If he’s being deprived of sleep, he could be gone for days.

He’ll be back soon, and he’ll be fine.

He’s not sleeping well; it’s beginning to really get to him, a voice argues in my head.

“Piper?” Priya’s hand flashes past my face, making me blink.

“Huh?”

She takes a plate out of my hand and puts it in the sink. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine. Sorry, I totally spaced there.” Part of me is still back in that room, and the other part is just trying to recover as quickly as possible.

The headache is still there, but food helped, and it’s bearable.

“I’m worried about Kevin,” she admits. “But the last few days, he’s withdrawn and been quiet and pretty defeated.”

“We’ll make sure he’s okay when he gets back, get him to open up so we can help,” I tell her.

She turns the tap and fills the sink with soapy water. “Yes, he’s not good at talking about his own feelings, but he needs to.”

I help Priya wash up and then we join Theo, Hazel, and Lucie on the sofas.

That’s how we spend the rest of the evening, watching DVDs, volume down low.

No sign of Kevin and no music yet.

Theo is still very mad at me over our missed chance of escape this morning. Deep down, I hope he understands we never would have gotten away. They would have killed us if we got close. I think they wanted to hunt us and then bring us back here to prove they can do what they want, that they have ultimate control.

But we didn’t give them the satisfaction. It was a win for us, even though being back in this hell doesn’t seem like much of a win at all.

I try to make eye contact with Theo. We are the only ones around the kitchen table since Lucie, Hazel and Priya are still watching DVDs.

“Theo, I’m sorry.”

He lifts his eyes to me, and from the lowered angle of his chin it looks like he’s glaring. He may well be. “Let’s not talk about it, Piper. It’s done.”

“I don’t want you to stay mad at me. We both know coming back was our only choice.”

“We’ll never know, will we?” The bitter edge to his voice makes me flinch.

He’s not usually this cold.

Dropping my half-eaten slice of bread on the plate, I lean my arms on the table. “Look, I understand why you’re angry, but you can’t honestly believe that we had a chance out there. You know what they stand to lose if we’d escaped.”

“They would never let that happen, Piper. I know that.”