Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 106090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Past the sitting area, a kitchen that makes me stop and stare.
This isn’t a cabin kitchen. This is something you’d find in a Manhattan penthouse. Wolf six-burner range with a red enamel finish. Sub-Zero refrigerator humming softly against the stone wall. Granite countertops in a deep gray that match the fireplace. Professional-grade cookware hangs from a copper pot rack, each piece gleaming like it’s never been used. I open the refrigerator and find it fully stocked with ingredients you see in food magazines. High-end cheese. Fresh herbs. Beef wrapped in butcher paper with a label I can’t read. A bottle of Dom Pérignon chilling on the top shelf.
None of this makes sense. People who kidnap you don’t stock the fridge with champagne.
A bathroom connects to the main space through a doorless archway. Rainfall shower, heated floors if the warmth under my socks is any indication, thick towels monogrammed with initials I don’t recognize. White marble and brushed nickel and more luxury than most hotels I’ve stayed in.
The door catches my eye next. Heavy, solid wood with iron hardware that looks almost decorative. From the inside, there’s no lock mechanism at all. Just a handle that turns easily when I try it.
The door doesn’t move.
I try again, putting my weight into it. Nothing. Whatever’s holding it shut is on the other side. Reinforced, probably. Bolted from the outside. I could throw myself against it all day and accomplish nothing but a bruised shoulder.
I check the windows. Triple-paned glass, set deep into the stone walls. I could throw a chair at them and it would probably just bounce off. Even if I broke through, I’d be facing sub-zero temperatures in whatever I’m wearing. No coat. No boots. Nothing but the T-shirt and leggings I fell asleep in at the lodge. Bare feet on heated floors—a detail that would be luxurious if it weren’t so clearly designed to keep us from running.
We’re trapped.
Whoever took us didn’t just grab us and throw us in a hole. They prepared. They thought about thread counts and kitchen appliances.
That scares me more than a hole would have.
I glance back at Liam. Still out. Still breathing. One bedroom, one bed, and he’s on the couch. Whoever put us here made choices about the arrangement, and I don’t like what those choices imply.
I’m running my fingers along the window seals, looking for any weakness I might have missed, when I hear him groan.
He’s stirring now, one hand coming up to press against his temple.
“Hailey?” He pushes himself up on one elbow and squints at me like I might be a hallucination.
“Yeah, I’m here.” I cross back to him, crouching beside the couch. “How’s your head?”
“Feels like someone’s mining for copper inside my skull.” He sits up slowly, steadying himself on the arm of the couch, and looks around. Takes in the cabin, the windows, the fire. I watch him change from confusion to assessment to something harder. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere remote, based on the view. We were drugged at the lodge and brought here while we were out.” I gesture at our surroundings. “I’ve already checked the door and windows. We’re not getting out that way.”
He stands, a little unsteady, and moves to the door to see for himself. I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t take someone else’s word for it either. He tries the handle, examines the frame, runs his hand along the hinges.
“Steel plate behind the wood,” he says after a moment. “Hinges on the outside. This was built to hold people.”
“I figured.”
He turns back to the room, and I see him cataloguing details the way I did. The exits that aren’t exits. The windows that won’t break. The one bedroom with the one bed. His eyes hold on that last part a beat too long, but he doesn’t comment on it. Neither do I. We have bigger problems.
“The kitchen is ridiculous,” I tell him. “Whoever did this spent serious money making sure we’d be comfortable.”
“Comfortable.” He says the word like it tastes wrong. “That’s not reassuring.”
“I know.”
He’s quiet for a moment, still scanning. “No phones. No clocks. No way to tell what time it is or how long we’ve been out.”
“Nothing. I already looked.”
“So we’re blind and deaf and locked in a box, but at least we have a nice stove.” He laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “This is wrong, Hailey. All of it. People don’t go to this much trouble unless they want something specific, and they don’t make the cage this pretty unless they plan to keep you in it for a while.”
I want to argue with him. I want to say we’ll find a way out, that someone will notice we’re missing, that Knox—
But Knox doesn’t know where I am. Knox doesn’t even know I left. I couldn’t figure out what to tell him, so I told him nothing. Just vanished after everything we’d started building together.