Page 8 of A Simple Mistake (Deadly Mistakes #1)

EIGHT

Gabriel

Present

I don’t know how much longer my body can stay in a state of panic. It’s been days at this point that fear has raced through me. In this dark room, all I can do is think about what is going to happen to me. Beyond short trips to use a bathroom that’s in the cellar and small sips of water, I’m given no other luxuries.

My stomach clenches in hunger, though I don’t feel like I could eat a bite even if it was offered to me as the revolting smells from within the room attack my senses. My head is constantly throbbing and my wrists and ankles ache, but overall, I’m okay. If I could get the tape off my legs, and the shackles wrapped around my ankles unlocked, I could run, and I would never stop running. I could get away.

The door opens, spilling light into the room when the white-suited masked man enters while I remain as absolutely quiet as I can, silently begging and praying he’s not here for me. But what I don’t expect is for him to drag another man into the room who I vaguely recognize. I know he’s a police officer, but he works the third shift, so my interactions with him have been quite limited.

“Let me go! Let me go!” he begs as he’s dragged across the room, thrashing and flailing. He flips so hard that he slams into a chair, causing it to teeter and hit the floor. The clatter of the noise is loud enough to get Rick moving.

But my eyes are drawn to a shard of wood that chipped off the back of the chair when it hit. Moving as slowly as I can, I reach my bound hands out toward it.

He looks over at me and I stop moving, begging that he doesn’t see what I’d been reaching for. His attention soon returns to the officer as relief washes through me. Quickly, I lay my hands on the shard before pulling it back toward me.

As my heart beats wildly in my chest, I shrink in on myself, making myself as inconspicuous as possible as I wait for him to leave.

“Why are you all so nervous? We’re having fun, aren’t we?” he asks as he returns to the chair which he picks up. I’m so afraid he’s going to see that the chair has been chipped. I’m not even sure what I could do if he does. My hands are bound enough that only the tips of my fingers can move, which wouldn’t be enough of a grip to drive the shard into any vital parts.

He takes a seat in the chair and simply stares at us behind his white mask. Just watches us, and when I glance up to see what the fuck he’s doing, I find him looking right at me, making fear wrap around me.

He saw. He saw. He saw.

And now he’s going to kill me.

Adrenaline floods through me as I question what I could even do when I can’t move. I’m chained to this wall with no way out. Even if I stabbed him and killed him, we would all starve to death in here.

“I like you the most. You whine the least,” he says. “You’re a good boy. I might save you until last. The others whine and whine, and it just… it gets on my nerves, you know?”

He slides off the chair and drops down to his knees in front of me as he draws a fingertip over my cheek then down over my lips. I’ve never been so absolutely revolted by the feel of someone. It’s like even after his fingers are gone, I can still feel the touch of them.

“You are just precious, you know that? And now you’re all mine.”

He picks up a camera that I hadn’t realized had been hanging around his neck; I guess I’d been too fixated on the way he was looking at me. It’s an old Polaroid camera that he uses to snap a picture of me. The camera whirrs before the photo pops out. After it develops, he stares at it for a second before he digs the edge of the photograph into my cheek. “It’s almost perfect,” he muses as he pushes my hands up, grabbing the shard I’d hidden as my stomach tightens. He slowly drags it away from my fingertips before pressing it against my cheek hard enough that blood begins to roll out. He swipes his finger through the blood and rubs it across the white bottom of the photograph.

“How lovely,” he says as he gets up and finally leaves the room, taking the shard and my only hope with him.

I gasp, like I’d been holding my breath. My pulse races and my head spins as I question if there’s any way out of this hell. There’s only one hope left, and it’s bound between my hands, a place he’d never checked.

But is anyone even going to figure it out? Liam might… but does Liam even know I’m gone?