“Did the man who . . . do you think he’s the one who took us?” he asked her after a moment.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I don’t think so. He wasn’t very . . . he wasn’t strong.”
“How do you think he knew about you, then? About us? Where did he rent you?”
She met his eyes. “A marketplace where you can buy and sell . . . people. I . . . I don’t know.”
Yes, he’d had the same dark suspicion. He’d even come up with the same word—marketplace. “Okay, yes, I agree. So then maybe these are . . . gifts . . . and are from the people who rent . . . us?”
“Gifts?” she asked and then shrugged. “It’s possible.”
“Why, though? I don’t think wooing is necessary. We’re sort of a sure thing.”
“Not funny.”
“I wasn’t trying to be.”
She stared morosely down at her strawberry for a moment before using her fingernail to score the middle and then pull it apart. She reached through the bars, giving him half. “It doesn’t matter. Rejecting this food won’t get us anywhere. We need it.”
He took the strawberry and set it on his tray, quickly counting the peanuts and handing her half plus one on account of the one he’d already eaten.
They ate in silence, allowing the other to savor the food, especially the chocolate, which he continued to suck from his teeth long after it was gone. He knew she was as aware as him that it would be the only small pleasure they’d receive that day.
When they were done, they pushed their trays back in the dumbwaiters without being directed to, and the doors slid shut, the internal cart lifting to some unknown location above.
They sat there in silence for several minutes before she picked up the conversation they’d been having before their food arrived. “We’re being sold. But I keep coming back to . . . why us? Why us in particular? Our connection . . . it still . . . it has to mean something.”
He couldn’t answer that. But like her, his mind kept returning to the same question. And if he could figure out what, maybe they would be able to appeal in some way to whoever was keeping them captive.
It wasn’t random. They’d been taken from two separate locations. It must be someone who knew them both, but he couldn’t fathom who. Maybe it was simply some sicko who’d followed the court case and had developed some strange fascination with them or their families or who knew what aspect of the case.
It had to be an operation, though. This wasn’t some singular deranged madman. There were at least a few more people involved, one being the lackey who’d escorted Noelle to the room upstairs. The man who’d threatened to take his fingers and appeared excited at the possibility. Another being the man who’d rented her. If they were being “rented,” then they were being advertised. On some black market, like she’d said. But where? He had no comprehension of that kind of thing.
He couldn’t even fathom the depth of evil he was pondering.
The kind of evil they were living.
“I think there were cameras up there,” she said after a few minutes. “I saw this tiny red light on the upper portion of the wall near the ceiling. I focused on it.”
“Cameras,” he repeated. “People watching as this man—”
“Yes.”
Someone watched? God. This is insane. He sat up slightly, leaning on his forearm. “Do you think there are cameras down here too?” He whispered the words as though speaking quietly might help make him invisible. “Do you think someone is watching . . . and listening?” It was like he could suddenly feel their eyes. The unknown predators behind all . . . this.
She leaned up, too, looking around. He hadn’t seen any small light, though. If it was here in this room, it was hidden well. Or perhaps the equipment was different. “I think we should assume there are,” she answered. “Otherwise, how did someone rent me? Based only on a description?” She shook her head. “No, I’d think they’d want to see what they were getting for the money.” She fell back on the floor, rolling onto her back and throwing her arm over her eyes.
For a minute he thought she was crying, and he began to put his hand through the bars to reach for her. But then she lowered her arm, turning her head toward him. “My father stopped taking me to church when my mother died,” she said.
Evan’s forehead met the cold bars, and he watched her as she spoke. “She’d been the more religious one.” She let out a small laugh that didn’t hold much humor, if any at all. “Ironic, I guess. I don’t know. She was committing adultery, after all.” He hid the grimace that threatened. “I think my father thought maybe it was all just BS. A building to go to on a Sunday morning. Words that went in one ear and out the other. I wonder if that’s what church became for him, because obviously that’s what it’d been for her.” She gave a fleeting smile and a small shrug. “Or maybe he just couldn’t bring himself to be around so many people. I really don’t know.”