“Like the pencil. That you used to start a fire.” He paused. “The million-dollar question is, How would someone guess you’d even know how to do that?”
“Maybe he knew I was the daughter of an electrician. I knew how to start a fire in an electrical outlet because I’d followed my dad around on jobs since I was a kid.”
He scratched his jaw. “I mean, I wouldn’t have known how to do that. A pencil, or the uses for what’s inside it, would have flown right over my head.”
“Right. It was personal. He’d researched us.”
Evan appeared slightly dubious, and so she bit her lip, trying to think of the right way to clarify this. For a moment there in the casino, it had clicked in her mind, and she didn’t think she was explaining it adequately enough, or maybe it was just that in her mind, the thought had been braided together with the feeling, and she had no way to convey that part.
“What about you?” she said. “You were given that mallet. I’d guess it was approved by whoever oversaw that kind of thing because it was presented as a musical instrument to go along with our singing. But that wasn’t the true intention of the sender. And you knew it wasn’t. Maybe the person who sent it knew you’d smash your hand to get it through the bars.”
He paused as though he’d already considered her being sent a tool that would allow her to start a fire but hadn’t considered what he’d been sent. And how he’d used it. “How could he know that, though? How could anyone?”
“It was the first thing that was threatened,” she said quietly. “I saved your fingers in exchange for my virginity.”
He turned away, but not before she saw the deep pain in his eyes.
“It hurts you, even now,” she said.
“Jesus, of course it does.”
“Someone saw that. They gambled on you crushing the bones in your hand. And they were right.”
“Okay.” His voice was choked. “Okay.” He was quiet for several moments, as though weighing that possibility, letting it sink in. “A part of me relished it,” he finally said. An admittance. One she could tell was difficult for him to utter. “I felt so damn guilty for what you’d paid with for my fingers. I almost enjoyed each blow.” Unconsciously, he extended his fingers and then curled them in a fist.
Oh God. “Evan—” she said, her voice breathy.
“I know. I know I didn’t need to feel that way, but I did. Sometimes I still do.” He turned back toward her, uncapping the water and taking a long swig. “So what you’re saying is someone bet on me breaking my own hand?”
She watched him for a moment but took his cue to keep going. Keep looking at this. “Yes, but I don’t think it was a singular bet. I think it was one link in a . . . string.” She paused as she looked down for a moment, her mind zipping through each stage of their escape, and then she raised her head. “Maybe that was it, one of the bets was whether we’d escape. Whether or not we’d manage to get free.”
He was quiet for a moment as he appeared to think that over. “So us getting free was always a possibility?”
“Probably a very remote one. The only reason we did is that we were sent an array of the exact things we needed to get past one barrier and move on to the next.”
“Damn.” He gave his head a small shake and raised his brows. She could see by his expression just what he thought, and she agreed—it was a lot, and her brain hurt too. “I mean, there would have to be rules, right? Like you couldn’t just send a gun on our food tray? Whoever helped us—whoever made that bet—would have to strategize and plan and then hope we’d get it without being told.”
“Yes. Which would mean our entire escape was choreographed, in a way.”
“Who, though? What type of person could do that? But wouldn’t call for help for us?”
He crossed his arms over his chest, leaning his shoulder on the cabinet that held the television. She chewed at the inside of her cheek for a moment, trying to see the entire picture of what they were discussing. It was difficult, though. They were assuming quite a lot, and the rest of it sounded too unbelievable to be true. But they had to brainstorm. What else did they have?
“Evan,” she said after a moment. “I have to tell you about this man.”
“What man?”
“One of the men who rented me.”
She saw him tense, but he took his time answering, taking a long drink of water and using the back of his index finger to wipe his bottom lip slowly. “We said we were never going to talk about that.”