“What did he say?” Vanessa asks.
“Not a lot of anything,” Tom says. “He mainly asked me about Birdie, how she was doing. He asked about you, too.”
“Me?”
“Yeah,” Tom says, exhausted.
“What did you tell him about Birdie?” she probes.
“That she’s fine,” Tom barks. He runs his hands over his face. “She is, isn’t she?”
His eyes meet Vanessa’s, challenging her. He’s asking for the truth. A hint in his question that he might think she isn’t alright. Vanessa leaps on the question like a grenade.
“She’s fine,” she says calmly.
Tom sighs and leans back in his chair.
“He’ll call back later. Left a number for me if I wanted to give him a ring,” he holds up a notepad with a number scrawled on it. He lets it fall to the desk with disgust.
“Quite the little situation you’ve got yourself here,” Vanessa says.
Tom looks at her, a threat in his eyes.
“You’ll figure it out, Tom,” she says bitterly. “You always do.”
She turns and leaves, the bowl of blood sloshing with every step.
BIRDIE
The door clicks shut, the bolting mechanism finding its home in the groove of the doorframe. Birdie chose those doorknobs. When the money was still there, and she’d been in charge of overseeing the building of the house on the ranch, she had imagined a paradise in the desert. Not the prison, complete with oil-rubbed bronze doorknobs, that she found herself in now.
She reaches with her functional arm for her mouth and draws back a hand smeared with blood. The first blood she’s had in her mouth since becoming a vegetarian when she was fifteen. She spits into the air, a fine mist of pink spraying over the white blanket.
Her stomach jumps, threatening to contract once more in an effort to vomit. She stalls it, swallowing the pool of saliva gathering in her cheeks. A thin sweat coats her brow. The room is warm without air conditioning, but the air feels cool against the perspiration. A small comfort.
She exerts the most energy she’s expended in the past few days and forces herself into a sitting position, no longer supported by the pillows. She bites her tongue hard enough that blood—now human—fills her mouth. She wants to groan, to scream, but she swallows the pain. When her ears stop ringing with it, she hears voices. People in Tom’s study below.
Birdie collapses back into a lying position, again stifling the sounds of pain. After a moment, she makes out what’s being said.
Tom makes a non-comital noise. The conversation is one sided, she realizes. A phone.
“And what makes you think that?” Tom says to whoever is on the other end of the conversation. Birdie imagines it has to be someone in a position of authority. Her heart quickens. There might be a chance that someone is advocating to get her out of there. She clings to the idea, a life-preserver thrown into a tossing sea.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Tom says. More silence. He sighs. The person on the other end of the line is saying something.
Tom makes another noise.
“Thanks,” he says sarcastically. Birdie hears the phone find the receiver, a click indicating that the call is over.
Birdie overhears Vanessa’s voice. Her pulse quickens. She asks what the conversation was about, who it was with. Ollie speaks up. The familiar sound of his voice should have the opposite effect of Vanessa’s, but Birdie wants to scream out his name.
Tom dismisses Ollie and Jeff, leaving only himself and Vanessa. They go back and forth, a bitter conversation in which Tom tells Vanessa that they want to negotiate some kind of medical care for Birdie. She thrills at the thought. Her hope is quickly dashed like a snake against a rock in a hawk’s beak. Vanessa leaves the room, leaving both Tom and Birdie alone in the silence.
In the conversation, Birdie overheard Tom mention a phone number on a piece of paper presumably. Something in the office. She could get there if she just had a little more time to recover. She might be able to get on that phone and save herself.
The thought is heady. She wipes at her mouth with her sleeves, trying to get the remnants of the blood stains off of her lips. Newfound resolve suddenly makes her situation seem slightly less grim. She just has to get to that phone and find that phone number.
But then the idea overwhelms her that she’d still have to find a way to physically get herself out of the house and to a location where someone could get to her. And if the FBI could get to her, so could Tom’s people. There’s a chance that she might never leave this ranch again.
At least alive.
A gentle knock raps at the door.
Birdie steels herself for Vanessa.
When the door opens, Tom steps through, nothing in his hands. No threat of violence. He closes the door quietly and walks over to the bed. He sits on the edge and turns to face Birdie.
“How are you?” he asks. His tone is urgent, demanding an answer that will further his foothold in the negotiation with the FBI. She knows how she has to answer.
“I’m okay,” she begins. “I think—”
“Good,” Tom cuts her off. “Some people are worried about you. I’m worried about you, Birdie,” he takes her hand. “But you’re strong. You’re okay?” It’s a question.
She nods.
“Good. I need you to be okay.”
Tom leaves, not noticing the pink spritz of blood on the white blanket or the stains at the corners of Birdie’s mouth.
There’s a lot Tom doesn’t notice, Birdie realizes. And she wonders if there’s a chance that he might not notice if she were able to slip out of this room, down the stairs, and into his study. She wonders if there’s a chance that she might be able to save herself.
IONE
The hum of activity making the tiny town pulse like a heart hardly slows as the sun sets. The only thing that changes is the level of light pollution the town normally
