Rick rounded the vehicle and dove into the passenger seat. Frank floored the gas pedal as Rick frantically buckled his seat belt. “Do you think he’ll know that was from us?” Rick shouted.

Frank chuckled, a nasal sound that was less laugh and more snort. “If he calls for a meet, then we’ll know.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

Frank ceased laughing. “Then we’ll have to refine our message.”

PART TWO

PART TWO

CHAPTER NINETEEN

MELISSA

This was how people broke down prisoners of war, Melissa thought. They stripped their hostage of every human necessity and then, ever so gradually, doled out morsels of kindness in the form of basic luxuries. A little food. A little water. A light over a toilet.

There was a cost to these gifts, Melissa knew. She had to be good. She couldn’t scream herself hoarse as she had been doing. She couldn’t make a mess of her meals or piss on the floor, as had happened a bit earlier.

There’d been no helping that. Like most people, she relieved herself after waking. Her bladder was trained to expel its contents minutes after she got up in the morning. She couldn’t have held it, even if she, supposedly, hadn’t been trapped that long.

Time was relative. In the dark, it became elastic, stretching the hours, vibrating with tension. Her argument had resonated with her captor, which she would call It from now on. Names belonged to human beings. Killing something with a name was hard. Melissa was determined not to hesitate if she got the chance.

It had opened an unseen door and turned on the bathroom light, revealing a sink, the unpainted space where a mirror had once hung, and a solitary stall. She sat in there now, clothed bottom atop the toilet seat, her need to urinate previously satiated on the hardwood floor. A toilet paper holder had gleamed from the wall, beckoning like a knife. She’d managed to pry it loose and had been using it to bang on the faucet. Her goal was to break the pipe and perhaps cause a flood, something that would need to be addressed, hopefully by someone other than It.

She’d been hitting the thing for what seemed like hours. Breaking the pipe no longer seemed possible. The noise, however, might attract attention.

Of course, any sound could also draw It back to revoke her bathroom privileges. It liked to punish, Melissa thought. It had already said that she wouldn’t be getting dinner, given that she’d refused to eat the prior offering, “irrationally” claiming fear of poison. Such thoughts were ridiculous, It had insisted. The goal wasn’t to kill her. She was here simply to “settle down” so that they could have a discussion about how things needed to be going forward. What they should do.