Truth or Lies? by A. Gomez (book club recommendations txt) 📗

where I was. I looked to my left and Betty Lou was still sound asleep. The clock on the nightstand next to her read five in the morning. Four hours of sleep… I’d only had four hours of sleep and yet I felt like I couldn’t sleep anymore. I rubbed my eyes, feeling tense. I was too worried for Betty. I was worried Chang would take her away from me and I wouldn’t be able to protect her. The thought of someone touching her inappropriately was nauseating. I still had my gun hidden. Could I use that to shoot our way out of there? I didn’t know how many bullets I had left in the magazine. Surely not enough. I shook my head at my wayward thoughts. I’d just get us all killed if I went all John Wayne on us. “Think of Josh,” I whispered to myself.

“Who’s Josh?” Lilly was awake

“Oh, hi.” I sat up in bed so I could see her better.

“You said, ‘think of Josh.’ Who’s Josh?”

“Josh is someone I care about very deeply.” I touched my necklace reflexively.

“Does he know you’re here?”

“Yes, he does.”

“Then he’ll get the police and they’ll come to rescue us.”

“Well, he doesn’t know where here is, unfortunately. He just knows I’m with these bad people.” I eyed Lilly curiously. “Lilly, perhaps you can help me. How can I get to a phone or some sort of tablet or something so I can communicate with Josh? Do you think you can help me?”

“We all have cell phones and tablets but they don’t work for calling or texting or work in any way to communicate with anyone outside this house. Mr. Chang has a lot of cell phone and Wi-Fi jammers in place here. Our phones and tablets are only good for games, music and watching videos. You would need to get one of those phones that plug into a wall to actually call anyone. Plus, Miss Debbie has a lot of the chargers so I wouldn’t know if we have a charger that your phone takes.”

I blew out in exasperation. “Do you know if they even have a landline that’s working?”

“I think so. Miss Debbie has a fax machine that she’s always using but it doesn’t matter, there’s no plug-in phone that I know of.”

“Hm, maybe not, but I can definitely get a fax to someone at my office if I could just get a few minutes alone with the machine. The only problem is I don’t even know where we are. Do you?”

“I don’t either, but Mr. Hong, the nice man that delivers our groceries, he can probably tell you. You just have to make sure Miss Debbie or An don’t see you talking to him.”

My eyes bugged. “Did you say Hong? When does he come? And who is An?”

“He comes every Monday and sometimes Fridays. It all depends if we run out of food faster than normal. This is Tuesday now, so he already came. He’s nice to us. He sneaks us candy… safe candy, he calls it.” She sighed in exasperation, adding, “And An is the guy that’s always around making sure we don’t get out of line.”

That must be the man I saw with Debbie at the hospital.

“Safe candy?” I asked quizzically.

“Yeah, it’s candy that has no drugs in it so it’s safe for us to eat as much as we want.”

“Oh, my goodness, Lilly. You mean to tell me there’s candy around here that has drugs in it?” I was floored.

“Yeah, Miss Debbie has them in a bowl next to the front door and one of the back doors. It’s these little chocolate balls that Mr. Chang has her inject with some weird calming drug so we don’t freak out when we have to go to one of our appointments.”

“Do y’all eat them?” I asked.

“Some of us did when we first got here because we didn’t know better. It made a few of us sick and…” she trailed off, looking down at her hands, fidgeting with the comforter.

“And some of y’all are now addicted to the drug,” I finished her thought for her.

“Yes,” she whispered, almost embarrassed for the other girls. “They can’t stop eating it.”

“Are you addicted, Lilly?”

“No,” she croaked, trying to hold back her tears. “I have food allergies so even if I wanted to see what the drug feels like, the chocolate would kill me before the drug could even take effect.”

Relief washed through me and I went to her, hearing both relief and despair in her voice. I sat on her bed and hugged her tight in my arms, rocking her side to side. “My sweet girl, this is such a blessing in disguise. Thank the good Lord you have this condition and don’t think twice about it.” I pulled away to gaze at her. Tears were spilling down her cheeks. “I bet you’re grateful and upset all at the same time, aren’t you?”

She nodded.

“I bet you’re wishin’ you could see what chocolate tastes like, but at the same time, you’re glad that you couldn’t at that moment.”

She nodded, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.

“Sweet girl, I can make you some chocolate that you can eat. I used to have food allergies too and my mama taught me how to modify recipes and almost anything else so I can try different foods too.” I wiped her tears with my thumbs. “Would that be okay with you? Just tell me your allergies and I’ll go from there.”

She nodded, smiling at me. “Betty Lou was right. You are really nice.” She gazed down at her fingers. “I wish you would’ve been here when I first got here so you could’ve killed Gator Leg then.”

I tilted my head to one side, smirking. “Did you just call Frank Gator Leg?”

She nodded,