The Prey (41 page)

“Yes,” she said a moment later.

Bobby narrowed his eyes. “Yes? What the fuck does that mean?”

“You asked if I ever wanted to kill someone for the sheer pleasure of it. Yes.” Rowan glared at him, trying to keep her emotions under control. She wanted to scream and rage and tear at these binds, but knew that was what he wanted.

“I would get intense pleasure killing
you
, you bastard.”

He reached over and slapped her, knocking her over. She struggled, tied to the chair. The coppery flavor of her own blood poured into her mouth and she swallowed, gagging.

Bobby laughed. “Such spunk. You were always a brat. But you were scared of me. I knew it. You’re scared of me now. I see it. And you will die.” He stood and stared down at her, his cold blue eyes vindictive. “But you will beg for mercy before I’m done.” He kicked her and walked away.

She closed her eyes and took deep breaths. It hurt, but there was no real damage. She needed to loosen the ropes, break free when he least expected it. But she had no intention of escaping.

Not until she killed him.

She wished she knew his plan. She thought he’d just use her as a punching bag. Literally beat her to death. She wouldn’t break. She’d been trained to withstand torture. To retreat into her mind, force herself to think of something other than the situation.

But Bobby wanted to break her. He’d started by sending her the funeral wreath, the hair, the lilies. He fully intended to kill her, but first he wanted her fear. Her tears. She mentally prepared herself for the worst.

She had no idea.

He came back, untied her from the chair, hoisted her up, and half-carried, half-dragged her to the living room. He tossed her onto the couch and righted her so she sat up as straight as possible. She felt the ropes on her wrists loosen. Just enough to give her hope that she could manipulate the binds and free herself.

“This is your life, Lily bitch.” He sat down in a recliner and turned the television on with the remote control.

It was one of those large-screen televisions, fifty or so inches across. When the screen lit, Rowan was staring at a wedding picture.

Her parents.

“Robert MacIntosh married Elizabeth Pierson on June first,” Bobby said, his voice singsong, mocking. “Typical spring wedding for a boring couple. He had a future, could have gone places and done things with his life, but the bitch kept him tied to home with a bunch of brats.”

Bobby glanced at her. “You all should have been killed. Six fucking kids. What were they thinking? The house was a fucking zoo all the time. If I didn’t keep you all in line, there’d never be any peace and quiet.” He paused, a gleam in his eye as he glared at Rowan. “But I know why. She did it to keep Daddy with her. Got herself pregnant every time he had a thought of leaving the whore.”

Rowan was careful to show no reaction. She wouldn’t allow Bobby’s words to affect her. She looked at her parents on the screen. Her father’s dark hair and brilliant blue eyes. Her mother’s fair skin and white-blonde hair.

It was like looking at herself.

They looked happy. At least when they first got married. You saw it in their eyes, in the way her father beamed at her mother, in her mother’s half-smile, half-laugh, caught forever in time.

What had happened? Had her father started hitting her mother after they were married? After they had children? When did the abuse start, and why did her mother stay with him for so long?

“Did you know the bitch was pregnant when they got married?” Bobby said, his voice spitting out venom that made Rowan unconsciously shiver. “She got herself pregnant, trapped him into marriage. I was born in November. June, November. Hmmm. All their hypocrisy. Church on Sundays, no swearing, no fun. Yet they were out screwing around. Good enough for them, wasn’t it?”

Rowan didn’t think the hypocrisy had anything to do with church or swearing. It had to do with her parent’s relationship. With her father hitting her mother and her allowing it. With her accepting all his apologies. With their all going to church as a family and pretending they were normal.

They were anything but normal.

Rowan hadn’t realized the image on the video was paused until Bobby pressed “play” and the image switched to a baby. He paused it again.

“Me,” he said, with both disdain and pride in his voice. “The only MacIntosh worthy of being born. The bitch should have had her fucking tubes tied, but no, she couldn’t keep Daddy trapped if she couldn’t get herself knocked up.”

The baby was beautiful. Bald, with startling blue eyes. Round and chubby. Bobby sat in a little baby chair in front of a Christmas tree, about a month old. He could have been the Gerber baby.

Bobby. How could a beautiful, innocent little baby turn into a monster? Rowan closed her eyes.

“Open your eyes!”

She felt the sharp sting of something on her face. Tears sprung to her eyes at the sudden, unexpected pain, but she swallowed them. She glared at Bobby. He had a whip in his hand.

“Don’t close them again. You don’t want to know what I’ll do.”

“You can torture me, but I won’t break,” she said through clenched teeth, anger seething beneath the surface.

“We’ll see.” He grinned.

The videotape started rolling again. The baby picture stayed on for another minute, before switching to a picture of Bobby, Melanie, and Rachel. A portrait, taken at the shopping mall. Bobby was three or four, Melanie a year younger, and Rachel a baby.

They were three beautiful children, Bobby fair, Mel and Rachel dark-haired like their father. Young, happy children.

Bobby didn’t look cruel. But was any four-year-old capable of knowing he was going to grow up and kill his family? Kill innocent human beings in his warped sense of vengeance and revenge?

Bobby didn’t pause the pictures. Several snapshots of the three oldest MacIntosh children rolled across the screen. At birthday parties. At Christmas and Easter and wearing their Sunday best. Playing in the yard, in the park, having a tea party in the backyard.

Rowan searched Bobby’s eyes for the turning point, when he had changed from a happy little boy to a murderous thug who terrorized his younger siblings.

Then she saw it. Not in Bobby, but in Melanie and Rachel.

They were young girls, four and six or so, and Rowan saw
their
eyes change. Bobby’s didn’t. Bobby looked the same. But one snapshot of Rachel showed fear as she glanced at him, the photograph preserving her emotion for all time. Another showed Mel hugging Rachel. It could have been the sweet scene of two sisters embracing; instead, Rowan saw anger in Mel’s eyes and tears in Rachel’s.

Had their mother known? Had she known what Bobby did to her other children? She would have had to, Rowan thought. Rowan remembered many times when her mother had told her to take Peter outside, away from Bobby. All the times Mel had taken them for ice cream. The sullen look in Rachel’s eyes whenever Bobby had been in the same room.

Her mother had known. Yet she kept them all in that house. Knowing Bobby terrorized them. Taking the abuse of her husband yet welcoming him in her bed. Rowan would never understand her mother. She couldn’t hate her, though she wanted to. After all, she was dead. Murdered by her abusive husband.

They were all dead.

Except Bobby and her. And Peter, Rowan thought gratefully. Peter was safe in Boston.

If Rowan died at Bobby’s hands, she would die knowing Bobby hadn’t won. Peter was alive. And because Bobby thought he was dead, he was safe.

The images started flashing by rapidly, pictures of Mel and Rachel and Mama. Where had they come from? As she watched, she realized that the same ten or so pictures repeated. Over and over. They looked familiar to her, but why?

Her photo album. He’d found her cabin in Colorado and stole the one thing she had left of her family.

Suddenly it stopped on Mama’s bloody body.

Rowan screamed, then closed her eyes.

Bobby whipped her across the neck and she winced. “Open them!”

“Go ahead, whip me to death! I don’t care!” She tried to control her pain and anger but couldn’t.

“Open them, or your lover will be next.”

Her eyes shot open and she glared at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Though Bobby didn’t know it, John was dead. He’d never have left Tess.

She quickly blinked back her tears. She couldn’t think about John now. She wouldn’t be able to focus on what she needed to do.

Bobby leaned back, smirking, tucking the whip into his lap. “Yes you do. Watch.”

Stone-faced, preparing herself for more bloody images of the family she loved, she stared at the television.

Music started. Loud, surrounding her through speakers in all corners of the room. Some unidentifiable rap tune with verses that highlighted the word “kill” and a beat she felt in her gut. She wanted to vomit.

Mama’s picture was in black and white. The shades of gray did nothing to mask the terror of the scene. The blood almost black against the pale gray of the linoleum, arcs and splatters across the too-white cabinets, the stark lighting giving everything an unreal feel, like a bad B-movie.

Mama was followed by a picture of her father taken recently. His dark hair gray, his eyes vacant, empty, hollow.
Bobby must have taken it when he visited Daddy
. He looked just like Rowan remembered seeing him last week.

Then Mel and Rachel, together, smiling. Then lying dead and bloody in the foyer.

Kill, kill, kill the bitch!

Rowan shivered at the lyrics, wondering how Bobby had obtained the crime-scene photos. She almost laughed out loud. She could hardly believe he’d escaped from prison and had found a fool to replace him. Stealing crime photos would be child’s play.

Peter at five, his kindergarten photo. Then Peter dead.

No, not dead, Rowan reminded herself. He wasn’t dead.

There was a photo of a cop carrying Peter out of the house. Peter wore his dinosaur pajamas and they were covered in blood. It was Dani’s blood, not his.
Dani’s blood
. But Peter’s eyes were closed and his mouth was open and he appeared lifeless.

The image changed to Dani.
Dani
. A whimper escaped her throat but she forced herself to look. Beautiful Dani as a baby. As a toddler. At three, playing tea with her stuffed animals.

Then the small body bag. Somehow, the black bag was worse than seeing her dead again. So generic, so sterile.

Rowan didn’t know she was crying until her cheeks felt hot and damp.

Her tormentor grunted. “I never understood why you liked that little crybaby so much. Oh, well, she’s dead and buried, isn’t she? You couldn’t protect her. What’d you do? Put her body in front of yours? So she’d die in your place?” Bobby barked out a laugh, and Rowan wanted to strangle him with her bare hands. She had never hated anyone so much in her life. Black fury burned as she steadily worked on the ropes that bound her, careful not to let him see what she was doing.

The music changed to the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer,” the upbeat tune paradoxical to the gruesome photos that followed.

A bloody body massacred, cut into bits, lying in a Dumpster. It took Rowan a moment to realize this was Doreen Rodriguez. Bobby had taken pictures of his crimes. Bile rose in her throat and she swallowed it back.

The florist, stabbed to death, pretty blonde hair matted with blood.

The Harpers. The little girl while she still had her pigtails. The mom staring dead into the camera.

Pretty Melissa Jane Acker, raped, strangled, her body left spread-eagled in the signature style of Rowan’s fictional killer in
Crime of Corruption
.

“You’re sick,” she muttered.

Bobby laughed, and her fingers continued working on the ropes. Were they looser? She thought so. Her fingernails were raw and wet with her blood as they broke in her quiet fury.

Then she stopped.

Michael.

He was half lying, half sitting against the wall in what she presumed was his apartment, his chest a bloody mess, his eyes unfocused. Dying.

A sob escaped her throat and Bobby said, “I thought you were screwing him. But you’re the ice princess.” His tone was mocking. “Ice cold, no feeling. The press didn’t like you. I don’t think you’ve made any friends now, have you?”

Michael. He didn’t deserve this. None of them did. “You fucking bastard,” she whispered. “I’ll kill you!”

The whip stung the back of her neck again and she felt warm blood ooze down her back.

“You’re hardly in a position to threaten me, Lily Pad.”

The videotape rolled. Images of Tess. John. Roger. Herself. Many taken from the vacant house next to hers. Roger in Washington. Tess going into her apartment.

He paused it.

“Well, she’s in a bazillion pieces, or burned to a crisp. Either way, your lover’s sister is dead. Along with Roger Collins. Asshole. He deserved it. His fucking mocking attitude, thinking he was so much better than me. Well, I showed him, didn’t I? Didn’t I?” Bobby lashed out with the whip again, this one cutting across her arm.

“Yes, you sure did.”
Oh, Roger! I’m so sorry
.

“I was going to get his stupid wife, but didn’t have the chance. Now it won’t be any fun to knock her off. So, I guess she’s going to live.” He sounded almost sad.

“You
are
sick,” she said quietly. That they shared the same parents, the same blood, made her nauseous.

“No, Lily Pad, I’m not sick.” He paused the videotape and turned to her. “Look at me.”

She did, her hatred for Bobby filling her soul.

“Our father is sick,” he said, his voice bitter with hate. “Weak, pathetic, sick. Stupid fuck let that woman pussy-whip him into getting her way every fucking time. When he finally stood up to her and slapped the bitch down, he cried and apologized. Of course she forgave him. What’s one bruise when she had whatever she fucking wanted? If he’d only showed her who’s boss, she’d never have gotten away with screwing around.”

“She didn’t. That’s your own twisted logic.”

“Oh, Lily, you are naÏve. Dad finally confronted her that night. They were in a huge fight when I walked into the kitchen. Dad pounding on her and I thought finally, he was going to kill her.”