Fenley

Fenley's stomach seems to, thankfully, be back to normal. Hollow and thirsty, but at least she's not scurrying into the bushes to empty her bowels at roughly the speed of sound while hoping she'll be able to clean herself afterwards.

Small things, she tells herself as she rearranges the sheet around her so it's more like a jumpsuit than a toga. A short jumpsuit, but at least it should stay on and her legs shouldn't get tangled up in it if she has to run.

Another small thing, she thinks, and doesn't know if she wants to laugh or cry.

Fenley creeps her way in the direction where she heard her captor earlier and peeks through the trees. She realizes she'd spent the night near the trail, and likely beneath the same tree as she'd hidden under the previous day. She ponders going back to the cabin and putting her captor to sleep with a story, but her mind circles back to the same impasse as yesterday: will he stay asleep if she tries to tie him up?

There's also still a lingering worry that she doesn't have a Trouble at all and this is part of the games he and his partner like to play with their victims.

Because she's not the first, she thinks as she makes her way back to the wall, and if she can't find a way out of here and bring the police down on these guys, she also won't be the last.

*/*/*/*/*

The wall, in the daylight, is the same as any other wall: grey concrete, but very smooth and—she cautiously touches it—not electrified. She stares up at it. It's not overly high, she guesses about ten feet, but when you don't have a ladder, ten feet may as well be a thousand.

She looks down at the sheet she's wearing, then at the surrounding trees.

"I should have at least grabbed one of the knives," she mutters under her breath, "maybe I could have cobbled a ladder together."

No, I couldn't. Fenley knows she could never have built a ladder that would support her weight, let alone one that was ten feet tall. She also would have had to pull it up after her so she could get down the other side. She has a sudden image of the thing miraculously holding her weight until she was at the top only for it to fall apart as she pulled it up behind her. No, that kind of skill and luck only happens on television or in the movies.

She half-heartedly turns to her left and begins to follow the wall. Maybe it ends, or there's a second way in with an open gate…but she already knows neither of those is true. She's in an enclosure, a square of forest locked up tight, otherwise her captor would have assumed she was back in Haven already, or lost somewhere, deeper in the woods. He knows she's still here, still somewhere she can be found once his partner arrives. That means the space is big enough to hide in but not big enough to stay hidden forever.

Frustration is building inside her, and she wishes she could throw back her head and scream at the sky.

This isn't fair, she thinks, and for the first time since this ordeal began, anger begins to simmer inside her. She's never done anything to this guy or to Kip, if his partner really is Kip, and she doesn't deserve any of this.

*/*/*/*/*

Fenley doesn't know how long she walks, the wall an endless, featureless grey mass to her right, but it feels like it takes forever and no time at all before she's back where she started. The sky has clouded over so she can't tell how far the sun has moved and, for a moment, her inability to understand how much time has passed makes her dizzy. A sudden gust of wind rattling the trees makes her jump and she shivers. The air has turned chilly and smells like rain.

She shivers again and turns her glum attention back to where the trail ends, cut off by the wall. Maybe she should have staked out this place and slipped through when her captor's partner drove through the gate that must be here. She might have been able to slip out before they realized she was there.

But there are no seams anywhere in the wall that she can see, not even here, where there must be a gate if they want to get a car close to the cabin.

Fenley moves deeper into the trees, sits down behind a particularly thick growth of bushes and tries to think.

If there's a hidden door, her captor is right: she's too stupid to find it.

She also now doesn't know if her captor's partner has arrived or not, and a chill of fear slithers down her spine at the thought. She thinks of the stories she's been telling since she woke on that bed. None of her heroes would be pleased that she allowed herself to be at such a disadvantage.

Of course, I also didn't think to take the knives...or water.

Rage explodes behind her eyes and she shakes with it, fighting the urge to bash herself bloody against the wall while screaming out her fear and frustration.

She's half-way to her feet, ready to do just that, her hands curled into tight fists, her teeth bared in a feral snarl, and stops, teetering...and sinks back to the ground, taking deep breaths to calm herself.

Rage is no more productive than fear, she tells herself. I'm still free and maybe he knows where I am...but maybe he doesn't. Maybe his partner is here, and maybe he isn't.

She turns and looks up the winding trail, at the end of which is the cabin.

Shelter, she thinks. Water. Knives. Food?

Enemies?

Only one way to find out.

She turns her back to the trail and heads deeper into the forest, hoping that, if anyone's watching, they won't understand she's making her way back to the cabin.

*/*/*/*/*

Fenley moves carefully and as quietly as she can, making a wide circle as she edges her way back to the cabin. She keeps her ears and eyes peeled for any sign of her captor, hoping she will see him before he sees her, which is why she stumbles over something half-buried in the forest dirt and falls, scraping both her knees and the palms of her hands.

She rides out the pain then rolls over and sits up to check her wounds.

Not bad, she thinks as she flicks dirt and gravel from her knees. She's scraped up a bit, but there's not much blood and it shouldn't slow her down.

Then her eyes drift to what tripped her.

It takes her a moment to understand that she's looking into the empty eye sockets of a human skull.

She stares for a long moment, and a distant part of her thanks whatever god might be listening that at least it's just bare bone, as devoid of identity as any plastic prop on the detective shows she likes so much.

Don't let Temperance Brennan hear you say that, a voice gibbers inside her, and now she's gritting her teeth once more, struggling again with the urge to scream out her rage at the people who put her in this situation, the people most likely responsible for that skull being here in the first place.

They need to pay for what they've done, she thinks. They need to be brought to justice.

Anger swells inside her: anger for herself, but even more anger for the person who once animated that skull in front of her. She wonders how many more victims are scattered in these woods, how long these guys have been doing this and getting away with it.

Fenley's vision narrows and she doesn't know if she's on the verge of a panic attack or a rage attack but she does know she needs to calm down. She can't afford to lose herself in her emotions if she hopes to win against these monsters. But she feels her control slipping, her vision narrowing, a red haze filming her eyes…and then she mutters, through clenched teeth, "Let me tell you a story."

*/*/*/*/*