Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake) by Rachel Caine (books to read in your 20s female TXT) 📕

slowly, steadily, and take inventory. My head aches. My ears are barely working, still buried under high-pitched noise. The gag’s tight, expertly applied; when I try to scrape my face against the seat, it doesn’t move at all. The bonds on my wrists are tight enough to hurt, and my ankles ache too. I’m in trouble.

He’s talking, I realize. But he’s not talking to me. He’s got a phone, and he’s talking into it as he drives. I hear only the sound of it, not the meaning.

Then I hear the other voice. He’s talking to Gwen.

I try to scream. The gag muffles it. I feel the car slow down and stop, and the driver’s side door opens, closes. A second later, the back door by my head opens, and light floods in on me. I blink, trying to really see him. I struggle.

He pulls me out of the car and across a long, clean concrete surface. I’m in some kind of building, and when I manage to blink and focus enough, it disorients me. Just . . . space, going up into shadows above me, with a winding steel staircase vanishing into the distance.

Lighthouse. I’m in the lighthouse.

He doesn’t pause. Next thing I know, we’re in an elevator, a large freight-size thing that moves jerkily and stops with a jolt. By this time, I can see better. Hear more clearly. And none of it helps.

I try to focus on Jonathan Watson. He seems utterly disinterested in me, other than moving me like a piece of furniture where he wants me to be. He pulls me into a corner and props me against the wall like a discarded mop, then walks away to the elevator. He slides a door shut and enters a code into the keypad beside it. I can’t focus enough to see what it is.

There’s another way down, I tell myself. Stairs.

Yeah, if I can cut myself loose. I look around. This is some kind of control center, maybe for the lighthouse itself; the consoles look new, shiny, fitted out with all kinds of touch-screen displays. I don’t see any sharp corners that I can rub these damn restraints against. There’s a single rolling office chair. On the other side from the rounded console, there’s a bank of monitors, and once I glance toward them, I can’t stop looking.

There are nine monitors. Gwen is on one of them. She’s sitting in a room with a body, a mutilated body, and though I can’t see it in detail, I can feel the horror of it. I start to squirm forward, trying to find something, anything to use.

Jonathan Watson walks back toward me and stands there, watching me. Then he shakes his head and says, “I’m not going to hurt you. You aren’t guilty of anything. But I can’t let you interfere either. This is important. You need to be quiet now.”

I want to tell him about the baby. Maybe it will make a difference. But he doesn’t seem to care when I try to talk through the gag as he takes out a pair of handcuffs. He flips me on my side, cuts off the zip ties on my wrists, and I feel one set of the cuffs going on my right wrist. He pulls me over to a standpipe that’s against one of the walls, and then the second cuff clicks on. When I lunge forward, I nearly jerk my arms out of my sockets, and have to pause to pull in painful breaths through my nose.

He’s locked me to the pipe. I’m not going anywhere.

He forgets about me almost immediately. He walks over to the chair, spins it around to face the monitors, and leans forward, watching. I look too. I can’t help it. My vision is getting clearer and clearer, and the horrible thing I’m seeing sharpens along with it.

“She chose this,” he tells me. “Sheryl Lansdowne. You understand, I didn’t do it out of cruelty. I let her make all the choices. I always do.”

I can’t answer him. I blink, and I see Sheryl is moving. Just her torso and head. Arms and legs pallid and still around her like some kind of horrific art installation. And even knowing what I know—or at least suspect—I feel a surge of sickness.

“Gwen can stop her suffering, if she chooses,” he continues. “I think she will. That’s the easy choice.”

Gwen has never taken an easy path. I don’t know what this man is thinking. Or why. Maybe I never will. I try to stay calm, but I’m scared. I don’t know if what happened to me back there at the cannery would have hurt my baby. I’m afraid that my nose will stop up and I won’t be able to breathe, and that would be a shitty, stupid way to die.

I’m afraid that help isn’t coming. That Gwen and I will just vanish off the map like magic, alive or dead.

I just want to go back to sanity. Safety. Javier and the baby and life.

Jonathan keeps watching Gwen. He leans forward. Sometimes he talks to her, but mostly he just . . . watches. When Sheryl starts to scream, it’s horrible. I shut my eyes and try not to hear it, try not to hear Gwen offering what little she can in the way of comfort. It takes forever to stop. Don’t cry, I tell myself. You can’t cry. You need to breathe. Keep breathing.

When I open my eyes again, it’s silent. Jonathan is sitting back in his chair. I think he’s surprised.

He hits a button. He’s just unlocked the room, I realize. And Gwen—bloody, distraught, bone-pale Gwen—stands up and leaves.

I listen to their exchange, not because I want to but because I have no other choice. I’m scrabbling with my fingertips against the pipe. It’s smooth. No rough surfaces. The floor is too. I can’t find anything, anything to work with.

Jonathan presses another button, then swivels his chair to face me. He leans forward and studies me like I’m a damn