Page 140 of Reaper and Ruin
“Okay, we need a plan B then.” I leaned forward, groping around in the dirt, sorting through the things that had been in my cleaning caddy. Why the hell hadn’t I packed a pocket knife in there? Or better yet, a gun. Maybe a ladder to climb out of this freaking prison hole.
My fingers closed around a stiff piece of plastic from the broken handle. “Plastic can get sharp,” I whispered, scared Francine had her ear to the floor above us, listening to every word.
Nyah offered up a suggestion of her own. “There’s a big rock over here. Maybe we could dig it out and throw it at her.”
I grinned at her, not hopeful in the plan, but happy there was a little fight in her expression again. “Or we could try breaking this plastic up against it. Maybe seeing if we can sharpen it on the rock.”
Nyah nodded and scuttled onto her knees.
I pressed the broken plastic to the rock until it gave with a brittlecrack. Shock punched through me when I came away with a jagged spear, crude and barely longer than my palm but perhaps sharp enough to do some damage if it caught a person somewhere soft or vital.
Excitement replaced some of the fear circling around inside me.
The same feeling I’d had when I’d taken Travis’s life.
If Nyah noticed I was having a psychotic daydream, she didn’t comment on it.
She took the plastic weapon, turning it over in her hands, then looked up at me, clearly just as shocked as I was. “That tip is really kind of sharp. This could actually work.”
She went to give it to me, but I pushed it back into her palm. “Hold on to it. I’m going to try—”
A banging on the front door cut me off. “We’d like to talk to you about your car’s extended warranty!”
I frowned.
Nyah widened her eyes. “Is that X?”
But I knew my guys, and even though that was a very X thing to say, I’d recognize Levi’s voice anywhere. “Levi!” I screamed. “Help!”
Nyah instantly joined me, her voice much weaker but screaming Levi’s name, even though her voice was hoarse. “Please! We’re down here!”
I had no idea if they could hear us. There were gaps in the floorboards, so I wasn’t worried about running out of air, but Ihad no idea if our shouts would carry far enough for Levi to hear while he was standing outside the door.
I opened my mouth to scream that we were beneath the house, when a darkly taunting voice filtered through the gaps.
“Come through my door and you’ll dance with the dead,
The floor’s full of teeth and they’re hungry for red.
Stay where you stand if you value your skin,
One wrong little step and you’ll see I win.”
Nyah froze, clutching my arm with trembling fingers.
But I’d heard that voice before. Heard the robotic, distorted sound of its threats.
And this time, I heard Francine speaking into the voice changer as well.
Travis might have been the brawn. He might have been the one who’d built this prison, who’d rigged explosives and traps.
But Francine was the brain. It was her twisted mind who’d come up with these games to torture us for taking away the man she’d loved.
Were we really so different? Wouldn’t I have completely lost my mind if someone had murdered Whip or X or Levi? Wouldn’t I have hunted them down and made them pay?
I could have so easily walked in Francine’s shoes.
Except I would have never sent young women to a predator’s home so he could rape and murder them. And Levi, X, and Whip would have never asked me to.
