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

Chapter Eight

Bennie lay in the box, exhausted and in pain. Pounding and screaming had burned off her panic. She swallowed hard, her mouth parched. Sweat drenched her. She’d had to go to the bathroom. She remained still, breathing shallowly. She needed to conserve her air and her energy again, so she could try harder.

She wondered where the box could be. People might hear her screaming, unless the box was in the basement of Alice’s house. It was the one place that they hadn’t gone, but Alice was way too smart for that. Alice was brilliant, despite appearances. Bennie had learned that the hard way a long time ago, when Alice played her during her murder case.

Bennie remembered how she’d started to lose her way, proving Grady right that if she took on the representation, she’d have no professional distance. She’d found out that Alice had been cheating on the murdered cop and she knew it wouldn’t have struck a sympathetic note with the jury. So Bennie did what few other criminal defense lawyers would have done. She cut her hair as short as Alice’s, and they dressed alike at trial, so they sat at counsel table side-by-side, like a double image. She figured that the jury would see the identity between them and project the goodwill that Bennie had earned onto her less likable twin. That her gambit had worked hadn’t made it any less uncharacteristic, and looking back, Bennie realized that during that trial, at some time she couldn’t pinpoint, she’d shed her own identity and merged in some uncanny way with her twin.

Now, she couldn’t believe how far it had gone. Couldn’t believe that she had ever wanted to be with Alice, much less be her. It was Bennie’s loss of perspective that had put her inside a box that was God knows where, with her very life in jeopardy.

Suddenly, in the quiet, she heard a noise, like a scratching. She waited, then heard it again. It was coming from outside the lid, right near her head. Was Alice scratching on the lid? Why? How? She listened for the noise to come again, but the only sound was her own panting. Then just as abruptly, the scratching returned.

“Stop it!” she screamed. “Let me out! What are you doing? Stop it, stop it, stop it!”

But the scratching didn’t stop, so Bennie started pounding with all of her might.