“I have everyone working on it. I’ll be very upset if we lose Sofia. And I expect you’ll be pushing yourself to see something helpful.”
“Of course.”
“Very good. Because without Sofia, there really isn’t a place for you here.”
He doesn’t say if there’s not a place for me here, there’s not a place for me anywhere. He doesn’t have to. I swallow. I hope he doesn’t see it.
I hear him stand, and almost sigh in relief because I know where he is now in relation to me, and it means he’s leaving.
“There is another matter. The matter of Adam Denting.”
James, James, how could you? “Yes?”
“I’ve heard some interesting things about him since he was killed. Did you know he was a neurologist? Studied brain abnormalities in women. Something of a prodigy. Very interesting. And I’ve been thinking about what you saw, his name swallowing mine. I’m curious: How can a girl who has been blind since age four understand a vision that revolves around words?”
I stutter, grasping desperately for something, anything to explain this. Fia would know. She’d have a lie. She’d twist and slide and slip through this. She’d never have
messed up this bad in the first place.
I am lost.
His voice is close now, too close, and I sink back against the couch, wishing I could disappear into it. “If you ever try to manipulate me again, dear girl, I can assure you that your death will not be nearly so pleasant and fast as the last one you saw, and I will personally make certain it happens.”
No footsteps, he has no footsteps, but I hear the door open with a click and a whisper. “If I were you, I’d pray for Sofia’s swift return.”
ANNIE
Eighteen Months Ago
I STOP HALFWAY TO FIA’S DOOR, THE TRAY BALANCED carefully on my hip. “You’re new,” I say. He smells like oranges and…something darker. Richer. Not the cheap, stinging aftershave of Stewart, the regular guard.
He laughs; it has an edge to it that sets my senses on alert. It’s unnerving and a little bit sexy. I am eighteen years old. I know nothing about sexy. Or men. I wish I did. I wonder what it would be like to have a life where boys were a part of it.
This man, whoever he is, knows everything about sexy. I can already tell by his smell and his laugh. “I am new. How did you know I was here?”
“Stewart smells much worse. And he breathes like a horse.”
He laughs again. “You must be Annabelle.”
I smile, then inwardly berate myself. What am I doing? He’s one of them. And, even worse, he’s new. Which means something must be changing. Which is absolutely terrifying. “Why are you here?”
“They needed a replacement for the previous project manager.”
The previous project manager. Clarice. Dead Clarice. “So, what did you do wrong to get assigned here?”
“Ah, you mean what did I do right? Because here is looking pretty good now.”
I don’t know if I’m blushing; my cheeks are hot and I feel like I need to tuck my hair behind my ear or touch my neck, but I’m holding the tray. Fia’s tray. “I have to take this in to Fia. Open the door.”
“Fia,” he says experimentally, then repeats it softly to himself. “Yes, about that.”
I feel the tray wobble ever so slightly. He touched it. “What did you just do?”
“I think it’s time we weaned your sister off the sedatives, don’t you?”
“Really?” I turn my face toward his voice, overwhelmed with hope. They’ve kept her so drugged up ever since…ever since that day. She’s barely a person. I’ve asked and asked, pleaded, argued, demanded. What was the point in keeping her here if they were going to leave her a zombie forever?
“Really.”