The Cage, Page 2

  It had torn him apart too. It didn’t matter that he’d never met her. He had been the one responsible for ruining her life. Only two people knew it: him, and her dad—a man who made Lucky’s fist ache with a desire to punch something.

  “Who are you?” she demanded.

  He rubbed a hand over his chest, where the guilt was still tender as a sucker punch, even after two years. “I’m Lucky. From a little town in Montana called Whitefish. I woke up in the middle of a snowdrift in that forest a couple hours ago; before that, I was working on the busted throttle lock of my motorcycle. That’s all I remember.”

  He stopped short, swallowing his words, the ache in his head pulsing like a second heartbeat. Memories of home played in the back of his head. His granddad’s sun-wrinkled face. The smell of chicken feed. Motor oil slick in the lines of his hand, so hard to wash away. He’d been fixing his motorcycle so he could drive to the army recruiting office in Missoula. With your grades, college isn’t an option, his school counselor had said, and slid a brochure across the desk: red, white, and blue font commanding him to do the right thing.

  It didn’t matter if enlisting was the right thing. It mattered that his dad, and his granddad, had sat in that same damn chair and gotten that same damn brochure. It mattered that Afghanistan was a long way from the accident that had left his hand busted, and from his mother’s gravestone with the plastic flowers, and from Cora Mason’s face in the newspaper.

  A wave pulled the girl’s body out to sea, and Lucky lurched for it. “Shit. Help me grab her. The police will want to check the body.”

  Cora eyed the water like she’d rather step into quicksand.

  “Okay . . . then we’d do Plan B. You stand there and look cute, and I’ll haul out the dead body.”

  He approached slowly, giving Cora space as he waded into the surf. He’d never seen a dead body before. Would it be warm? Clammy? The dead girl looked foreign, maybe Middle Eastern, and she had to be close to six feet tall. An old scar marred her chin, in the shape of a lopsided heart.

  He cracked the knuckles in his left hand. They were always stiffer when he first woke up.

  “You ever done this before?” Cora asked.

  “Pulled a dead body out of the ocean? Can’t say I have.” He grabbed the girl under the arms and hauled her to shore. As soon as he was out of the water, Cora helped. They laid her on the sand, and he watched as Cora did a quick check of the body.

  “No wallet. No ID.”

  The dead girl’s dress strap had fallen. Lucky fixed it, wishing his hands weren’t shaking. He stood up, dusting sand off his palms like he could wipe away the grit of death, and met Cora’s eyes directly for the first time. They were surrounded by dark circles in real life. The photographs in the newspapers hadn’t captured that.

  “I’m Cora,” she said.

  Now would be the time to tell her that he knew her name, and a lot more. He could tell her about September 3—the day he’d tried to kill her father.

  It was two weeks after the accident. He’d broken into his dad’s gun safe. He’d driven to an airfield where Senator Mason’s son was learning to fly a Cessna 172. He’d parked the car and told himself he could do it. He had to. His mother was in the grave, and Senator Mason was patting his son on the back. Carefree. Guiltless.

  He’d tried to open the car door, only to find two men in black suits on either side. They’d dragged him out and taken his gun.

  Then they’d made him an offer.

  “Nice to meet you, Cora.” He looked away, wiping his mouth. “I’m going to check the barn for a phone. You should come. We’re safer if we stick together.”

  She glanced behind her toward the cityscape. “Yeah, but . . . don’t get too close.”

  He held up his hands in mock surrender and climbed the path. It wound them through the orchard, where a stream ran between the trees, spreading an eerie calmness through the air. He ducked a hanging apple, and his stomach lurched. How long had it been since he’d eaten? Were the food and water safe?

  “So what’s your theory?” he asked.

  “Theory?” She held her arms tightly across her chest.

  “Where we are. How we got here.” He paused. He really should tell her about that day in the airfield. But she cast a questioning look at him, all wide blue eyes, and he lost his resolve. “I mean . . . it’s snowing fifty feet away, and here it’s seventy degrees. There’s a desert over that hill that goes on for miles. And I swear that sun hasn’t moved since I woke up hours ago. The clothes you’re wearing . . . are they yours?”

  She brushed the strap of the camisole. “No.”.

  “Same for me. Why would someone change our clothes? And put us in these weird locations?” He raked his nails across his scalp to help him think. “I’ve been through every possible explanation: it’s a joke. An experiment. But it’s too weird, changing our clothes. That takes time and planning. Whoever is doing this is messing with us intentionally. I just can’t figure out why.”

  “I don’t care why,” Cora said. “I just want to go home.”

  Her voice broke, slicing into Lucky’s chest. He stopped. “Hey. It’s okay. To be afraid, I mean.” He gave her a smile, just a tug of one corner. “I am too.”

  The barn was just feet away. He started for it, but she grabbed his arm. He flinched, not expecting her touch. Her fingers were smaller than he’d imagined. So fragile. Who would do this to a girl who’d already been through so much?

  “Those markings on your neck,” she said. “The black dots. What do they mean?”

  Lucky blinked. He had no idea what she was talking about, but her eyes dropped to the place just below his left ear. He reached up a hand that brushed hard bumps, like grains of sand embedded in his skin.

  He dropped his hand.

  For years he’d worn his granddad’s watch, even back when the strap had been too big, but it had vanished when he’d woken. He felt lost without its weight.

  “I don’t know.” His eyes went to her neck. “But you have them too.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  4

  Cora

  CORA’S HAND FLEW TO her neck. Raised bumps, like a connect-the-dots game.

  Pain throbbed through her head, and she doubled over in the sunflower patch next to the barn. She hadn’t imagined that anything could be more frightening than her first day in Bay Pines. Charlie had driven her there with the family’s lawyer, so that the press didn’t get photographs of Senator Mason checking his daughter into detention. The officers had patted her down for contraband and given her khaki clothes that smelled like they’d been washed with rat poison. They introduced her to the cinder-block dorm room she shared with a cornrowed Venezuelan, then threw her to the wild in the cafeteria. She’d been one of the youngest inmates, and the richest. They might as well have squirted a target on her back with ketchup and mayonnaise.

  Now, as she felt the raised dots, she had a new bar for what qualified as “terrifying.”

  “The dead girl had them too,” she said quietly.

  Lucky let out a mirthless laugh. “That’s real comforting.” He tugged on the barn handle. “It’s locked. I might be able to take it off its hinges, if I can find something to use for a makeshift screwdriver.”

  “I’ll look for another way in.” Cora circled the barn until she reached a large black window, six feet wide by three feet tall. The feeling of being watched felt like nails down her back. The window was in good repair, which was odd given the weathered state of the barn. She knocked on the glass. A hollow thud sounded. Something was wrong, like it lacked an echo.

  She pressed her face against the glass, but a rip of pain tore through her head, and she winced and pulled back. It was too murky to see inside, anyway. More like a television screen than a window. Suddenly a shape moved, just a flicker, and she scrambled back. The tingling sensation d
own her back ran deeper, and she whirled toward the farm, half expecting to see a knife-wielding stranger rushing up behind her.

  Nothing. Barely even a breeze.

  Lucky came around, shaking his head, eyeing the window like it creeped him out as much as it did her. “Get this—the door isn’t real. The whole barn is fake, like a movie prop. We’ll have to go to that city.”

  Cora glanced toward the sea, where the distant cityscape crouched on the far side of the bay. What if it was where their captors lived? Wouldn’t they be walking right into danger?

  She rubbed her eyes. Exhaustion was catching up with her. “No. We should stay put and wait for help. My dad’s in politics. Once he realizes I’m gone, he’ll have the entire country looking for me.”

  “I don’t care if your dad is the president of the United States. My dad’s a sergeant in Afghanistan. You think he just kicks rocks around while insurgents are firing at him?”

  On the black window, the shadow keeled slightly to the left. Cora took another step away from it.

  Lucky’s face softened. He cracked his knuckles, less of a threatening gesture this time, more like an old wound. “If we find a phone, your dad is the first person we’ll call. I promise. Here’s Plan C: we stay off the paths, and stay away from any more of these black windows. And if you see anyone—hear anyone—you run. Neither of us is going to end up like that girl in the water.”

  She nodded. “I can live with Plan C.”

  They set off down a path made of a material that looked like pavement but felt softer, almost spongy, through a meadow of tall grasses. It was all uncannily beautiful, but that only set off Cora’s nerves. Beauty had a way of masking something darker.

  The path crested a rise, showing the far-off city, only it looked much closer now. The structures blurred together in a dizzying way that didn’t seem right at all. Was exhaustion making her head foggy? As they walked more, she could start to see details. First the rooftops, then glimpses of windows, pavement, flashes of color from potted flowers.

  She stopped.

  It wasn’t just exhaustion messing with her head. The buildings were real, but they were hardly the skyscrapers that they had seemed from a distance. They were between one and two stories high, and there couldn’t be more than ten of them. It was as though the buildings had been placed in just the right locations so that, from a distance, the rooftops lined up to give the appearance of something substantially bigger.

  The shadows on Lucky’s face deepened. “I swear this looked like a city from far away. You think it’s in our heads, like virtual reality?”

  “I don’t think so. My dad invests in tech, and there’s no virtual reality that comes close to this.” Her mind whirled, playing back conversations with her father, coming up with no explanation. “This must be real. Designed to make us feel a certain way and go certain places, like elaborate optical illusions. The same with the distances. It should have taken us hours to get here, and it’s been what, half an hour?” Sweat trickled down her forehead, though the temperature couldn’t be higher than the mid-sixties.

  Lucky motioned for her to follow him to the nearest building. As they circled it, a neon sign flashed above the front door.

  CANDY SHOP.

  Cora had mentally prepared herself for anything—tanks and guns and terrorists—but not for a place to buy taffy. Could Lucky be right, that this was the set for some movie?

  A dozen shops circled an eerily idyllic town square, all built in different architectural styles, with signs above the doors. The drugstore had intricate Middle Eastern designs over the windows. The hair salon was set up like an old-fashioned French burlesque. The flashing lights of the arcade looked straight out of 1980s Tokyo. An enormous weeping cherry tree stood in the center, like a pin stuck in the center of a map. No cars. No people. The only sign of life was a tall Victorian house flanking one side of the square, with lights blazing in the upper windows.

  “It’s like Epcot Center,” she muttered. “All different cultures and time periods crammed together.”

  Lucky cocked an eyebrow. “Dead girls don’t float up on the beach in Disney World.”

  “Not as a rule, no.”

  He jerked his chin toward the house. “If the lights are on, maybe there’s a phone. Maybe even a—”

  His words were cut short by a shout coming from the shops. The yell came again, high-pitched and scared, followed by a deep bellow.

  The saloon-style doors of the toy stop crashed open, and two boys spilled out.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  5

  Cora

  CORA REACHED FOR HER necklace, forgetting its absence, and felt her heart thudding beneath a too-thin layer of skin. Two boys. Both strangers. One—the biggest guy Cora had ever seen—was about to pummel the other one to death.

  She spun toward Lucky. “What do we do?”

  He pointed to the cherry tree. “Stay here. If anything happens, run.” He wrapped her fingers around a branch, rooting her, and took off. A gust of wind lifted one of the tree’s weeping branches to brush her cheek, as though laying claim to her.

  She jerked away. “Yeah. I don’t think so.”

  She ran after Lucky. The larger of the two boys—a Polynesian built like a small country and dressed in a three-piece charcoal suit—had his hands around the neck of the other boy, a twitchy redhead with pale skin, who inexplicably wore a French revolutionary war jacket.

  Lucky jumped onto the porch, and Cora flinched. A fight between teenagers was like a fight between dogs: the worst thing you could do was get in the middle.

  “Break it up!” he yelled, laying a hand on the hulk’s shoulder.

  He was braver than Cora, or else he hadn’t been around as many fights as she had. Girls had fought all the time at Bay Pines, and after getting sucker punched that first day, Cora had learned that the best tactic was to hide in the bathroom and wait for the guards to break them up. Only there weren’t any guards here—just a kid in a leather jacket.

  The hulk whirled on Lucky, smacking away his hand. Tattooed black lines swirled around the right side of his forehead and eye, a look both ancient and menacing—completely mismatched with his tailored suit. For all his bulk, though, there was a softness around his eyes that said he couldn’t be much older than she was.

  “Mind your hands, eh?” He spit at Lucky in a rough accent. The redhead kid took advantage of the distraction to dart into the toy shop, probably looking for a back exit.

  “Get back here!” The hulk shoved open the saloon-style doors, with Lucky right behind.

  Cora climbed onto the porch. Inside, the shop was set up like an old-fashioned general store straight out of a Western movie. It even smelled old, like grain in burlap sacks and coffee and cotton, though there weren’t any of those things on the shelves, only brightly colored toys of all shapes and sizes. The hulk had the other boy against a glass countertop, hands around his throat. In the corner, a dark-haired girl in a black dress rocked back and forth, emitting a high-pitched wail.

  Cora pushed through the swinging doors and knelt by the girl. “Hey, you okay?”

  A strangled sound came from the girl’s throat. She looked Asian; her full lips were pressed together; dark brown hair with a pink streak fell in her left eye. Beautiful—the kind that didn’t happen in real life. Cora positioned herself to shelter the girl from the fight and glanced over her shoulder.

  Lucky had managed to separate the boys. “What’s this all about?”

  The hulk spit on the ground. “I’ll ask the questions around here, brother. And I’d rather talk to that pretty blond friend of yours.”

  Cora jerked her head up. He was talking about her. Her muscles reacted faster than her brain, pushing her to her feet, as he headed toward her.

  A whir of movement flashed, followed by a crack. Cora flinched as a spray of blood fanned
across the floor.

  Lucky had smashed his fist into the hulk’s nose.

  The tattooed boy stumbled backward until he collided with one of the creepy black windows. It didn’t shatter. It didn’t even creak. He dragged the back of his forearm across his bleeding nose as if that was all the tending it needed.

  “How about I ask the questions?” Lucky flexed his hand. “Let’s start with your names and finish with what the hell’s going on.”

  The redheaded boy in the military jacket rubbed his neck. His eyes were blue-green, with heavy lashes that made him look like a kid playing dress-up. A small spattering of black dots, not unlike Lucky’s, clustered below his ear. The hulk had them too. Cora glanced at the girl in the corner—her straight hair hid her neck.

  “It’s no good asking the two of them anything.” The hulk jerked his chin toward the others. “I’ve been trying to get answers out of them for the better part of an hour. She hasn’t stopped sobbing, and he’s close-lipped.” His accent was Australian or New Zealander; with his darker skin, he might be Maori.

  “I’m Leon, by the way.” He spit a line of blood on the floor that landed an inch from the Asian girl’s foot. She rocked harder, hands pressed tightly over her head, fingers gripping her hair so hard Cora was afraid she’d pull it out.

  “Easy.” Cora rubbed the girl’s skeletal shoulder, ignoring the tension and weariness in her own muscles.

  “Her name is Nok,” the red-haired boy said, still rubbing the splotchy red marks on his neck. His voice was deeper than she’d expected. “I’m Rolf. From Oslo, in Norway. She and I met a few hours ago when we woke up in different shops. She’s Thai, but she speaks English well. Said she lives in London. Except for a bad headache, she was okay before we ran into this Neanderthal and he started demanding to know what was going on.”

  “Do you know what’s going on?”

  Rolf shook his head. “Your guess is as good as mine. She doesn’t know either. Before she had the panic attack, she told me she was a model; the high-fashion type with big magazine spreads. Someone famous, I think. There must be people looking for her.” He crouched next to Nok and said softly, “He’s not going to hurt you. He’s just a stupid bølle who picks on anyone he can.”