Sunday, 1:40 p.m.
Olivia refused to allow anyone into the room with her when she went to see the body.
Lexie, who understood the woman’s reluctance, based on the little she knew of her abilities, had offered, even though she wasn’t really ready to see that sweet girl in death. So, of course, had Aidan. But Olivia had insisted on going in by herself.
God, how Lexie wished Aidan had been successful when he’d tried to find the answers they sought. He’d spent a long time sitting beside the body, but had simply been unable to come up with anything. Not about who was lying dead in the next room, or anything about her twin sister, wherever she might be. So, as much as he’d hated to do it, he had contacted Olivia, then had gone out to the old plantation house to get her and bring her back here.
Lexie had the feeling this effort Olivia Wainwright was about to make would cost her greatly. Whatever demons Aidan battled, he seemed much more able to bounce back after one of his psychic episodes. And while he obviously was affected by the plight of the people he looked for, he never seemed to be personally devastated when his strange connections took place.
Olivia looked devastated even before she pushed into the room where the draped body still lay on a cold, metal gurney.
“You’re sure?” Aidan asked. “I can go with you. I’ve already been in once.”
The woman shook her head. “No. I need to be alone with her.”
Walter and Ann-Marie exchanged a look.
“I’ll try to find out as much as I can,” Olivia told the Kirbys. “But there’s only so much I can do. I won’t be able to experience more than the last 130 seconds of her life. If she was already unconscious . . .”
“Thank you for trying,” Walter said, lifting a shaky hand to stop her from saying anything more. “Whatever you can do.”
Then, with one more approving nod from the parents, Olivia walked into the other room.
Nobody sat; they all gathered near the door, and Lexie would bet every one of them cast a look at the large wall clock, measuring the seconds as they ticked by.
Fifteen seconds felt long.
Thirty interminable.
By the time they reached one minute, she realized she was holding her breath, listening for any sound, however minute, from the other room.
Aidan reached for her hand, holding tight, equally as tense and anxious.
The clock ticked on, seconds sweeping by. It was more than two minutes, well over four, in fact, before they finally heard Olivia’s shoes tapping on the linoleum floor as she walked toward them. The door swung open, and she emerged through it. Seeing her, Lexie instinctively reached out and grabbed her arm, sure the woman would fall.
She looked like she had aged a decade.
The pretty, delicate woman was now gaunt, her mouth hanging open, lines of pain carved into her face as if she’d emitted a long, silent scream that had left its permanent mark on her. Her whole body quivered and shook, and her breath came in short, raspy bursts.
“Come on, Liv, sit down,” Aidan said, taking one of her arms. Lexie still had the other, and together they guided her into the closest chair.
“Is she all right?” Ann-Marie asked.
Walter also appeared worried, but he was still enough of a frightened father to ask what they were all wondering. “Did it work? Were you able to . . . discover anything?”
Olivia’s head dropped back, and she flinched, jerking once, twice, as if she were being struck, or in the grips of deep, violent chills. Finally, though, the spasms stopped ravaging her body. Her breaths slowed, the color began to return to her ghostly white cheeks.
“Olivia?” Aidan asked, his tone gentle.
The other woman licked her lips and nodded weakly. “I’m all right.” Her teeth chattering a little, she added, “Just cold. So cold.”
Lexie took off her light jacket and draped it over the other woman’s shoulders. Olivia managed a weak smile of thanks. Then, with one final deep sigh, she straightened and looked at Walter and his wife. Her tear-filled eyes held such pain, such unimaginable anguish, Lexie wanted to beg her forgiveness for ever asking her to do this.
Walter and Ann-Marie grabbed each other’s hands, obviously just as overcome by the momentous thing this stranger had done for them. Their remorse had to be tempered by hope, however, that Olivia might have learned something.
Finally, the brave woman opened her mouth and told them. “I heard them talking. Their last conversation, the twins. Funny. Joking.” Her voice broke. “Then it happened. Came at them from behind.”
Ann-Marie made the sign of the cross, but said nothing.
“It was quick; she didn’t suffer long before she died,” Olivia said, her voice clipped, her lips still trembling with cold, and, Lexie suspected, pain. The shared death might not have taken too long, but, she suspected, the agony of it would endure Olivia’s entire life.
“She didn’t know,” Olivia added. “Talking with her sister one minute, gone the next.”
Tears streamed down Walter’s face, but she imagined they would have been much harder had he found out his little girl had suffered for a long time.
Olivia cleared her throat. “Your daughter, the girl lying in that room?”
Walter tensed, putting an arm across his wife’s shoulders, both of them readying themselves. “Yes?”
“Her name was Jenny.”
Sunday, 3:20 p.m.
Though Olivia swore she was all right, and wanted get back out to the plantation, where Aidan had picked her up earlier, he and Lexie instead took the woman back to his house and ordered her to lie down. If they’d had the time to spare, he would insist on driving her all the way back to Savannah. Liv promised she would rest and wait for the others to return so she could head back home with them.
He’d seen her work before, but he didn’t know that he’d ever seen her so affected by what she did. But he suspected, given the gratitude of Walter Kirby and his wife, Olivia didn’t have any regrets about it, despite how long the memories might live in her mind.
Having talked to Julia about what was going on there, he considered going out to the plantation house himself. Two things stopped him, though. First, he still hadn’t talked to Chief Dunston. He’d been sidetracked by the request the Kirbys had made and had never made it out to the crime scene.
Second, he didn’t want to leave Lexie alone.
Walter and his wife had finally agreed to go home. They not only had decisions to make, they also had two other daughters in the care of relatives, waiting to find out what had happened to their older sisters. He didn’t envy them that conversation.
Knowing there was nothing she could do to help them now, beyond fighting to bring Taylor home, Lexie had insisted on getting back to work. With that obviously foremost in her mind, as soon as they left his place again, she said, “Can you take me downtown? I want to go to the county office building, start searching the records on that property. I don’t have the actual address, so I’m going to have to check some survey maps.”
“It’s Sunday; won’t they be closed?”
With a grim smile, she said, “One of the few benefits of living in small-town hell. The town clerk is another one of Walter’s poker buddies. I called him while you were talking to Julia, and he agreed to meet me over there.”
“All right. While you do that, I’ll track down Dunston.”
“Chief Dunce,” she murmured, slowly shaking her head. “I still can’t quite accept that he might not be the douche bag I’ve always thought he was. I never would have believed the way he talked to the mayor if I hadn’t heard it for myself.”
“I don’t think he’s bad. Just lazy. He started believing his own stories about how quaint and peaceful this place is and turned a blind eye to anything that didn’t fit that picture.”
She sneered, staring out the window. “It’s as quaint and peaceful as a slaughterhouse. I am so outta here when this is over.”
He understood the sentiment. A year ago, when he’d come here to escape everything about his past life, he hadn’t imagined ever wanting to go back. Now that he’d been so forcibly reminded that ugliness and evil were in no way exclusive to any one place, he had to admit, he wouldn’t mind getting out of here, too. The sooner the better.
Especially now that the only thing he liked about Granville had just told him she intended to leave it.
“Where will you go?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Savannah. Atlanta. Maybe Jacksonville.”
Though he knew he probably didn’t have to remind her, he still said, “You do know there’s no place you can go that won’t have its own brand of tragedy and ugliness.”
She turned to look at him, her pretty face still marked with the tracks of her tears. “Says the man who moved here just to escape?”
“True enough,” he admitted, “which is how I’ve come to realize it doesn’t matter where you are. Humans will be humans. As capable of brutality as they are of love, and it really doesn’t make any difference where they go to sleep at night.”
“Does that mean you’re actually going to stay here?”
“Fuck no,” he snapped, the words flying out of his mouth. “I hate this town.” He’d always hated it, he had just thought hating his home was fine when he had spent the past year pretty much hating himself.
Lexie laughed briefly, though the sound quickly died, humor unable to be sustained on a day this bleak. “Ditto.”
“You’ll have to be sure to leave me your forwarding address when you go,” he said, trying to keep his tone light, though the thought bothered him. A lot.
But after knowing her such a short time, he had absolutely no claim on her. She could go wherever she wanted, the fact that they’d had sex this morning didn’t change anything.
“You planning to come visit me?”
“Would you want me to?”
She didn’t respond right away, instead shifting a little and reaching for his hand. He took it, lifting her cold, trembling fingers to his mouth and brushing a kiss on her knuckles.
“Actually,” she admitted, “I’m counting on it, Aidan. When this is all over, no matter where I go, or where you go, I’m depending on you still being around, even if you live in the next state.” She brushed her fingertips against his jaw, adding, “I think you could be someone I want in my life for a long time.”
He hesitated, realizing she was admitting she had feelings for him that went beyond this week, this story, this immediate sexual attraction.
That admission scared the hell out of him. He had a hard enough time maintaining his own sanity without bearing the burden of someone else’s emotions, which is why he’d never let himself really care about anyone beyond the most basic friendships.
Funny, though. He had the feeling it had happened anyway.
He and Lexie had known each other only a few days, but they were already far beyond anything he’d let himself feel before. Basic friendship would not have filled him with the driving desire he felt for her. Nor with the tenderness he’d felt when watching her sleep in his arms. It wouldn’t have him ready to rip someone apart for putting his beefy hands on her in that alley, or made him feel helpless against those tears in her eyes. It wouldn’t have landed him in a room with a set of grieving parents who he knew wanted him to be their child’s savior. He most definitely wouldn’t have already begun to trust her—especially given her profession, if he felt only the most simple, casual friendship for the woman.
She’d worked her way in. Quietly, quickly. Thoroughly.
She’d inserted herself into his life.
Lexie changed the subject before he could come up with any kind of a reply. “There it is,” she said, pointing to a pretty, three-story brick structure that dominated the square at the center of downtown Granville. Few cars were parked on the nearby street, with most of the shops closed on Sunday, so he was easily able to find a spot on the side of the building.
He had already decided to walk her inside, not about to let her out of his sight given what was going on in Granville, when he realized he was probably going to end up sticking around a little longer, anyway. Because pulling into the parking space directly behind him was a squad car. And behind the wheel of that car was just the man he wanted to see.
“Think that’s a coincidence?” he asked, eyeing the chief in his rearview mirror.
Lexie turned around in her seat and raised a speculative brow. “I somehow doubt it.”
They got out of the SUV just as Dunston reached the driver’s side door.
“Chief Dunston,” Aidan said, “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to get over to see you sooner. We got tied up at the hospital.”
“I heard,” the man said, his tone hard, but his expression at least a bit interested. “You tellin’ me some friend of yours really knows for sure which Kirby girl is lying in that morgue?”
Lexie joined in the conversation from the sidewalk. “There’s no doubt about it, Chief. I’ve never been much of a believer in this stuff, and I know Walter and Ann-Marie haven’t, either. But we were all entirely convinced.”
That was true. When Olivia had related how she knew it was Jenny who had died last night, including repeating the words she’d heard between the girls, Lexie, Walter, and his wife had all started crying all over again. Lexie had told him afterward that it was because Olivia, who had never met either of the twins, had relayed exactly the kind of conversation they would normally have, nailing each girl’s personality, right down to the cadence, the words they’d used and the way they’d spoken to each other.
“So did you just happen to see us pull up?” Aidan asked, suspecting that wasn’t the case.
Dunston shook his head. “Got a call from Frank. He wanted to know if it was true, what Ms. Nolan here told him.”
Raising a questioning brow, he asked, “Frank?”
“The county clerk,” Lexie explained.
“He seems to think you are on the trail of some important clue,” Dunston said, staring hard at Lexie. “You aren’t running around trying to play detective, are you?”
She lifted a shoulder and responded, “Old habits. You’ve got to give me a chance to get used to the idea that you might be on my side all of a sudden.”
The man pushed his sunglasses onto the top of his head, his gaze clear and unwavering. Any blinders he’d been wearing up until now had definitely been torn off. “I am on the side of this town,” he told her. “And every person who lives here, both north of Woodsboro Avenue and south of it.”
“Fair enough.” Lexie stuck out her hand to the man, and Dunston took it. “Let’s go talk inside. Aidan can fill you in on what we know and I’ll tell you exactly what we’re looking for here.”
The chief nodded his agreement, and the three of them walked together up the tree-lined sidewalk. A thin, nervous-looking man of around sixty stood outside a door marked “Employees Only.” As they approached, he saw Lexie and the chief together, and suddenly appeared worried.
“It’s all right, Frank,” said Lexie, waving a hand, letting him know she wasn’t angry that he’d called the chief on her. “We’re all in this together.”
“I was so sorry to hear about Walter’s daughters.” The man’s voice wavered, as if he’d done some crying himself today. “Anything I can do to help, I’ll do it.”
“That’s good,” said the chief, clapping the other man on the shoulder. “Actually, I’m waiting to find out what we’re doing here, too.”
Once they got inside, the clerk led them to a conference room. “If you’ll wait here, I’ll go get the information you asked for, Lexie. I already started looking for the file on that property and should have it within a couple of minutes.”
“Thank you,” she said, leaning against the large block table that dominated the room. She didn’t sit down, looking too keyed up, desperate for this to work, for them to find something.
As soon as they were alone again, Aidan began to explain everything to Chief Dunston. He did it as quickly and concisely as he could, and Lexie jumped in to add details he neglected to mention, including the fact that they’d first heard about the mysterious Hellfire Club from some teen prostitutes.
“Out in the country, according to these girls,” the man said, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully. “And what led you to decide that meant Terrytown Road?”
When Lexie fixed a pointed stare at him, Dunston’s face reddened. “I turned those bone fragments over to the medical examiner this morning,” he said. “Didn’t fully believe it myself, but he confirmed they’re human soon’s he saw ’em.”
“Jessie Leonard,” Lexie murmured.
“The first girl? How do you know it’s her?”
Telling the man what the prostitutes had said, about how Jessie had gone to one of those club parties and had never been seen or heard from again, Lexie made a pretty convincing case.
They might get even further confirmation soon. Derek, Julia, and Mick were still out at the plantation, and if they found the actual spot where Jessie died, Derek would probably know it. At least, as long as the death had been a violent one. Peaceful passings didn’t usually leave an imprint on this world—but he didn’t imagine any death that took place at that club could ever be assumed to be non-violent.
God did he hope it played out that way, and they didn’t have to ask Olivia to touch the remains Dunston had turned over to the ME. He didn’t know if the woman would be up to going through that twice in one day, especially since she usually resisted doing it at all.
Dunston, who listened to Lexie’s explanation about what had led them to that house without interrupting, hesitated when she finished. Then he made a surprising admission of his own. “I was out on Old Terrytown Road myself last night. Following a van full of local men. Guess you didn’t hear that part of my conversation with the mayor.”
“No, we didn’t. Why were you out there?” asked Lexie.
He told them what he’d been up to, and Aidan and Lexie could only exchange looks of shock as they realized they had seriously underestimated this “local yokel” police chief.
Aidan had a hard time believing it, but it sounded as though they had come close to running into the members of the club last night. “What time was this?”
“About seven thirty or so.”
“Right around the same time we were there.” As the truth suddenly hit him, Aidan smacked his hand on his own forehead, wanting to hit himself again for having been too stupid to see it. “Damn it, that van!”
Lexie sucked in a shocked breath, understanding, too.
“A white passenger van flew by us when we were leaving the estate,” Aidan admitted. His muscles tensed and his hands fisted. “I heard them. Sons of bitches, I heard their sick, twisted voices and attributed it to moving the log back into place.”
Dunston appeared dubious. “Heard them, from inside the van?”
Lexie crossed the room and put a hand on Aidan’s shoulder. “Considering how that place affected you, you couldn’t possibly have realized they were passing by us at exactly that minute.” She glanced at the chief. “You know who Mr. McConnell is, so you must have some idea of what he does. The feelings he got off that house confirmed every one of our theories, and the girls’ stories. Some local men—the ones in that van you were following, I suspect—have been doing some pretty sick things to young women from this community.”
Dunston’s jaw thrust out and he hunched forward. “Killing?”
She shook her head, telling him the rest, everything they hadn’t shared thus far. Including Aidan’s own certainty that Vonnie Jackson had been to that club, but that she wasn’t there now.
When she was finished, Dunston shook his head, appearing confused. “So if you already know she’s not there, why are we here, trying to find out who owns the place?”
Aidan explained. “We know two of the missing girls were at that house, both wrapped up with that club. A lot of other girls—girls whose backgrounds and descriptions fit the type these men like—are also missing. Right now it’s the only solid link we can find between them, and it has to mean something. We need to find out who the members are and what else they know.”
Dunston rolled his eyes and shook his head, “Well, I can tell ya who the members are. I watched most of them from across the street last night.”
“We didn’t exactly know that that before we came down here,” Lexie replied, her eyes narrowing.
Sensing the rising tension between them, Aidan interjected. “We’re here. We’re close to getting the property records. Let’s find out who owns it and see if we can use that information to get one of those men to start talking.”
“Good point,” Dunston said with a nod. “If one of ’em thinks he might take the fall for all of it, he might start spilling his guts a little faster. Just depends on who it is.”
“What about getting a warrant?” Lexie asked.
“You mean the document your friends think they don’t need to have in order to trespass on private property?” Dunston asked, visibly irritated. “Yes, I do need one before I can set foot on that place. But I won’t get it now, not with what I have—the say-so of a psychic who practically got run out of his last town.” He looked at Aidan. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
Lexie wasn’t giving up. “What about the bone fragments?”
“Think a judge is going to give me a warrant to search every house on that road? There are dozens of ’em, some occupied, some not. I still don’t know how you found the right one.”
Neither of them answered that question. The chief probably wasn’t quite ready to hear about Morgan.
As if knowing they weren’t going to explain, Dunston continued. “Nah, we need more before I even try it.” The man’s lip curled up on one side. “Especially because I saw a judge climbing onboard that van last night.”
“Good Lord,” Lexie groaned, rubbing at her temples.
Frank, the clerk, suddenly returned, pushing into the conference room, his arms loaded with photocopied documents. “Here we go, everything I’ve got. This has to be the place, Lexie. I looked up all the survey maps based on the mile markers you told me about.” He put the files and loose pages on the table—lien records, property transfers, wills. It looked like he’d gone all the way back to the construction of the house in the early eighteen hundreds.
But the piece of paper they were looking for was much more recent than that. And Lexie, with her cold, researcher’s eye, found it first, within just a minute or two.
“Here!” she exclaimed, holding up a sheet of paper he recognized as a recent tax bill. She read it, sucked in a surprised breath, and then mumbled, “Oh boy.”
Dunston plucked it out of her fingers and read it. “Ahh.”
“What?” Aidan asked, not caring so much about the name—since he knew barely anybody in this town—but why the others were so surprised by it.
“The man who owns that place is pretty well known around these parts,” Dunston explained. He cast a look at Lexie that could have been apologetic, or at the very least sheepish. “I think I can see what happened last month a little more clearly now.”
Lexie ignored him, flipping through the pages as she told Aidan, “It’s Bob Underwood. He owns the estate, looks like it’s been in his family for generations, since just after the Civil War.”
“Damned carpetbaggers,” the chief muttered.
“Underwood . . . the co-owner of the paper?”
“Yes,” she said, “No wonder he was so anxious to shut me up. You know if I had kept digging into those missing girls, I would have found out about this dirty club.”
This time, Dunston didn’t convey his feelings with only a look. He cleared his throat, saying, “I apologize, Ms. Nolan. I regret not believing you.”
“Thank you,” she replied absently, as if she’d moved past the painful episode. Maybe now, with so much at stake, she had been able to.
Dunston looked at Frank and waved the tax record. “Mind if I hold on to this?”
“If it’d help you find Taylor Kirby, you could have the original,” the clerk said.
“That’s another thing,” Dunston muttered. “How do the Kirby girls tie in to everything? I sure can’t see the members of this club playing those kinds of games with girls who are close enough to their parents that they’d tell ’em what was going on.”
Lexie turned away, wrapping her arms around herself. She hadn’t said anything, but Aidan imagined her guilt had only grown weightier with the discovery that Jenny was actually dead.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” he told them both.
Turning her head to look over her shoulder, Lexie waited. Hoping she’d see the reason in his theory, he said, “Look, Taylor was one of the students who got up and spoke at the game Friday night.”
Dunston crossed his arms over his chest, looking belligerent. That memory was obviously a raw one.
“Maybe the killer was there. He was angry, challenged, and decided to grab one of those two girls, as payback or something. Taylor was who he found first, and poor Jenny was just in the way.” Expounding on the thoughts that had been nagging in his brain, he added, “Or hell, maybe he liked the attention and decided to get even more of it by taking someone he knew would cause an uproar.”
Aidan honestly didn’t know. None of them could, not until they found the monster responsible.
“All that makes sense, but there’s no point wonderin’ about it now,” Chief Dunston said. “Not when we got somebody to talk to.” He looked at his watch, then at Lexie. “Do you happen to know where Bob Underwood spends most of his Sunday afternoons?”
She shook her head.
“Well, I do. He likes to sit in Walter’s office and go over every bit of the business, make sure each nickel is accounted for and everything is being done just the way he wants it. He’s the type who thinks everyone’s out to rob him blind.”
“Do you think he’d do that today, with what’s going on with Walter?”
“Ayuh. Even more reason for him to if he thinks Walter won’t be around for a while. Too worried about being cheated to think about his partner’s kids.”
Lexie sneered. “Asshole.”
“Maybe so. But at least he’s a predictable one.” Pulling his sunglasses off his head and wiping them with a corner of his shirt, he added, “You wouldn’t happen to have a key to your office, in case you need to get in there after hours, would you?”
A slow smile creased her face as she nodded. “As it just so happens, I do, Chief Dunston. But if you want to use it, you’re going to have to let me—us—come with you.”
The chief sighed. “Christ Almighty, what am I doing?” Then, almost resigned, he agreed to her demands. “Considering my own men don’t even know any of this is goin’ on, I’ll consider you my backup.” When Lexie’s smile widened, the chief pointed a finger at her. “However, you’re a silent, invisible backup. You two stay out of sight, and let me do all the talking. I know this man. I know he’s not going to want to say a thing, and he won’t if he thinks there’s anybody else around to hear. And if I think he’s involved in a crime and he might incriminate himself, I’m going to have to read him his rights and take him in.”
“I can’t see Bob Underwood being smart enough to be behind these killings,” Lexie said. “He doesn’t care about anything except money.”
“And having sex with teenage girls,” Aidan pointed out.
Lexie and the chief both fell silent, acknowledging that bitter truth.
Nobody really knew what anyone else was capable of. They had been neighbors with all these “good” people. They’d been friends with them, worked with them. Before now, he didn’t suppose Lexie or Chief Dunston had ever imagined those men capable of the things they’d done. So how much of a stretch was it to think they might have done even worse?
Maybe a lot worse.
Sunday, 4:50 p.m.
Jenny. Her sister, her other half.
“Gone,” she whispered.
He killed my sister. He killed her. She’s dead.
Taylor knew the words repeating over and over in her brain would eventually sink in. They’d stab her through the heart and she’d believe them and then she’d lose her mind. So she did everything she could not to go down that path. In her brain, she accepted it, but she refused to allow the awful truth of it to overwhelm her emotions and crush her heart completely.
She couldn’t, not yet. Couldn’t cry for the twin who she would grieve for as long as she lived—whether that was another hour, or another century.
Taylor had known Jenny was gone from the moment she’d woken up in this hole. Everything had felt different right away and she’d noticed that difference as soon as she’d fully regained consciousness. Not because she was in so much pain—her head throbbing, her back feeling seared—and scared and lost in the darkness. It had been more subtle, infinitely more awful.
Her world had been solid and secure every day of her life. Until now. Now there was some intrinsic, vitally important piece missing. Just like she always knew when Jenny was sad or hurt, the very emptiness, that lack of connection, had made it clear her sister was no longer alive.
She hadn’t needed the filthy, murdering bastard—whose voice she would swear she knew from somewhere—to say it. She’d already known.
Tears tried to rise, but she blinked hard, knowing her sister would be angry with her if she gave in to them. You’re the strong one, Taylor, so be strong! Jenny would say.
She’d already had to exhibit more strength than she’d ever have believed she possessed. Just by doing absolutely nothing. If that psycho had shared that awful truth when she hadn’t been prepared for it, Taylor would likely have done exactly what he’d expected her to do: break down. Scream. Sob.
But she hadn’t. She’d lain on that cold, hard floor, listening to him describe the awful things he’d done to the person she’d loved most in the world, and she had controlled herself. She’d stayed still. Let him think she was unconscious, in a coma, or almost dead.
At first, she’d wished she were. She didn’t want to fight, didn’t want to survive at all.
Her sister wouldn’t let her give up. Don’t you dare, Taylor Kirby. Don’t you let him win. He can’t have us both! You have to fight. Mom and Dad need you to. They can’t survive losing both of us, you know that.
Jenny had been right. And Taylor had listened, and obeyed.
Even while he walked around the room, mere feet away, the image of her sister had kept Taylor’s entire focus. Her eyes had been closed, and yet she’d seen Jenny there, exactly as she’d been on that parking lot, lying on her stomach, a few feet away, her arm outstretched. Their fingers had touched again, their bodies mirroring each other. Only this time, Jenny’s eyes were open, her lips pursed as she silently whispered, “Shh!”
Her sister’s voice had ordered her to be still. Jenny’s hand had held her down, kept her from swinging out in fury, despite the pain of hearing the truth put into words. And once the murderer was gone, Jenny had told her what to tell poor, beaten Vonnie to do before she got sick all over the floor.
Unfortunately, though, Jenny now seemed to have fallen silent.
So had Vonnie.
Believing Taylor’s claim that they were being watched, Vonnie hadn’t spoken much once they were alone. She’d tried a few words, which sounded as though they’d come from a mostly closed mouth. After confirming Taylor’s identity, she’d repeated the same phrase that had awakened Taylor this morning. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
As if any of this were her fault.
Then the other girl had grown quiet again. Waiting for the dark, as Taylor was.
Holding out for the dark.
She only hoped that when the dark came—as the late-afternoon shadows seemed to say it soon would—Vonnie would be able to speak. She had fallen asleep, or else she hadn’t gotten the drugs out of her system soon enough. She was still over there on that cot, her deep, even breaths telling Taylor she was completely dead to the world.
Taylor wondered if the other girl was dreaming. If she was even capable of dreaming anymore, after being locked down here for almost a week, enduring whatever she’d endured that had left her so bruised and bloody.
The shadows grew longer, the cell dimmer. But Taylor remained patient. Partially because she knew she had to, due to the cameras he must have hidden down here. And partially because she was so overcome with terror, she didn’t know if she was capable of movement.
Yes, you are.
“Yes,” she mumbled, glad to be hearing Jenny’s voice again, even if she couldn’t see her right now. She’d swear she’d felt the warmth of her sister’s breath on her cheek as she’d whispered in her ear. Taylor remained calm, knowing that, no matter what happened, her sister would be here with her.
The last bit of daylight coming in from the window over Vonnie’s cot went out, like a candle being extinguished. Darkness descended, full and thick. And while she certainly didn’t think it would be safe to get up and move around, she at least felt confident he wasn’t going to be able to see her lips move, especially not with her bloody hair still lying across her face.
“Vonnie?”
She’d thought the other girl was asleep. But the response was immediate. “I’m here, Taylor.”
“I was afraid you had passed out.”
“No. Just wanted him to think I had.”
Smart girl.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” she added.
Taylor couldn’t help letting out a small, ugly laugh, thinking of all the other reasons she had to be scared.
Vonnie sighed. “Okay, forget I said that. Are you okay?”
The pain in her back was bad. So bad. And lying the way she was for so many hours had made it worse. Though she didn’t like the idea of him knowing she was mobile, she had to shift. “I think he stabbed me.”
“Considering there’s a knife sticking out of your back, I’d say that’s a good bet.”
A sob rose in her throat. She swallowed it. Now it wasn’t Jenny’s voice she heard telling her to hold it together, it was Vonnie’s matter-of-fact one. “It’s tiny, like a penknife. It’s closer to your side, and if he’d hit any vital organs or major vessels you’d already be dead. So we’ll deal with it when we can. Until then, try not to move.”
They’d deal with it. Okay. But not moving seemed even more impossible than the idea that they could actually escape from here.
Vonnie’s chains clinked, as if she were rolling around. Taylor suspected the girl was trying to turn enough to see her, probably desperate for a familiar face.
“Everybody’s been so worried about you. There was a big protest at the game Friday night. Kids from both schools.”
“I can’t believe it,” Vonnie whispered.
“Believe it. People care. Everyone was devastated, afraid you were dead.”
“I thought I was, at first. Wish I’d taken that ride home from your sister.” The girl sniffled. “I’m so sorry, Taylor.” Then, her voice sounding a little stronger, she added, “But, you know, maybe it’s not true. You can’t believe everything he says. He lies. I know he lies.”
Jenny. She squeezed her eyes tight, forcing the tears away. Not now. Can’t think about that now.
“He’s not lying,” she said, not wanting to explain how she knew. Most people wouldn’t understand. “And you should know, my sister isn’t the one who offered you a ride.”
She told Vonnie what had happened, how she and Jenny had switched places—never again, oh God, never again.
Stop it, Taylor.
“Okay, Jenny,” she whispered.
Hearing that story, Vonnie, in turn, told Taylor why the monster had targeted her—them.
Hearing the true reason, that all of this might have happened because she’d driven her car across the parking lot without the headlights so they wouldn’t get busted for trading places, she thought she’d be sick. “Jenny died because of that?”
“Jenny died because a fucking psycho decided to kill her,” Vonnie declared. “That’s all. You were awake—you heard him talking. It could just as easily have been you. He didn’t know, and he didn’t care, and it’s definitely not your fault.”
It could have been her? It should have been her. She wished it had been her. Because of the two of them, Jenny was the good one, the nice one, the smart one. The one who would have done something amazing for this world, if only by being a part of it for the next eighty years.
“Stop it.”
She thought for a second she’d heard Jenny’s voice again. But it was Vonnie’s.
“I knew your sister. I know everything going through your mind right now would be going through hers if the situations were reversed.”
Maybe. Probably. But that didn’t make the pain of it go away.
She still found it hard to believe all of this had come about because of this monster’s crazy paranoia. “He thought I might have seen him driving after you so he killed my sister and intends to kill me.”
Vonnie didn’t sugarcoat it. “Yeah.”
“I don’t remember seeing anyone out of place,” Taylor insisted. “Nobody I wouldn’t expect to see leaving the school at that time of night.”
“What can I say? Neither did I. Didn’t know a thing was wrong until he took me. Never felt like anybody was watching me, had no warning whatsoever.”
Neither had she and Jenny. Not a single goose bump, despite what happened in books or movies. The man who had done this had not given them even a faint psychological hint of what he intended to do.
The man who’d done this.
Who was he? Who could be so vicious?
The voice might have sounded vaguely familiar, even though he’d disguised it. But trying to connect that voice to someone she knew who was capable of doing what this man had done was simply impossible. Her mind wasn’t wired to spot something so utterly evil. And Jenny’s definitely hadn’t been.
She fell silent, lost in her thoughts. So did her cellmate. Until finally, after a long moment, Taylor asked the question that was probably most on both of their minds.
“Vonnie, how are we gonna get out of here?”