Chapter Three
Meredith woke up tangled in red silk. It was still dark, and the clock on the bedside table glowed 3:06. Jay was snoring softly beside her. Moonbeams slanted through the open blinds, revealing her dress, dangling precariously from the ceiling fan. She smiled.
Good times.
Moving carefully, Meredith slid out from under the covers and padded across the room, pausing at the bathroom door. She really had to pee, but she was also itching all over for a smoke…
Cigarette first, she decided, heading for the hallway. Meredith didn't know where Jay had put her purse, but it was probably downstairs somewhere. She didn't want to wake him, if she didn't have to, but –
Meredith suddenly froze, heart pounding. She could've sworn she just heard a noise coming from inside the wall.
Holding her breath, she strained to listen. All she could hear was Jay, snoring away on the bed. Meredith took a step closer to the wall, and heard the sound again – short and high-pitched, almost like a squeak.
Mouse, she thought, exhaling shakily.
She glanced over her shoulder at Jay's sleeping form, but didn't try to wake him. A mouse, she could handle on her own. Hell, even a rat she could handle. But if the thing turned out to be a friggin' possum or something…well, then Jay was about to get the loudest, rudest awakening of his life.
On tiptoe, Meredith crept over to retrieve her dress and silently slipped it on. Just because she could handle a rodent, didn't mean she wanted to do it naked.
Feeling slightly less exposed, she returned to the wall, walking slowly along the length of it, until –
Squeak.
It came from behind the tiger painting. Ignoring the creepy stare of those silver-blue eyes, Meredith took a deep breath and lifted the painting down. There was a fist-sized hole in the wall behind it. She snatched one of her shoes off the floor, getting ready to pound whatever came scurrying out.
But the hole remained dark and silent, no hint of any furry, beady-eyed things shifting around in the depths. After a minute, she lowered the shoe, and it came again:
Squeak!
No, Meredith realized. Not a "squeak." More like a "whir." A mechanical whir.
Frowning, she reached toward the hole. Her fingers hesitated briefly, right in front of the opening, her mind flashing with spider legs and rat tails and sharp possum teeth. Then, with a shake of her head, Meredith screwed up her face and bravely reached into the unknown.
Don't be a possum, don't be a possum, don't be –
It wasn't a possum. Her hand closed on something small and cold. Meredith pulled the object out and stared down at it. A tiny camera lens, about the size of a quarter, stared right back at her. As she watched, the little lens rotated right, then left, whirring softly as it tried to bring her into focus. A thin black cord stretched from the back of the miniature camera, disappearing into the wall.
Meredith's mind felt paralyzed, unable to process.
Why the hell was there a camera in Jay's wall?
It made no sense, and she actually turned toward the bed, was actually opening her mouth to ask him about it, when understanding finally smacked her in the face:
The wall. The bed. The wall facing the bed.
A hidden camera pointed right at the bed.
Meredith's lips peeled back from her teeth in a snarl. She dropped the camera, letting it dangle from its wall-hole like some drunken dog-tongue, and tightened her grip on the shoe. Rage pounding in her temples, she advanced on her clueless, sleeping boyfriend – make that ex-boyfriend – having half a mind to beat him awake with a four-inch stiletto.
Oh, you perv, she thought, standing over him. You sick, deranged bastard.
Jay gave a soft sigh and snuggled deeper under the covers, utterly oblivious. At this moment, with his hair all mussed up and his face so peaceful, he looked like a friggin' four-year-old. Meredith felt her grip on the high-heel loosen, the intent to kill fading, even though the desire still crackled hot inside of her.
The one time she actually thought she was seeing a decent guy. The one flipping time, and it turned out he liked to make secret sex tapes. It was just her luck – once a freak-magnet, always a freak-magnet.
God only knew what he did with the recordings, too – Meredith didn't even want to think about it right now. She was just glad that before tonight, they'd always hooked up at her place.
Jay sighed again and rolled over, his foot flopping out from underneath the sheet.
Meredith narrowed her eyes, still entertaining the idea of braining him. No, death was too easy – dead people couldn't suffer anymore, and Jay most definitely deserved to suffer. An image came of his brand-new Jeep, parked outside. That ultra-shiny, cherry red paint job, just asking to get keyed. Those luscious leather seats, just waiting for her to spill their fluffy guts. Meredith smiled. See how he liked feeling violated…
Or, better yet, she could take the Jeep, leave Jay's sorry ass stranded in the middle of the woods, and then "redecorate" the car, once she was safely back in Walmart territory.
But, first things first – she wasn't going anywhere without that video…
Meredith walked back to the wall and started feeling around inside the hole. The tiny camera looked a lot like Dana's webcam, so it had to be attached to something bigger, right? Like a computer or an iPad? Meredith frowned, feeling the cord disappear further into the woodwork.
She picked up the camera again, turning it over in the moonlight. The stupid thing didn't even have any buttons on it. People couldn't save movies on a camera like this…could they?
Suddenly, she wished Simon were here. On the one day a week he managed not to get high, he was actually pretty decent with all this technology crap.
Guess my boyfriend ain't lookin' so bad now, is he? Dana's bitchy voice taunted.
Meredith told her to shut up, and gave the whirring, button-less camera a vicious tug. Out in the hallway, she heard something rip. Peering out, Meredith spotted a long loop of black cord, hanging like a jungle vine from the wall above the doorframe. A jagged tear in the blue-striped wallpaper showed where the cord had ripped through. And, now that she was looking, she could see the raised line underneath the paper, where the cord stretched on down the hall.
Meredith withdrew into the bedroom, chewing her lip. A quick glance told her Jay was still sprawled on the bed, dead to the universe. She hurriedly stuffed the whirring camera back into its hole and picked up the painting. Moonlight streamed through the tiger's missing pupil as she lifted the picture back onto the wall. Meredith hadn't noticed it before.
The perfect, creepy peephole.
She shuddered and stepped back, surveying the room. Everything looked normal. Jay wouldn't be able to tell right away that she'd found the camera. The longer it was before he discovered that his girlfriend – and car – were missing, the better.
Tucking her shoes in her armpit, Meredith stepped out into the hall, remembering to stick the loose stretch of cord back above the doorframe, so he wouldn't notice it hanging down. Then, by the soft glow of the nightlight at the end of the hall, she began to follow the trail:
Meredith's fingers traced the thin line of the cord, hidden under the wallpaper. The wire's camouflaged path went all the way to the end of the hall, down the steps, and into the living room, always expertly concealed by well-placed geometric patterns in the wallpaper. Even in broad daylight, it would be hard to spot that tiny lump. Jay wasn't just a perv – he was like, a genius perv.
The cord led Meredith through the dining room, through the kitchen, and up to a locked door she thought might lead to the basement. Only one way to find out, though –
Meredith swiped Jay's keys from a hook near the front entrance, and started testing them out in the lock. On the second try, the bolt shifted with a heavy clack, and the door swung open to reveal a staircase leading down into darkness. Meredith found the light switch and flicked it on.
Bare bulbs blazed to life along the stone walls. She could see that the stairs went deep, hitting a landing about twelve steps down, and then disappearing off to the right. Swallowing dryly, Meredith started to walk down them.
The stone steps felt like popsicles against her bare toes. At the first landing, she stopped to pull on her shoes. After that, her footsteps echoed eerily off the walls: click, click, click…
At the bottom of the second flight was another locked door, this one painted bright red. The camera cord, no longer covered by wallpaper or paint, snaked underneath it and into the room beyond. Meredith shivered. The air had to be ten degrees colder down here than it was upstairs. The place looked like a dungeon, and she was having second thoughts about this whole thing. Maybe she should just cut her losses and get the hell out of Dodge…
Meredith weighed this option against how pissed off she would be if her bare ass ended up on some porno site. Or worse – YouTube.
She decided it couldn't hurt to look – if the video seemed easy to steal or erase, she would do it. If not, she could always just take off. Meredith took a deep breath and started trying keys again.
This time, she didn't hit pay dirt until number seven. And then, even with the lock open, she still had trouble opening the door – it weighed a friggin' ton. With a grunt and a shove, Meredith shouldered it inward.
Damn thing's probably made of steel, or else—
But whatever thought was coming next died on the tip of her brain. Many thoughts died, actually, and the ones that didn't piled up on top of each other, creating a log-jam inside of her mind, and for a moment Meredith forgot how to do everything except stare.
In the room beyond, the lights were already on. The space was neatly divided – one large open area, three enormous, gleaming cages. Like super-sized dog kennels, the square pens stood at least ten feet tall, each big enough to hold a tiger.
The woman in the middle cage was curled up in a corner next to a pitiful cot, her arms wrapped around her bare, dirty knees. Matted blonde hair spilled over her shoulders in thick clumps. At the sound of the door, the woman looked up in fright, her eyes wild and frantic.
The man, on the other hand, didn't look scared at all. He stood right by the front of his cell, right up by the tight-woven bars, and gazed at Meredith with calm blue eyes, like he'd been waiting for her to come all along. Behind him, Meredith could see a fancy Oriental rug spread on the floor, a small, worn-out couch, and a table-top cluttered with books and teacups.
On the far left, the last cage stood empty, its barred door hanging open like a forgotten gate. A thin blue blanket was puddled on the floor, next to an overturned cereal bowl and a few plastic cups.
Meredith's heart pounded. She couldn't turn her eyes off. Jay was a kidnapper. A ninth-level nut-job. A psycho…
