Silent Daughter 3: Owned Read Online Free Page B

back into the chains I despise. 
    I curl up to the side, turning my back to the camera, and cry myself to sleep.

Chapter 5

    LEONARD
     
     
    I retreat to my office next to her room with the intention of watching her. One quick glance at my desk tells me that she has been in here, too. I always put my pen next to the notebook, but now I find it lying on top of it. I may have been inattentive enough to forget about locking her door, but things like this never escape my eyes. I’m a sucker for details and order.
    It doesn’t surprise me that she has been in here. It’s the natural thing to do, to snoop around your captor’s house when you are on the loose and he is gone. The computer and camera screens are password protected and have not been switched on, so while she may have had a peek inside the notebook and saw the things I have written about her in there, I can rest assured that she hasn’t found anything that would bring her real trouble.
    Yet, she will be punished for this.
    Once the picture on the screen appears, I see her lying on the bed, exactly where I left her. She is crying.
    I cannot believe how close I was to losing her. How could I have been so stupid? She could have made a run for it, hurried out onto the street, and told the very first person she encountered about the pervert who locked her up.
    She has been lying and hiding things about herself for so long, I’m sure she is a pretty good liar, and her story would have been adorned with a few little extra details that made me look even worse than the facts already do.
    It would have destroyed everything. My work with William, the Kidman deal. I would have to say goodbye to all of it, and I would be on the run again, sooner than intended.
    And I would have lost her. I know that will happen eventually, it always does. But I need to be done with her before I can let her go again.
    We are not there, yet.
    Liz moves and turns her back to me, deliberately, I am sure. She curls up into embryo position, and only the faint jerking of her body tells me that she is still crying.
    Why did she not run? I was so surprised and angry at myself for leaving her door open that I never cared to ask. She has had enough time to snoop around the house, so it doesn’t seem like she found out about the open door shortly before I came back home. Besides, she was standing in the hall as if she was waiting for me. It didn’t seem like I caught her in the act of fleeing.
    She wanted to talk to me. She expected me to react differently than I did. She thought that it was a test and that I left the door open on purpose. It flatters me that she thinks that, and I wish she was right.
    If she thought I wanted to test her with this, what should I make of the fact that she didn’t run? That she stayed with me by her own free will, but struggled and protested when I put her back into her confinement? How does all of that make sense?
    She could have left, but she didn’t, and now she is lying on her bed, crying desperately.
    I flinch in surprise when my phone rings. Who the hell could that be on a Saturday afternoon? I produce it from my pockets and check the screen. The number is hidden which makes it all the more suspicious.
    “Yes?” I answer cautiously.
    “You fucking bastard!” a hoarse and unfamiliar voice exclaims at the other end.
    “Who is this?”
    “Didn’t think I’d find you, did ya?” the caller says. His voice sounds husky and spent like that of someone who has been drinking and smoking too much his entire life. I have encountered many of the species in my life, but cannot for the life of me figure out who this one might be.
    Since he talks about finding me, he appears to be someone I would not be interested in meeting again. Someone who has a score to settle with me. There are plenty of those, too.
    “I’m sorry, buddy, you have to help me out here,” I say. “If I am supposed to be scared right now, you should, at least, let me know who you are and why you