you all right alone?”
“I’m not exactly alone, but yeah.”
While Roarke doubled back, she walked straight to the void, the empty room Peabody had reported, stared—her eyes burning dry—at the far wall. Old wood, old brick, so it looked patched and repaired and nondescript. But she felt the misery, the horror, and had to force herself not to attack it with her bare hands.
Morris came in behind her. “I passed Roarke. He told me to bring this.”
She grabbed the pry bar out of his hands, began to drag at the boards, the spikes and nails.