Page 1 of Caring for Cailin

PROLOGUE

CAILIN

Though it’s what I desperately hoped for, I’m still not sure I believe it.

Everything around me says it’s true. That, after four months of captivity, of waking up every morning not knowing if it would be my last, this nightmare might be finally be over.

Gruesome to the end, there’s blood everywhere. Darkening the clothes of the people I’ve come to call friends. Smeared across the worn wooden stage. Puddled on the floor beneath it.

And thesounds. Angry voices. Moans of pain. Rasping, labored breaths that make me fear death is imminent.

My gaze keeps bouncing around the basement that’s been my unwilling home for the last several months. Or at least, Ithinkit’s been that long. Time is funny when your free will is taken away from you. Sometimes it’s unbearably slow, and others, it’s a merciful blur.

There were days when I even wished I could put an end to all of it. When I wishedI’dget the role of doomed heroine in one of Dario’s sadistic plays.

No. That’s not true. Even at my lowest of lows, I still hoped.

No. That’s not true. Even at my lowest of lows, I still hoped.

For a return to my old life.

To see my friends again.

To look up at a blue sky instead of a pattern of crossbeams beneath a dingy ceiling.

I dreamed of the cavalry coming in to rescue us. Swarms of officers in police blue, their weapons trained on the man who took me.

Dario.

The man I both fear and hate.

Don’t hate,my dad used to tell me when I was little.You can dislike someone. But hate… that’s not a nice thing to say. It’s not something you want to feel.

Back then, he was right.

Back then, I didn’t know how terrible people could be.

When I showed up for the casting call all those months ago, Dario seemed like many of the other casting directors I’d met. He was a little rumpled in a careless, creative way, with his silver hair tousled and his tie slightly askew. He had a piercing gaze, like he was trying to look inside me. And he’d trail off mid-conversation to scribble something in the spiral notebook in front of him.

Did he stare at me a little too long, particularly at my breasts and legs? Yes. But, as an aspiring actor, I’d grown to expect that.

Did my stomach flutter with nerves? Yes. But it was a role I wanted badly—one of the leads in a series pilot—so I didn’t think much of that, either.

And I definitely never thought anything of taking the glass of water he offered. Not until later, when I woke up in a locked room in Dario’s basement.

At first, I couldn’t believe it.

I’d watched plenty of true crime docuseries and law procedurals—research, I considered it, and not because I likedthem—so it’s not like I didn’t know that true evil existed. But naively, I always thought it happened tootherpeople. I never, ever dreamt it could happen to me.

But in a blink of an eye—no, more aptly, a few sips of drugged water—I became one of them.

Except maybe what I’m seeing is actually true, and I’ll soon be free again.

“My leg!” Dario screams, jerking my attention to him. Conditioned by the sound of his voice to expect the worst, my heart jumps to my throat, and I let out a tiny, frightened yip.

A second later, I clap my hand over my mouth. Cringing back against the wall, I try to make myself as small as possible, hoping against hope he won’t notice me.

But he can’t do anything to you,a voice silently reminds me.He’s tied up. There are armed men all around him. Armed men who sure seem like they’re here to help you.