She paused.
Another breath down the line. He was waiting.
‘Who will visit you when you’re in a cage?’ she asked. ‘Because that’s where you’re going.’
A guttural sound down the line, the breath stuck in his throat.
Three loud beeps in Pip’s ear.
He’d ended the call.
Pip stared down at her phone, the corners of her mouth stretching in an almost-smile. Got him. The relief was instant, prying up the terrible weight from her shoulders, tethering her back to the world, the real world. A normal life. Team Ravi and Pip. She couldn’t wait to tell him. It was within her grasp now; she just had to reach out and take it. A sound somewhere between a cough and a laugh pushed through her lips.
She navigated into her recent calls menu and her eyes flicked across his phone number again. It was most likely a burner phone, considering he’d never been caught before, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was his actual phone, and maybe he’d pick it up without thinking, answer with his name. Or a voicemail would give it away. Pip could go to Hawkins with this number, right now, but she wanted to know first. She wanted to be the one to find him, to finally know his name and know all of it. Daniel da Silva. DT. The Strangler. She’d earned that. She’d won.
And maybe he should know what it felt like. The fear, the uncertainty. His screen lighting up with No Caller ID. That hesitation between answering and not. He wouldn’t know it was her. She would be masked, just like him.
Still walking the road beneath the deepening trees, Nat’s house forgotten long behind her, Pip copied and pasted his phone number into her keypad. Before the number, she typed in 141, the mask. Her thumb fizzed as it hovered above the green button.
This was it. The moment.
She pressed the button.
Raised the phone to her ear once more.
She heard it ringing, through the phone.
But, wait, no. That wasn’t right.
Pip stopped walking, lowered the phone.
It wasn’t only through her phone that she could hear it ringing.
It was in the other ear. Both of them. It was here.
The shrill chime of the call, ringing right behind her.
Louder.
And louder.
There wasn’t time to scream.
Pip tried to turn, to see, but two arms reached out of the unknown behind her. Took her. Phone still ringing as she dropped hers.
A hand collided with her face, over her mouth, blocking the scream before it could live. An arm around her neck, bent at the elbow, tightening, tightening.
Pip struggled. One breath but no air. She tried to rip his arm away from her neck, his hand away from her mouth, but she was weakening, her head emptying.
No air. Cut off at the neck. Shadows deepened around her. She struggled. Breathe, just breathe. She couldn’t. Explosions behind her eyes. She tried again and felt herself separating from her own body. Peeling away.
Darkness. And her, disappearing down into it.
Pip came through the darkness, one cracked eye at a time. It was a sound that led her out, something slamming by her ear.
Air. She had air. Blood flowing to her brain again.
Her eyes were open but she couldn’t make sense of the shapes around her. Not yet. A disconnect between what she saw and what she understood. And all she understood right then was pain, splitting open her head, writhing against her skull.
But she could breathe.
She could hear herself breathing. And then she couldn’t: the world growled and roared beneath her. But she knew that sound. She understood it. An engine starting. She was in a car. But she was lying down, on her back.
Two more blinks and suddenly the shapes around her made sense, her mind re-opening its doors. A tight, enclosed space; rough carpet beneath one cheek; a slanting cover secured above her, blocking out the light.
She was in the boot of a car. Yes, that’s it, she told her newborn brain. And it was the boot slamming shut; that’s what she’d heard.
She must have only been out for seconds. Half a minute at most. He’d been parked right behind her, ready. Dragged her. The boot open and yawning, to swallow her inside.
Oh yes, that was the most important thing to remember, her mind now catching up.
DT had taken her.
She was dead.
Not now: she was alive now and she could breathe, thank god she could breathe. But she was dead in all the ways that mattered. As good as.
Dead girl walking. Except she wasn’t walking; she couldn’t get up.
Panic riled up in her, warm and frothing and she tried to let it out, tried to scream. But, wait, she couldn’t. Only the muffled edges escaped, not enough to even call it a scream. There was something covering her mouth.