Wordlessly, he motioned to the wall beside the fireplace. A door sat there, so shrouded in shadows that it had been nearly invisible.
Clare hobbled around the room. She tried to keep her back straight and her gait as steady as possible. It seemed like a bad idea to let him guess how weak she really felt. She made it to the door and slipped through, acutely aware of his eyes following her until she was inside.
The bathroom was relatively modern, at least. Every surface of the white tiles and expensive white porcelain shone. Another door in the opposite wall told her the bathroom served a second bedroom as well. Clare crept to the bathtub and sank down to sit on its edge. Her body ached. Her head ached. And emotionally, she felt broken.
Clare opened the dressing gown and checked the bandages on her abdomen. The white cloth was tinted pink. She clenched her teeth as she unwrapped it. Her nerves sparked with fresh pain as the fabric peeled off. Breathing heavily but trying to keep silent, Clare examined the injury. Three cuts, long and nearly parallel, ran across the left side of her abdomen. What caused this? Glass, maybe?
She visualised sitting in the driver’s seat of the car as it crashed. The fractured windshield would hit her face, her shoulders, and her arms, not her stomach. That would be protected by the steering wheel and its airbag. She might have anticipated blunt trauma from an impact, but there was no sign of that. Only long, angry red gashes. Clare rewrapped the bandages with unsteady fingers.
I bet a knife could do this.
Nightmarish images of organ harvesting danced behind her eyes, and panic sent tremors down her back. But she didn’t think that was what had happened. The red scores were too shallow. She closed the dressing gown’s flap and tied it securely.
Her view from the window had only shown one direction, but from what she’d seen, there were no other houses nearby except the cottage, and its windows were dark and empty.
She lifted her chin to stare at her reflection in the mirror opposite the bath. Her hair was tangled and oddly clumped. She felt around the matted area and found it was still tacky with dried blood, though not as much as she would have expected. Dorran must have tried to wash it out for her.
Clare would have given anything to speak with Beth, even for just a moment. She was more than a sister—she was the closest thing Clare had to a mother. Nearly a decade older than Clare, she’d taken on her care after their parents passed away. Bethany worried endlessly, but any time Clare was faced with a bad situation or an impossible choice, Beth was always the voice of reason that guided her to the right solution.
She itched for her phone—or any phone. The stranger, Dorran, had said his didn’t work.
Can I trust him?
The closed door separating her from the strange man felt too flimsy. If he wanted to keep her isolated or trapped, cutting off her contact with the outside world would be the first step. Clare tried to imagine where her phone might be. If the stranger had taken it, she would probably never see it again.
She fought to retrieve her last memory. She’d been driving as she talked to Beth. The phone had been in the cup holder. That was where she always put it.
If she had crashed, the impact probably would have jarred it free. Maybe Dorran really hadn’t found it. Maybe it was in the back of the car or hidden under the seat.
She chewed on the corner of her thumb. Dorran said she had been in the room for two days. The phone’s battery would be almost certainly dead, and she didn’t have any cables in the car to recharge it.
But there might be another alternative. The phone wasn’t the only item hidden in her car. She still had the little black box in her trunk. He couldn’t have found that, surely.
She ran her hands over the bandages on her stomach. She was weak, but the forest had been visible through the snow, which meant it wasn’t too far away. I can make it. As long as I can get outside, I can make it.
Clare’s eyes drifted to the bathroom’s second door.
Chapter Four
Clare moved quickly. She turned on the sink’s tap. It gurgled and choked, then finally, a splatter of freezing water fell into the basin. Clare crossed the bathroom and opened the second door. Like she’d thought, it revealed another bedroom. Hers had been decorated with grey-and-blue wallpaper. The new room was painted all in red.
The running tap would buy her a few minutes, but if she was silent for too long, Dorran would check on her. She couldn’t afford to waste time.
Her feet were bare, though. She could deal with the cold for a few minutes, even cope with being underdressed, but she didn’t think she could wade across a field of snow then walk through the forest without shoes… at least not without slicing up her feet.
The new bedroom was almost a mirror of hers. A coat hanging on the back of the main door told her it was probably in use. The lights were off, and she didn’t want to risk wasting time or drawing attention by hunting for the switch. The bathroom’s light was strong enough to work by. She wrenched open the wardrobe door. It was full of men’s clothes, and, like she’d hoped, several pairs of shoes were lined up on the floor.
She assumed they were Dorran’s. They would be miles too big for her, but she could deal with that.
She pulled out the thickest pair—boots that went up to her knees—and tied the laces as tightly as they would allow. Her mental clock was ticking down. She kept one eye on the bedroom door and the other on the bathroom door as she worked.
Her dressing gown was thick enough to keep her warm indoors, but it would be useless outside. She grabbed one of the jackets from the closet and pulled it on over the top. Then, trying not to let the new boots make too much noise, she moved to the main door and cracked it open.
Outside was quiet. Clare listened for a moment, waiting for any sign of movement, and when it remained still, she pushed the door fully open.
The hallway was just as opulent as the bedroom had been, with plush carpet, decorated walls, and light fixtures every few feet. None of the lights were on, though. The bathroom’s bulb didn’t reach far. She could see a glow coming from under a door a little farther down the hall—her own bedroom, most likely. She pulled the jacket tighter, rolled her feet to keep the boots from thudding too awkwardly, and set out into the shadows, guessing a direction.
As the gloom grew thicker and harder to parse, she became less and less oriented. Her legs were gradually remembering how to walk, but her energy was failing. She was breathless by the time she found the stairs at the end of the hall.
Clare looked over her shoulder a final time. No motion disturbed the gloom. She faced the stairs and tried to navigate them without breaking her neck.
She was almost blind except for a pale white glow spreading across the staircase’s bottom steps. She used it to guide her path. One hand ran along a bannister to hold her balance. The carpet was thick enough to muffle her steps, even when she increased her speed.
The ground floor was washed in light filtered through snow-crusted windows. It was simultaneously dim and harsh enough to hurt her eyes. Clare squinted as she examined the space.
Antique furniture, just as decadent and outdated as the set in her bedroom, filled the space. Doors led to different parts of the house. The tiled floor was polished into a shine.
There has to be a phone somewhere.
She hesitated a second, torn between hope and fear of what would happen if she wasted more time. But she was horribly tired. If there was a phone within reach, she couldn’t afford to ignore it.