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  Deidre carefully filled the cup with water from the pitcher another Red Shirt handed her. The rest of the kids cringed, staring down at their laps, edging their chairs back away from Deidre and Morgan.

  Deidre stood and was joined by two male Red Shirts. “Micah, you’re relieved. Sit.”

  Micah didn’t leave Morgan until the two Red Shirts pulled him away. He slumped into a chair beside the youngest boy—the one Deidre had threatened earlier—and stared at Morgan, one hand worrying at the scar on his neck.

  The two Red Shirts weren’t as gentle as Micah. They each grabbed the broomstick restraining her arms and jerked her upright. One twisted his fist in her hair, pulling so hard that pain shot across her scalp, yanking her face up. The other slammed her jaw shut with his hand, holding her chin tight.

  Deidre approached, carrying the cheap plastic tumbler as if it was a chalice. She handed the cup to the female Red Shirt and positioned herself in front of Morgan. “You wanted water. So much that you spoke without permission. Here you go.”

  The female Red Shirt had a grin that matched Deidre’s as she tilted the cup, fitting its rim around Morgan’s nose and mouth, then pushed Morgan’s head as far back as possible. The cup’s contents gushed directly into Morgan’s nose.

  The pain of the water hitting the nerve endings in Morgan’s sinus passages was blinding. Primal reflexes engaged, closing off her airways and alerting her body to the threat of drowning. Stress hormones flooded her system, designed to produce panic and jump-start a person’s fight-or-flight reflex.

  A normal person. Not Morgan. She blocked out the pain. Used the stress hormones to energize and focus. Thanks to her father, she’d had plenty of practice. Nick had described the sensation correctly when they’d spoken yesterday: dissociation. As if her body and mind were separate.

  Her chest heaved and her limbs jerked, desperate for oxygen, but her mind wandered free. Bach’s Little Fugue crescendoed through her brain. Her father may have been an uneducated long-haul truck driver—when he wasn’t torturing and killing women—but he believed in the right music for the occasion, and Bach seemed appropriate now, the organ’s deep rumbling matching the thunder pounding in her head.

  She focused on the ceiling above her. Acoustic tiles. Suspended. Also a sprinkler system. Which meant a crawl space above the ceiling. A crawl space that would avoid locked doors and allow her access to the rest of the complex.

  Nice. She’d been worried she’d have to use her hidden lock picks to escape, travel around the outside of the building, and let herself back in. Not too difficult, but it was damn cold outside at night, and without shoes or a coat, she’d be risking hypothermia. Plus, she hated being cold.

  Plan of attack formed, she brought her consciousness back to her current situation and scanned the faces before her. Her eyeglasses were skewed and fogged with water droplets, but below them she could see Deidre smiling at her, Micah leaning forward in his chair, three more Red Shirts holding him down, his face twisted with fury—ready to sacrifice himself to rescue her? Why? He barely knew her—and finally Tommy, also held down by a Red Shirt, terrified and crying again.

  Her lungs strained. She could hold her breath a long time, but no sense risking blacking out—that’s where the real danger of waterboarding came, risking death by aspiration. She didn’t trust Deidre and her clowns to be smart enough to know that. Morgan choked and gagged, heaving her body in every direction, making a good show for Deidre.

  “Enough,” Deidre commanded. The Red Shirt removed the cup, water cascading over Morgan, soaking her hair and shirt. She went limp, gasping for air, making it look as if she’d been close to drowning. The two Red Shirts behind her dropped her, and she fell to the floor. They slid the damn broomstick free, and she gave Deidre what she knew Deidre wanted: surrender.

  Morgan curled up into a fetal ball, coughing, hands clutching her throat, not making eye contact with anyone. To her surprise, Deidre joined her, gathering Morgan onto her lap and rocking her as if Morgan was a child.

  “Breathe, little sister!” Deidre chanted. “Feel the warmth and light of our love. You’ve taken your first step to redemption and ReNewal.”

  “ReNew, ReNew, ReNew,” the crowd chorused all around Morgan. They stood over her, blocking out the overhead light. “We love you, we love you, we love you!”

  Their roar still felt more frightening than uplifting, especially as they edged closer until their legs pressed against Morgan’s body. Deidre on one side, clutching her tight, the faceless throng on the other. If Morgan were claustrophobic, she’d be panicked. Above her, the other students wrapped their arms around each other’s shoulders and began swaying and singing again, this time a softer tune, ragged at first, but then it coalesced into “Silent Night.”

  It was three months past Christmas, but obviously the kids’ repertoire was limited and the sentiment fit as well as anything. Rebirth, renewal . . . Deidre was orchestrating Morgan’s recruitment into her brainwashed zombie legion by tugging at multiple emotional and physical chords. Very effective.

  If she were a Norm, Morgan wouldn’t have to think and decide how to react to Deidre’s manipulation—it would have simply happened. But she was no Norm, so she had to bide her time, calculate how long was long enough without pushing Deidre’s patience past her limit. When the time was right, she threw her arms around Deidre, forced more fake sobbing, and cried out, “Thank you!”

  Deidre smiled down upon her, and all was right with the world.

  One step closer to gaining their trust. Now all she needed was a few minutes alone with students who knew Bree. That Micah guy, he seemed a good place to start.

  Then Deidre pulled her even closer, her hands squeezing Morgan’s shoulders so tight they dug into her flesh. She lowered her mouth until it was next to Morgan’s ear and whispered, “You don’t fool me. I know what you are.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Morgan stared at Deidre, stunned. No way had her cover been blown. She’d played the role of sheep perfectly.

  Maybe Deidre had meant something else? If so, what?

  One way to find out—and to get Morgan herself closer to an exit strategy in case she needed it sooner than anticipated. She glanced around. Who to target? Micah. He’d moved to stand beside her, as if to protect her from the crowd. He might have the answers she needed. She began coughing and choking again, twisting her body away from Deidre. Then she vomited all over Micah’s legs.

  Deidre and the Red Shirts jumped back in disgust. Micah bent to support Morgan’s heaving body. “Are you okay?”

  He didn’t even seem to notice that they were both covered in the foul-smelling remnants of her lunch. She nodded weakly, tried to stand, but fell back against him. He helped her to her feet.

  “Clean up. Both of you,” Deidre said. “Everyone else, to the music room.” Escorted by her Red Shirts, she paraded out the doors on the opposite side of the room, followed by the other students, while Micah guided Morgan back the way she’d entered.

  To her surprise the doors to the intake room were unlocked. Good thing because they were fire doors. Not that Morgan cared much about fire safety, but if she did have to make her way through the crawl space above the ceiling, it meant any wall containing fire doors would block her path. If these were routinely left unlocked, it was one less barrier to work around. She could simply climb down from the crawl space and walk right through them.

  Micah held the door for her, and Morgan shuffled through, still playing sheep-ish. Somewhere along the way she’d lost her flip-flops, and her feet squeaked against the gym mats that covered the floor of the intake room.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Micah asked.

  She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and nodded. “Yeah. Sorry about that. Hope it didn’t get you in trouble.”

  He shrugged. Just one shoulder, more of a backward heaving off a potential burden than an upwar
d motion. “The women’s showers are over there, behind those cubbyholes.”

  It was her first chance to get an uninterrupted view of the intake room in full light. His and hers locker rooms, she realized. With the wall separating them and all the lockers and benches removed, leaving a wide open space between the two shower and toilet areas. Guess whatever ReNew taught, modesty wasn’t an important tenet.

  The half walls that partially blocked the view into the shower areas were simple plywood, nailed together to form the cubbyholes that held the ReNew khaki uniforms along with an assortment of underwear and flip-flops. Micah moved behind the wall on the male side of the room; it barely came halfway up his chest.

  “You’re lucky,” he said as he stripped off his scrub top. “Usually we only get to shower with the rest of our level group while Red Shirts watch.”

  Morgan selected clean underwear and scrubs, this time in her proper size, and moved behind the cubbyholes on her side of the room to the women’s showers. Typical school locker room: an open area surrounded on three sides with shower nozzles and a central drain. There was no shampoo, only liquid soap in wall-mounted receptacles. She made fast work of cleaning up, wanting more time to check out the space.

  There were no towel racks—too easy to use as a weapon—no paper-towel dispensers, either. She used her dirty clothes to dry herself off before changing. Beyond the shower were four toilet stalls, all with their doors removed. Ugh. There was more privacy in prison.

  She glanced behind her at the clock over the door leading out to the administration area. Only 6:51? She’d been here less than four hours and was already going nuts with the effort it took to stay in character.

  Then she spotted one more thing—a camera in the center of the clock. It was behind the glass enclosure, so no microphone; that was good. She made an act of appearing exhausted as she shuffled across the room to slump down on the wall beside the door. Below the clock and out of view of its camera.

  She knelt and examined the lock on the door. Nothing she couldn’t handle when the time came. Micah emerged from his shower. He’d already put on pants and was in the act of pulling his top over his head. He had the kind of physique older men worked so hard to maintain: six-pack abs and well-defined back and shoulder muscles. No scars to match the ones on his neck, but bruises in various states of healing glowed yellow-green-purple against his pale skin.

  He looked up, spotted her, and smiled. “Feel better?”

  She didn’t answer. He joined her, sitting beside her. “The first day is always the worst,” he assured her. “Plus, you came at a bad time. It’s not always like this.”

  Morgan pulled her knees to her chest, hugging them like she’d seen so many of her father’s victims do. Trying to become smaller targets. Never worked. But it was a sheeplike posture, and Micah responded to it, placing his arm around her shoulders and letting her lean against him.

  “What is this place?” She added a tremor to her voice. “Some kind of cult?”

  “No. Not a cult. Just a bunch of kids with nothing to do, bored out of their minds, and a girl in charge who is a little—”

  “Crazy?”

  “Unstable. She didn’t used to be this bad. Deidre’s been here longer than anyone. Her brother enrolled her when she was twelve.”

  “Twelve? But she’s at least, what, twenty?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Seven years and no one has let her out?” She turned to him. “Does that mean we’ll never get out of here? My parents, my friends, I’ll never see them again?” She forced a pretend sob. “I have to talk to the Reverend, he seemed so nice, I know he’ll understand, this is all a mistake—”

  Micah gave a short laugh. “Good luck with that. You won’t be seeing the Rev again—unless he selects you for one-on-one counseling. And that’s only until he gets what he wants from you. Then you’ll be stuck here with the rest of us.”

  Hmm . . . she wondered if Bree had been one of the chosen selected to receive Reverend Benjamin’s personal attention. Sounded like he might be interested in something more than saving souls. She made a note to find a way to ask about that later, once she’d gained Micah’s confidence. Right now she needed him feeling strong and protective.

  She hugged her knees tighter. “But there must be adults. Guards, teachers, counselors?”

  “Nope. Just us chickens caught in the chicken coop. Deidre does her best—she’s a true believer, actually thinks she can save us all. Sooner or later kids leave. Usually when their parents run out of money. Never before the Rev is sure they won’t talk about what really goes on in here. Except once . . .” His voice trailed off. “Bree. Deidre hoped she’d change everything. Somehow got it in her crazy mixed-up mind that Bree would stay here. She was so angry when she found out Bree was leaving. Felt abandoned. You see, Deidre is just as trapped as the rest of us, even though she’s in charge.”

  The way his words gushed out, Morgan wondered when the last time was he’d had any chance to talk to anyone in more than the monosyllabic responses Deidre commanded. It felt as if Micah needed to unburden himself. And Morgan was very happy to hear it all. “If Deidre couldn’t change things after seven years of being here, what made her think this girl Bree could?”

  “Bree was supposed to save us all. When her mother came to get her early, she promised she’d let the people in the outside world know what was happening here. She said she’d tell our families, tell the cops, whoever it took. She and Deidre were especially close—they’d sit up all night singing together and Bree told Deidre about all the things she’d missed. I mean, can you imagine spending seven years with no TV or phone, no Internet, nothing but a bunch of mixed-up kids that you had to keep from killing each other? Bree painted a whole new world for Deidre.”

  “She gave her hope.” A dangerous thing in Morgan’s experience.

  “Exactly. But.” His shoulders heaved again. Micah’s shrugs were more expressive than most people’s smiles, she’d noticed. “But, she left and it’s been a month and nothing’s happened. Except for Deidre starting to lose it. For real. I’m worried. She’s going to go too far—or lose control of the Red Shirts, which would be even worse. Deidre wants to save our souls, but Red Shirts just want to have fun. Bullying the rest of us is the only entertainment they have.”

  Boredom. As dangerous as hope. Especially in people like Morgan. She craved stimulation like a drug, needing more potent doses with each hit. Being locked up with a bunch of sheep, if you were a person with Morgan’s proclivities, or worse, her father’s . . . not a pretty picture. And if Deidre was losing control—

  She realized that Micah was watching her again. It was unnerving, the way he allowed every emotion to rest on his face, exposing himself to the world. Inside the commons room he’d been protective of her, worried, and a bit frightened.

  Not now. Now he regarded her with curiosity.

  “Just who are you, Morgan? The truth.”

  “You first,” Morgan countered. “How’d you end up here?”

  Another shrug, this one nostalgic. “A bunch of us got into a bar over on the North Side. We thought we were so cool, sneaking in with the crowd after a Steelers’ game. Stupid dive bar, they didn’t care how old we were as long as we could pay for our beer. Anyway, there was this guy. He hit a girl. Slapped her so hard it knocked her down.” His breathing edged between clenched teeth at the memory. “No one was doing anything; they all just watched.”

  “Except you.”

  “Guess I was the only one sober enough—or stupid enough. I told the guy to back away—he was getting ready to kick her while she was down—and next thing I knew he had a broken bottle in his hand and there was blood all over me.”

  “He could have killed you.”

  “Not like he didn’t try. He got me in a choke hold, cut me, then dropped me to the floor and went on about his business. I don’t know what came o
ver me, some kind of berserker rage or something. I saw the blood, saw the girl crying, saw his smile—he was laughing—and everything else was a blur. I grabbed a cue stick, lunged at him, and he rushed me and—”

  “You hit him—did you kill him?”

  He touched the scar on his neck. “No. Stupid drunk. He tripped over the girl, fell on the bottle. Didn’t kill him but it cut him up pretty bad, needed more stitches than I did. But I was underage, had a beer, in a bar, holding a deadly weapon in my hands. Worse, the girl testified against me, said I started it, said I was the one who hit her and her boyfriend. Good thing they had video that showed otherwise. So all I got was ninety days for the underage drinking. Just dumb luck this place was next up on the residential treatment program rotation.”

  Dumb luck? He was the one who’d rushed in, decided it was his responsibility to defend a woman he didn’t even know. She had met other Norms like this—in fact, her life suddenly seemed full of them, saints and martyrs intent on showing her the light as they tried to take responsibility for every wrong in the world and set it right. Nick, Andre, Lucy . . . not Jenna. Jenna barely took responsibility for her own actions and always had her own agenda, a lot like Morgan that way. And now, Micah.

  He was only a kid. She had to stop him before his hero complex earned him an early grave.

  “Where do you draw the line, Micah? Or are you God, all-knowing, the Holy Father taking the world’s sins onto His shoulders?”

  He rolled his eyes, but his shoulders still slumped in anguish. “You’re thinking of the Son, not the Father.”

  “Right, the guy who ended up nailed to a cross. That what you’re aiming for?”

  He was silent. Morgan waited.