Page 16 of Sadist

“Uh-huh…” She drew out her agreement, that eyebrow raising a fraction higher. “When I am here, like I said.”

“This is fucking weird,” I said. “What’s the catch?”

She huffed softly. “You are no threat to me. I am your best bet at getting out of here unscathed. You are a bright woman. Mutual respect, Sweets. I can’t let you go, but this doesn’t have to be worse than it needs to be. And I’m getting real sick of scraping food off my cell walls. You behave for me, you get rewards.”

The small spark of satisfaction I got from knowing that the food art had pissed her off was quickly engulfed by the wave of heat at the way her voice dropped to a purr with those last few words. I swallowed once before I trusted my voice to maintain its iciness.

“Fine.”

“And you will eat what I give you,” she pushed.

I grimaced. “I don’t think a starved dog could stomach that stew.”

The raised brow nearly disappeared into her hairline.

“Fine,” I repeated.

“Look at that,” she crooned. “Less than a week and you already want to please me.” She winked when my mouth dropped open in silent, dumbfounded rage, every retort caught in a tangle of words on my tongue.

“Make yourself comfortable,” she chuckled, her eyes lingering on my mouth for a long moment. “Bedtime is 2200hrs.”

Theo worked on her screens while I wandered around the huge space. I had paced my cell, yet it still felt like I was stretching gloriously after being kept in confinement.

She didn’t seem to take much notice of me. The few times I glanced at her, she was studying her screen as she tapped a pen against her bottom lip, the screens setting her face glowing softly and illuminating the long line of her neck.

Not that I was looking at her neck.

I was strangely fascinated with this space. It was meticulously organized while being an eclectic mix of things that shouldn’t have worked together, yet did. I skirted the gym area, with its rack of dumbbells and a handful of exercise machines, and the shower area next to it, which was still the disorganized mess I had left it in. There was no television, but there was a row of wooden shelves loaded with books and a potted plant with dense, dark green leaves that hung in vines down the wall. The dark wood of the shelves accented the grey concrete beautifully, and behind the books, an abstract green and black graffiti mural decorated the wall. Two couches sat facing each other with a rustic coffee table between them, cushions neatly placed on them with an equally neatly folded throw on one of the arms. Itook a whileanda little satisfaction in curling up on one for a bit to watch the last of the sunset…making sure I leaned on all the pillows until they were less perfectly plumped.

Theo tapped something on her phone as the last of the sun faded and the fairy lights weren’t cutting it, and a few of the huge lights above clicked on, bathing the entire room in a warm light that allowed me to carry on exploring.

The doors were no help to me. The double doors sported deadbolts as thick as my wrist, and the smaller door had the glowing keypad that I had no hope of trying to get through. There was nothing I could have used to even attempt to get to the high windows either, so the sliver of hope I had at finding a way out vanished, and I resigned myself to investigating the rest of the space.

Theo’s bed was inside a huge walk-in safe, its mechanism dismantled and the heavy iron door sitting open. I could see a perfectly made double bed in the center of the room, sitting on a forest green rug on the bare concrete floor, accompanied by a small side table and lamp. There was a simple but sturdy set of drawers off to one side, and beautifully maintained potted trees on either side of a smaller vault door that was closed.

On the wall behind her bed was another painted mural, this one of a crow in flight rendered in black with green accents, its wings stretching along the entire width of the bed. Curiosity had me lingering, wishing I could go in there and delve into the private space of someone who could do the things Theo did. I wanted to see what made her tick, what things she kept in those small drawers next to her bed. It was probably as meticulous as the rest of this place, with a singular knife resting in its base. There could be a bible sitting in it for all I knew. That thought made me snort, and I instantly felt her attention on me.

“Something amusing about my bed, Sweets? You seem rather interested in it. Would you like a closer look, maybe?”

My cheeks flamed, and I refused to look at her and give her the satisfaction, instead busying myself looking at another painted design on a wall by the kitchen area. The longer I looked, the more I saw hidden in the depths of what could be passed over as random graffiti art.

“I was looking at the murals, they’re beautiful.”

She hummed a note that did not sound very convinced, but I chose to ignore it as I took in the kitchen area at a distance, mindful of her warning that it was off limits.

For a woman who had served me several varieties of canned slop for nearly a week, her kitchen was well organized, with copper pots hanging in a neat row above the long granite countertop. There was a small coffee machine that was spotless, a kettle, and a knife block, all in the same polished silver that didn’t have a single smudge on it. She really was a psychopath.

“If you have quite finished using your free time to inspect my living quarters,” Theo said after a long silence, “hostage enrichment hour is over.”

7

THEO

The phone rang as I was midway through my morning workout, cursing to myself as I racked the bar and picked it up.

“You seen the news?” O’Malley asked as soon as I picked up.

“Nope.” I tucked the phone under my chin so I could flick my monitors on, William Vanguard’s stricken face filling my screen as I clicked onto the streaming platform.

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