CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Amber’s eyelids fluttered open, the hope that it was all a nightmare dissipating instantly with the dull throb in her ankle. She winced as she shifted on the cot, the old wooden frame creaking under her weight. She had tried to keep track of time, counting the seconds and minutes in her head, but despair made a poor timekeeper. She was sure that it must have been a full day now, some twenty-four hours since she’d become a prisoner in this forsaken place.

She had managed to nibble on some chips, the salt stinging her dry lips, and to take small sips of water that tasted like plastic. The meager provisions on that shelf, those half-empty bottles of water and crumpled bags of junk food, were the only things keeping her from complete dehydration and starvation. She had conserved as much as possible, acutely aware that every bite and swallow might need to last an unknown stretch of time.

The light from the kerosene lantern flickered, casting erratic shadows across barren shelves. Its brightness was dwindling again, mirroring her own sense of hope. She knew she should get up and tend to the flame before it died out completely, leaving her in darkness. But her body felt heavy, leaden with dejection. And when Amber attempted to move, pain shot up her leg from her sprained ankle, anchoring her back to the cot. A sigh escaped her lips, not just for the physical hurt, but for the ache of realizing she was well and truly trapped.

Images of her own life – her family, her friends, the animals she cared for – flashed before her eyes, each image a reminder of everything she stood to lose. She wondered if anyone was looking for her. Trentville was small; someone should have noticed her absence by now. But what if no one was looking? What if her disappearance had slipped through the cracks of daily life?

No doubt Dr. Reynolds would be covering her shift at Paws and Harmony Rescue. Guilt, irrational yet sharp, jabbed at her conscience. She knew it was ludicrous to feel responsible for abandoning responsibilities when she herself had been taken against her will. But rationality had little place here in this flickering light.

She pictured Liam, with his earnest eyes and the soft way he’d say her name, like it was a secret only they shared. How he must be worried, pacing the length of his dorm room, unable to concentrate on the biological diagrams that usually captivated him.

And then there was Jason, whose image brought an involuntary shiver despite the room’s chill. His hands, once familiar and comforting, now seemed foreign, belonging to a past life she had willingly left behind.

Would her absence forge a truce between the Jason and Liam, uniting them in a cause greater than their own needs, desires, and jealousies? Would they both be searching for her? Would they have enlisted others?

The lantern sputtered, reminding her of its dwindling life, she forced herself to focus on practical matters. She mustered the strength to hobble over and tend to it, knowing that the darkness would only amplify her fears. She reached for the kerosene can, the metallic scent filling her nostrils as she poured the liquid with painstaking care. She fumbled to raise the wick higher, coaxing a steadier flame from the lantern.

Collapsing back onto the cot, Amber closed her eyes, trying to shut out the world and the crushing reality of her captivity. She lay there, a captive not only of the root cellar but of her spiraling thoughts and mounting dread.

The memory of her last conversation with Jason made her wince. His voice, once so familiar and warm, had turned cold as he processed her engagement to another man. She could still hear the crack in his tone when she’d told him about Liam, the raw edge of betrayal that she never intended to inflict. Would he care enough to raise the alarm for her, or would his anger cloud his concern?

Her thoughts shifted to her father, the confrontation in Otto’s Auto Repair shop replaying in her mind. His words had cut deeper than she would have admitted, branding her choices as mistakes. “A bad investment,” he had called her, his disappointment sharp as shattered glass. Could he look past his own hurt to realize she was missing? Or had she become just another failed project to him, easily dismissed and forgotten? Was her mother angry enough to simply follow her husband’s lead?

Amber’s heart ached at the thought, the weight of their judgments heavier than the stones that entombed her. The air in the cellar felt thick, suffocating, as if every breath was laced with the dust of crushed dreams. She pulled the thin blanket tighter around her shoulders, seeking warmth where there was none to be found. The idea of rescue seemed more like a mirage now, a cruel trick played by her desperate mind.

She sank back onto the cot, her mind a battleground between reason and paranoia. As much as she tried to dismiss the idea, part of her couldn’t help but wonder if she had violated some unspoken rule by daring to dream beyond the confines of her old life. Perhaps small-town expectations had roots deeper than she’d ever imagined, entangling her in a web of duty and tradition she hadn’t seen until now. Was it wrong to want more than the life laid out before her in Trentville?

Could the rage she had ignited in Jason and her father have set this sinister sequence into motion? She scolded herself for even entertaining the notion. It was ludicrous to believe that their anger could translate into such a cruel fate. She missed them both, despite everything. And Liam—her beacon of hope for a different life—how could love for him be a mistake? The very thought felt like a betrayal of their plans, their shared dreams.

Clarity began to seep through the cracks of her despair. No, the fault lay not with her, but with the madman who saw her as someone else, someone named Lisa.

“Stop it,” she whispered fiercely to herself, fighting to suppress the tears that threatened to spill.

Her heart knew the truth—she wasn’t responsible for the twisted delusions of her captor. Jason, with his mechanic’s hands stained with grease, and her father, whose stern demeanor masked a lifetime of sacrifice, were far removed from this nightmare. Neither Jason nor her father were men capable of such atrocity. They were just hurt, not monsters. In the oppressive darkness of her confinement, fear had a way of distorting every thought.

Amber’s senses sharpened to the subtle sounds filtering through the heavy wooden door of her confinement. The rustling of leaves, an owl’s distant hoot—they were life’s whispers from the world outside. Her heart clung to these slender threads of hope as she lay there, entombed in a purgatory of earth and timber. Then, breaking into the night’s chorus, came the unmistakable crunch of footsteps on the dry earth, growing steadily louder.

A spark of hope ignited within her chest; perhaps this was the moment of her deliverance. But as quickly as it had flared, the hope extinguished when the hoarse, semi-whispering voice slipped through the cracks of that door.

“How are you, Lisa? Is your ankle still hurting? I hope it’s feeling better.”

“Please,” she called out, trying to inject a firmness she didn’t feel into her voice. “My name is Amber Stevens. You’ve got the wrong person. I’m not Lisa.”

The voice fell silent, and Amber could sense eyes scrutinizing her from the darkness beyond the peephole—a voyeur to her suffering. She felt naked under that gaze, stripped of her identity and dressed in another’s skin by a madman’s delusion. The vaguely familiar timbre of the voice scratched at the edges of her memory, but like a word on the tip of the tongue, it remained elusive. It was a cruel game, being haunted by recognition without revelation.

“Please,” she repeated, her voice barely above a whisper now, “I don’t belong here. You’ve made a mistake. I’m not who you’re looking for.”

Amber’s breaths came in shallow gasps, the musty air of the cellar heavy in her lungs. “I’ll do anything,” she pleaded, her voice trembling against the thick silence that followed her captor’s question. “Just let me go—I swear I won’t tell anyone about this. Please!”

“You wound me with your lies,” the voice on the other side of the door rebuked softly, the words slithering into the cellar like a cold draft. “Why do you keep saying you’re not Lisa? Don’t you remember us, the love we shared?”

Her heart pounded a frenetic rhythm as she pressed her back against the damp stone wall, seeking support where there was none. She struggled to find a grip on reality amid the chaos of her thoughts. “I am Amber Stevens,” she insisted, her voice cracking under the strain. “I don’t know any Lisa. You have to believe me.”

“Lisa,” he continued, ignoring her protests, “we both made mistakes. You shouldn’t have left me, and my anger... it was unforgivable. But I’ve waited so long for you to come back to me.”

Amber’s mind raced, trying to piece together the delusion that held her captive. She shook her head, strands of hair sticking to her tear-stained cheeks. “There’s been some mistake,” she said again, forcing calm into her tone. “I’m not the person you think I am.”

Amber’s breath caught in her throat as the voice on the other side of the thick, wooden door twisted again into a lament. “It breaks my heart each time you deny it, Lisa.” His words were steeped in a sorrow that seemed almost genuine, yet they sent icy tendrils of fear slithering down her spine.

“Tomorrow,” he continued, his tone suddenly chillingly calm, “I’ll be back. Maybe then you’ll remember us... remember me.” There was a pause, and then his confession spilled forth like dark oil. “I’ve killed you twice already, and I’d hate to do it again. But tomorrow, Lisa, the choice is yours.”

Amber recoiled from the door, horror gripping her as she processed his words. An involuntary scream tore from her lips. “What do you mean you’ve killed me? I’m not Lisa! Please, come back!” Her pleas echoed off the cold cellar walls, desperate for him to hear her, to understand.

“Please,” she called out again, her voice breaking, “just tell me what you want! We can fix this, I promise!”

But there was only silence, followed by the fading sound of his retreating footsteps. She knew then that he had gone, leaving her alone with the weight of his madness pressing down upon her.

Amber drew a shuddering breath, her mind racing with the echoes of the madman’s confession. Lying there on the cot, the rough fabric scratching at her skin, she was painfully aware of every ache in her body, and the dim light of the lantern cast long shadows across the stone walls.

That bizarre conversation with her captor played on a loop in her mind. He had sounded almost tender when he called her “Lisa,” a jarring contrast to the terror he instilled in her. She couldn’t understand why he refused to accept her identity, why he was so convinced she was someone else. Who was Lisa to him? And why did it matter so much that he would go to such lengths to keep her here?

“Lisa,” he had called her. Not once, but insistently, as if trying to will her into being someone else. The thought sent a chill through her despite the stagnant air of the root cellar. Could she become this Lisa, if only to survive? Could she weave herself into his delusions and find a way out?

Her heart drummed in her chest at the prospect. To play the part of a dead woman, to convince a killer of her authenticity—it was a gambit fraught with peril. Yet what choice did she have? The alternative was to remain just the woman he held captive, the woman he believed he had already killed twice.

She found herself replaying the man’s earlier visit, and remembering another name he had mentioned. “Would you prefer that I call you Nancy?” he had asked.

What had he meant by that? It had almost sounded like a joke at the time. Did that name have any importance for the ruse she was desperately considering?

She moved cautiously, wincing as her sprained ankle protested, and pulled herself up into a sitting position. Her eyes traced the contours of the cellar, taking in the details as if they might hold the key to her performance. She would need to be convincing to inhabit the character fully. It was a role she never wished to audition for, yet now it could mean the difference between life and death.

Tomorrow, her captor would return, expecting Lisa. And she would be waiting, armed with nothing but desperation and a fragile ruse.