“I’m sorry, Alix,” she said. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way.” She glared over her shoulder at Moses. “It wasn’t supposed to have been like this at all.” She unlocked the door. “Come on. You can come out. No one’s going to hurt you.”
Hesitantly, Alix crawled out. Cynthia helped her up. Alix wasn’t sure if she wanted to shove Cynthia away, but her body took the decision away from her. She was so stiff and sore that she staggered. She ended up leaning against Cynthia for support.
“Thanks, I think.”
Cynthia was still glaring at Moses. “You promised that you wouldn’t hurt her,” she said again.
“I didn’t want to hurt her. I wanted to keep you safe. She’s too dangerous to all of us on the loose.” He shrugged. “If it’s a decision between us and her, I’m going to worry about us, first.”
“Nice speech,” Cynthia said. “Remind you of anyone?”
Alix was surprised to see Moses suddenly look stricken. The expression was so fast she almost missed it, but it was there, shock and shame and then a hardening into a blank wall.
“This is on you,” he said to Cynthia. “You’re risking everyone.”
For a second Cynthia hesitated, then said, “We can’t do it this way. If we do, we’re no better than they are.”
She took Alix by the arm, her voice was gentle. “Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
18
CYNTHIA GUIDED ALIX THROUGH A bewildering maze of workshops and empty manufacturing lines and old storage racks to what appeared to be a locker room where workers had once bathed and changed into uniforms of some sort. There were orange industrial lockers in long rows, and benches, and rows of sinks and showers, along with cracked white ceramic tiles on the floors and walls.
Cynthia pulled a bunch of the workmen’s lockers open.
“You can use some of my clothes,” she said. The opened lockers revealed neatly stacked T-shirts, carefully hung skirts, and blouses. Designer labels. Prada bags. Michael Kors skirts and jackets. Manolo high heels. Derek Lam blouses. One locker had makeshift shelves welded into it, holding makeup: NARS lip glosses, Dior eye shadows. Another locker for accessories: ECCO bags and Ray-Bans, Oakleys, Dolce & Gabbana. Another held perfectly pressed Seitz uniforms. White blouses, pleated skirts, Seitz school emblem blazers, kneesocks. Other clothes. Juicy jeans. All-Star high-tops sneakers. More and more lockers.
“You have clothes here?” Alix asked, puzzled.
“I live here,” Cynthia said, softly. “This is my home.”
An entire girl’s wardrobe jammed into scratched metal lockers. Bangles. Hair clips. All the things a girl might need, stored incongruously in the factory.
“But…” It was too surreal to take in. “But…”
“We’ll get you cleaned up, then we can talk. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
Cynthia led Alix down the locker aisle to a row of shower stalls and pulled aside a water-stained vinyl shower curtain, revealing a dubious fifties-era lime-green tiled stall. Old tiles, some of them cracked and shattered. Bare concrete overhead.
“Go ahead,” she said when Alix hesitated. “I’ll keep out the wolves.”
The shower pipe was rusted and the spray head appeared to be a scavenged fire-extinguishing nozzle of the kind that hung from the ceilings of Seitz and had been welded onto the showerhead. Alix remembered the little welder kid. Tank. The one who wanted her to promise not to run away. He must have done this.
“Shower’s optional,” Cynthia said at her hesitation. “It’s up to you.”
Water gushed over Alix, cleansing hot, stripping away the darkness and the fear. Cynthia stood outside the bathroom, guarding it.
“I won’t let them bother you,” Cynthia had said, and Alix, against her best instincts, believed her. What else was she supposed to do? She didn’t even know where she was inside the factory complex, let alone how to get away if she managed to break out.
Not yet anyway.
The scalding water poured over her, sluicing away grime and sweat, the hangover of the party, the pain of sleep, the stains of imprisonment.
The water was so blissfully hot that Alix thought she’d never loved a shower so much: the relief of being out of the cage, the sense that she could stop time as long as she stood under its spray, the feeling that behind this vinyl curtain she didn’t have to face whatever was out there. She didn’t have to confront the strange youths who lived in this warehouse, who looked at her with such calculated interest that it seemed as if they weren’t even from the same planet as she, let alone that they might speak English and be part of her country.
Alix scrubbed herself and then soaped up again, and still she lingered in the gushing water. Despite everything, she felt grateful for Cynthia’s kindness. And then she wondered if that was some kind of mindfuck that they were gaming on her as well. Cynthia playing the good cop, and Moses playing the bad one—the one she was supposed to fear.
If she was honest, she did fear him. She didn’t understand him. She didn’t know what he wanted, but she suspected it was something she wouldn’t want to give, no matter how much Cynthia pretended to be her friend.
And what about the rest of them? Were they really Cynthia’s friends? That blue-haired, pierced gutter rat? The shaggy little brown kid with the ringlets of hair that reminded Alix more than anything of a scruffy Hobbit? The tall one, lanky and smooth, who’d DJ’d and looked at her as if she were some kind spider—what about him?
And, of course, there was Moses. Presiding over them all. He was the one they looked to. The one who had seemed so seductively intriguing when he’d stood behind her and whispered in her ear as he wrecked Seitz, and who had turned out to be so monstrous when he’d put her in a cage.
All she could remember were the last things he’d said to her when he’d had her trapped.
“Your dad kills people.”
“Your whole family’s covered in blood.”
It sounded ridiculously melodramatic, as if she were part of a family of assassins. As if her father were someone who went around with a sniper rifle, killing targets for cash. The whole thing was so absurd it made her want to laugh.
Except that Moses and his crew clearly believed it, and were crazy enough to kidnap her.
At least you know he’s not planning on murdering you.
So what did he want from her? Why grab her at all?
It didn’t matter, she decided. All she needed to do was keep playing for time. Dad was out there, and right now he’d be calling all the people he’d called when he’d thought Jonah had been taken. Right now, there were people tracking her down.
Just hang on.
“Did you drown in there?” Cynthia called through the shower curtain.
“Just a sec.”
She couldn’t stall any longer. She shut off the water. Cynthia passed in a towel and Alix wrapped it around herself.
She came out, feet cold on tile, navigating around the drains, with Cynthia hovering as Alix went back to the lockers.
As nice as Cynthia was acting, she was standing a little too close. Keeping an eye on her, still.
Alix turned on her. “I’m not going to bolt while I’m still in a towel, okay?”
“Alix—”
“You aren’t going to let me go, are you?”
Cynthia’s lips compressed. She avoided meeting Alix’s gaze. Instead, she turned and rummaged in her lockers. She pulled out a tank top and then a black hoodie. She found some painter’s jeans. “These should fit. They’re loose on me.”