The Silent Girl

whom? What’s out there?”
    Iris did not answer. In the silence, Jane felt, rather than heard, the brush of air against her cheek, as though the wind had whispered into the room and was stirring the darkness.
Something else is here with us
.
    She heard the soft clatter of handcuffs falling free. And a whisper: “Apologies,
Sifu
. I would have come sooner.”
    “My sword?”
    “Here is Zheng Yi. I found it upstairs.”
    Jane knew that voice. “Bella?”
    A hand was pressed across her lips and Iris murmured: “Stay.”
    “You can’t leave me like this!”
    “You’re safer here.”
    “At least cut me free!”
    “No,” said Bella. “She’ll just cause trouble.”
    “And if you fail?” said Jane. “I’ll be trapped down here, and I won’t be able to defend myself. At least give me a fighting chance!”
    She felt a tug on her hands, heard the hiss of the blade slicing through her duct tape bindings. Another slice freed her ankles. “Remember,” Iris whispered into her ear. “This is not your battle.”
    It is now
. But Jane stayed silent and still as the two women melted into the darkness. She could neither see nor hear their departure; all she sensed was the kiss of air again, as if they had dissolved into wind and had whispered through the door and up the stairs.
    Jane tried to rise to her feet, but dizziness sent her staggering blindly in the dark. She sat back down again, her skull aching frombeing dropped on concrete. That and the lingering effects of the drug left her weak. She reached out, felt the wall nearby, and once again tried to stand, this time propping herself, as unsteady as a newborn foal.
    A gunshot made her chin snap up.
    I can’t be trapped down here, she thought. I have to get out of this house.
    She felt her way to the door. It was unlocked and softly creaked open. Somewhere upstairs, she heard heavy footsteps running. Two more gunshots.
    Get out now. Before the men come back for you
.
    She started up steps, moving slowly, afraid to make a sound. Afraid to alert anyone to her presence. Without a weapon, without any way to defend herself, she could not join this fight. She was the noncombatant trying to slip through a war zone to safety, wherever that might be. Find the exit, get out of the house. She didn’t have her car keys, so she’d have to run to the neighbors. She tried to picture the property. Remembered the long driveway, the woods and lawns and the tall hedge that surrounded it all. By daylight, it had looked like a private garden of Eden, enclosed to keep the world out. Now she knew that the gate, with its spiked posts, was not meant just to keep people out, but also to keep them in. This was no garden of Eden; it was a death camp.
    She reached the top of the stairs and felt another closed door. Pressing her ear against it, she heard nothing. The silence was unnerving. How many gunshots had there been? At least three, she thought, enough to have taken down both Iris and Bella. Were the women lying dead, beyond that door? Were Patrick and Mark now on their way back to the cellar to find her?
    Her hand was slick with sweat as she grasped the knob. The door swung open soundlessly, to darkness that was every bit as thick as in the cellar. She could not make out any shapes or shadows. This floor, too, was concrete, and as she slowly inched her way across it, arms outstretched for unseen obstacles, she heard something small andmetallic skitter away from her shoe. She collided with an edge that hit her hip and she halted, trying to discern what it was. It felt like a table, coated with dust. Jagged metal suddenly bit her fingers and she pulled back, startled. It was a table saw. She shifted a few feet farther into the darkness and hit another obstacle. This time, a drill press. This was Patrick’s woodworking shop. She stood among the power tools, thinking of saw blades and drills, wondering if mahogany and maple were the only things this equipment had sliced into.
    Renewed panic sent her fumbling in the darkness for a way out. She touched a wall and followed it to a corner.
    More gunshots. Four in a row.
Get out, get out!
    At last she located the door and wasted no time slipping through it, to find yet another set of steps to climb. How far belowground had she been?
    Deep enough so that no one would have heard my screams
.
    At the top of the stairs, she exited through a door and found herself in a carpeted hallway. Here she could barely make out shapes in the darkness,