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that was that the Tracy Shapiros of the world didn’t hook up with the Mark Jenkinses.
    The man didn’t have a Smurf’s chance in a wolf fight.
    Which seriously increased Lindsey’s odds of getting skewered.
    She pushed the last lit button as Tracy dragged out her phone call with Sam by asking him about the traffic on the Five. Jesus. If Lindsey were Sam’s wife Alyssa, she’d sit down right here in the lobby, at this desk across from Tracy’s. And she’d clean her entire collection of handguns. Hint, hint, beeyotch. “Troubleshooters Incorporated, how may I direct your call?”
    L OCATION : U NCERTAIN
D ATE : U NKNOWN
    She was cold. Always cold.
    Hungry, too.
    He kept the damp basement freezing, kept her carefully underfed.
    And almost always in the dark. There were no windows. No way to tell the difference between night and day.
    Sometimes he turned on the lights just to disorient her. There was never any rhyme to it, never any reason.
    She tried to keep track of time, but it was impossible to do, especially during days like these, when she hadn’t heard his footsteps in the kitchen overhead for what felt like weeks on end.
    She couldn’t remember the last time he’d brought her food. All she knew was that the supply she’d been hoarding was gone. She started to believe that she would starve to death, locked down here, cold and alone.
    She tried to tell herself that that would be okay. It would be better than what he’d done to Number Four.
    But then she heard it. Footsteps overhead.
    His
footsteps. She’d know them anywhere.
    He was sliding something across the kitchen floor.
    Someone.
    She knew that he hadn’t been shopping while he was gone all that time. She knew it wasn’t a hundred-pound bag of potatoes that he’d dragged in from his car.
    There was little she could be certain of in her life—in this nightmare that her life had become. But that he hadn’t come home alone was definite.
    And sure enough, he opened the door and came partly down the stairs. The glow from the kitchen spilled into the basement, lighting him from behind, making it hard for her to see his face.
    “I’m back, Number Five. Did you miss me?”
    She couldn’t remember what he looked like. And she’d never really seen his eyes. Not without the sunglasses he’d worn when she’d gotten into his car. Time was a blur, but she knew it had been months since he’d first locked her down here. Maybe even years.
    She’d had a name once—Beth. But now she was a number. Five.
    He called her that, called her his champion, too, in his flat Yankee accent, when he opened the door to bring her food. Sometimes he brought fresh water, so she wouldn’t have to drink the brackish liquid that seeped up in a pool, in the corner of this prison.
    Lord, how she hated him, how she feared him—yet how she looked forward to those dazzling moments of light.
    This time, he threw something at her. She ducked, and it hit the wall before she realized what it was. A loaf of bread. A jar of peanut butter. She tore it open and ate it, as quickly as she could. Because she’d learned that everything he gave her, he could easily take away.
    She would have liked to save it, because she never knew if the food and water he’d brought was all she’d get for God knows how long. If he’d gone right back up the stairs, she would have rationed it, both dreading and praying for his swift return.
    Sometimes he left food well out of range of her chains, with no way for her to reach it. She’d sit in the darkness, starving, smelling it, even over the constant stench of death.
    Sometimes he took and emptied the bucket he’d given her for her waste. Sometimes he wouldn’t bring it back downstairs again for days on end. Sometimes he did. Sometimes he threw it at her, covering her with her own filth if she didn’t move quickly enough out of the way.
    All the while calling her Number Five. “You’ve been a good girl, Number Five.”
    “You’ve been a bad girl,