Behind Closed Doors (Season One: Book 7) (Jessica Daniel) (27 page)

It was only when Jessica felt the patter on her arms that she realised it was raining. She wondered if whoever had brought her out here might change their mind, or at least take her somewhere
dry, but they kept their grip firmly on the band of her trousers.

Water began leaking through the canvas, soaking her head, making the material stick to her skin. Breathing was instantly harder, every mouthful offering a taste of the roughness of the sack
instead of the air she craved.

Stay calm.

Jessica’s foot rattled into something solid and she felt the hand holding her, preventing her from falling over the top of it.

‘Sit.’

Jessica had never realised how hard it could be to perform such a simple task without the use of her hands. She turned around, trying to lower herself, but couldn’t stabilise her body
enough to stop herself falling backwards. Her backside hit the wood hard, her trousers absorbing the wetness of what felt like a tree trunk. Again, she felt the hand on her, gripping her tightly
and preventing her tumbling.

She sat, waiting for further instructions, listening to the noises around her, unable to distinguish if the sound of footsteps came from one person or half-a-dozen. It felt as if people were
circling her but it was difficult to be sure because the rain was tinkling from all of the surfaces around her. It took her a few moments to realise that whatever additional sounds there had been
were now gone.

Still it rained.

‘Hello?’ Jessica said, unable to fight the panic she had been suppressing. She started to stand but could not get enough leverage through her legs without using her arms. There was
still a dull ache at the back of her knees from where she had been kicked at the top of the stairs.

Jessica could hear nothing but drizzle, licking the trees, pounding the bark, soaking the soil. As a shiver tore through her, she gasped in shock as the hood was snatched away in one clean
movement. She hadn’t felt anyone loosening it at the back, which left her wondering if it was ever as tight as she’d thought.

Crisp, cold air filled her lungs making her cough viciously. She couldn’t see anything other than a bright white light. She blinked quickly to try to clear the mixture of pain and
confusion. Slowly, the scene drifted into view, silhouetted tree trunks and low-hanging branches encircling a clearing.

Someone walked around the stump she was sitting on, their hazy outline gradually becoming a man: short, thickset, big arms.

Glenn said nothing, standing imposingly over her, waiting.

‘My wrists hurt,’ Jessica said.

He didn’t move.

Jessica tried flexing her fingers again but it felt like somebody was stabbing something sharp into them.

Glenn’s eyes flickered over her head before quickly focusing on her again. She could sense a person – or people – behind her.

‘What is your name?’ Glenn eventually said, his words dissolving away with the rain.

‘You know my name.’

He didn’t move, arms clamped to his side, eyes fixed. Jessica couldn’t stop herself shivering, rain streaming down her back, her clothes and hair sticking to her.

‘What is your name?’ he repeated.

‘Jessica Compton.’

Could he know she was lying?

‘Why are you here?’

‘I’m not sure. Zipporah invited me.’

A slight shake of the head. ‘Why are you here?’

‘I’ve had problems, with my dad, with my life. Zipporah said she could help.’

‘You’re not answering the question.’

‘I am!’ Glenn seemed unaffected by the weather but Jessica’s teeth were chattering. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say,’ she added, unable to stop the
frustration creeping into her voice.

‘I want you to tell me why you’re here.’

‘Because I need help.’

‘How?’

‘Zipporah listened to me in Manchester when I told her about my dad and my baby. She said there was a safe place I could come where other people like me lived together peacefully and
everybody helped everyone else. I thought it sounded right for me.’

‘You’ve still not answered the question.’

‘I have!’

Jessica didn’t know what he wanted to hear. Her reason for coming had been because Cole and Charley thought she was the person they had been looking for. She couldn’t tell Glenn that
– but the truth was Zipporah had been persuasive. She listened without making judgements about Jessica’s character, without that stupid tilt to her head that everyone seemed to have
when they were trying to be sympathetic. Jessica had spent months shying away from talking about her problems and yet, ultimately, that was what had brought her here.

‘I wanted to be helped,’ Jessica said, suddenly realising it was the answer he wanted. It wasn’t even false.

This time Glenn nodded. ‘Have you been?’

It sounded like such a ridiculous question considering the situation she was in. She remembered sitting in the rain before being allowed into the house. Since then it had been an endless stream
of initiations: the trust exercise by the fireplace, being groped, ignored, given tough manual labour with an impossible target, denied access to the outside world and left unsettled by the lack of
a clock or calendar.

This was the final insult, something that apparently built character by breaking you down first.

It dawned on Jessica that it had simply made her more determined to do what she always did: win. If that could be described as helping then so be it.

‘Yes,’ she replied.

‘How?’

‘Being with everyone has helped me see things differently.’

It was the truth: mainly she had seen how vulnerable people could be manipulated.

‘Why do you think we have brought you out here?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I asked you why you
thought
we’d brought you here, not if you knew.’

Glenn’s relentlessness was so intense that Jessica felt more intimidated by him than ever, especially with her arms still tied behind her. She was at his mercy and yet, so far, all he had
done was talk.

‘I think it’s because you’re a bully.’

Jessica wanted a reaction but the one that came wasn’t what she expected. Glenn flicked his head upwards, signalling to whoever was behind her.

Jessica heard a shuffling sound, turning to see Ali emerge from the shadows behind, the dim light of the moon glinting a dangerous white from the blade of the knife in his hand.

He crossed to Glenn, handing him the knife and then spinning around to face Jessica. For a moment, he said nothing, his eyes scanning her up and down, before he uttered five words that Jessica
had dreaded hearing since the day she had entered the house.

‘We know who you are.’

Jessica couldn’t take her eyes from the blade. Glenn was moving it from one hand back to the other, his attention now on the blade instead of her. As he twisted it
around, the light caught the edge, reflecting chillingly through the rain towards her.

‘Thank you, Ali,’ Glenn said.

Ali couldn’t meet her eyes either and Jessica was left staring at them, the only sound being the slowing rain.

How could they know who she was? Charley had suggested she could use a fake name to get into the house but Jessica knew she would never be able to remember to answer to anything other than her
own. ‘Jessica Compton’ was close enough, the name she should have had if it wasn’t for an administrative error in Las Vegas. It didn’t mean anything to anyone else other
than her and Adam. No one at the house had asked for any sort of identification, or taken anything from her with her name on. The only way they could have found out who she was would have been if
they somehow knew her real last name. Then they could have discovered pictures of her on the Internet as Jessica Daniel, found out what she did and who she worked for.

‘Why are we here, Ali?’ Jessica asked, thinking he would be the more approachable of the two. ‘Why have you got a knife?’

He glanced towards Glenn, who replied: ‘You’ve been asking too many questions – querying our methods and our ways. It has been noticed.’

Jessica knew it had to have been Heather who had gone to either Moses or Glenn. Strangely, Jessica didn’t feel angry with her. She was a young girl who had been through a lot and then
ended up being manipulated by Moses. He didn’t love her; he probably didn’t love anyone except himself. But he was happy to leave that hope hanging for all the girls, presumably to
engineer moments where people would come to him and tell him anything untoward they had seen.

She wondered if he was still behind her, waiting in the woods, keeping to the shadows, ready to announce himself. It seemed his way to get other people to do the dirty work for him.

Heather was someone who had never been given a chance to grow up. She wanted to be loved to make up for her loss but she was never going to find that here, even if Ali had a thing for her. If
anything ever happened between them, Moses would probably do everything he could to stop it, perhaps even make a new rule that people in the house could not partner with anyone else unless they
were married. No doubt he would find a reason why it corrupted the mind.

‘Why are you here, Ali?’ Jessica asked, trying to speak in a slightly higher tone, sounding girly and vulnerable.

Glenn answered for him. ‘He has to learn the ropes.’

As he spoke, Jessica attempted to wriggle her wrists, hoping that by some miracle the plastic ties had been affected by the rain. If anything they felt tighter, cutting and digging into her
flesh.

‘The ropes for what?’

‘How things work around here.’

‘How do they work?’

Glenn didn’t reply at first, while the sprinkling of rain ended as suddenly as it had begun. For a couple of seconds there was silence and then isolated spots began dribbling from leaves
overhead, patting the already sodden ground in a disjointed symphony.

It felt like he was waiting for a silence that didn’t come, staring at the blade in his hand as Ali carefully looked on.

‘I’m not sure you’re in a position to be asking questions,’ he eventually replied.

‘What are you going to do to me?’

Glenn ignored her query, asking his own. ‘Why
have
you been asking questions?’

‘Because this place is new to me. I want to fit in but the only way I can do that is by figuring out how everything works.’

Glenn crouched, picking up a piece of wood from the floor and running the blade along its length. ‘Why are you really here?’

‘I told you, I want to be helped.’

‘Who do you work for?’

‘I work in a post office. Worked. Now I work with you outdoors in the gardens.’

Jessica thought of Ali’s statement – ‘we know who you are’. If that was really true, there would be no need for any of this. Surely she’d already be dead?

‘You’re lying,’ Glenn said, not looking up.

‘I’m not.’

Three more times he asked variations of the same questions, asking what her name was, where she came from, what she did and why she was there.

Then he came to the question Jessica suspected was the reason why she was there: ‘What did you tell the police this morning?’

‘I told them I didn’t really know Wayne as I had only been here for a few days.’

‘Did they ask if you saw him leave?’

‘I said that I hadn’t. That’s the truth, isn’t it?’

Jessica didn’t expect a reply and she didn’t get one. ‘Did they offer you anything for information?’

‘What information? I don’t know anything.’

Glenn peered up from the blade, dropping the wood and stepping closer. Ali was a little behind him but Jessica could tell he was nervous from the way his arms were crossed. He wasn’t as
ruthless as Glenn in any sense, so if he appeared worried, then she should be.

‘That wasn’t the question I asked,’ Glenn said.

‘Sorry, I know. They didn’t offer me anything.’

‘Did they ask you about individual people within the house?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who?’

‘You.’

Jessica expected a reaction and, although Glenn tried to hide it, he couldn’t prevent one of his eyelids from twitching. He passed the knife from one hand to the other and half-turned to
look at Ali. Jessica saw the widening of Glenn’s eyes, the annoyance. He didn’t say anything but the expression said it all: ‘I told you so’.

He twisted back to Jessica, trying to seem as calm as before, but he was standing a little straighter, rattled. ‘What did you tell them?’

‘I said you worked outdoors.’

‘What else?’

‘That you were married to someone called Naomi. That’s it, I don’t know anything else.’

‘Did you tell them about what happened with Wayne?’

When you assaulted him?

‘Moses explained to me what had happened. I didn’t say anything.’

A hush fell across the woods as the last few raindrops hit the ground. Jessica was freezing and couldn’t stop herself from shivering. There was an itch at the centre of her forehead that
she couldn’t raise her hands to touch. The best she could do was crinkle up her skin in an effort to make it go away.

‘What are you doing?’ Glenn asked.

‘I need to scratch my head.’

Jessica hoped either of them would show some sort of sympathy by cutting her free or, at the absolute least, scratching it for her. Neither of them moved.

‘Who else did they ask about?’

‘Moses.’

‘What did you say?’

‘That he seemed like a good man. That he was well respected and helped a lot of people.’

‘Who else?’

‘Zipporah – I told them she was a good listener and had brought me here.’

‘Anything else?’

‘I don’t know anything else.’

‘What did you tell them about the house?’

‘Nothing, they didn’t ask.’

This conversation made Jessica even more certain that the room she had been in with Charley wasn’t bugged. It would have made things a lot easier if they had known that at the time.

Glenn motioned for Ali to come to him and they turned their backs, facing into the darkness of the woods. Jessica could hear their voices but they were speaking far too quietly for her to catch
individual words. When they turned around, the knife was in Ali’s hand again.