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When the door to my room clicked open, I didn’t hesitate. I stepped out into the hall and followed the directions from the cuff to the kitchen.
Chapter 9
For once I was the first one to arrive. The kitchen was located through a door at the back of the dining room. I’d never noticed it. The bronze plate was right there, naming the room. I guess I’d been too freaked out to really notice.
It was a fairly well-appointed workspace. It was bigger than the kitchen at the diner and had anything I could think of: deep fryers, a gas range, a big oven, stainless steel prep tables, a flat griddle, an industrial microwave, blenders, mixers, and an assortment of pots, pans, and knives. Looking at the knives nearly sent me into a spiral. Any captor who willingly and without reservation allowed his captives access to weapons had to be so completely secure in his authority that he had no fear of them attacking them.
A few moments after I arrived, Bri shuffled into the kitchen, saw me, and nodded absently. “You and me today, huh?” she asked.
“Uh, yeah, I guess. So, we make all the food?” I’d never thought about where the food at each meal came from.
Bri nodded. “Lunch and dinner anyway. I have no clue who makes breakfast. Probably the freak who put us here.” She gestured toward one of the steel tables. “What’s on the menu today?”
Turning, I saw a white sheet of paper lying on the table I’d missed before. Upon closer inspection, it showed that it was a list of ingredients and recipes. We were having club sandwiches and potato salad for lunch then chicken pot pie and salad for dinner. Simple but filling and nutritious. I was still trying to get my head wrapped around that. Ramen and canned ravioli were typical meals for me out in the real world.
Bong. “Miss Gilmore and Miss Belrose, please cook for your housemates. You have one hour to complete the assigned lunch items,” Sam said from the hidden speakers.
“You go grab the stuff for the sandwiches and I’ll do the potato salad.” Bri leaned over my shoulder to see the list.
While Bri grabbed potatoes out of a dry pantry on the right side of the room, I found a big walk-in fridge and freezer on the opposite side. There was sliced turkey, packs of bacon, cheese, tomatoes, and lettuce. Once I was at the table I found that Bri had located sliced bread in the pantry. She went about peeling the potatoes to boil. I arranged the slices of bread into enough sandwiches for everyone.
“So, how’d you get here?” Bri asked without looking up from her peeler.
“What do you mean?”
“How and where were you taken? That’s what I mean,” she said.
“Oh. Um, I don’t remember much of what happened before, but it was outside of my apartment. I tried to find my neighbors, at least, I think that’s what it was, it’s still hazy. I turned around and a black shadow was there. He injected me with something in my neck. The next thing I knew, I was in my bed here yesterday morning. What about you?” I was hungry for information. Anything that would tell me about our kidnapper.
Bri finished one potato and grabbed another before speaking. Her shoulders were stiff, her gaze on her task. “I was in the parking lot at work. I’d gotten off late and was walking to my car. I think there were maybe two or three other cars in the whole lot and no one was around.”
She shrugged and grabbed another potato. “Where I work isn’t known to be dangerous, so I didn’t have my head on a swivel like I would have in other parts of town. Otherwise, I may have seen him coming. I stood at my car, head down, sending a friend a text. I’d just pulled my keys out to unlock my door. That’s when he got me. I felt the needle slide into my neck. Boom. Night-night.”
I layered the meat and cheese for a few seconds as I thought, then asked, “Are there any connections to you and the others? Like, does this guy have things he looks for when he’s finding victims?”
Bri glanced up and grinned ruefully. “We’ve tried that. There isn’t. We all have different backgrounds, none of us work in the same fields, and we’re different ages and sexes. We all live within about an hour of the city, though. That’s about it. The only thing we have in common is proximity to Savannah.”
I sighed and smeared a thin layer of mayo on a piece of bread. That should have been surprising, but why? Whoever this sicko was, he couldn’t pull people from all over the country. He had to work locally to find his victims. “We don’t know anything about who he chooses?”
Bri gave a shrug. “Drake said he’s never seen anyone forty or over, and no one under twenty. That’s about it. He has a twenty-year age range for his dolls.”
“Have you ever, you know, done something bad for Sam?”
Bri’s eyes darted to my face, and then to the pot of water she was filling. “Sounds like you got your first taste yesterday.”
“Umm, maybe.” I didn’t want to say it. I still couldn’t believe it’d happened.
“We’ve all done bad stuff. Each and every one of us. We don’t talk about what we do, though.”
Before I could try to delve deeper into that, my cuff gave a low buzz at my wrist. Not painful at all, but enough to get my attention. Glancing down, I read the message, and my heart hammered in my chest: There is a vial of poison in the cabinet beneath you. Place three drops on one of the sandwiches. It should be at random. Do not tell Bri about your task.
I lowered my hand and looked at Bri. Her head was down as she worked. If she’d noticed my getting the message, she didn’t show it. Moving slower, I continued to make the sandwiches as though I hadn’t heard anything. Maybe, if I was lucky, Sam wasn’t being serious. The cabinet was empty. It was all a trick. A joke.
A painful shock zapped my wrist so fast and unexpectedly that I couldn’t hold back my gasp of pain.
Bri’s head snapped around. The sudden knowing smile that appeared on her lips looked more like a hungry sneer. “You’re getting an order, aren’t you? You disobeyed, and you got punished.”
“I’m not doing it. That fuck can get over it,” I said. My voice had a lot more conviction than my actual resolve.
