by Graham West
It was the bed which welcomed her tired body each night, the bed she shared with Jake. The bed in which they had made love so many times would now be defiled by this man. This screwed-up piece of human scum.
“Take off your clothes,” he barked, waving the gun. “Just leave your knickers on…”
Jenny wanted to tell him what a twisted fucker he was, but fear stopped her. Slowly she undressed down to her underwear.
“Now, lie on the bed!” he growled, undoing his belt.
Jenny’s heartbeat slowed. She felt so cold inside, yet her skin was warm to the touch. I am with you—with you. Again, the voice in her head was clear. Trust me, my child. You must trust me!
Jenny lay back on the bed. “You can’t do this with a gun in your hand,” she muttered.
Reece looked perturbed by her calmness. “You’re not putting up a fight?”
“What? And end up dead?”
“You’re gonna end up dead anyway. Might as well go out with a fight.”
Jenny found herself smiling. It seemed to alarm more than confuse her assailant. “I presume you can’t get an erection unless there’s a struggle?” she goaded.
“I can get an erection anytime I want, bitch,” he snapped. “You’ll know what a real man feels like when I’m done with you.”
Jenny sighed. Ice ran in her veins. “Well, if you are having problems in that area then you could always shoot me first, like you did with that girl. Shagging corpses is obviously something you’re good at.”
Reece raised the gun. She saw the crazed look in his eyes. “Shut up, slag!” he roared. “Maybe I’ll just kill your boyfriend right now! Let’s see how you deal with that!”
Jenny listened to his footsteps on the stairs. Was he really going to kill Jake? She looked down at her arms; the skin was so pale her fingertips were almost turning blue.
“What’s happening?” she whispered.
You’re dying, said the voice. I am stronger than you.
Suddenly, she was drifting, gloriously, blissfully unaware of the single gunshot that rang throughout the cottage.
***
Kayla sat rocking, perched precariously on the edge of the chair. She was chewing her thumbnail so hard that it was making Rob feel sick. She must be down to the skin by now, he thought, resisting the urge to say something. There was a single pinging sound, like a microwave. It was Kayla’s phone.
“I’ve got a message,” she said, looking anxiously at the screen. “It’s Caden!”
Rob read the expression on her face. “What’s he said? What’s wrong?”
Kayla shook her head. “I don’t understand. He says that I will be your only daughter!”
Josie looked horrified. “What? Where is he? Where are Jenny and Jake?”
Rob froze. “They’re at home. Some guy from a country magazine is going round today.”
“Ring her—ring her now!” Josie yelled, jabbing her index finger in the direction of Rob’s phone. He punched the name and waited, his hands shaking. Josie watched on anxiously, but there was no answer. “We need to get round there!” She grabbed her jacket from the chair. “Come on!”
Kayla stood, and her face crumpled as the tears ran down her cheeks. “Oh God! I hope he’s not going to do something stupid!”
“Is he capable?” Rob asked. “You know him! Just tell me the truth. Is he capable of harming my daughter?”
Kayla shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she sobbed. “But I just don’t know,”
Josie climbed behind the wheel of the car, her face showing little emotion. “Best if I drive,” she said. “You’ll end up killing us.”
Kayla crouched in the back seat, still sobbing.
“Will you shut up?” Rob snapped as Josie accelerated down the road. “Crying isn’t helping anyone!”
“Rob! Leave her. We don’t know what that message means, yet.”
“It’s fucking obvious what it means! He said that Kayla would be my only daughter! So where’s Jenny going? What’s he going to do with her?”
“Okay, but it might be just hot air—and besides, he won’t try anything if the magazine guy is there.”
“I’ve got a feeling,” Rob muttered. “Sebastian told us we were in danger—he sensed it. And he sounded really stressed out this morning. I should have called him back.”
Josie swung the car left at the junction. “Shit!” she screamed, slamming the wheel with her fist. A tractor towing a trailer had shed its load. Bales of hay lay strewn across the width of the lane while two farm hands stood surveying the scene.
Rob climbed out and headed towards the hapless figures. “Are you gonna move these or just stand gawping all day?”
Josie groaned. “Oh my god, they’ll deck him if he doesn’t back off.”
“Sorry, mate,” the younger of the two blonde, tousle-haired men replied with a shrug of his shoulders. “It’s going to take us over an hour, at least.”
Rob decided against further confrontation. There wasn’t time. “I don’t even know a different route,” he groaned, returning to the car and pulling his seat belt across his chest.
Josie spun the car around. She tapped the address into the sat nav. “If we head off in the opposite direction it should give us a new route,” she said.
“It’s meant to happen. We can’t do anything about it,” Rob snapped.
Kayla, who had managed to pull herself together, began to cry again.
“Oh, for God’s sake, will you stop whinging!”
“I’m sorry, Dad,” she sobbed. “But it’s all my fault!”
“I know it is! You’ve bought this psycho into our lives. And if anything has happened to Jenny—anything—then it’s over. I’ll never want to see your face again! Ever!”
Josie shook her head. “You know what, Robert? Sometimes you can be such an arsehole!”
***
Jenny heard him entering the room. She even remembered watching him undress, clambering out of his trousers. Something had given him the erection he needed, but Reece looked uneasy. Jenny closed her eyes and felt him hovering over her, his breath on her neck. His hand moved slowly across her thigh. She felt his fingers inside her as he kissed her breasts, then her stomach. Suddenly, there was steel in her veins. She reached down, running her fingers through his hair. His head was now between her parted legs.
Jenny waited, her eyes closed. Any moment now. What felt like a bolt of electricity surged through her body as she grasped a clump of hair and pulled his head back with a violent jerk. She heard him gasp, and then she heard him scream. Jenny opened her eyes. He was staring in horror. She had never seen such terror in anyone’s eyes. But it wasn’t her hands that were gripping him. They weren’t her arms, either. They belonged to a dead girl, a girl who had been rotting beneath the stagnant depths of a woodland lake. Putrid blue flesh hung from the bones as she gripped his face and began to squeeze. Caden Reece yelled in pain as his cheekbone snapped.
Jenny was floating, rising easily from the bed and taking her assailant with her as if he were no heavier than a feather.
“Jesus Christ!” he screamed.
“No! And you won’t be seeing him anytime soon,” she rasped. The voice wasn’t hers either.
Jenny flung him like a rag doll and watched him crash against the wall.
“Stay away!” he yelled, sliding to the floor. “Leave me alone! Who are you? What are you?”
Reece sat, looking up, his eyes wide with fear as Jenny stretched out a rotting arm, pulling his head forward and slamming it back against the wall. She smiled at the naked frame of a man stripped of any dignity. But it was a dignity he had never earned. She turned, glimpsing her reflection in the bedroom mirror. The face that stared back was not hers. It was nothing more than a skull draped in slivers of flesh, the remains of an eye protruding from its decaying socket.
Jenny drifted into an unconscious state. It was beautiful. It was easy. The room began to spin. Reece lay motionless. She felt the gun in her hand as eve
rything turned from grey to black.
***
They found Jake lying in a pool of blood, his hands tied behind his back. Kayla screamed. Jake opened his eyes. “It’s okay,” he said weakly. “He hit my shoulder.”
“Where’s Jenny?” Rob cried. “What has he done to her?”
“Upstairs,” Jake gasped, wincing in pain.
Rob bounded upstairs, three steps at a time, crashing through the bedroom door to find Jenny sitting on the floor with her eyes closed, propped up against the bed and wrapped in a duvet. Caden Reece lay naked, slumped against the wall.
Jenny opened her eyes slowly. “Hi, Dad,” she mumbled sleepily. “Is Jake okay?”
Rob stared at her, scarcely able to believe what he was seeing. “What the hell happened?”
“I caught him by surprise, that’s all. But I need to get dressed, and you need to call the police.”
Rob took the gun from Jenny’s side and returned downstairs. Kayla and Josie waited with Jake, who was now propped up in a chair, holding a napkin against his shoulder. They were all looking at him.
“Please tell me she’s okay?” Jake said anxiously. Rob nodded. Jake closed his eyes “I thought he was going to kill her! I thought I’d lost her!” Josie flung her arms around him. “Oh my god!” he groaned. “I just can’t believe this is happening. Did he rape her? I must have passed out with the pain.”
Rob shook his head. “I don’t know what the hell happened up there, but that bastard came off worse. He’s out for the count.”
Kayla was holding back the tears. Rob glanced over at her, wondering how he felt about the girl who had brought all this upon them. “Don’t worry. Your boyfriend’s still alive,” he said with a sneer.
“He’s not my boyfriend!” she snapped. “I don’t want anything more to do with him.”
Josie shook her head. “Just leave it, Rob. Please?”
Jenny walked into the room, her face pale and drawn. She gasped when she saw Jake. “Oh my god. He shot you?”
“He’s okay, it’s just his shoulder,” Kayla said.
Jenny shot her a look. “Who are you?”
She watched the girl recoil. “I’m…I’m your sister.”
Jenny’s eyes widened. “Kayla?”
The girl nodded as if she were expecting a slap.
Rob looked around the room. “Where’s the bloke from the magazine?”
Jenny flopped back into the chair. “That was him. It was him all along.”
Josie looked totally confused. “What?”
“It was all a setup,” Jenny said wearily. “An elaborate one, too.”
“I’m so sorry. I had no idea,” Kayla sobbed.
Rob opened his mouth to say something, but Josie stopped him in his tracks with a single look.
Jake closed his eyes, still gripping his shoulder. “Shit, this hurts. I’m really not up to talking to the cops—just give me some painkillers, please.”
Jenny stared out the window at the four police officers heading along the path. “I think this is going to take some explaining,” she said. “But at least we’re still alive.”
Rob pictured the naked man slumped against the bedroom wall and smiled. Jenny was the only person who knew what really happened up there. It was more than a lucky punch. This was something to do with Amelia. Maybe, one day, she would tell him the truth.
Chapter Fifty-Four
The following week passed quickly. It were as if they had pressed the fast forward button on life’s remote control and the days ran into each other. Jake had the bullet removed and was discharged with prescription painkillers. The police had a hundred questions, of course, but Caden Reece confessed to everything, including his thwarted attempt to rape and murder Jennifer Adams in her own home.
His story suited Jenny. Yes, she had simply taken him by surprise. The knee in the groin had sent him crashing against the wall and she had followed it with a kick that smashed his cheekbone. She had got lucky, seizing the moment, and it had saved her life. Reece admitted that he had intended to shoot them both and set fire to the house. He also confessed to killing Sean Kaplan, the drug-dealing scum who had made Kayla’s life such a misery.
Kaplan had met Reece in a disused barn thinking he’d bagged himself a new client. But Reece had bound and gagged him and spent the next hour explaining to his victim exactly what he had planned. Kaplan knew how he would die for at least an hour before Reece poured petrol over his clothes and watched him burn to death. Maybe Kim had got off lightly. A bullet to the head almost seemed humane, in comparison.
Sebastian almost wept with relief when Rob called him back with the story. “You were right all along,” he told the old man. But while he had been talking, Kayla had left without a goodbye.
***
“Why didn’t you tell me you had a daughter?” Jenny asked, unwrapping the new bedding she’d bought.
Rob had known the question was coming. “I didn’t know how you’d react. You had enough on your plate.”
It sounded weak, but Jenny smiled. The lack of malice in her eyes put him at ease.
“Do you really think I would have disowned you?” she asked gently.
“I didn’t want to hurt you. You’d only just found out that…”
“I wasn’t your biological daughter?” Jenny cut in.
Rob nodded.
“I get that, but I wish you’d told me. None of this would have happened if you had.”
Rob wished he had too.
“You need to get back in touch, Dad. She thinks you don’t want her.” Jenny looked him in the eye. “You do want her, don’t you?”
That was the question he’d prayed she wouldn’t ask him. He didn’t know.
“Dad?” Jenny stared at him. “She’s your daughter!”
Rob looked away. “I know, but she lied to me. She lied about her mother, and she bought that psychopath into our lives. You and Jake could have died!”
“But we didn’t,” Jenny replied softly.
“What if she knew what Reece was like? That guy is a serious nutcase—she must have known something, surely!”
Josie was hanging around in the background. She had her own theories. “I’m guessing he’s suffering with some kind of disorder,” she said, but even Rob could see that. “He gets a kick out of playing complex games. Why else would he go to all that trouble? But sometimes the people closest to the likes of Reece never suspect anything.”
Jenny sighed. “Josie’s right. Don’t be too quick to judge, Dad. Give the girl a chance. You two really need to talk.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
Kayla had spent the past seven days in a local bed-and-breakfast living out a sports bag. She was set to return to London, where her aunt was waiting, unaware of the drama that had unfolded over the past few days. Rob had called and sent countless messages, but she had ignored them all. There was little point in trying to dress a wound so deep it would only fester, bringing only more pain and misery.
But that morning, Kayla had climbed behind the wheel of her battered old car wondering if there was enough fuel in the tank for a two-hundred-mile trip when her father called. This time she answered.
“Honey, we need to talk. Please. You know where I live.”
She killed the call and threw the phone onto the passenger seat, glancing at her reflection in the rear-view mirror. God! She looked a mess! The shower at the bed and breakfast was cold so she had washed over the sink. It hadn’t been worth applying any make up. Why bother? It was a long drive and she’d shower back at her auntie’s. But it would be good to say goodbye. She fired up the engine. It wouldn’t take long—no longer than it took to swill down a decent cup of coffee, which the proprietors of the bed-and-breakfast seemed incapable of providing. Her heart thumped as she set off—the heart that her father had broken.
***
Kayla hunched in the chair like a schoolgirl summoned to the headteacher’s office. Rob tried to reassure her with a smile, and Jenny attempted small talk bu
t without much success.
“I didn’t think you’d all be here. I thought it would just be me and Dad,” she said coolly
“I want you to tell me the truth,” he said. “I need to be able to trust you.”
Kayla’s eyes shifted from each one to the next. “If I told you the truth, the whole truth, you wouldn’t want to even know me.”
Rob frowned. Even Jenny looked uneasy.
“Look,” she said, “No one is here to judge you, but Dad’s right. You need to tell us the truth, no matter how hard it is.”
Kayla sniffed, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand. Her hair was still tied back in a ponytail and still hadn’t been washed. “I don’t even know where to start,” she said. “It’s horrible.”
“How about the beginning, sweetheart?” Josie said softly.
Kayla looked at her and smiled weakly. “I hated it back in London,” she began. “Ireland was cool. I made loads of friends over there, but Mum just wanted to be with him. She didn’t care how I felt.”
“So it was serious?” Jenny asked.
“Yeah, pretty quickly. Kaplan had money, too. A nice car. He just wasn’t very interested in clothes, but he bought Mum stuff, and I got a really expensive pair of trainers.” She paused. “But he was buying his way in—I saw that before Mum did.”
“So when did you find out that he was involved in drugs?” Josie asked.
“We moved in with him as soon as we got back from Ireland. We had to. He had this place just outside London. It was a big thing for me. New school, new friends. It was all going too fast, but like I said before, Mum was hooked. He had a nice house, though. I guess that helped. But that’s when I found the heroin. Kaplan wasn’t arsed. He just held his hands up and told us that we had to find out where the money came from sometime.”
Kayla wiped her eyes again. “Mum was shocked. She packed our bags and told me we were leaving that night, but when I got home from school, I found them cuddled up on the sofa watching TV. He’d talked her around, somehow. Drugs was just supply and demand. ‘Sean doesn’t make anyone take drugs, sweetheart. If they didn’t get them from him, they’d just go somewhere else.’ There was no point arguing with her. She was loved up.”