“What does the anxiety feel like?” he asked, softly.
She sipped the milk to clear her throat. “When it’s bad, I don’t have control of my body. It feels like something huge and chaotic is wearing my skin, thrashing around in it, stretching it, and I’m stuck in there with it, helpless.”
He fed her another bite, thoughtful, listening. Maybe he didn’t understand, but he seemed to be trying.
“Sometimes it’s subtle, just there beneath the surface. If I’m distracted, I won’t identify it until it’s passed. I’ve tried to study it as it happens, to better understand it. If I lay still and really focus, I can almost grab hold of it. It’s as if my brain has its very own body and something is brushing up against it, something that shouldn’t be there.”
“Do you feel it right now?” He watched her with those perceptive eyes that could reach deeper inside her than any other part of his body.
“I feel...” Panicked? No. Troubled? Not exactly. “Out of alignment.”
His eyes glimmered. He liked that answer, and it made her insides flutter.
As he finished off the breakfast, she realized she’d stopped counting the bites when he prompted her to talk. Probably his intention. He didn’t seem to do anything without an agenda.
There were still a few bites left, but her stomach hardened, way too bloated. She shook her head at the next forkful. “Tell me something about you. Something that’s hard for you to talk about.”
The fork paused then lowered to the table. He glanced at the mudroom and back at her, his thumb moving restlessly along the edge of the plate. Then it stilled. “I’ll show you.”
He stood, and without waiting for her, strode to the mudroom, opened the garage door, and stared into the dark hush, his features empty and distinct.
His expressions would never expose who he was, but judging by his sudden remoteness, whatever waited in the garage would.
A cold sweat broke out over her skin, but she rose to follow him, determined to know him. As she walked right through the middle of the smashed cereal without looking at it, her head tilted back, her arms relaxed at her sides, and her strides carried her to him with grace.
He glanced at her with cool, unreadable eyes, and she curled her fingers around his limp hand. Then she followed him through the door.
CHAPTER 24
The fluorescents overhead buzzed in the darkness a half second before the garage flooded with light. Amber blinked rapidly, her lungs tightened, and her hand released Van’s fingers with a jerk.
Where she expected chains, whips, torture equipment, and hell, maybe a car was something much more startling.
Dolls and mannequins in every size and state of repair lined workbenches and shelves, hung from walls, and overflowed crates and boxes. Detached arms and legs scattered the floor. Headless bodies slumped in piles with limbs tangled together, the hinged eyes and painted faces frozen in apathy.
The humidity in the two-bay garage stifled her breath, and a chill settled into her bones as she took in the largest collection of mannequins she’d ever seen. There was something very sad about their condition, the way they were tossed aside, neglected...yet kept all the same. A graveyard for broken dolls? Or some kind of a sick tribute?
He left her side and strode toward a large table in the center of the garage, its surface cluttered with paints and tiny tools and doll parts.
She didn’t follow but instead walked a wide circuit around him on shaky legs, hands at her sides, her attention imprisoned by the horde of soulless faces. What would a man as virile and rugged and manly as Van want with dolls?
Her steps took her through a maze of baby dolls, toddler-sized dolls, and nipple-less mannequins, all bald and naked, most damaged beyond repair. Her stomach turned, but she wanted to understand the source of her apprehension. He didn’t seem to have any friends or family. Were these...things a distraction from the loneliness when he wasn’t abducting people?
The agony of being alone and feeling unwanted was a cruel affliction. It could make one desperate for any kind of connection. Maybe even a connection with the plastic replicas of the real thing. Or with deliverymen in the dark.
Had all those men she’d slept with been some kind of coping mechanism for her loneliness? That might’ve been part of it. Like a fourth of it. Yeah, and the other three-fourths of the reason was simply payment for her deliveries. It’d been a fair trade. She hadn’t been using them, right? Her ribs squeezed, and she shoved that thought away.
She passed a tall display cabinet with a glass door, the only one like it in the room. The two dolls inside... What the hell?
A plastic woman sat nude on a chair. She was similar to Amber’s height and held a child-sized doll in a red-checkered dress. The woman’s brown marbled eyes stared with a glassy, far-away look. Even more eerie was the red line hand-drawn from one glass eye to the pink painted mouth. A scar drawn exactly like the one on his face. She shuddered, gasping, and covered her mouth with her hand.
The dolls in the cabinet were the only two in the garage with hair, the strands intricately woven together in various shades of brown. Why weren’t they damaged like the others? Why were they the only ones safely displayed behind glass? What did they mean to him?
They held answers. Shivering curiosity drew her hand to the knob on the glass door.
“Don’t touch those.”
His harsh voice made her jump, and she yanked her hand back. Shit. She shook off her nerves and turned to face him. “You collect dolls.” Hollow-eyed, creepy-ass plastic people.
Perching on a wheeled stool, he rolled toward the table and placed his palms on the surface, staring blankly at the clutter around his hands. “I make them, collect them, and...break them.”
An emotionless response, but layers hummed beneath the words. He leaned back, knees spread, hands folded between his
