Trials and Errors (7 page)

I’m actually going to do this, aren’t I? I’m going to put on these clothes and follow Mat out of this house and leave behind the only person who truly loves me without so much as a by-your-leave. What will I do then? How will I survive on my own?

His hands had fastened his jeans for him while he’d been thinking.

You think too much, Douglas, always
think
too much.

Mat kept Dougie’s socks for himself, thick warm wool, but it wasn’t as if Dougie would need them with the leather sneakers Mat was handing him. He took them numbly. Put them on himself because he didn’t think he could bear Mat doing it for him. His jacket next, warm but lightweight down. It didn’t escape his notice that he was bundled up to his eyeballs and Mat was still naked. Well, except for Dougie’s socks.

Protecting you, he’s protecting you. Willing to freeze so you don’t.

That thought warmed him better than the clothes ever could. Scared the fucking shit out of him, too. There had to be a reason Mat was doing that. Had to be something he wanted, something he needed. He’d kept Dougie around all these years as a post-fighting-days meal ticket, Dougie knew that. No other reason to put up with him. So why was he being so selfless now?

You
think
too much, Douglas.

Yeah. He knew that. He just didn’t know how to shut it off; only Nikolai had ever managed to silence the storms that raged in his head.

He scrubbed his face with both hands and stood up from the bed, waited for Mat to show him what to do next. If he could just . . .
obey
, follow orders, trust and be patient and wait, then maybe everything would be okay. Somehow.

Mat nodded at him and handed him the two jagged sticks. Or tried to. Dougie wouldn’t take them. There wasn’t one person in this house he would be willing to use them on, not for himself, not for Mat, not for anything.

Finally, Mat sighed around the gag and laid them on the little round table. Then he stripped the blanket and top sheet from the bed, laid the top sheet aside, and folded the blanket into some insanely complicated toga-like thing that left his arms and legs free for fighting and running and wouldn’t trip him up during either. The sheet he folded down small and handed to Dougie. In case they froze, he supposed. Dougie tucked it into his jacket and looked to Mat—
Is that right? Is that okay?
Mat nodded again. Pulled his lips back from the gag in what Dougie thought might be a smile. Clapped him once on a down-poofy shoulder, and retrieved his
yantok
sticks.

Then he crept back to the door, opened it, and peeked down the darkened hall.

Mat nearly melted with relief when Dougie followed him into the hallway. To be honest, even after getting him dressed, Mat still hadn’t been sure that he would.

He tightened his grip on the makeshift
yantok
sticks and squinted into the dark. Saw nothing, heard nothing, sensed no one but Dougie at his back, crying softly though God knew why. They were getting out of here. That was something to celebrate, not mourn.

Or had Nikolai already fucked with his head so badly that he thought he’d miss this place?

Mat couldn’t afford to think about that possibility right now. Not how true it probably was, not how big a role he himself had no doubt played in it, not how he’d ever figure out how to make things right again. He needed to be sharp now. Alert. Keep them alive and get them the fuck off this mountain. He could deal with the fallout
after
they were both safe. Right after he found a knife or scissors or something to cut this fucking gag off his face. It wasn’t just about how uncomfortable it was, or how it constantly left him feeling on the edge of choking, or how it made it hard to breathe every time he looked at Dougie broken and begging and he teared up too. No, it was how fucking close to
shattering
Dougie was, and how much Mat needed to be able to talk to him, talk him down, tell him everything he should’ve said that awful, awful night with Mr. Baseball Bat.

Fix things. He had to fucking fix things.

Somehow.

God, they’d work it out, they always had. Mat refused to believe that this was less fixable than the deaths of their parents or Dougie being taken into foster care. He just needed to be able to talk. To comfort Dougie in a way that touches couldn’t.

He looked over his shoulder again. Dougie was still behind him, eyes wet and shining in the dim light that streaked out from under the door at the top of the stairs. Would that door be unlocked too? Were they that lucky? God, were they lucky at all, or was this some kind of fucking trick? Would there be attack dogs at the top of the stairs, waiting to tear them apart for their betrayal?

No. We’re too expensive for that.

Still, he didn’t trust it. Couldn’t.

Maybe Nikolai would be waiting at the top of the stairs. Or the guards. Only one way to find out though, and at this point, they didn’t have much more to lose and a whole hell of a lot to gain.

How much more could Nikolai punish them? Could that ever outweigh their chance at freedom? Mat cast one more look at Dougie over his shoulder, still fucking
crying
(although at least he was doing it quietly)—just at the thought of leaving this place?—and decided it was worth the risk. Because it was either risk it, or leave Dougie to lose himself entirely. Tonight, Dougie had refused to rape him. Would he do the same again tomorrow?

Mat crept up the stairs, shifted both sticks into one hand, and put out his other hand to signal for Dougie to wait below while Mat put his ear to the door. No sounds of stirring at all.

Okay. Here goes. Lady Luck, don’t fail me now.

Mat took the knob in hand.

Turned it.

Raised his weapons.

The door swung open, revealing . . . nothing at all of note. An empty cupboard, and outside of that, an empty hall. He gestured to Dougie to climb the stairs, stared out at the hall again. Right or left? Mat barely remembered the house’s layout, and turned to Dougie for help. He needed to get this fucking gag off. He pointed at the straps. Made a scissoring motion with his hand.

“The kitchen?” Dougie whispered back. “Left.”

So Mat turned left, but froze when Dougie’s hand caught his wrist. When Mat turned to see what was the matter, Dougie shook his head until fresh tears fell. “We can’t,” he whispered. “I forgot. Jeremy.”

Jeremy must be the cook. The one who made Mat all those surprisingly not-bland meals of lean protein and complex carbs.

What, the fucking guy cooks in the middle of the night?
He was really starting to wish Dougie could muster up the energy for some full fucking sentences. It wasn’t fair to be angry at him, he knew that, but he needed more information and couldn’t ask for it, and Dougie wasn’t fucking volunteering it.

But then, suddenly, he did. “His bedroom’s off the kitchen. I . . . I’ve spent some nights there. He never shuts his door.”

Mat didn’t want to know why. He just reached out with one hand to cup Dougie’s cheek and hoped that would serve as comfort. The way Dougie closed his eyes and leaned into the touch, like some needy cat but
sexual,
somehow, made him want to pull his hand away again. But he resisted the urge.
He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He doesn’t mean it. He just . . . needs you.

And you need him, too. You can’t live without him. Not his fault he’s too fucked up to express that properly anymore.

Okay, so Mat would be stuck with the gag a little longer. Maybe there was a shed or something in the garden. Not that he wanted to put rusty gardening equipment anywhere near his face. Oh well, no point in worrying about tetanus when they hadn’t even made it out of the house yet.

Shit. Which way was out? How to ask? He tucked one stick beneath his arm and made a walking man with two fingers, mimicking going down steps with them.

“Stairs?” Dougie asked, and then his eyes lit up. “You want to go back downstairs?”

No!
Mat shook his head vehemently. Damn, well, it was hardly Dougie’s fault for not thinking of the stairs that led down to the front drive. He tried again. Drew a rectangle in the air with one finger, then mimed turning a doorknob—
The front door, kiddo, where’s the front door?
—and when Dougie just cocked his head at him like some confused dog, he tucked both sticks between his knees and wrapped his arms around his blanketed chest, shivering as if outside in the cold. Made a broad, expansive gesture for the sky.

Then took a hold of the sticks again because he felt fucking naked standing here without a weapon, never mind that he’d been trained as one himself.

And
still
Dougie didn’t seem to get it. God, how messed up was Dougie that he didn’t instinctively know where they needed to go? They were wasting fucking time here. If he didn’t figure it out soon, Mat would just have to pick a direction and hope. There had to be night guards or something prowling the halls, preventing slaves from escaping, preventing cops or even unwitting outsiders from getting in. They were running out of fucking
time
.

“Front door,” he said, trying his best to whisper through the gag, but it came out as something a little closer to
hrnt oor
. Well,
oor
rhymed with door, at least. He tried again.
Oor. Oor.

Click
, and Dougie’s addled fucking mind jumped into action. “You want to go out. A-are you sure that’s a good idea?”

Good idea? Probably not, but it’s our only option now. I have to get you out of here, good idea or not, suicide mission or not.
Mat nodded.

“Follow me,” Dougie sighed. Sniffled. Stepped forward.

Mat caught him by the arm and shook his head.
No.
Pointed.
You stay behind me.
He brandished his sticks.
If we come up against anybody, I want them tasing me first.

“Please don’t hurt anyone,” Dougie whispered, and Mat’s teeth dug so hard into the bit he hurt his fucking jaw, but Dougie slunk behind him and meekly pointed right.
Like an obedient little slave,
and that thought made Mat as sick with fury as Dougie’s twisted fucking concern for the members of this twisted fucking household. No room for anger now, though, no room—just like in a match, and God, he’d never fought one so important, except for maybe the one he’d lost against the bruisers who’d first brought them to Madame’s—so he forced it all down, buried it for later, and led Dougie right.

The hall was mostly dark, thin slivers of light spilling in from somewhere—moonlight through a window, perhaps, or maybe a guard’s flashlight. His eyes had adjusted enough to see, but just barely, and every twitch and shadow sent his heart jumping, his hands jerking with the instinct to strike. He wouldn’t have even half a second to spare if they stumbled across someone; he’d need to knock them out before they could alert anyone else, make any noise, scream for help.

But all the shadows were just shadows. No threat, no danger. Just an overactive limbic system in a house full of all-too-real horrors.

At last, the hall opened up onto the broad, fancy foyer he remembered from his first day here. He froze in the shadows of the archway, put an arm out to tuck Dougie behind him, then raised both sticks and peered ahead. The foyer was brighter, moonlight spilling in through oversized windows and reflecting off white marble tile. It was also empty. He poked his head around the edge of the wall, looked in one direction, then the other. Still no sign of anyone. Where were all the guards? Wasn’t anyone on watch? Or was Nikolai so fucking
certain
of himself that he thought he didn’t need them? Or maybe he just didn’t want the unwashed masses polluting his house.

No. This is a trap. It has to be. You’re missing something. Look again.

Except he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary on second glance, either. Or on the third. And he couldn’t cower in this fucking hallway forever. He was the one wasting time now.

He looked over his shoulder, locked eyes with Dougie, darted his gaze toward the front door and then back. Nodded once—
Are you ready?

Dougie’s chin wobbled, and the terror that bloomed in his eyes was so stark Mat was
sure
he’d rabbit. But he didn’t. Just canted his head up and held his ground despite his fear. It broke Mat’s fucking heart to think of how Nikolai had trained that discipline into him. He wished he knew what exactly Dougie was so afraid of right now. Was it the possibility of exposure, of being caught? Or was it the fear of leaving this place behind them for good?

Worry about it later, asshole. You have bigger problems right now.

Like getting the hell out of here. Speaking of which, it was time to bite the bullet. He turned back to Dougie one last time, gave him a brief, purposeful nod, and streaked across the foyer to the front door.

Unlocked. It was unlocked, too. After a long, lingering look through a decorative glass panel—
No guards, where are all the fucking
guards
?
—he threw it open.