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I take her arms, squeeze.
“What is it? What the hell has happened?”
“She’s gone. She’s just…”
“What?”
“Mercedes. She was feeling sick so I opened the window to give her some fresh air and—”
“The window?” She’s up on the second floor.
Lois nods. “She used sheets.”
I run past her up to Mercedes’s room and crash through the door to find it and the bathroom empty. The window is open, and it wouldn’t be wide enough for me to squeeze out, but Mercedes is smaller than me and much more flexible. But that’s not the worst of it. There, outside, Paolo is gathering up the sheets that she’d tied together, that had ripped from whatever she’d secured them to. The dogs are sniffing and barking, and I hurry back out of her room and down the stairs through the kitchen and out the door.
A memory of something I’d seen at her house crops up in my head. A magazine. Yoga. Aerial yoga.
But fuck. To tie sheets together and use them in an attempt to escape? And go where? The gate is locked. She can’t get off the property, and if she could, then what? She has no money. No transportation.
Although she has friends. Friends outside of IVI.
And she has one on property. An accomplice more likely.
Theron.
“Did she fall?” I ask, my heart pounding against my chest when I reach Paolo.
He holds out the ripped sheet.
“Fuck!” Did my brother come get her? Did he somehow plan her escape? Did Miriam facilitate it? For all I know, he could be running off to elope with her. But she wouldn’t do that to me. She wouldn’t.
At least she survived the fall. There’s no blood. Nothing like that.
I dig my phone out of my pocket and dial my brother. After a few rings, it goes to voicemail, and I hear his arrogant voice commanding me to leave a message.
“Where the fuck is she? Pick up the goddamn phone, you little prick!” I disconnect, then hurry to the stable to get my horse. The grounds are acres large, and the South Cottage is at the farthest end of the property with its own entrance and exit. I need to take the detour to the stables because it will be faster to get there by horse than on foot.
As I mount, I call Theron again, and it again goes to voicemail after a few rings.
“If you touch her, I will fucking kill you.” I disconnect and ride at the speed of light to his cottage, keeping low to Kentucky Lightning’s back as we take the shortest route through the woods.
I hear the dogs somewhere nearby. They must have picked up her scent. But I’m surprised when the sound of their barking grows farther away. When Theron’s cottage comes into view, it’s dark. No lights are on. No smoke from the fireplace. His car is in the driveway, but the house is empty. I know it. He’s not here.
And my alarm grows. Because this is more wrong than my brother stealing her away just to fuck with me. I feel the dread in my gut.
On the wind, I hear the whining of the dogs. I squeeze my thighs around Kentucky Lightning’s body and turn him in the direction from where the barking grows louder.
But it’s farther off than it should be, in a direction I don’t expect. And as I near the outbuildings, passing the one I’d kept Ivy in, my blood runs cold.
Because there’s one place I’ve forbidden her. Would she go there? Would he take her there?
I stop thinking as I approach the dark mouth of the entrance because I hear a terrifying scream, and my gut wrenches.
“Mercedes!” The wind carries my call away. Can she hear me in there?
Another scream is followed by a choked sob, and I hurry blindly through the darkness, stumbling over stones. When I reach the door, all I can think is I don’t have the key but that doesn’t matter because the lock is gone. Someone has cut it out. I push my way in, and I don’t know if it’s the ear-piercing scream or the sight that greets me that makes my vision darken, makes my brain rattle inside my skull.
Because there, naked and bound to the leather-topped bench I remember well, is Mercedes up on the tips of her toes because she wouldn’t reach the handholds otherwise. She barely reaches them now. Her arms are stretched too far, her hair sweeping the filthy floor. But the worst of it. Fuck. The worst of it is the soft, fragile skin of her ass and thighs burns a throbbing, angry red, the skin broken in places, a drop of crimson blood sliding over the crease of one knee as she sobs like I’ve never heard anyone sob.
