Carved in Darkness (13 page)

She shook her head, still unwilling to believe. “No. I would’ve heard—”

“He likes waitresses. Young ones with blue eyes. Spreads it around—
Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas. Sticks to small towns with podunk sheriffs who couldn’t find their asses with both hands and a map. He’s disciplined. Careful. He only takes one a year. Guess when?” he said.

His words sucked the air out of her lungs. She couldn’t breathe.
October first.
Today. He was hunting today.

“He takes them and—
poof
—they’re gone, never seen again. Frankie was number fourteen last year. My guess? He’s looking for number fifteen—if he doesn’t have her already.”

Liar. He’s a liar
. He’d say anything to get her to do what he wanted.

“How do you know? If the police can’t put it together, how did you figure it out?”

“I have unlimited resources, and I’m highly motivated.”

His answer reminded her she had no idea who or what he was. Not anymore. She turned her back on him, surprised she found her way up the last of the steps without stumbling. She turned to give him another look. “Stay away from me. Stay away from my family.”

“I’m not going anywhere. You’re going to help me.” He bared his teeth in another vicious smile. “One way or another.” He backed away from her until he was standing in the glow of the streetlamp. The sullen young boy she remembered was gone. In his place was a hardened man who would not take no for an answer.

“Oh, and a word of advice? Stop digging into my background. You’re going to get your boyfriend killed. I’m staying at the Brewster place. You want to know something, just ask.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“No. I’m warning you.”

“Don’t come back here.” She wanted to run. Instead, she crossed the porch slowly and pushed through the door. She closed it with a quiet click and engaged every lock in an impressive row of chains and deadbolts.

I’m staying at the Brewster place. You want to know something, just ask …

The Brewster place was a B&B, one street over—directly behind her house. She looked out the foyer window. He was gone.

SEVENTEEN

S
ABRINA DID HER BEST
to bury it. The fear, the worry—she tossed it in a hole she’d dug in the back of her mind and did her best to cover it up. But it was still there.

Her life was unraveling.

Valerie made dinner while she helped the twins with homework. Afterward they played Scrabble. For just a few hours, she’d tried to pretend everything was fine. She’d laughed and joked, teased and played—but every time she looked at Riley, she imagined her trapped in the dark, with nothing but the sound of her own screams and the smell of blood to reassure her she was still alive. That she hadn’t died and gone to hell.

“Mom? Can I?”

She looked up. Jason was staring at her, Scrabble tiles in his hand and a concerned look on his face. Game over, she and Jason were putting the game away while Val and Riley loaded the dishwasher. Somehow, over the years, she’d become
mom
instead of sister—a natural progression of time and the love they both felt for her.

“What’s up, kiddo?”

“I asked if I could use the car this weekend,” Jason said, tossing the handful of tiles into the box. “I asked Staci Greene to the movies.”

“Ohhh, the infamous Staci with an
i
,” she said, and Jason blushed. He was a good-looking kid with hair a few shades darker that his twin sister’s auburn color. Where Riley’s heart-shaped face was finely boned, Jason’s was more masculine, his features a bit broader. But they both had the most heart-breaking blue eyes Sabrina had ever seen. Sometimes looking into them was hard, but she did it now, ignoring the twinge of fear she felt in her gut.

“Yeah, Mom, Staci with an
i
… so, can I?”

Her hand found the lapis band around her neck and squeezed.

The look of concern on Jason’s face deepened into a scowl. “Mom, are you okay?”

She smiled again, quickly averting her eyes, concentrating instead on folding the game board and placing it in the box. Jason had always been the sensitive one. He noticed things.

“Fine.” She nodded. “I’m fine, kiddo. Long day, that’s all. If you can wrestle the keys from your sister’s iron grip, then I don’t have a problem with it.” She arched an eyebrow at him and narrowed her eyes. “You
do
understand that I expect you to treat Miss Staci with an
i
with respect, right?”

“
Mom
.”

“Just sayin’,” she said with a shrug.

“I understand. Besides, getting the keys from Ry won’t be hard. She has a date,” Jason said in a sly tone that had Sabrina’s head jerking up.

“A date. Riley has a date? With who?”

Jason cast a quick glance at the door connecting the kitchen and dining room to assure they weren’t overheard.

“Jimmy Bradshaw.”

“Jimmy? Little League Jimmy? Braceface Jimmy?” She felt marginally better.

“He’s nose ring, blue mohawk Jimmy these days. Anyway, he asked her out.” Jason didn’t seem pleased, and truthfully, neither was she.

He killed my sister …

Worry gnawed at her. Somehow she’d managed to delude herself into thinking that even though he was still out there, the man who kidnapped and tortured her had stopped with her. That he hadn’t hurt anyone else. Michael was right—she was smarter than that. “Would I be completely terrible if I asked you to push for a group outing rather than a one-on-one thing?”

Jason looked reluctant. “Me and Jimmy don’t exactly hang any-
more.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. He got all weird after he didn’t make varsity last year.” Jason put the cardboard top on the game box and put it away.

“Sounds like he needs a good friend.”

Jason laughed and shook his head. “My mom—the gun-toting humanitarian.”

“Jason.”

He rolled his eyes at her but softened it with a smile, “Okay, okay—I get it. I’ll talk to him tomorrow, see if he’s down with it.”

“Thanks, kiddo.” She leaned over and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. When she pulled back, he was giving her that look again.

“I know something’s wrong. You always do that when you’re upset,” Jason said, jamming his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

“Do what?”

“Hold on to your necklace.”

She looked down. Her hand was wrapped into a fist on her chest, the lapis band clutched tight. She hadn’t even realized she was doing it. She looked up to give Jason a half-hearted smile and a lame excuse, but she found herself alone.

EIGHTEEN

M
ICHAEL LET HIMSELF INTO
his room and locked the door before taking a quick look around. Other than fresh sheets and clean towels, the room was untouched.

He stooped and pulled out the case, set it on the bed. He punched several buttons on the coded keypad and popped its top. Guns. Laptop. Prepaid cells. Cash and documents. He bypassed it all and pulled out his binocs. He took the chair from the small writing desk and set it in front of the window before retrieving the bottle of Glenfiddich from the dresser.

Sabrina didn’t believe him. She didn’t trust him—had no reason to. Goddamn it, he’d come at her straight on, been honest, and she’d flat out refused to help him. She was the beginning, the point from which all roads led. Way he saw it, she was the reason girls were dying.

And she didn’t care.

He wasn’t surprised, though. Not really. He’d dismissed everything he’d been told about her. Lucy warned him she was different. Not just the way she looked, that
she
was different, but he hadn’t believed her.

A person couldn’t change who they were. They could break habits and make conscious decisions that altered their behavior, but deep down, they were still same the person. No one knew that better than him, but she
was
different.

What had been done to her changed her on a fundamental level. It’d killed the sweet, naive girl she’d been and left a stranger in her place. A stranger who didn’t give a shit about anyone or anything but herself. A far cry from the girl he remembered. He’d barely known Melissa back then beyond good looks, but she’d been kind and quick to smile—compassionate, like her grandmother. Thinking about Lucy tied his stomach in knots.

Taking the bottle with him, he settled into the chair he’d placed in front of the window and broke the seal with his teeth.
To hell with it
, he thought
.
Promise keeping had never been his strong suit anyway. He wedged the open bottle between his knees and lifted the field glasses to his face, seeing her almost instantly.

She was on her back porch, a file folder in her lap and a borrowed dog at her feet. He imagined the file was full of whatever information she’d managed to scrape together about him. It wouldn’t be much. Everything since he’d joined the Army was well beyond her reach. The set of her shoulders suddenly stiffened. She raised her head and stared across the yard, in his direction.

She knew he was there. Her eyes scanned the back of the house he hid in and settled on each of the windows for a few moments before she flipped the bird in his general direction and mouthed the words
fuck you.

He cracked a half-smile and lifted the bottle, tipped it in her direction. “Right back at you,” he said out loud, but he didn’t take a drink. Melissa was long gone. There was no way the woman she’d become was going to help him. Not willingly.

He checked his watch. It was just past seven. Jessup was a few hours ahead, so he should have heard from Tom long before now. He couldn’t decide if the fact that he hadn’t was good news or bad.

NINETEEN

S
HE POURED A GLASS
of wine and took it—and O’Shea’s painfully thin arrest file—out onto the deck. There were eighteen pieces of paper inside. She counted them, put them in chronological order. Read them and reread them. According to his file, he’d run away when he was thirteen. Just disappeared without a trace.

He’d been found almost a year later, OD’d on heroin in the closet of some shitty rent-by-the-hour motel. She found the missing persons report and reread it. His foster mother filed the report in Jessup. The police chief, Billy Bauer, had filed it himself.

Sabrina took a deep breath. Billy Bauer was her father. Her mother, Kelly, had been fifteen and beautiful, with a reputation that kept her hip-deep in trouble. Billy had been older, newly married, with a baby on the way. Little Melissa Walker was born a year and four months after Billy’s son, Wade.

Kelly had taken one look at the baby and decided motherhood wasn’t for her. She dropped her in Lucy’s arms and walked away. Lucy took her in, and they moved away to Marshal, far from Jessup and the ugliness of schoolroom gossip. The pair visited the Jessup community every Sunday, though, to attend Lucy’s lifelong church, and she’d felt the sting of being excluded.

None of that had really bothered her. She was raised with love. Did well in school. She worked hard to be all the things her mother wasn’t. She lived to make her grandmother proud, tried to do the right thing. Which is why, when she was fifteen and Kelly showed up on their doorstep, claiming to have had a change of heart, she listened.

It wasn’t the words that got her—they were all lies—it was the fact that Kelly was pregnant again. And so at fifteen, she agreed to leave the life that Lucy had given her. Not because she wanted to, but because she knew the babies Kelly was carrying wouldn’t survive without her. She’d moved back to Jessup for them.

Sabrina shoved the useless pieces of paper back into their folder and set it aside. She picked up her wine and took a drink, pushed her bare feet under the dog that lay at the foot of her chaise. He groaned, rolling his eyes to look at her.

“I didn’t ask you to stage a prison break, you know. I’m aiding and abetting, here. The least you can do is keep my feet warm.” Noodles licked her ankle.

She was cold but refused to go inside, even for a moment. O’Shea was watching her. She could feel it. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of thinking she ran from him. Nearly an acre of land separated her deck from the back of the Brewster place, a three-story Victorian much like her own. Her eyes scanned the windows that dotted the second and third floor. A few were lighted, but most were dark. O’Shea was behind one of them, she was sure of it. She gave into her fear and frustration and flipped the bird in the general direction of the Brewster place and mouthed the words
fuck you.
Childish, but it felt good anyway.

The porch light snapped on.

She craned her neck around to see Val standing in the open doorway.