Evelyn woke to darkness and damp concrete, her body aching in places she could no longer name. Cold clung to her like a second skin, and her breath curled in the air, faint and trembling. Her wrists were raw from the rope that held them in place, and her left foot had gone numb where it was bound to the splintering wooden leg of the chair.
Pain throbbed in her side—deep, rhythmic, like a pulse with no beat. She knew it was from the machete. She remembered the glint of the blade, the blur of the forest, the sudden white-hot agony that had knocked her off her feet. Since then, everything had collapsed into moments of darkness and hazy light.
The man was sitting across from her again.
Always the same chair, always the same slouch, one arm hanging over the back like he was settling into his living room instead of a concrete basement. His scruffy beard was uneven, his shirt stained with something too dark to be coffee, and a jagged scar ran from his jaw down to the edge of his collar. He hadn't told her his name, and Evelyn wasn't sure she wanted to know it.
"You're still breathing," he muttered, as if mildly disappointed. "Tough girl."
She said nothing.
There was no point in talking. The first time she'd screamed, he'd laughed. The first time she'd begged, he'd walked out without a word. She had learned quickly that silence was safer.
He leaned forward now, elbows on his knees. "She hasn't come looking for you."
Evelyn stiffened, though she tried not to show it.
"She," he said again, slower this time, like he was testing her reaction. "Guess she's got other things to worry about, huh?"
He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes.
Evelyn stared at the floor. Concrete and dirt. A single dead insect in the corner. If she looked at him, she might say something she'd regret.
She didn't want to give him that.
Still, the word she echoed in her skull long after he left the room, slamming the metal door behind him with a heavy clank.
It wasn't the first time he'd mentioned someone else. Someone he clearly knew she would recognize. And that was the most terrifying part.
She didn't know many people.
There was no one she could think of who would want her here, like this. No one who would hire a man to kidnap her, drag her through a forest, and leave her bleeding in a locked room with no windows. No one who hated her enough—except maybe…
No.
She pushed the thought away before it could form completely.
Her stepmother's face flashed uninvited in her mind—smooth, composed, always carefully painted with a smile that never quite touched her eyes. Valerie. That was her name. Or "Mrs. Hart," as she preferred Evelyn to call her after the wedding. She wasn't cruel. Not exactly. But there was a distance to her, something unreadable behind the warmth she performed in public.
Evelyn swallowed hard. Her throat was dry, and her tongue felt thick. She hadn't been given water in—what? A day? Two? Time moved strangely in the dark. There were no windows, no clocks. Just the flickering bulb above her head and the occasional thud of footsteps when he returned.
The rope around her wrists had cut into the skin. She could feel dried blood there now, crusted and tight. Her side still throbbed. The wound hadn't been cleaned properly. It pulsed with heat. She wondered absently if it was infected.
She leaned her head back against the chair, closing her eyes just for a moment. The silence in the room was deafening. No birds. No wind. No voices. Just the faint buzzing of the light and the sound of her own breath.
She thought of her father. Would he be worried? Would he be out looking for her?
Would Clara?
Her stomach twisted.
She wanted to believe they were tearing the world apart to find her. That Clara was holding her photograph up to strangers, sobbing, praying. That maybe her friends were organizing search parties, calling her phone a thousand times a day.
That hope sat like a fragile flame inside her chest—small, flickering, but alive.
She didn't know that not far from the edge of a dense forest, a local officer had stumbled across a pale silver object half-buried in a patch of wet leaves: her watch. The same one her father had given her for her seventeenth birthday. The clasp was broken. The glass was cracked.
Its discovery had sparked fresh urgency in the search. But here, in the stale air of the room, Evelyn remained unaware. The world above continued spinning while she floated in limbo, unseen.
The man came back only once more that day, tossing a small bottle of water at her feet.
"Don't die yet," he muttered. "She wouldn't like that."
Then he was gone again, the door's iron groan echoing through the stillness.
Evelyn didn't speak. She barely moved. But her heart beat louder in her ears than ever before.
She didn't know what game he was playing, or what connection he had to Clara—if any. But the way he said she made something curdle deep in her gut. Too casual. Too personal.
He wasn't bluffing. Not entirely.
She remembered how he'd found her in the woods. Not by accident. Not with surprise. He knew her name. He knew her face. And now he talked like he knew her life.
The question—why—haunted her. Why her? Why now?
She tried not to let her thoughts spiral. Tried to stay grounded in the moment. The next breath. The next sip of water. The slight shuffle of her foot against the rope—testing for give. There wasn't much. But there was something.
She'd wait. She'd watch. She'd look for cracks.
And in the back of her mind, the question sat like a shadow.
What if it really is her?
She didn't want to believe it. But she couldn't deny the possibility any longer.
And that fear—more than the pain, more than the hunger—was what kept her from sleeping that night.