Night, Forgotten

CHAPTER 3

First, the roar of rushing water. It filled my ears to the brim, seeped out and over and all around me. Shocked me awake. My head felt stuffed with mothballs, and I struggled to pry open my eyelids.

Through swollen slits, with a few strenuous blinks, I saw that my exposed thighs and the tops of my knees were streaked with ugly red lines. The lower half of my body was submerged in a deep tub of lukewarm water. Everything hurt.

I twisted onto my side and pressed my palms against the edge of the tub, trying to hoist myself up. The motion triggered a sharp pain inside my pelvis. I collapsed back into the water.

"You probably shouldn't try to move," said a man's voice right behind my ear. I wrenched my neck toward it and another type of pain crashed through my skull.

Where am I? Why am I in a bath?

The answers didn't matter. I wasn't alone and I needed to get out of there. This man must have hurt me. He'd hurt me and now he was going to kill me.

If I could sit up and swing my legs underneath me, then rise onto my knees, maybe I could crawl over the edge of the tub. My legs, though, trembled pathetically, uselessly. It felt as if they'd been crushed beneath something powerful, and then reattached slightly incorrectly.

"Please—" I pleaded.

A massive hand came down on top of mine, gripping it against the edge of the tub, and my voice broke off in my throat.

"Julie!"

Marcus. His breath smelled like the sticky floor of a college fraternity. He sat on the lid of the toilet seat, at the head of the tub, breathing heavily.

I was relieved to recognize him. If Marcus was here, that meant I was probably close to home. My kidneys, most likely, had not been harvested and stored in a cooler for sale on the black market. The relief I felt, though, was closely followed by confusion. If I'd been kidnapped by a stranger, at least the plotline would be recognizable from Dateline episodes my mother-in-law often forwarded to me and thirty other recipients with paranoid subject lines like "Better to be safe than sorry."

But Marcus's presence sent my brain spinning in a thousand new directions, none of which provided a reassuring explanation for why one of us was lying—naked? Yes, oh, my god, I was completely naked from the waist down—in a bathtub. The gold-flecked sweater I'd picked out earlier that night clung to my breasts and shoulders. Soaked through. It was the only item of clothing on my body.

"Sorry." Marcus cringed, looking down at me. He pulled his hand away from mine and rested it unsteadily on his knee, which was at the level of my shoulder. "Is the water . . . is it warm enough?"

The question was so ridiculous, I thought I might be dreaming. Then the water lapped against the abrasions on my thighs and from the way it stung, I knew I was not sleeping. I must have been unconscious before, when someone had put me in this bathtub, but now I was undeniably awake. And with each passing moment, I was becoming more and more alert. I recognized the familiar octagonal, stark white floor tiles and the gaudy gold fixtures of the Dolans' master bathroom where, less than a month ago, I'd waited on the same toilet lid where Marcus was now seated, playing on my phone while Liza changed out of her yoga clothes.

"Liza?!" I yelled, frantic. "Where are you?" There was no response from Liza. "Marcus, what the hell is going on?"

He stood up and extended a thick white bath towel in my direction.

"Here," he said, turning his face toward the wall in an absurdly inadequate gesture of propriety. I reached back as far as I could and grabbed the towel from his hand.