“We have to find him then,” I said, trying to sidle past Jason toward the inner door.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said, raising his gun to my chest.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Yale yelled at him.
“People don’t just disappear,” Jason said, “unless someone disappears them.”
“Are you crazy?” I looked at him in disbelief. “I didn’t disappear Marcus. Have you listened to a word I’ve said? Besides, when would I have done that? I’ve been with one of you this entire time.”
“Jason, put the gun down,” Yale said.
“Not gonna happen,” Jason said, clicking the safety off instead. “How could she know all that shit? About the CAMFers. About Marcus. Unless she was one of them.”
“For Christ’s sake, I’m not a CAMFer,” I protested. Were we really back to that?
“Put your hands up. Especially that one,” Jason said, gesturing at my ghost hand with the barrel of his gun.
“Yes, I’m a CAMFer with PSS,” I said, raising my hands.
“You think they don’t have people like us with them?” Jason asked, scowling. “I know they do. I’ve seen them with my own eyes. Nose, tie her up.”
“We’re not tying anyone up,” Yale said.
“Yes, we are,” Jason said. “It ain’t gonna hurt her. It’s just gonna keep her out of trouble until Marcus gets back.”
Nose stepped forward, a coil of rope in his hands from his pack. He didn’t look at me and he kept his head down, chin tucked in.
“Tie them behind her back,” Jason instructed. “Not in front.”
As Nose pulled my arms behind me, I glanced up at Yale. He was behind Jason, his eyes on the gun, on Jason’s finger on the trigger. Then he looked at me and shook his head, only a little, but I got the message. He didn’t have a gun. His tazer was out of batteries. There was nothing he could do for me at the moment against two armed idiots.
Rope bit into my wrists and Jason said, “Get down on your knees.”
Nose helped me down, holding me by my elbows so I wouldn’t bang my knee caps on the hard cement floor. “Marcus said to keep you safe,” he mumbled as he lowered me. “To not let you come after him no matter what.”
“Nose,” I pleaded in a whisper. “Come on. You know I’m not—”
“Shut up!” Jason screamed, jamming the barrel of his gun against my cheek. “I knew you was one of them the second I saw you. And so did Marcus. Why else would he keep you so close, and lie to you about everything? He never trusted you.”
“Take it easy,” Yale said, putting his hand on Jason’s shoulder.
Jason pulled the barrel back, but he didn’t take his eyes off of me.
I decided it might be a good time to keep my mouth shut.
Nose wrapped rope around my ankles and cinched the end to my wrists. When he was done, he let go of my elbows. I flopped to the floor, landing on my right side, Emma’s phone digging into my hip.
“So what now?” Yale asked Jason.
Was he seriously going to let Jason do this? Maybe he was just biding his time until he could get the upper hand. God, I hoped so.
“We secure the CAMFers in separate rooms,” Jason said. “And then we wait. If Marcus doesn’t come back by midnight, we head back to camp.”
“You think it’s safe to stay here?” Yale asked.
“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t think it was safe,” Jason said. “You got a problem with that?”
“It’s juss that he toll us—” Nose began.
“Shut up!” Jason yelled. “You want her to know everything?”
Nose stood, stark still, his hands clenching to fists. Jason’s regime was falling apart. I could see it happening. Yale was already on my side. Nose was not happy with the way Jason was treating him. Marcus was the glue that held these three together, and that glue was gone. I couldn’t resist prying at that crack a little.
“He told you to go back to camp, didn’t he?” I said. “Because he knew he wasn’t coming back.”
“I said shut up!” Jason yelled, driving the tip of his boot into my side.
Pain jumped up and down my ribs. I couldn’t breathe. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to curl my body in against the next blow. I’d seen what Jason had done to Palmer. Stupid! I was stupid! Jason probably wouldn’t shoot me, but he would certainly enjoy beating the shit out of me.
“Stop it!” I heard Yale say, his voice like I’d never heard it before.
I opened my eyes to see him standing between me and Jason.
“He thaid to keep her safe,” Nose said, joining Yale. “Thath the only reason I thied her up. But we’re naw gonna hur her.”
“She’s one of them,” Jason insisted, but he lowered his gun. He was at least smart enough to recognize when he was outnumbered.
“I highly doubt that,” Yale said. “But either way, she can’t do anything tied up and locked in a garage.”
“You saw what that hand can do,” Jason pointed out. “You don’t think she can use it to untie those ropes, and break outta here? Maybe she’ll even stick it into one of us on her way out. So, we take shifts watching her until Marcus comes back.”
* * *
I had hoped Yale would pull first shift guarding me, but he didn’t.
Jason knew better, so he left Nose in the garage, armed, with instructions to duct tape my mouth if I tried to talk to him. I could hear Yale and Jason arguing in the living room. Yale was working on it, trying to make Jason see reason. I wasn’t going to hold my breath for that.
I tried to use my hand on Nose as soon as Jason and Yale left. I willed it to reach out and skewer him, but it refused to cooperate. Maybe it was the cool cement, sucking the warmth out of my body. Maybe it was exhaustion. Or maybe it was just my ghost hand’s stubborn determination to only do things that screwed up my life. Whatever the reason, no matter how hard I tried, it wouldn’t take any form but a useless tied-up hand. I had the bullet in my pocket, but that was a joke. Sure, I could disappear my ropes, or maybe even myself, right out of the garage and straight into the paranoid lap of Jason The Wonder Thug. The universe had a sick sense of humor.
I craned my neck, looking at Nose, who was now sitting in an old lawn chair he’d pulled off one of the shelves, his gun in his lap. I couldn’t hear Yale and Jason arguing any more. They were probably securing the CAMFers. Would Nose really gag me if I talked to him? I had thought he was my friend. I had liked him. Trusted him. And he had tied me up. I had trusted all of them, Marcus most of all. And he had lied to me and used me. Had the kissing and flirting all been a part of that too? No. He felt something for me. That was why he’d gone off to save Emma. I’d talked him into it. I’d begged him to save my friend and tapped into his guilt over his sister without even knowing it.
I lay my head down, my hair splaying over the oil spot on the floor. I had to find a way out of this. The CAMFers weren’t just going to let Emma go once they had Marcus. She knew who they were, and they had no qualms about killing people. I had to get help. I had to get Marcus and Emma back. But how?
How had Marcus known where Emma was? He must have been in contact with the Dark Man, probably through my e-mail account.
Dear Dark Man, meet me at the blah blah blah. I’ll give myself up in exchange for the girl.
He knew the CAMFers would intercept the message. It would have been that simple. But then the Dark Man had called Emma’s phone. He’d decided he wanted us all, and Marcus’s web of lies had begun to unravel. But he’d still gone ahead with the plan to give himself up.
It was possible I was wrong about the whole thing. Maybe Marcus really was going to come back in a few hours with the Dark Man trussed up like a pig and Emma safe and sound. I wanted to believe that pretty badly. And even then, I couldn’t.
Something began to niggle at me, something at the edge of my awareness, like a feeling of déjà vu or familiarity. A tremble. A subtle vibration. A sound that, at first, I thought must be coming from outside. A passing car maybe. Or a helicopter flying overhead. No, not a helicopter because it was coming from the floor. Then suddenly I knew what it was. It was the blades. I could feel the buzzing of Passion’s blades.
I lifted my head, glancing around the garage frantically, straining my neck.
The blades were nearby. Somewhere in the garage. And they were reacting to the use of a minus meter.
“Whas the madder?” Nose asked, leaning forward in his lawn chair.
“Do you hear that?”
“Hear wha?” he asked, cocking his head.
“That buzzing.”
“I don hear nuddin,” he said, looking at me suspiciously.
“No, listen. It’s the blades. They’re here somewhere. In the garage.”
“The blaves?”
“Yes, the blades. Follow the sound. Look for them. Maybe they’re on one of these shelves.”
“Maybe they are,” Nose said, getting up and looking on the shelf behind him. “Maybe they are wight here next to the tape,” he said, picking it up and walking toward me.
“No!” I begged, tears swimming at the corners of my eyes. “I’m telling you they’re here. And someone is using a minus meter nearby. That’s what makes them buzz.”
“Come on now. I’m nah falling for tha,” Nose said, crouching down and setting his gun right in front of my face. “You wan me to look around on these shelves so you can Houdini your way out of here behind my back. I don’t thing so.” He found the end of the tape and began pulling a piece loose.
“Nose, listen to me.”
He tore at the tape, ripping a long strip off.
“Don’t do this.”
He stretched the strip over my mouth, patting it down tightly.
A tear of frustration rolled down my cheek, catching and welling at the sticky edge of the tape.
Nose started to move away, to go back to his chair, but before he could a new sound rose from below us, from the very earth under the garage. It was muffled and faint through the thick slab of cement, but there was no mistaking it.
It was the sound of someone screaming.
FREEZERS DON’T SCREAM
“Wha—is—tha?” Nose said, his eyes filling the holes of his ski mask.
The screaming went on, faint but rising and falling. Then it suddenly cut out.
The garage filled up with silence. The buzzing was gone. The blades had stopped just when the screaming had.
“Hmm. Mm Mmmfph,” I said, lips straining against the duct tape.
Nose looked at me. He glanced at the garage door. He looked down at me again, reached over, and ripped off the tape.
“Untie me,” I said, even though my lips and cheeks were burning with pain. “They’re under us. It came from right under us.”
Nose looked toward the garage door again.
“Nose,” I said, calling his eyes back to me. “We don’t have time to argue with Jason. You know I’m not a CAMFer. Untie me!” I rolled over and shoved my bound hands at him.
“We only hab one gun,” he said as he untied me. He was scared. So was I. But we couldn’t risk bringing Jason or Yale into this. Obviously, they hadn’t heard the buzzing or the screaming—and probably wouldn’t believe Nose and I had.
“There must be a basement,” I said, pulling my hands free, and then my arms, “Or a cellar under the garage.” I sat up and began helping him untie my legs.
“Yeah, bu how do we geh down there?” Nose said, glancing around.
“There has to be an entrance in here,” I scanned the garage like I never had before. “If Marcus didn’t go out the back of the house, or the front, then the only place he could have come was in here.” I got up and started moving around the garage, desperate, looking, shifting things aside as quietly as I could.
Nose joined me. We didn’t have much time. His turn guarding me would be over soon.
We searched systematically, silently, moving things off the shelves, feeling along the walls, inspecting the floor for any signs of a trap door.
After about five minutes Nose said, “There’s nudding here.”
“There has to be. Keep looking.” I pulled the mower aside and looked at the chest freezer. Maybe it was covering a trap door. I shoved my hip against it, but it didn’t budge. It was damn heavy and wedged in the corner. I put my hand on it, feeling the hum of its motor. Maybe that’s what I’d felt before—not the blades—just the vibration of the freezer on the cement floor. But freezers don’t scream. Maybe if I unplugged it, Nose and I could move it together and look underneath.
I went around to the freezer’s end and found the power cord trailing away behind the nearest shelf. I moved some stuff and found the plug sitting on the shelf. It wasn’t plugged in. If the freezer wasn’t plugged in, how could the motor be humming?
I threw myself down on the floor next to the freezer, pressing my face to the cement, spreading my hands.
“What are you doing?” Nose asked, standing over me.
“It’s happening again,” I said, feeling the buzz of the blades rising up from the floor. I hadn’t been able to feel them when I was standing up.
Just as Nose knelt down next to me, the screaming started again.
I knew what it was. Could see it in my mind’s eye; Marcus on a cold metal slab, his mouth open making that sound. The Dark Man standing over him, extracting his PSS again and again.
The freezer wasn’t on, so it was probably empty. And yet I hadn’t been able to move it at all.
I jumped up and went back to it, grabbing the door handle, ready to yank it open. There was no doubt the screaming was coming from inside of it. Then, like before, the sound suddenly stopped. The garage was silent. My hand on the freezer felt nothing. No buzzing.
“This is it,” I said, feeling Nose come up behind me.
I lifted the freezer door.
The freezer had no bottom. Instead, metal stairs descended into its deep insides, leading down into unknown darkness.
Cool air wafted up at us, fluttering my bangs against my forehead.
“Get your gun,” I said to Nose.
For a second, I was afraid he’d chicken out. He stared at the steps leading down into the dark hole under the freezer. If he made the wrong move, I was going to have to reach my ghost hand into him. I was pretty sure I could do it, now that my hand and arm weren’t pinned on the cold cement. Just like Jason, I told myself. In and out with no prep or weirdness. Except this time I wouldn’t let go until Nose was out cold like Passion had been. I didn’t want to do that. Yes, I was still pissed at him for listening to Jason and tying me up, but despite all that, I couldn’t help liking Nose. But it didn’t matter. I could not risk anyone trying to stop me.