Page 56 of His Toy

Trish had started trying to emulate her in some ways.

When she’d first been taken, Trish had been nearly hysterical, and her first few days had been hard. But she’d seen how Bella had stayed calm and done whatever she’d needed to do. She hadn’t seemed to dwell on the things that were done to her; she’d held herself together and hadn’t fallen apart, no matter what the provocation.

Trish had the unfortunate suspicion that her trying to do the same was feeding into her own problem—she’d become so accustomed to this life she had trouble imagining leaving it. It should have been terrifying, but what was really scary was itdidn’tterrify her.

What did she have to go back to, after all? At least here, she felt wanted. Cherished. Desired.

Yeah… She was definitely losing it.

“Here, Trish.” A pancake was dumped onto her plate by one of the women across the table—a hard-edged brunette whose name Trish couldn’t remember, although she’d seen her around often enough. The woman frowned at Jordan. “You need to take better care of her, Jordan She’s barely touched her food and she hardly weighs anything as it is.”

Oh shoot.

The big blond turned away from the man he’d been talking to and frowned down at Trish.

“Sorry.” She blinked up at him. “I’m eating.” Trish shoveled a forkful of eggs into her mouth and then began cutting up the pancake.

Jordan stroked his hand over her head before letting it come to rest on the back of her neck, a steady reminder of his presence. And to eat. Trish was exasperated, but there was no point. The brunette went back to her own conversation, but kept one eye on Trish. It was unsettling, after years where no one cared what she did or how she was, to be so constantly under everyone’s scrutiny. Strangely caring scrutiny, sometimes.

After breakfast, Jordan picked up the food he always brought to Bella and Alex. He was leading Trish out of the cafeteria when he got a call on his com-unit. He put one hand to his ear and then pulled her to the side of the hallway while he answered it.

“Yes… Yes… No… Yes, Sir.”

Jordan grabbed Trish’s hand and pulled her down the hall.

The wrong hall.

“Where are we going?” The change in routine made her uneasy.

A smile flickered across his face. “You’re going to see a secret, little girl.”

The small hallway he took her into was empty, and they were about a third of the way through it when he stopped and faced the wall, which had a marking on it that looked a bit like answith a horizontal line through the top curve. The marking was all over the compound; Trish had seen it a million times. It was in hallways, rooms… There were three of them in Jordan’s room, and at least a dozen in the cafeteria. It was the kind of innocuous wall decoration that went unnoticed because of its commonness.

Jordan pressed his fingers across the shape quickly; the right end of the bar, the left end, the bottom curve, the top curve, and then on each place where thesintersected the horizontal bar. The wall sank inward and then slid silently to the side.

Trish’s jaw dropped as she stared into the dimly lit hallway beyond, barely hearing Jordan’s chuckle at her shocked reaction. He grabbed her hand in his again and pulled her into the hall. When she glanced back over her shoulder, she saw the door had slid smoothly shut behind them. The same decorative symbol was on this side of the wall.

“Are all of them like that?” she asked. If there were… Good grief, how many secret passageways would be around the compound?

“No. All the passageways are behind symbols, but not all the symbols have passageways,” Jordan said, walking quickly enough that Trish had to trot to keep up with him. His legs were so much longer than hers, but he expected her to make up for it. “The entrances are not commonly known, nor are the way through the passages, although everyone knows they’re there. You could get lost in them if you don’t know where you’re going.”

As if to emphasize his point, they had already reached an intersection that branched off into four other passageways—five, including the one they had just come from—and nothing to differentiate one from another. Jordan took the second to the left without hesitating.

“But what are we doing in here?” Trish looked around for any sign of where they were within the compound. They passed more symbols, so she assumed they were passing exits from the tunnel, but where would they open up?

“There was a… disturbance on our usual route,” he said, unperturbed by both her questions and whatever the disturbance had been. Trish sighed and hoped it wasn’t something too awful. Maybe Cora’s men and the Wolf’s men were fighting?

It might be easier to escape with the two sides fighting each other… but escape to what? Where? Plus, how would she find Bella and Alex? Could she live with leaving them behind? And what would happen to Jordan if there was fighting?

Dammit… She shouldn’t be worried about him, but she didn’t like the idea of him being in real danger. Even though, by all rights, she should have wanted to see him hung out to dry, the idea of his admittedly beautiful body being ripped open by violence made her insides clench in a kind of anguish.

Her suffering from a psychological condition didn’t dissipate the effects of it.

Trish fell silent, disturbed by her own thoughts, and wondered about the passageways behind the compound’s walls. Where did they all lead to?

They went through two more intersections before Jordan stopped in front of another symbol and pressed his fingers in the same pattern as before. The right end of the bar, the left end, the bottom curve, the top curve, and then on each place where thesintersected the horizontal bar. As he did it, Trish stood behind him and watched, silently mouthing the pattern and trying to commit it to memory.

As soon as the new passageway opened and they stepped out into the hall, Trish recognized where they were: steps away from the room where Alex and Bella were kept. Trish was willing to bet she and Jordan had barely lost any time from their detour. One look back at the wall, with its distinctive-but-common decoration, and then Jordan was pulling her along again.

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