Читать книгу The Fifth to Die: A gripping, page-turner of a crime thriller - Джей Ди Баркер, J.D. Barker - Страница 14
Оглавление“Would you like a glass of milk?”
Lili Davies heard his voice before she saw him, truly saw him.
He spoke slowly, softly, only a breath, each word enunciated with the utmost care as if he put great thought into what he wanted to say before releasing the words. He spoke with a slight lisp, the s in glass troubling him.
He’d come down the stairs nearly five minutes earlier, the boards creaking under his weight. But when he reached the bottom, when he stood at the foot of the steps, he remained still. Shadows engulfed him, and Lili could make nothing out but the outline of a man.
And this was a man, not a boy.
Something about the way he stood, his broad shoulders, the deepness of his breaths, these things told her he was a man, not one of the boys from school. Not someone she knew playing some kind of sick joke, but a man, a man who had taken her.
Lili did want milk.
Her throat was as dry as sand.
She was hungry too.
Her stomach kept making little gurgling noises to remind her of just how hungry.
She said nothing, though; she didn’t utter a sound. Instead, she huddled deeper into the corner, her back pressing into the damp wall. She pulled the smelly green quilt tighter around her body. Something about the material made her feel safe, like being wrapped in her mother’s arms.
He’d been gone for at least an hour, maybe more. Lili used that time to try to figure out where she was. She hadn’t allowed herself to be afraid, she wouldn’t allow herself to be afraid. This was a problem, and she was good at solving problems.
She was in the basement of an older home.
She knew this because her house was older, and she remembered what the basement looked like before her parents brought in the contractors and construction crews to renovate it. The ceilings were low and the floor was uneven. Everything smelled like mildew, and spiders thrived. Every corner and cranny had either an old web or a new web, and the spiders crawled everywhere. When her parents brought in the contractors at her home, they gutted the basement, leveled the floor, sealed the walls, and coated everything in fresh drywall and paint. That drove the spiders out, at least for a little while.
Her friend Gabby lived in a brand-new house, built only two years ago, and her basement was completely different. High ceilings and level floors, bright and airy. They carpeted, brought in furniture, and turned the space into a fun family room. Basements in old homes could never be fun family rooms, no matter how much work was done. You could cover up the moisture, even level the floors, drywall, and paint, but the spiders always came back. The spiders wouldn’t give up their space.
This basement had spiders.
Although she couldn’t see them from where she sat, she knew they were right above her, creeping in and out of the exposed floor joists. They watched her with a thousand eyes as they spun their webs.
He gave her clothes, but they were not her clothes.
When she woke on the floor, wrapped in the green quilt, she quickly realized she had been stripped nude and left here, in this cage, a stranger’s clothes folded neatly and left near her head. They didn’t fit. They were at least a few sizes too big, but she put them on because she had nothing else, because they were better than the green quilt. Then she wrapped herself in the green quilt anyway.
She was in a dimly lit, damp basement. More precisely, she was in a chainlink enclosure set up in a dimly lit, damp basement.
The enclosure went from floor to ceiling, and the pieces were welded together. It was meant to be a dog kennel. She knew this because Gabby’s family owned a dog, a husky named Dakota, and they had a very similar, if not the same, kennel in their backyard. They bought it at Home Depot, and she and Gabby had watched her father put it together over the summer. It didn’t take him long, maybe an hour, but he hadn’t welded it.
When Lili stood up, wrapped in her green quilt, and ran her fingers over the various pipes and thick metal wire that made up her cage, she sought out joints, remembering how Gabby’s father assembled his, then her heart sank as she found the bumpy welds. The gate at the front was locked tight with not one padlock but two — one near the top and the other near the bottom. She rattled the gate, but it barely moved. The entire structure had been bolted down into the concrete floor. It was secure, and she was trapped inside.
“You should drink something, you need to be strong for what is to come,” the man said, his voice catching for a second on the s in something.
Lili said nothing. She wouldn’t say anything. To talk to him would give him power, and she wasn’t ready to do that. He didn’t deserve anything from her.
The only light came from what was probably an open door at the top of the stairs. He stood perfectly still at the base.
Lili’s eyes fought with the darkness, slowly adjusting.
He remained out of focus though, a darker shadow among other shadows, an outline against the wall.
“Turn around. Face the back wall, and don’t turn back again until I say it’s okay,” he instructed.
Lili didn’t move, her posture firming.
“Please turn around.” Softer, pleading.
She gripped the quilt and pulled it tighter around her small frame.
“Turn the fuck around!” he shouted, his voice booming through the basement, echoing off the walls.
Lili gasped and took a step backward, nearly tripping.
Then all went quiet again.
“Please don’t make me shout. I prefer not to shout.”
Lili felt her heart pounding in her chest, a heavy thump, thump, thump.
She took a step back, then another, and another after that. When she reached the wall, the back of her cage, she willed her feet to turn around and faced the corner.
Lili heard him as he walked closer, the living shadow. Something about his gait was off. Rather than steady steps, she heard one foot land, then the other slid for a second on the concrete floor before it too fell into place, repeating again with the next step. A shuffle or limp, a slight drag of the foot, she couldn’t be sure.
Lili forced her eyes to close. She didn’t want to close them, but she did anyway. She forced her eyes to close so she could concentrate on the sounds, picture the sounds behind her.
She heard the jingle of keys before the telltale click of a padlock — it sounded like the top lock — then the other a moment later. She heard him slip both locks from the gate, then lift the handle and open the door.
Lili cringed in anticipation of what would come next.
She expected his hand on her, a touch somewhere or a grab from behind. That touch never came. Instead, she heard him close the gate and replace the locks, both clicking securely back into place.
His uneven shuffle away from her cage.
“You can turn back around now.”
Lili did as he asked.
He returned to the stairs, lost to the dark again.
A glass of milk sat on the floor just inside the cage, a thin bead of water dripping down the side.
“It’s not drugged,” he said. “I need you awake.”
