Page 150 of Cruel Abandon (Fallen Royals 5)

“Got it.” I hit the end button and shove my phone into my pocket.

I’m suddenly fourteen again, and Skylar is gone.

Missing without a trace.

How the hell am I going to find her?

41

Sky

Run, now, my girl. Don’t look back.

Pain wracks through me, but I don’t move. I can’t move. I’m frozen solid, colder than I’ve ever been. I’m in danger, lying on my side. Slow inventory of the rest of my body reveals things I don’t want to know: I lost my shoes. My head aches, and my mouth is full of cotton.

Around me is silence, but maybe my hearing is gone.

I don’t trust it, so I stay still.

Eventually, I pick up a tap-tap-tap of dripping water and someone breathing. The quick, short inhales and exhales are almost in time with the water.

It can’t be Masters—he strikes me as the calm and steady type. He didn’t even flinch when he drugged me.

“It’s been twelve hours,” someone whispers.

A girl.

“Or are you already dead?”

I peek through my lashes, unsurprised that the room is dark and damp. Isn’t that basic serial killer 101? Concrete floor, cement-block walls painted light gray. There’s shelving off to the side, big metal racks, and not much else. And then I locate the source of the breathing, and the voice.

My heart skips.

“Whitney?” I mumble. My mouth is so dry, I can barely talk.

She nods frantically and scoots closer. “Yeah. God, I am— No, sorry, I was about to say I’m happy to see you. But that just means you’re stuck in this hell with me, and I don’t want that on anyone.”

I blink a few times and finally work up the nerve to push myself into a sitting position. My wrists aren’t bound, but there are marks on them from the zip ties. I draw my legs in close and immediately flinch at the scrape of metal against the floor.

There’s a cuff around my ankle.

Acidic bile rises up my throat.

“I’m going to be sick,” I manage, rolling away from Whitney. I cough up whatever’s in my stomach—not much, if it really has been twelve hours since Masters took me. Bitter, acidic bile.

“He left water,” she says. “Here, lean back.”

I shuffle back until my shoulder blades touch the wall, and I sag against it. She hands me a small tin cup half full of water and helps me take a sip. Then two.

I wave her off.

She doesn’t look good. Her hair is dirty, pulled back away from her face but greasy. There’s blood crusted on her temple, a dried trail of it running down and staining her shirt collar.

“It’s freezing,” I say.

She nods, then glances up. “I don’t know where we are.”

I reach for her hands. They’re ice, too. She’s not dressed much better than me: socks, at least, and pants. No jacket.