Page 148 of X's and O's

Maybe when I found her, I’d be able to tell her I loved her to her face.

35

VIOLET

“Ah, fucking hell!” Dickson kicked his booted foot into the corrugated metal wall. The crash echoed around the room with a grating clang.

Fear coursed through my body, every muscle tightening, instinctively preparing for a fight I logically knew I couldn’t win.

Levi had tried to warn me, and I hadn’t listened.

I wasn’t a small woman, and I might have had Toby on my side, but neither of us were the prison-hardened criminal standing across the empty space, nothing but a table between us.

I flinched at the sight of a knife lying in the middle of it.

But neither of us made a move for it.

“We just threw ourselves out of the frying pan and into the fire, didn’t we? Who is this freak? Jailbird’s gay lover?” Toby stage-whispered. Then narrowed his eyes at me shrewdly. “Please don’t tell me you had a second prison pen pal I don’t know about and he’s come to claimyou in a jealous rage.” He raised his voice so it carried to where Dickson stood. “I’m not the boyfriend! I’m about as straight as a rainbow, honey. You want to shank the big guy with the tats, whenever he gets here.” Then he lowered his voice. “He is coming, right?”

I had absolutely no idea. This whole thing had felt off from the beginning, but I’d ignored my gut, desperate to have just one single solitary moment where I felt special and wanted.

And instead, I’d walked into something out of a horror movie.

Dickson cocked his head to the side, his beady gaze flickering over my face. Recognition dawned on him. “I know you.”

“No you don’t,” Toby called. “We’re very boring people. Just your run-of-the-mill besties. Nothing to see here. We’ll just be on our way…”

The voices of the gang outside were louder, and something crashed against the outside wall of the building.

Toby cringed. “Just as soon as we find another way out, since this way seems wrought with locked doors and men with small penis energy.”

Dickson ignored him and shook his head.

I could practically see his brain whirring behind his eyes.

He pointed at me. “No, I do know you. You’re Levi’s girl.”

Something about this whole situation wasn’t adding up, but I couldn’t quite make it all work in my head. Why was this guy so surprised I was here? Clearly Levi hadn’t sent that poem, since it was Dickson standing in front ofme now. Why was he acting like he’d only just recognized me if he’d orchestrated this whole thing to punish Levi by hurting me?

A speaker crackled to life, and all three of us spun around trying to pinpoint where it was coming from. There wasn’t much inside the warehouse. An old-looking water cooler. Some piles of scrap metal. A few chairs with bent legs, but only shadows beyond that. I couldn’t see a speaker, and the sound seemed to be coming from somewhere over our heads. A distorted, electronic voice cut through the static.

“The doors are locked, the windows high,

No way out, so don’t you try.

Two must die, for one to go,

Who will strike the final blow?”

There was a silent pause, and then the message played again. And then again.

Each line of the poem sank in one by one.

We were locked in.

And two of us were supposed to die.

Toby gave a nervous giggle. “Well, this is quite the icebreaker game, isn’t it?”