Page 6 of Captive

That’s how it’s been for years, but call me crazy, it feels as though everything is about to change.

We make it home, and we pull right into the garage, parking next to Hawthorne’s vehicle. As Royal turns the engine off, I look at him and say, “Stay here with her. I’ll go talk to Hawthorne.”

“Ooh, babysitting an unconscious girl. How fun,” he mutters, but in the end he waves me off. There will be no arguing about this. Besides, it isn’t as though we can just stroll in and bring the girl with us without giving Hawthorne a heart attack.

That guy… he’s a peculiar fellow. He likes his routines. It’s why he’s so good at what he does. This girl is going to throw a wrench into everything, but hurting her, doing anything to her, would go against the very things we stand for.

I get out of the car and venture into the house, searching for Hawthorne. The man practically never sleeps, so it doesn’t take me long to find him. He’s in his office, a room on the second floor, with black-out curtains pulled over the two windows, and only a dim floor lamp on as he sits, semi-hunched over a laptop on his desk. Regardless of the time of day, it’s always dark in here. Gloomy. Just how he likes it.

Hawthorne looks up at me. He’s the oldest out of us, though not by much. Thirty-two, but the seriousness of his amber eyes makes him appear older sometimes. Or maybe it’s just because of the thin-rimmed glasses he wears. Refuses to try contacts. Freaks out anytime something gets close to his eyes.

“Ezra,” he says. “I got word from the cleanup crew that all went well.” He sits back in his leather chair, resting his hands on his lap. “A little messier than usual, so it’ll take them a bit longer to do their cleanup, but well all the same.” He then must notice I’m alone, and he makes a big show of glancing around me. “Where is Royal?”

“He’s still in the car,” I say, taking a tiny step closer to his desk. “There is something we need to talk about. It was messy tonight, in more ways than one.”

He tilts his head. “What do you mean by that?”

I take in a giant breath and explain everything. The kill bag we found and wrongly assumed belonged to Brock. The girl who fell out of the closet while she tried to get a spider off her. How she seemed not bothered at all by the dead, half-dismembered body on the bed, and how she seemed to know who we were.

Hawthorne listens intently, and the more I explain to him, the wider his gaze gets, until it looks like he has a raging headache. He leans forward, placing his elbows on his desk as he pulls off his glasses and rubs his eyes. Only when I’m finished does he say, “You’re telling me… there was a girl? And that she’s in the car with Royal right now?”

“Yes. We didn’t… we didn’t know what else to do with her.”

He puts his glasses back on. “First thing’s first: let’s get her inside. Bring her up to my room. I need some time to think.” He rubs his temples, like I’ve just given him the worst headache imaginable.

To someone who prefers things go without a hitch, I probably just did.

I head downstairs, to the garage, where I find Royal pretending to be asleep in the driver’s seat. I tap on the glass, and he dramatically jerks awake. When I only give him an unimpressed look, he shrugs and gets out of the car, stretching, like he’s been in there for hours and not, you know, a few extra minutes.

“What’s the word?” he asks, leaning back on the car.

“He says to bring her up to his room.”

“That would be creepy if it was anyone but Hawthorne. His room is the least-used in the house,” he says with a glance over his shoulder at the unconscious girl in the backseat. “He’s always sleeping at his desk. I don’t know how that’s comfortable.”

Me either, but now isn’t the time to wonder about Hawthorne’s habits.

I go for the door and pull it open, and together Royal and I heave the girl out of the backseat. Her body is limp, like a doll, and once she’s in a good position, Royal is able to carry her all on his own, cradling her in his strong arms. We head into the house, and soon enough he’s depositing her on Hawthorne’s bed.

Royal and I crowd around the queen-sized bed. “Should we,” I start, “take the pillowcase off her head now?” She’s not awake yet, but she will be, soon. By that time, we need to figure out just what the hell we’re doing with her.

All he does is shrug.

Since Hawthorne isn’t in the room to tell me either way, I decide to go for it. I yank the pillowcase off her head, and in the process I pull the small beanie off her head too, exposing her multi-colored hair.

Not what I was expecting to see.

“Holy shit,” Royal mutters. “Her hair is like… like fucking cotton candy.”

Cotton candy. Yeah, that’s the best descriptor. With a center part, the top right half of her hair is a pink color, while the bottom half is a light blue. On the opposite side, the colors are opposite: the top left is that same blue and the bottom right is that same pink. Her hair has a gentle wave to it, and its length ends just above her shoulders.

The color is a startling contrast to the black ensemble she wears, and honestly? I can’t picture her having a kill kit of her own. She’s… not exactly who you’d imagine when you imagine a killer, even if that wannabe killer is out for revenge.

“She’s pretty,” I say as I toss the pillowcase and beanie to the side. Captain Obvious here, but it needs to be said. I remember her eyes from earlier; they’re a bright, shiny gray, almost silver. Combine those eyes with that hair and face? She’s more than pretty, really.

“She is,” Royal huffs. “Doesn’t change the fact she saw things she shouldn’t have.”

“What are we going to do? We can’t kill her.”