Her fingers curl around my hand, pressing the key inside my palm so hard I think it will fuse with myskin. Then she backs away and gets to her feet.
“It’s going to be fun breaking you into little pieces,” she sneers, her voice once again sharp andacidic.
Then she turns and leaves.
I stare after her, gasping. But I don’t dare look at the new weight resting in my left palm. I’m tooscared to.
The walls have eyes. At eleven o’clock tonight, they’ll close.
This is a game. It has to be.
She’s taunting me with freedom. If I bite, they’ll pull me back into this cell and torture me some more.These people—her, Belov—they play mind games. This is a trick. I know it.
But what if it isn’t?
I spend the next seven hours veering between wild hope and panicked f
