Once again, Alex felt as if a life she’d ignored for years was rushing at her, determined to drag her back to the pain she’d endured as a child. Hiding in her room, overcome by fear. She’d sat on the floor, leaning against her bed, repeating one of several mantras. I will not be afraid. I will overcome this. I will be okay. One day I’ll do something great.
She’d made other declarations, but she couldn’t remember them all. She’d shut her mind from recalling those years, but obviously not everything had been banished.
“Alex, please. Tell me what’s going on.”
She looked up at Logan and was surprised to see the concern on his face. She realized she was rocking back and forth, just like she had as a teenager. And she’d been mouthing the words I will not be afraid. I will be okay. She forced her body to relax, but it wasn’t as easy as it should have been.
“Tell me about moving in with your aunt,” Logan said gently. “Please. It clearly traumatized you. Help me understand.”
Anger flared like a fire igniting inside her. “Let’s get back to work. I’m fine. It’s just a shock seeing this again.”
“I thought you never read it.”
Alex took a deep, calming breath. “I didn’t, but like I said, Willow was always quoting from it. She thought she was trying to save me, but I didn’t want her kind of salvation. All I wanted was freedom. You probably can’t understand that.”
“I think I can.” He leaned toward her. “Please let me in. I really want to help.”
Alex pulled the papers from his hands and put them on the table. “If you want to help me, let’s figure out a way to assist law enforcement in catching this guy.”
Logan didn’t move. She realized her response hadn’t satisfied him. She didn’t want to tell him the truth. She wouldn’t risk her career by letting people know who she really was. Had been. But before she could stop herself, words suddenly flowed from her mouth unbidden.
“I don’t know why my father left us when I was four. He just walked out the door one day and never came back. But his leaving destroyed my mother. She’d been great, you know? The kind of mom who baked cookies and took me to the park. She’d tuck me in bed at night and sing a song or tell me a story. She was . . . wonderful. Until she wasn’t.”
Alex closed her eyes. “She never smiled after he left. She struggled with depression for years, and we lived off welfare because she couldn’t hold down a job anymore. By the time I was ten, she spent most of her time inside the house, completely overcome. She was there in body, but she wasn’t the mother I’d known. I had to do all the cleaning. Make sure our clothes were washed. She’d go to the store when she could manage it, but I had to write out the grocery list. That’s where I began to learn to take care of myself without anyone to depend on. I know I’ve made it sound like I learned to cook and all the rest once I arrived at Willow’s, but the truth is those last years with my mother . . .”
Alex cleared her throat and tried to choke back the stream of words pouring out. “When . . . when I was twelve . . .” She put her hands up to her mouth. Why was she saying these things? Why couldn’t she stop?
Logan reached over and gently pulled down her hands. “Don’t be afraid. You can trust me, Alex.”
A wave of fury broke inside her, and she stood, facing him, wanting to break him down. Stop him from caring.
“Trust you? Trust you? I don’t even know you, and I don’t trust anyone.” He reached for her, but she pulled away. “When I came home from school that day . . .” Tears streamed down her face, but she couldn’t stop them. “I found my mother hanging in the hallway. Our house had two stories, and she’d looped a rope off the staircase railing, fashioned a noose, put it around her neck, and jumped off. It wasn’t like I’d seen on TV. It was ugly . . . awful. . . .”
Logan was on his feet, pulling her close to him. She didn’t want to be held. She didn’t want sympathy. She began to beat on his chest, but her blows grew weak and useless, and she melted into his arms. She had no more strength. She couldn’t fight anymore.
After a few minutes, Logan gently sat her down on the couch. “Your coffee’s cold. I’ll warm it up.”
She watched him as he put her cup in the microwave. When he brought it back, she tried to thank him, but she could only gulp. What had she done? Had she just thrown away her career? Would Logan tell Jeff she was unstable?
Logan sat down next to her.
“You never got counseling?”
“Some woman at the child welfare office talked to me before I was hauled off to Wichita, but I didn’t listen. I was too numb.”
“Well, listen to me now,” he said quietly. “When we push too many painful things behind a door in our minds, one day it finally bursts open. It’s too crowded in there. It doesn’t mean we’re unbalanced. It only means our minds are telling us we’ve got to deal with those feelings. That hurt. We can’t do it if we won’t acknowledge what’s going on.”
Alex wiped the tears from her face and picked up the cup he’d brought her. After forcing several sips of the hot liquid down her throat, she put the cup down and looked at him.
“How can you possibly understand?” she asked. “You probably had a perfect life. A perfect family. I doubt if you know how it feels to lose the people who were supposed to keep you safe and then end up with someone like Willow. Once again, I was the adult. She was the child. She needed even more help than my mother. I did everything. She did nothing.” She took a deep breath. “I couldn’t have friends. Couldn’t invite people to the house. Whenever someone came over other than the Circle—a repairman, whatever—Willow would act crazy. Tell them the end of the world was coming.”
“But Mike was a friend?”
Alex nodded. “He was nice to me. We weren’t that close, but he’d seen Willow at her worst and didn’t mind. His parents seemed to understand my situation and welcomed me into their home. Made sure I had enough clothes to wear and school supplies. They were very kind. They were the bright spot in an otherwise miserable life.”
“Alex, there’s something I don’t get. The feelings you have toward Willow . . . She may have been disturbed, but she doesn’t sound mean. Certainly not dangerous.”
“Not dangerous?” She stared at him, wondering if she should tell him everything. “At first it was just . . . frightening. House full of trash. Empty refrigerator and cupboards. A woman living mostly on junk food. The food she’d tried to cook was left on the stove, no doubt for days. The smell was horrific. Dirty dishes piled up. Clothes all over the floor. I’d just found my mother’s dead body. I was alone in the world, shipped off to live in another town with a crazy aunt. I worked hard to overcome it. I cleaned and cleaned . . . Finally, things were better. I didn’t complain about cleaning up after her. At least I had a roof over my head. And then one night I woke up, probably because I heard my door open. Willow was standing over my bed . . . with a knife.”
Unable to look at Logan for his reaction, Alex picked up the most recent pages Harrison had faxed. She shuffled through them until she found what she wanted and read aloud.
“‘When the Virgin who shall be washed in blood, the final sacrifice, is offered to the Master, the demons will be unleashed, and the angels will make war with the evil ones. This sacrifice will be holy, and the one who offers it will be elevated in the Master’s kingdom. He is the Destroyer. The one called to fulfill the will of the Master. Long live the Master!’”
“Isn’t part of that one of the verses Walker wrote on a train car?”
“Your aunt thought you were the virgin to be sacrificed?”
“That night, I think she did.”
Logan looked stunned. “What did you do to protect yourself?”
Alex looked down at the floor. “I was seventeen when this happened. A senior. I know I said Mike and I weren’t close, but I had no one else to turn to, so I told him. I was too scared to tell his parents, and so was he. We were afraid I could end up in the system. Even though I would be eighteen in two months, the idea of ending up somewhere even worse than Willow’s terrified me. Mike knew a guy at school. . . .”
She looked up at him. She’d gone this far. She might as well finish it. “Mike got me a gun—a loaded gun. I slept with it under my pillow until the day I left, when I dropped it in one dumpster and the bullets in another.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?”
“Like I said, I couldn’t take the chance that some social worker would take over my life. Willow had no memory of what happened.” Alex sighed. “I realized then how sick she really was. I really didn’t want to get her in trouble, and frankly, I was afraid of the Circle. If I called the police, would they retaliate? Would I have more problems than I already had?”
She clasped her hands together. Talking about this was harder than she thought it would be, yet she felt like some of the anger inside her had been released. “I’d forgotten about that night until we were on this case. I guess it just popped out from behind that door you mentioned. That memory is probably why I’ve seemed so angry with Willow. It was fear masquerading as something else, I guess.”
“I’m glad I was here to talk to. It will stay between us.”
“Thank you,” Alex said. “I imagine I’ll have to be nice to you from now on.”
Logan laughed. She loved his laugh. It was one of his best features. “Nah, no blackmail. You can still be mean to me if you want.”
She smiled at him. “I feel much better.”
He grinned at her but then grew serious again. “Hey, I thought there had to be five sacrifices before the virgin is sacrificed. So how could Willow get it in her head you were . . . you know.”
“I think it must have been a combination of reading that stupid book and being overmedicated. I’m not sure the doctor she saw from time to time truly cared about her well-being. She seemed shocked when I told her what happened. In my opinion, she was walking in her sleep. Now that I know more about how people with her illness think, I’m almost certain she wouldn’t have actually stabbed me. I know she felt bad about it. Neither one of us ever mentioned it again.”
She sighed. “As soon as I graduated from high school, I moved out. I got a job at a local restaurant. It was barely enough to get by on, but I found a room to rent and was able to buy food. Willow had given me a small, white Chevy Aveo that had been parked in her garage for years. The car needed to be repaired, but I worked out a deal with a nearby garage. They got the car going and let me make payments.” She smiled. “That thing got me to college in Lawrence, Kansas, that fall, where I’d been granted a scholarship. But then it died, and I didn’t have the money to revive it. I did a lot of walking, but thankfully friends at school chauffeured me around quite a bit.”
“Did you go all through college without a car?” Logan asked.
“No. In my senior year, a girl offered to sell me her Volkswagen Bug for four hundred dollars. She even let me make payments. That’s how I ended up with my first Volkswagen. I liked it so much that when it broke down, I bought another one. It made me feel good to take care of myself.”
Thankfully, the rush of words finally slowed. Alex had no plan to talk about some of the hurt that had imprisoned her because of the trauma she’d endured. But these were small things. Even waking up to see Willow standing over her with a knife. She could have handled that. She understood it even though she might not be able to truly forgive it. But the big monsters were still behind that door. The things that gave her nightmares. One in particular. One she would never tell anyone. She would keep it locked and shuttered away. If she ever let it out . . .
She pushed the thought away. It would never happen. She’d defeated everything the past had thrown at her. She’d do it again, and she’d do it alone. “Let’s get back to work now. And . . . and thanks for listening, Logan.”
“No problem. I’m here anytime you need to talk.” When she didn’t say anything else, he picked up the papers and stacked them on the table.
Alex lifted her pen and opened her notebook. All she wanted to do was figure out this Walker guy and ensure he was caught before he killed anyone else. Nothing could interfere with that goal.
Nothing.