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Chapter Two
Rose tried to swallow and couldn’t. Her tongue felt glued to the top of her mouth. Her head ached and her arms hurt. She was lying on her back. She raised her hands toward her face, wanting to rub her gritty eyes, but her arms stopped short, chains jangling.
She squeezed her eyes closed for a second, then blinked them open. The ceiling was sharply sloped and white, the walls a pretty mint green. Deja vu swept over her. She’d seen this room before.
She pulled on her arms again, listening to chains clank. She sucked in a breath, the sound making her stomach jangle with nerves and remembered sickness.
Here. She’d been here before. Wait, that wasn’t right. She was still here. Moment by moment, it came back to her—the van, the hood going over her head, a needle in her arm, a plane. And Caden.
Caden.
A sickening rush of adrenaline made her sit up. Her mind was still foggy but her body remembered—her wrists were manacled, the chain connecting the restraints looped through and padlocked to the iron headboard of the twin bed. Her ankles were manacled too, but the chain between them was loose, allowing her to swing her legs off the bed and sit up.
She scooted closer to the head of the bed, so one arm wasn’t pulled awkwardly across her body, then looked around the room. It was small enough that she could press her feet against the opposite wall. Probably a closet, and given the pitch of the roof and lack of windows, it was probably in an attic.
It wasn’t the first time she’d woken up in the room. Bits and pieces of memory were tumbling around in her brain, jangling and clashing. Everything was fuzzy, as if they were half remembered dreams that lingered rather than memories of reality. She had no sense of how much time had passed, and that was terrifying.
She tried to place what she remembered in order. Boston? No, before that. She’d been at home in L.A. Caden had called her.
Caden was dead.
No. Go back. Think.
Caden had called her from Boston. He was going to steal some stupid poetry book from a member of the Trinity Masters. It was yet another task in the Andersons’ endless machinations. He’d planned to steal it, going in without backup, sure that the poetry book’s owner, a member of a newly formed trinity, would be at the hotel all new trinities went to. He’d been sure this would be the one, the thing that would allow him to unlock whatever secret Elroy, Barton, and Victoria were trying so hard to protect.
“I’m tired, Darling. I want to be done. I want you and Tabby safe.”
“Okay, I’ll check flights. I can be there by morning. Early afternoon at the latest.”
“No. I’m doing this tonight.”
“Yes, Sir.”
That was the great plan. Caden would find this secret, then use it as the leverage they needed to finally escape. He, Rose, and most importantly, Caden’s disabled younger sister Tabitha would flee to South America, where they would live out the rest of their lives in relative peace.
Caden had gone in, even as Rose had rushed to the airport, sure that something was about to go wrong.
And it had.
Once more her stomach lurched. She bent, elbows tucked into her stomach, and dry heaved.
“The first one reads ‘Loss and darkness await me. Night, like death—’”
“Caden?”
“I heard something,” he whispered.
“Caden, get out of there. Run. Run!”
Pop.
Thump.
Then the sound of new voices, faint through the cell phone connection.
“Oh my God!”
“Is he dead? God! Is he dead, Christian?”
