The Keyholder by Claire Thompson Page B

let his arms fall from around her, but remained sitting close beside her on the bed, a small smile on his face, concern in his eyes.
    “Hey, you,” he said softly. “You okay?” He touched her arm, his fingers lightly grazing her skin. He smiled, a slightly lopsided, thoroughly engaging smile that made her heart skip a beat.
    “Yeah, thanks.” She struggled a little as she tried to hoist herself into a sitting position. “Glad I’m awake, though.”
    “Let me help with that,” Jack said, standing. He reached for the bed’s remote control that lay on the mattress beside Eva. “I think this is the button we want.” He pushed the large black button and the head of the bed began to lift, gently raising Eva to a sitting position. “Good?” he asked, and Eva nodded.
    He set the remote next to her. “Can I get you something? They’re bringing breakfast by in a minute, but I got you fresh water and ice.” He pointed to a small pink plastic pitcher and a plastic cup on the table beside the bed. “Are you thirsty?”
    Eva licked her chapped lips and swallowed. Her mouth was dry, the taste on her tongue bitter. “Yes. Thanks, that would be great.”
    As Eva reached for the cup, she saw her wrists were wrapped with gauze and white tape. Her fingernails, which she’d always kept perfectly manicured and polished before the abduction, were bitten to the quick, the cuticles ragged and bloody. She was dressed in a hospital gown, her hair no doubt a mess. She reached reflexively with her free hand to push it back from her face and felt only the scruffy fuzz of new growth on her bare scalp.
    What must she look like to this man—a hideous scarecrow of a girl, a survivor of a death camp? A victim. The realization tore at her like barbs latching onto her psyche. Where had Eva Sandler, the eager, confident young woman ready to conquer New York City, disappeared to?
    I’m still here, a small but insistent voice whispered from somewhere deep inside her.
    As she drank the cold, refreshing water, memories surfaced from the night before—the ride in the ambulance with Jack beside her, the probing and prodding as doctors examined her, the pierce of the IV needle and then the fuzzy wooziness that had overtaken her as whatever sedative they’d added to the solution did its work.
    “There was someone else here last night, too, wasn’t there? The woman who came into the attic and someone else?” The couple had arrived just as she’d begun to drift away in the fog of whatever drug she’d been given. She could see their faces, recall their concern and attention as the man talked earnestly to the doctors while the woman sat beside Eva and held her hand, but their names wouldn’t come.
    “Yeah, that was Nora and Charles,” Jack said. “They’re keyholders too and my best friends here in New York. Nora’s the one who found the soap. Charles kept Phillip distracted with a bogus repair issue while Nora waited for the cops and ambulance. They got here around two in the morning and made me go home for a while.” He looked at his watch. “They’ll probably be back soon.”
    The soap.
    All at once Eva was back in that room on the second floor, left alone for a few minutes by Master Phillip, her heart beating high in her throat, her hand shaking as she desperately scratched letters into the soap with a nail she’d found several days before in one of the bathroom cabinets.
    What a staggering risk she’d taken. If Master Phillip had caught her, her punishment would be worse than anything she could imagine, and the chance of her ever leaving the attic again destroyed. Yet it was a risk she’d had to take, even if no one ever found the soap, or could make sense of it if they did.
    “Eva.” Jack’s concerned tone pulled her back to the present. “What is it? Are you in pain?”
    Eva shook her head, focusing on Jack’s face as she willed away the negative images still crowding her mind. “Not anymore.”
    They both looked over at