You slump back against the wall and close your eyes. There's not much you can do now but wait and see what will happen to you. Maybe, just maybe, your captor will listen to reason.

Time passes. You can't be sure how much. You can't reach your pockets very easily, but you know for a fact that your cell phone was in your messenger bag, not in your pocket.

Still, you shift your weight experimentally, trying to determine if through some random twist of chance and fate, you slipped your cell into your back pocket.

Nope.

Even if you had, you're pretty certain Wes would have found it and relieved you of it.

Suddenly, you hear the sound of shuffling somewhere near at hand. The hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and you look toward the sound. "Please don't be rats," you whisper. "Please, please don't be rats."

"Hello?" comes a voice from the darkness. It's raspy, thick with tears.

Horror prickles through you. "Oh, my God."

Rather than a response, you hear the sound of a woman crying.

"Oh, my God," you repeat. "How long have you been here? ...Hello?"

"He's coming back," she sobs. "He's coming back, he's coming back. We're going to die."

"Shh. Shh. Everything's going to be okay. We're going to find a way out of here."

You wonder if this girl is Maisie, the girl who disappeared and was never found. You're about to ask your fellow captive for her name when a slow, eerie creak slices through the silence of the barn, followed by the ghostly squeal of hinges.

Your heart hammers in your chest, and you suddenly wish you had tried harder to get away. You are torn between cowering and straining for a sight of the person who must now be coming into the barn—but it would be no use anyway; in the stall where you're held captive, the walls rise up well above you, and the gate is at such an angle that it's impossible to see the doors.

You don't have to wonder long, though. You can hear booted footsteps approaching you across the ancient floorboards of the building, and you see a flash of white in the moonlight: the side of someone's face as he crosses through the thin shaft of light cast by the window opposite the hayloft.

The person trapped in here with you can still be heard crying softly, but you think she is trying to be quiet.

Wes leans against the gate of your stall, his arms folded. He says, "Well. Ain't she a beaut." His tone is perfectly nonchalant, as if he's peering into the stall at a prize-winning horse and not a living, breathing, terrified woman.

The blend of fear and your continuing nausea from whatever drugs he gave you is almost too much for you to bear, and, perversely, a desperate thought pierces your mind: Water. You're so damned thirsty.

"Wes," you say softly, aiming for a reasonable tone. "You don't have to do this."

"Do what?" he asks, cocking his head. You wish you could see his face. It's so dark in here, and the light from the window can't reach him. He's backlit, a silhouette, a man-shaped shadow.

The sob shakes your shoulders before you realize you're crying. "You don't have to kill me," you say. Something primal and terrified in your brain is circumventing your filters. You should be reasoning with him, not begging. "Please, please, you don't have to kill us. Please let us go."

"Now, don't you go cryin' on me, Kendall. You were so self-possessed back at my bar. Brave enough to take a drink from a stranger." He ignores your mention of us and shakes his head. "Tsk, tsk, tsk...now what would your mama say?"

The tears are flowing fast and hard, and you suck in a shuddering breath. You hate him for mentioning your mother. Her face flashes through your mind and you long desperately for this all to be a nightmare. "Please, Wes, just tell me what you want, I'll do anything—"

"And me without a hankie," he sighs, impassively watching you as you cry.

His playful tone as he makes light of your suffering is, perhaps, the most chilling thing of all. For a moment, you forget your bound wrists, your desperate circumstances, and marvel at his lack of humanity. "Wes, I—"

"Shut up." At once, his tone is cold.

You shrink back against the wall further, another sob shaking through you.

"I said. Shut. Up. Waterworks don't do much for me, Kendall."

It's very hard to stop crying when you've got such a good reason, but you do your best to rein in your emotion, lowering your head and wiping your nose and cheeks on your shoulder. The whole time, Wes stands casually against the gate of the stall that's become your prison cell, watching from the dark.

[[Go to Chapter 78.]]