Page 14 of Trapped

He lay down, stacking his hands behind his head and thinking about his life before this place. At least her visit had given him some glimpses into his past. They had talked about high school, and she hadn’t mentioned where it was. But he knew now. Ellicott City, Maryland.

They’d gone to Centennial High. On Centennial Lane. She lived in one of the big, new houses that were going up in Howard County. He lived in a dinky apartment across from a shopping center. Chatham Mall.

The familiar names gave him something to grasp onto. And also made his stomach clench.

He remembered the kid he’d been back then. A tall, lanky teenager, standing tall even with the enormous chip he was carrying around on his shoulder. Because so many of the kids who went to school with him had all the money they wanted, lived in McMansions, and drove late-model cars to school. He and his mom were crammed into a tiny apartment that was one step up from a housing project. And his transportation was a clunker that he worked on himself in the parking lot of the rental complex.

The only reason Mom could afford the place was because of Section Eight. Rent assistance. And food stamps.

They’d been okay when Dad was alive. He’d had a dead-end job in a warehouse, but at least he’d brought home a steady paycheck.

He’d died in a car wreck when Cash was twelve, and Mom didn’t have the education to get a good-paying job. She’d worked fast food. Or in the service department of a car dealership. Sometimes one in the day and the other in the evening.

He laughed aloud—and it wasn’t a pretty sound. More details of his life were coming back. And they were ones he’d rather forget.

When he’d been old enough to get a job at a fast food restaurant—different from the one where Mom worked—he’d kept the money for himself. The memory made him cringe—because he understood now that he should have contributed some of it to their living expenses. But with the logic of a juvenile jerk, he’d figured he deserved some of the stuff the other kids had. And the only way to get it was to pay for it out of his earnings at Popeyes. Or steal it.

Yeah. He’d done some shoplifting back then. Mostly at the upscale Mall in Columbia where they had Lord & Taylor and Macy’s instead of Kmart and The Dollar Store.

He whistled through his teeth. No wonder he didn’t want to remember his misguided youth.

But the present wasn’t much better.

Let’s see. What did he know?

He ticked off the facts on his hands.

He was stuck in a secure facility. He’d thought he was here to save his life. Now, from what Sophia had said, it looked like this was a carefully controlled environment designed to extract information.

From him.

And mind-altering drugs were part of the package.

He didn’t really know how long he’d been here. Maybe it was three weeks. Maybe not. He couldn’t trust his memory. And a woman from his past had showed up to warn him not to trust his doctor.

He shuddered. How was that for a paranoid scenario? He wanted to stride down the hall, find someone in charge and demand answers about what was really going on in this place—wherever it was. But he suspected it was dangerous to do something outside the pattern they were expecting.

Still, in the morning, he was going to start taking charge of his life again.

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Sophia hurried along the corridor, keeping her head down, even though she wanted to glance up at the security cameras.

They were supposed to be off. But she wasn’t going to take a chance on getting her face photographed in case the jamming device had malfunctioned.

Her senses were on alert. This was no place to lose your focus. She wasn’t supposed to be here. And if someone caught her, she’d have to go into her song and dance about a surprise inspection—and pray that the story would hold up long enough for her to figure out a way to escape.

At all costs, she couldn’t let them know that she had come here to contact Cash. Or that she’d talked to him.

Her heart squeezed when she thought about their meeting. She wanted to assure herself that it had gone really well with him. She’d connected with him on a very basic level.

But she hadn’t been able to tell him much. And that had made him wary, as he should be, unfortunately.

Did he believe her enough to keep his mouth shut with Montgomery? Or was that just wishful thinking?

She prayed she’d gotten that through to him. And prayed that she could get out of here without being seen.

When she started to turn a corner, she saw a man in a blue uniform coming toward her and stopped dead in her tracks.

One of the guards.

Backing up, she turned and ran along the hallway, hoping she could make it to safety before the guy discovered there was an intruder in the facility.

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