Karin Slaughter - Triptych

Nothing.

Angie turned around, reaching blindly with her fingers. She felt along the girl’s naked body, touching sticky blood, finally feeling the shallow up and down of Jasmine’s chest laboring to breathe. Angie didn’t touch her mother much, but the few times she’d visited Deidre in the home, this is what she had felt like: dead weight, just a shell that looked like a body.

“Jasmine?” Angie whispered.

The girl did not stir as Angie touched her face, her hair. Angie’s fingers slipped under the scalp and she recoiled.

“Oh, Jesus!” Angie bent at the waist, trying not to vomit again. She’d touched the girl’s skull, felt the splintered bone and the soft, wet, gray matter underneath.

They had to get out of here. They had to get help.

Angie stood again. She paced out the cellar. Ten feet wide, maybe twelve feet deep. Before the bulb had been switched off, she had glimpsed crude wooden shelves built into the walls. With her hands tied behind her back, it was difficult to check the top shelves. Her fingers felt nothing but vacant space as she checked the lower shelves for anything that might be used as a weapon.

The cellar was empty. Even the packed dirt floor was swept clean.

Maybe her wrist was not completely broken. Angie could still move her fingers, though they felt swollen and hot as if an infection was already working its way through her bloodstream. She was becoming used to the pain, almost welcoming it because it took her mind off the pounding in her head, the roiling in her stomach. The dark helped, too. There was nothing for her eyes to focus on, nothing to throw her balance.

Michael was upstairs. She thought he might be making a meal, lunch or dinner. She didn’t know what time of day it was or how long she’d been in this fucking hole.

Every noise he made-a chair sliding across the floor, joists squeaking as he walked around-intensified her fury. Angie seethed with hatred. He had gotten to her. He had worked his way into her mind and made her feel like a useless piece of shit. She’d had more men inside her body than she could count, but not one of them had ever gotten into her head like this.

She would kill him when he came back. She would kill him or make him kill her. Those were the only two options.

Angie braced herself, sliding down the wall until she was on her knees. Two paces to the stair, the broken glass imbedded in the tread. She turned and felt for it with her hands, careful not to slice her already shredded fingers as she positioned the thick, knotted rope over the biggest shards. She sucked in air through her teeth, trying not to think about the pain as she sawed the rope against the glass.

Michael’s handcuffs were on Jasmine. He had used rope to tie up Angie.

“You fucker,” she breathed, a mantra to herself. Michael Ormewood didn’t make mistakes. He was always in control, always on top of everything. Everything but the fact that glass could cut rope.

“You stupid fucker.”

Blood soaked her hands, wet the rope that bound her wrists together. Angie stopped sawing, trying to catch her breath, take it slow. She’d almost passed out the first time she’d tried to cut the rope, but with each new attempt, she honed her technique, learned more about the knots he’d tied, the way the rope bound her wrists. She could feel that the rope had shifted down a little, was rubbing raw a new section of skin. Her blood was acting as a lubricant.

She would get out of this. She would saw off her own hand if she had to.

“Oh!” She gasped as the rope skipped down the glass, her hands slipping, the razor-sharp edges slicing into her fingers.

Angie held her breath, listening for Michael. God, she had never hurt so bad in her life. She couldn’t stand it, couldn’t take the feeling of the flesh being sliced off bone. She leaned forward, her forehead touching the ground as she cried.

“Will,” she whispered. She couldn’t pray to God, not after everything she’d done, so she prayed to Will. “I’m going to get out of this,” she promised him. “I’m going to get out of this and…” She didn’t say the words, but she knew them in her heart. She would leave Will for good. She would finally let him escape.

Overhead, footsteps walked across the floor. Angie reared up, her hands fumbling for the glass. She furiously worked the rope, fear anesthetizing her against the pain.

“Angie?” Michael called. He was on the other side of the locked door. “Answer me. I know you hear me.”

She stretched the rope taut, wrenching her shoulders, desperate to break free. “Fuck you, motherfucker!”

“Get away from the stairs, Angie. I’m gonna open the door, and I’ve got my gun trained right on you.”

She didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. Faster, faster, she sawed the rope up and down the jagged glass.

The key scraped in the lock.

“No,” Angie whispered, forcing herself to hurry. “Not yet, not yet.”

“Get away from the stairs,” he said. “I mean it.”

“No!” she screamed, jumping away from the glass just as the door flew open.

The light blazed on. Angie looked at Jasmine, saw the girl’s face was turned toward her, the eyes slit open but unseeing. Her mouth was open. Blood pooled around her head.

“Don’t try anything,” Michael warned. He stood at the top of the stairs with the gun in his hand. He was bare-chested, jeans and sneakers the only thing covering his body.

“Fuck off,” Angie told him. She’d felt the rope give, but not enough. Blood wet her hands like water. She was still trapped, still helpless.

He tucked the gun into the waist of his jeans, then reached into his back pocket.

“Go away,” Angie told him.

He put on a black ski mask, holes cut out for the eyes and mouth.

“Go away!” she screamed, backing into the wall, scrambling to stand.

He took out the gun and started down the stairs. Slowly, one tread at a time.

Angie’s shoulders tensed to their breaking point as she pulled at the rope. She had felt it give before. She had felt it give.

He kept up his steady pace down into the cellar. The ski mask was unnerving, more terrifying than anything he could have said. The gun stayed trained on her chest, and she saw the knife sheathed at his side.

Angie’s throat tensed. She could barely speak. “No…”

He stepped over the last stair and stopped. His eyes were dark, almost black. She could see dried blood around the mouth of the mask.

The sight of him sent an uncontrollable tremble through her body.

He looked at Jasmine lying in the corner, then took a step closer to Angie. They both stood there facing each other, the room quiet but for the short breaths Angie was taking.

His voice was so soft she could barely hear him. “Michael is going to hurt you.”

“I’ll kill you,” she breathed. “I’ll kill you if you touch me.”

“Lie down.”

She kicked out at him. “You sick fucker.”

He still spoke gently. “Lie down on the floor.”

“Fuck you!”

He brought up his gun and slammed it down on her head.

Angie slumped to the ground. She couldn’t keep her head up, couldn’t remember for a moment where she was.

He cupped her chin in his hand, his words still soft; the tone he would use with a child who was misbehaving. “Don’t pass out on me,” he whispered. “You hear me?”

She saw Jasmine lying behind him, her body limp. What had Michael done to her? What had the child endured before her body simply gave up?

“Look at me,” Michael said, gently, as if this was some kind of seduction. “Keep looking at me, Angie. Look at Michael.”

Her head rolled to the side. She couldn’t make her eyes focus.

“Come on, darlin‘, don’t pass out.” He cupped her chin with his hand again, tilted up her face. “You okay?”