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)
The idea is mine, because I’m the one with leverage and I’m the one who knows Marlena’s type. Collectors are patient until they’re not, and when they’re not, they get sloppy. So we wait. We let the deadline get closer. We let her stew and monologue and watch us on her cameras looking defeated and scared. And then, right when she’s convinced we’ve run out of fight, I break. I give her what she wants. Mostly.
The details of “mostly” I’m keeping to myself for now. The broad strokes are simple. I cooperate, I give Marlena enough to believe she’s won, and I hold back just enough to keep us alive and breathing and necessary. A woman like Marlena doesn’t destroy an asset she still needs.
The tricky part is timing. Cave too early and she won’t trust it. Hold out too long and she starts cutting off fingers to make her point. We’re aiming for the sweet spot between broken and believable.
In the meantime, we wait. On the plan. On the distress signal Liam rigged from the camera’s Wi-Fi module last night, which went out into the dark and came back with nothing. No ping, no response, no way to know if it reached a tower or just died in the cold. Knox and Liam are talking about pulling a second module to try a longer broadcast, but even if they do, we won’t know if anyone heard us until we know. Sitting with that uncertainty is its own kind of torture.
So. Day three. Waiting.
The afternoon light streams through the frost-edged windows, pale and winter-soft. Everything feels different since this morning. Knox and Liam are in the living room, arguing over what to watch on the ancient DVD player—because apparently Marlena stocked the cabin with technology from 2005. The collection she left us ranges from romantic comedies to action movies, all of them at least a decade old. Liam called it “retro charm.” Knox called it “psychological torture.”
But they’re doing that thing where they look at each other now. Actually look. No more of that cagey tension from the first two days. Something happened between them—I don’t know the details, but I’ve seen the way they move around each other now. Easier. More fluid. Whatever wall they’d built between themselves has come down.
I cross to the pantry closet, mostly just to have something to do with my hands. The first two shelves are stocked with gourmet pasta, artisanal olive oils, and enough canned goods to survive a nuclear winter. I push past the truffle salt and imported tomatoes, reaching toward the back where I spotted something earlier.
My fingers close around cardboard. I pull the box forward, shoving aside a bag of organic quinoa, and nearly drop it when I see what’s inside.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”
String lights. A fake tree about two feet tall. Glass ornaments in red and silver and gold. Velvet garland in deep green.
Knox looks up from where he’s crouched by the DVD player. “What’d you find?”
I hold up a strand of tiny lights, letting them dangle between my fingers. “Christmas decorations.”
Liam abandons the stack of DVDs and crosses toward me. “No way.”
“Way.” I dig deeper, pulling out a velvet tree skirt embroidered with snowflakes. “She really went all out with the holiday hostage aesthetic.”
Knox joins us, peering into the box with the same tactical assessment he’d give a supply cache. “Fake tree. Ornaments. Even hooks.” He pulls out a smaller box. “Gourmet hot cocoa mix.”
“Naturally it’s gourmet,” I mutter. “Why hold people prisoner without Swiss chocolate?”
Liam reaches past both of us and grabs the tree. It’s already fluffed, the branches that perfect manufactured pine shape that real trees never achieve. “You know what? We should set this up.”
I stare at him. “We’re being held captive by a lunatic who wants to kill us in a week. And you want to decorate?”
“Christmas Eve is in seven days.” Liam shrugs, but the shrug doesn’t sell it. His voice is too tight. “If we’re going to die, might as well do it festively.”
Knox snorts. “That’s dark.”
“I’m a dark guy.”
I look at the tree in Liam’s hands, then at the box of ornaments, then at the two men watching me with expressions that are trying very hard not to look hopeful.
Fuck it.
“Give me the lights,” I say.
What follows is the most surreal two hours of my life.
Knox takes charge of the lighting situation because that’s who he is. He examines the windows like he’s planning a tactical operation, measuring distances with his eyes and muttering about even distribution and optimal coverage. Liam holds the ladder—which materialized from a hallway closet—and offers a running commentary.
“Little to the left. No, other left.”
“I know where left is.”
“Do you? Because that’s distinctly right.”
“That’s your left, asshole.”
“Left is left. It doesn’t change based on perspective.”