The Wanted by Lauren Nicolle Taylor Page A

snapped, the pressure on my chest feeling heavier and heavier. “Seems like you are too.”
    Matt and Desh avoided my eyes. I knew I was being a jerk, but I couldn’t stop myself. “How long do I have to lie like this?”
    “Another day. At least until the bleeding slows.”
    I closed my eyes. I couldn’t look at them. It was a reminder. The last thing I heard was Gus discussing the next move.
    “If it goes the way I think it will, we won’t be able to stay.”

 

    ROSA
    There was no clock. But there was ticking in my brain anyway. I counted the little bursts of movement from the camera in the corner. It told me it was after midnight. It told me I wouldn’t sleep tonight. My hands ached, and my heart ached. My eyes were like two purple, velvet pincushions.
    At home, there was never a quiet place, no stillness where my body used to lay. Now silence smothered me like heavy-fogged poison. It pushed at me from every angle. That peace I thought I needed, that I craved, was all around me and I couldn’t stand it. What I truly needed was gone. The slip of sheets moving across bodies, the clang and thud of metal, wood, stone. Gone. I wanted it now, more than anything else.
    I pulled at the sheets in my clawing hands, wondering what I could throw at the cameras. A metal bowl grinned at me from the bedside table. I reached out to grab it, sliding my fingers along the cold surface, but once they made contact, they retreated. I had to be good. Obedient. To stay alive I had to not… be… me.
    I drew my hand in under the covers and shivered with the need to break something.
    The latch clicked and a slice of light cut the floor. A tall, long shadow wavered in the entrance like heat, and then moved towards me.
    Immediately, I clicked the lamp on, lighting up a calm, young face.
    Denis.
    I slithered up to sitting and watched him as he carefully approached me. Never not moving, but going so slowly that it was agony. I wanted to jump up and get behind him to shove him forward. But he continued in his sloping, loping way of walking. Like he was picking out each spot he was going to put his foot on before he stepped on it, the angle he would place his foot at, and how much noise his shoe would make. I ground my teeth together in annoyance.
    He lifted his head slowly and connected with my eyes. “Look scared,” he whispered, his deep blue eyes ringed with darker circles like someone had taken a pen to his irises. I was kind of scared but mostly impatient. If he was coming in to hurt me, I wished he would get on with it. I nodded, which he seemed to be irritated by. So I clutched the sheets in my fists and tried to look wide-eyed and scared.
    He was wearing just pajama bottoms and no shirt, which could have been intimidating if not for the old man slippers. His body was toned but childish, as if he’d never seen a hard day’s work in his life. Nothing about his demeanor suggested harm.
    He stood two steps away from me. I found myself staring at his feet, trying to guess where he would step next. Left, left, right.
    Finally, he reached me and I huffed. He kneeled down, neatly folding his legs over each other like a collapsible pram. Carefully, he put one hand on my shoulder and the other over my throat. I would have screamed but he wasn’t really touching me. His eyes bounced to the camera and he shifted his head so he was blocking my face from its view. His held me down with one hand and the other was like a collar, taut and straining but hovering just millimeters from my skin.
    “Wha… what?” I whispered. His eyes screwed shut, and he shook his head to the left.
    “Look frightened,” he whispered more urgently.
    I was starting to be.
    “Better,” he said with a slight, lips-pressed together kind of smile. He stared down at my own lips, and I started to feel uncomfortable.
    “I’ll scream,” I threatened half-heartedly.
    “No, you won’t,” he assured me. And he was right. I wanted to know what this was all