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Every Flower of the Field

By Sara Davison

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Darkness had fallen over the house like the ninth plague on Egypt.
Dim light had filtered into the room from the long, horizontal window set up near the ceiling and then faded away again how many times now, two? Three? She’d lost count.
Rose sat on the floor, her shoulder propped against the foot of the bed, her arms wrapped around her knees, clutching them to her chest. Deep tremors gripped her, shuddering over her in waves that ebbed and flowed like the tide. Not because of the cold, although, even with the milder spring temperatures outside, the air had chilled after the furnace had ceased its low rumbling beneath her. At night, her shallow breaths puffed from her mouth in clouds that drifted on the wan moonlight struggling to pass through the branches outside her window.
It was the dark she hated, that sprinkled raised bumps across every inch of her flesh. It had always been a living thing to her, reaching out grasping fingers, brushing cold over her skin, smothering her until she couldn’t take a breath without inhaling it into her lungs like thick, noxious smoke.
What was happening? Where were all the other women? Her roommate, Allie, never had returned after that last night at the hotel, so Rose hadn’t personally witnessed anyone being dragged away. She’d heard it, though—thudding boots in the hallway, doors flung open, scuffling, brief cries cut off by something—a hand maybe, or a gag. All much quieter than she would have expected.
Eerily so.
Clearly the women had been threatened with dire consequences if they resisted, if they made too much noise. Every one of them would have understood what kinds of terrible things could happen to them.
Which explained the quiet.
But it explained nothing else. Why the women had been taken away. Where they had been forced to go.
Why she was still locked in her room.
Alone.
For a few hours, she hadn’t been. The day after the great emptying of the house, she’d heard footsteps in the hallway. Not the usual thudding, but quiet, nearly silent, treads, the occasional squeak of a sneaker. Rose had padded to the door and pressed her ear to the cool wood as the wearer of the running shoes approached. Her heart had pounded against her ribcage. Should she call out? What if whoever it was had been sent by Brady? Was she safer being pulled from the house and taken wherever the other girls were or left here for someone—hopefully the police—to find?
She’d stayed silent, even when the footsteps stopped outside her door and Rose had thought—or maybe imagined—she could pick up exhalations of breath through the tiny cracks below and above the door. She’d pressed her fingers to the wood, aware that only a couple of inches separated her from whoever was wandering along the hallway. A cry had risen in her throat then, but before she could call out the footsteps moved away. She lowered her hand to her side, waiting for the front door to close.
It never did. Instead, a dull thud from the room next to hers was the last thing she heard. Her heart hadn’t stilled its rapid thumping for an hour or two after all noise had faded and silence had draped over the house again.
Rose rested her cheek on her knees. Her stomach rumbled. No one had brought her food since the girls had been taken. Although the power had been cut off, the water was still running in her tiny bathroom. It was beginning to look as though having water to drink only meant that it would take longer for her to die. Unless one of the neighbors called the cops and they came to check out the place.
Would they, though? Even given all the terrible things that happened here, as far as Rose knew, no one in the area had ever notified the police that something might be going on.
No doubt Brady had been able to convince the neighbors that nothing untoward was happening in the house. He could be extremely charming when he chose to wield that particular weapon in his arsenal.
And so could Van.
More shudders rippled through Rose.
Van.
He ran the house for Brady, who hadn’t been here in months. Even before that, Van’s boss had only made sporadic, unannounced visits to make sure the girls were staying in line. Rose had no idea where Brady was the rest of the time, but he left the everyday operations to Van, who was very serious about living up to the responsibilities Brady had placed on him.
Deadly serious.
A hazy fog had been drifting through Rose’s mind for the last day or so, and it wrapped around her now like a thick shawl, blocking out the reality of what was happening to her. She drifted away through space and time, to that horrible night that changed her life when she was fourteen years old. In her mind, the walls of the room in Brady’s house shifted closer together, like the closet she had huddled in that night. Like it was now, her back had been pressed to the wall, but the space had been much smaller, her knees bumping against the wooden door in front of her. Clothes had brushed the top of her head, the worn sneaker she’d sat on dug into the back of her jeans. Too frightened to move, she’d left it where it was and focused her gaze on the thin slit of light dancing on a cloud of dust motes through the crack in the closet door. Even with that, it was dark in the closet.
But not silent in the house.
Her skin prickled. A distant pounding dragged her back to the present.
Rose lifted her head. Boots thudded along the hallway.
She let go of her legs, pressed one palm against the wall and the other on the mattress of her single bed, and scrambled to her feet.
Although the echo of boots was never a good sign, the sole indication in days that she wasn’t alone in the house did send a sliver of hope trickling through her. Hope as wan as the dull sunlight weaving its way through the thick leaves outside the small window to fall in tiny yellow pieces, like bits of broken glass, onto the worn carpet. The sunlight always had struggled to enter this place, as though, when it did manage to filter through the thick trees in the yard and reach the window, it came face to face with something on the other side of the glass that denied it entry.
The thudding grew louder. Only one pair of boots, as far as Rose’s muddled consciousness could tell. Was it Brady?
She crossed her arms and pressed them against her abdomen as a deep cold settled in her core. Whoever it was, it didn’t sound like anyone who might be interested in rescuing her. In setting her free from the prison that she hadn’t thought could become any more terrifying than it had been the last eight years but somehow had.
A key rattled in the lock before the door was flung open, hard enough to crash against the wall behind it. Rose jumped.
The silhouette of a man filled the doorway. She blinked, trying to bring features into focus in the dull glow of the backup pot lights set into the ceiling in the hallway. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Vietnamese.
She swallowed hard and then said, in a voice raspy from days of not using it, “Van.”
“Hello, darlin’. Miss me?” The mocking in his steel-cold voice undermined any hint of affection the endearment might have conveyed.
“Where is everyone? And why is the power off?”
“That’s not your concern.” He took a step toward her. Rose would have given anything to keep a room’s length of distance between them, but her back was against the wall at the foot of the bed. He took another step, the gaze welded on her as predatory as ever.
“Not my concern? I haven’t eaten in days, and I’m here alone …”
Icy fingers wrapped around her vocal cords when he reached her, cutting off anything else she might have intended to say.
“You’re not alone now.”
Although, in the thick blackness, being alone had felt like the worst possible thing, it struck her then that there was something worse.
He ran a finger down the side of her face.
Much worse.
Despite knowing how futile the gesture would be, dangerous, even, Rose jerked away from his touch.
In the pale light filtering through the glass, she caught a brief glimpse of his cruel smile before he grabbed her face in both hands and shoved his mouth against hers. The taste of him, the peppermint gum he always chewed, instinctively caused her stomach to churn. Rose struggled to free herself, planting both hands on his chest and pushing hard, trying to drive him away. Although he wasn’t as broad shouldered as Brady, Van was three or four inches taller than she was—nearly six feet—and all leanness and hard muscle. He was too strong for her. He always had been.
When he pulled back, her lips were throbbing. His dark eyes met hers as he fingered one of her long, strawberry-blonde curls, still damp from the cold shower she’d taken a couple of hours ago. “You’ve never stopped fighting, have you, Raine? Not even after all these years. That’s what I love about you—you’re the only one in the house we’ve never been able to break.”
Raine. The name she’d chosen for herself the night they’d dragged her off the sidewalk and into a vehicle. The one glimmer of satisfaction she could grasp hold of was that, whatever they might have done to her over those eight years, whatever Brady and Van and all the soulless henchmen who worked for them had forced her to do with strange men every night, they still didn’t know her name.
He brushed a curl away from her cheek, his fingers suddenly soft and warm. When he spoke, his voice had softened too. Only his dark eyes remained cold. “So beautiful. Do you have any idea what you mean to me?”
In spite of herself, in spite of everything she knew about him, Rose closed her eyes and rested her cheek against his palm. So few gentle words had been spoken to her during her time in captivity, such little kindness, that the tiniest hints of it were bread crumbs flung onto hard ground; starving, she was willing to scrabble in the dirt for them, even knowing they were tainted, not nearly enough to sustain her, and that, after leading her into a trap, they would disappear as quickly as they had been offered.
When she opened her eyes, Van was watching her, a faint look of triumph in his eyes. He’d always known how to get to her, when to offer comfort, exactly how to rip it away to cause the greatest amount of psychological damage.
And a desperate craving for more.
He slid off his brown leather jacket and tossed it on the bed. Grasping both her wrists in the fingers of one hand, Van yanked her arms over her head and held them against the wall. “One more time, darlin’? A final farewell?”
“Farewell? Who is leaving?” The words came out jagged and raw, tinged with terror. Was he planning to kill her? Is that what had happened to the other girls?
He leaned in but stopped inches from her. “If you want me to fill you in on everything that’s going on, tell me you want this.”
She pressed her lips together to hold in the agonized groan that rose in her throat. Van always gave her a choice, but one option was as horrific as the other. Still, she had to know … “I want this.” She forced the lie out between clenched teeth.
“Good girl.” Van shoved his lips against hers again. He slipped his free hand beneath her yellow T-shirt, gripping her waist as he ran his thumb over her ribs.
Rose gave up trying to get away from him. Despite the words he’d made her say, she knew he wanted her to fight him. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Not tonight.
He inched his hand farther up her ribs. Rose pressed her eyes shut tightly, willing herself to go somewhere far away in her mind. To her meadow, filled with wildflowers and butterflies flitting from bloom to bloom. In her mind, a cool breeze brushed over her flushed cheeks, and she tipped back her head to let the sun fall warm across her skin.
Van moved closer, imprisoning her between his body and the wall.
Please let this be over quickly.
Her eyelids flickered. Was that a prayer? She hadn’t cried out to God for a long time. Not since the first few months she’d been here, when she’d figured out that her prayers were going no farther than the eight feet it took them to reach the ceiling and crash back down around her. If God existed, like she’d once believed, he’d long ago abandoned her to …
A cell phone vibrated.
Van lifted his head and his hand slid out from under her T-shirt. He lowered her arms but kept his fingers wrapped tightly around her wrists as he reached behind him to grab the phone from his back pocket. After stabbing the button with his thumb, he pressed the device to his ear. “Van Minh.” He shot a look at her, as though he hadn’t meant to say his full name. Then his features relaxed and he shrugged slightly.
Her stomach twisted. Clearly, he didn’t expect her to live long enough for it to matter. Rose strained to hear the voice on the other end of the line, but Van turned away from her and spoke low into the phone. “Yeah. I’m here with her now.”
He listened a moment. “Okay, that’s good.” After a few seconds, he added, “Got it. I’ll make sure she stays here.” He disconnected the call and shoved the phone into his pocket. “He found her.”
Rose wrinkled her forehead. “Who, Brady?”
“Yes.”
Had the girls escaped and now Brady was tracking them down one by one? That did sound exactly like something he would do. Shivers crawled over her skin, biting into her like a thousand tiny mites at the thought of what he would do if he caught one of them. “Who did he find?”
“Someone who made the very foolish mistake of crossing him.” Still gripping her wrists, he brushed a curl from her face. “Brady is taking care of her tonight, and then he plans to come here and take care of you.”
Take care of her? How could those words, so comforting in one context, spark such deep terror in her when Van said them, his dark eyes filled with sadistic glee? “I didn’t cross Brady. Why is he coming after me?”
“Because you matter to her.” He released his iron grip on her, finally.
Her wrists pulsed with every beat of her heart, and everything in Rose wanted to rub them, but she refused to let him see how much he’d hurt her.
Van reached for his leather jacket and pulled it on. “Have to cut this short, beautiful. Sorry.” He took a step toward the door.
Rose grabbed his arm. “Van, wait. You know I don’t deserve whatever Brady plans to do to me. Don’t leave me here. Please.” She hated begging him, but she couldn’t sit here in the dark waiting for Brady to come and mete out whatever punishment he wanted to inflict on her because of this other girl, whoever she was.
“I don’t want to.” He grasped her chin and tilted her face up, studying her as though memorizing her features. “But I have to follow orders, or he’ll kill me too.”
Kill him too? So, Brady was planning to kill her? Panic gripped Rose like wave after wave of icy water crashing over her, stealing her breath.
Van let her go, shook her hand from his arm, and strode for the door. “I need to get out of here before The Bird lights the place up.”
Who was The Bird? And what did lights the place up mean? Somehow, she doubted it meant the darkness was about to be vanquished. “Van.” Rose followed him. When he stepped into the doorway, she grabbed his arm again, desperate to stop him, to make him take her with him. He yanked free and backhanded her across her cheek. She stumbled into the room a few steps, bracing herself on the dresser when the corner dug into her hip. She pushed herself off with a palm against the smooth wood and lunged for the edge of the door. Her fingers closed around thin air as it slammed behind Van. The metallic clang of the lock clicking into place echoed up and down the hallway.
Rose bit her lip to keep from screaming out his name. She couldn’t keep from grasping the knob and yanking on it, hoping in vain that the lock hadn’t truly caught. Or from pounding her fists against the door when she had to face the fact that it had. The only response was the thudding of boots fading into the distance. Rose turned and, her back against the door, slid to the floor, bent her knees, and buried her face in her arms. Once again, she was all alone.
In the darkness.

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