DELIVER(11)

Van scratched his neck. “Let him go, Liv. You got the wrong kid.”

While Van was attempting to win the boy’s trust, it didn’t quite soften his razor eyes. He sucked at being the passive captor, though to his credit, he’d never had to watch from the sidelines before. His sadistic control-freakery was probably tearing him up inside.

“Just stand there and hold the gun like you’re supposed to, Van.” She met the boy’s steadfast expression with her own. “You will be trained. Then you will be sold for sex.”

“I can pay.” He raised his stubborn chin. “I can come up with the money and cover whatever they’re paying you.”

Hell, he didn’t have a dollar, and certainly not two million of them. His illogical offer meant he was still in the panic stage. She remembered the confusion and how the uncontrollable trembling and desire to escape had made her crazed, hyper-aware, and desperate.

Witnessing him experience the first horrific phases of capture was why she’d avoided conversation in the truck. She hadn’t wanted to connect with him as his equal, as a friend. Connections like that birthed concern and sympathy and other touchy-feely detriments to her arrangement.

But she’d returned his kiss. At the time, she’d reasoned it was a luring tactic. Until their lips separated, and she was left with a lingering taste of something she’d never have.

“Follow me.” She didn’t wait for the boy’s obedience. Van’s gun would ensure it. She strode to the soundproof wall that divided the attic into two chambers.

At the door, she punched her code into the keypad. She and Van had separate codes to move through the rooms within the house, but only she had a code for this one.

She walked through the long, narrow room. Once her prison, it was now her sanctuary, her bedroom, and the only place she could escape Van. When Mr. E promoted her from slave to deliverer, he allowed her request to hold the only combination to the room. And why not? He could reach through any door with the threat he held over her. But Van could not.

Tossing her phone on the threadbare mattress in the corner, she moved past the open shower, toilet, and sink along the front wall. Reaching the coffin-sized pine box opposite the unenclosed bathroom, she turned and waited for the boy to join her.

There was an illusion that he could walk freely into the room, but it was psychological bullshit. Van wouldn’t shoot if the boy slipped-up, but any number of the non-lethal weapons hidden on his person insured compliance.

The brick at her back made the attic feel inescapable, as was intended, but the true barrier was the sound-deadening concrete forms veneering the exterior walls. Its effectiveness was tested by her own lungs during her first year in that room. No one had come to save her.

The boy crossed the threshold with Van’s gun at his back. His arms lolled at his sides, his expression growing more wary and alert with each step. What would he do? What was he thinking? Planning?

He scanned her room—the room she would be sharing with him—and his gaze seized on the phone on the mattress, flicked to the horizontal box, and returned to the phone.

“Keypad is locked.” She kept her posture still and straight, her voice detached.

A storm of frantic ideas churned in his icy eyes. He could try to dial 911, but the modifications Mr. E put on her phone disabled things like the camera and the ability to make emergency calls while it was locked. This allowed her to keep her phone with her, one of his requirements. He used it to track her every call, her every move. At the end of the day, she was just as trapped as the boy.

Van nudged him with the gun, moving him forward.

The boy stopped a foot away from her position beside the box. His breath evened in what seemed to be an attempt at deference. Too many emotions clouded his face to predict what he was planning. But his choices were no longer his.

“Requirement number four. Slave will not wear clothes unless Master requests otherwise.” She exhaled slowly through her nose. This would not go over well. “Strip.”

His expression emptied. Was it shock? Was he masking his terror? If so, he was doing a damned good job. Maybe he’d already worked out it would come to this. When she was forced to strip the first time, she’d already played out the worst scenarios in her head. Surrendering her clothes had paled next to her imagination. Hadn’t stopped her from pleading for her modesty.

“Why did you skip requirements one and two?” His voice was calm. Too calm.

Had he already reached the compliance stage? That usually took days to weeks of unrelenting pressure. Perhaps he was just being vigilant and probing his hopeless situation from all angles.

She inhaled deeply through her nose. As a coldhearted deliverer, she couldn’t answer his questions. She kicked his knee, hard enough to make him stumble. “Clothes. Now.”

He glanced at Van, the gun, back to her. “If I refuse, do I get a matching scar, too?”

The little shit actually grinned. It was shaky as hell, but he had brass balls. Her stomach sank at the thought of breaking them.

Van laughed, playing the part. “Only if you’re really lucky. You’d have to fall in love and break the virginity clause to earn one of these.” He stroked his scar.

She closed her eyes. The love thing was one-sided, and he’d left out the most important part, the piece that held her there. For that, she was grateful.

When she opened her eyes, the boy was watching her with a demeanor she couldn’t interpret.