"Think Twice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Scottoline Lisa)

Chapter Two

Bennie woke up, groggy. She opened her eyes but everything stayed pitch black. She didn’t know where she was. She seemed to be lying down. Where was the kitchen? The house? Alice? She couldn’t see anything. Was she asleep? She got up and slam!

“Ow!” she heard herself say, momentarily stunned. She slumped backwards, hitting the back of her head. On what? Where was she? Was she dreaming? Was she awake? One question chased the next in a crazy circle. It was so dark. If she was asleep, it was time to wake up.

She raised her hand and bam! Her fingers hit something hard, above her. She flashed on the dinner with Alice. That had happened, hadn’t it? She hadn’t dreamed it, had she? Her face had fallen onto the table, hitting her cheek.

Give it up. It’s over.

Bennie tried to remember. Had she heard that? Had Alice said that? What the hell? Where was she? The only sound was her own breathing. She raised her arms, cautiously, and hit the thing on top of her. She felt along its surface with her fingertips. It was solid. Coarse. She pressed but it didn’t move. She knocked it and heard a rap, like wood. It felt like a top.

A lid.

She didn’t get it. She couldn’t process it. Her arms were at an angle. The wood was less than a foot from her face. She flattened her arms against her sides. There was another surface under her fingertips, behind her. She spread her arms, running them along the surface behind her. More wood? She shifted her weight down, shimmying on her back. Her toes hit something. Her feet were bare, her shoes gone. She pointed her toes against whatever she had reached. It seemed like a bottom.

It’s a box. Am I in a box?

She didn’t understand. It couldn’t be. She touched along her body from her neck to her knees. She had on her suit from work. Her skirt felt torn. Her knees hurt. There was wetness there. Blood? She told herself not to panic. The air felt close. She squinted against the darkness, but it was absolute.

She felt the lid. Her thoughts raced ahead of her fingers. The top was sealed. There was nothing inside the box. No air, food, water. No hole to breathe through. She forced herself to stay calm. She needed to understand what was going on. It wasn’t a dream, it was real. She couldn’t believe it and she could, both at once. Was she really in a box? Would Alice come get her out? Would anybody else?

A sense of dread crept over her. She hadn’t told anybody at the office where she was going. It was Friday night, and the associates had scattered. DiNunzio had taken Judy Carrier home to her parents’ for dinner. Anne Murphy was out of the country for summer vacation, as was Lou Jacobs, her firm’s investigator. Bennie’s best friend, Sam Freminet, was in Maui, and she wasn’t close to anybody else. Nobody would realize that she was missing until Monday morning.

She exploded in panic, yelling and pounding the lid with both hands. It didn’t budge. She kept pounding with all her might, breaking a sweat. The lid still didn’t move. She felt the seams with shaking fingers. She couldn’t tell how it was sealed. She didn’t hear a nail or anything else give way.

She pushed and pounded, then started kicking, driving her bare toes into the lid. It didn’t move but she kept going, powered by sheer terror, and in the next minute she heard herself screaming, even though the words shamed her.

“Please, Alice, help!”