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My eyes squeezed shut as the bearded one grasped a chunk of my hair and began sawing away at it. It felt as though he had ripped every strand out by the root before he finally released me, tossing a wet lock of auburn hair the size of a snake on the floor.
I stared at it as the metal door slammed shut behind me, and for several seconds, the room was eerily silent.
Deathly silent.
“Mr. McCormick?” I finally asked, turning my head to the left, but my heavy, wet hair blocked my view.
“It’s for the best,” Liv snapped.
The other prisoners that I could see nodded their heads in agreement before hugging their knees and burying their faces again.
“What do you mean? Is he …” I turned to face Liv.
She nodded, hugging her own knees as she watched me with sunken eyes. “If he’s lucky.”
I thought about what she’d said and couldn’t disagree. It didn’t make his death any less tragic, but I was sure anyone in that room would have traded places with him if they could have.
“What happened?” I asked, scanning the downturned faces and naked bodies in the room. “I thought everyone was evacuating.”
“We were,” Liv answered bluntly, “but traffic got backed up with everyone trying to get off the peninsula at once, and then … they put up roadblocks.” Her deep brown eyes clouded over, as if she were seeing something I couldn’t.
“They went from car to car, takin’ the women … shootin’ the men.”
Her face was expressionless, but I knew. Her da, her brothers … her ma.
Oh God.
She kept talking, trying to get past that part as quickly as possible. “But some men, probably the weaker ones, got brought back here, too. They forced them to watch.”
Her eyes refocused and landed on Mr. McCormick’s naked husk.
“They’re gonna come for you soon.” Her attention shifted back to me with a sense of urgency. “When you first get here, they all take a turn. If you want my advice, fight back. Bite, scratch, kick, spit … be such a fuckin’ problem that they decide to go ahead and kill ya. Trust me. The longer you stay alive”—her gaze drifted over to the empty handcuffs in front of me—“the worse it gets.”
“Is that what Sophie did?” I asked gently. As cruel as she’d been to me all those years, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. For all of us.
What little color was left in her face drained completely at the mention of her best friend’s name. “Why do ya say that?”
I recoiled from the venom in her tone.
Liv sat straight up, pinning me with a murderous glare. “Why do ya say that, Clo? Did you see her?”
“I … I …” I shook my head slowly, hoping that she would get the message without me having to say it out loud. “I’m so sorry.”
Liv slumped back against the wall, her face falling and eyes glazing over, just like Mr. McCormick’s had when I got there.
And like Mr. McCormick, she didn’t so much as flinch when the door shot open behind me a moment later.
CHAPTER 17
CLOVER
As they carried me through the hallways, back out the way we’d come, I tried to tell myself that it was just like the long walk home after checking the traps. I knew I was going to be punished for something, but I never knew why or how badly until I got there. It didn’t matter how many lobsters I’d caught. If I came home with an empty sack, Oliver would lay into me for being a lazy failure. If I came home with a full one, I’d get it for being late or tracking dirt in the house or some other thinly veiled excuse for his anger over my success. Walking straight into certain doom was something I should have been used to. I’d done it more times than I could count. I could do it again.
At least these men were strangers.
At least when they hurt me, it wouldn’t break my fucking heart.
But all my logic and bravery disappeared the moment they set my stool down in the center of the fish market and a rumble of jeers and whistles echoed through the warehouse-sized room. This wasn’t one man or two. This was an entire lion’s den.
