Out of Her Mind

by Ragan, T. R.

  She was sprawled out across the tiles. Blood trickled from the sides of her mouth. Through a heavy-lidded eye, she saw the front door.

  Freedom was only a few feet away.

  When she tried to push herself that way, a sharp stab of pain sliced through her right leg. She used her arms, dragging herself forward an inch at a time. Almost there. Just a little bit farther.

  Footsteps sounded on the stairs.

  Faster, Riley thought. You’ve got to move faster.

  She grimaced. She could hardly move.

  Bubbles stepped in front of her, hands on her hips, looking at her like a mom might do if you got caught eating cookies before dinner. Calmly, without a word spoken, Bubbles grabbed hold of both of Riley’s arms and dragged her across the tiles and back up the stairs, one step at a time. Riley’s screams were high-pitched and raw.

  By the time Bubbles had hauled Riley up the stairs and into the bedroom, she could hear the crazy lady’s raspy breath, in and out, like an angry bull. She quickly put a cuff around Riley’s ankle and clamped it shut, making sure it was secure before she scooped Riley into her arms and plopped her on top of the mattress.

  Riley screamed again. Her leg was broken, the pain unbearable. She was going to be sick. The bone wasn’t sticking out of her skin, but her leg was bent in a weird position.

  Bubbles grabbed hold of Riley’s upper body and yanked her toward the headboard, prompting another cry of agony. Riley’s arms hung limp at her sides as Bubbles clamped metal cuffs over one wrist and then the other.

  The blood coming out of her mouth, Riley realized as she used her tongue to feel around, was from missing and broken teeth. One of her front teeth had shattered, leaving only a sharp fragment. Two of her bottom teeth were cracked, and one was gone.

  Intense rage seemed to have given Bubbles increased strength as she worked on cleaning up the room. Moving to the closet where Riley had spent the past few days, Bubbles grabbed the smelly bin and carried it into the bathroom.

  Riley heard the toilet flush and then the sound of the bathtub faucet turned on full blast. As Bubbles marched back and forth from the bathroom to the closet carrying a rag and a large plastic bag, she cursed and muttered under her breath. “You blew it,” she told Riley, her eyes wild. “We could have had a wonderful life together.”

  “Why me?” Riley asked. Nothing made any sense.

  Bubbles had been about to disappear inside the closet when she looked at Riley and said, “Because you were special and I chose you. The moment I saw you, I knew.”

  Riley swallowed. Even that hurt. “I have a mom and a dad and a brother,” Riley said. “Why can’t you understand that?”

  Bubbles shook her head, looking sad and weary instead of angry. “You’re my daughter. But look what you’ve done.”

  Riley wasn’t sure exactly what Bubbles was referring to: the scratches and the hole in her arm where blood ran down from her elbow where the pencil had pierced her skin, or the mess Riley had made in the closet. Either way, for the first time in her short life, she was pretty sure she was witnessing the type of people her mom counseled in prison on a daily basis. Somewhere along the way, people like Bubbles simply lost their minds.

  But Bubbles had a job. She ate, dressed, and did what millions of other people did every single day. She’d heard the term “functioning alcoholic,” so maybe Bubbles would be considered a functioning lunatic? “What happened to you?” Riley asked her.

  Bubbles pushed her hair out of her face and looked at Riley as if she were talking in another language. She had no idea what Riley meant, so Riley asked a different question. “What happened to the real Molly?”

  Bubbles dropped the bag on the floor and disappeared back inside the bathroom. She returned to the side of the bed with a towel and bucket of soapy water, and washed the blood from Riley’s face, neck, and arms with a washrag. “My first Molly was an angel,” Bubbles said. “Perfect in every way. All the nurses in the hospital where she was born said she was the most beautiful baby they had ever seen.”

  Bubbles looked toward the ceiling.

  “What happened to her?”

  “My husband was away on business. I was on a leave of absence from work, and I was tired . . . so tired. Babies are a lot of work.”

  She looked at Riley then, and she reminded her of an actor onstage, every expression animated. “Diapers and feedings and baths, over and over again. Never sleeping.” Touching her temple, Bubbles let out a long sigh. “That night my darling Molly was crying all night, up every hour on the hour. It was three in the morning when I slid off the bed and made my way down the hallway and into Molly’s room.” Her eyes grew twice their size as she said, “I remember it still. I scooped up my precious bundle and brought her to bed. She was ravenous, and she latched on to my breast as if she’d never eaten before. She ate and ate, tugging and pulling on my nipple.”

  Riley inwardly cringed.

  Bubbles had grown quiet, her gaze fixated on the ceiling again when she said, “The next morning, I woke up feeling refreshed and better than ever. I looked at the clock, surprised that it was already seven and Molly hadn’t awoken. I nearly wept with joy until I got up and saw her lying there on the bed. Her lips were blue. She was gone. I killed my sweet Molly.”

  Silence stretched out before them.

  Riley didn’t know what to say, especially when Bubbles looked at her again, her eyes rounder than she’d ever seen them. “For all those years I’d wanted nothing more than to have a baby to call my own.” A wistful sigh escaped her. “And now she’s gone.” Bubbles tossed the washrag into the bucket, then took a seat on the edge of the bed, making the mattress sink lower.

  Riley gritted her teeth as pain clawed into her. “I think my leg is broken.”

  “That’s too bad. If you’d been a good girl, none of this would have happened.”

  “I’ll never be a good girl,” Riley said, and she meant it. She could never live here with Bubbles and pretend everything was okay.

  “I know that,” Bubbles said. “You’re a smart girl, though, and you know what happens next, don’t you?”

  “You’re going to kill me. Maybe with a gun or a knife. I’m not sure which one.”

  A giggle escaped Bubbles. Her big marble eyes sparkled. “You’re a clever one, all right. Despite all the pain and grief you’ve caused me, I’m going to make sure you don’t suffer overly much.” She rested a hand on Riley’s bad leg and squeezed. “Just kidding.”

  Fiery hot pain made Riley scream again.

  Bubbles reached up and clamped a hand tight over Riley’s mouth. Dizziness made the room spin. Riley thought she might pass out. She was looking forward to it. Instead, she desperately sucked in air through the cracks between Bubbles’s fingers, again and again, her eyes open just enough to see Bubbles’s mouth move as she said, “When the time comes, I’m going to give you enough pills to put you to sleep and then carry you into the bathroom for a good long soak in the tub. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

  Riley tried to shake her head, but she was pretty sure nothing happened.

  Bubbles finally dropped her hand from Riley’s mouth and said, “I’m going to finish cleaning up here and then get you something to eat.” Her smile reminded Riley of the Cheshire cat’s grin. “Think of it as your last supper.”

  Riley wanted to ask her when she would be dying—tonight? Tomorrow? But she couldn’t form the words, let alone push them out of her mouth.

  Her lips trembled as she watched Bubbles pick up the garbage bag and head into the closet. She thought of the girl in the birthday hat and prayed for someone to save her.

  The tears came flooding out of her. She couldn’t stop crying. She wanted her mom, needed to feel the comfort of being held in her arms.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Harper wasn’t sure how long she’d been scouring the cement floor where QB had stayed. Her fingers were red and raw, her mind numb. No matter how much or how hard she scrubbed, she still saw blood in her
mind’s eye.

  Lots of blood.

  Bug’s blood.

  Trying to keep Bug quiet while Psycho had sewn her up with a needle and thread had not only fried Harper’s nerves, it had been heartbreaking to watch. The Xanax had hardly seemed to take the edge off. The second Psycho had finished, Bug had passed out from exhaustion. The rest of them used that time to scour the place, getting rid of all traces of evidence.

  Hours later, Psycho returned with the tarp, and together they rolled QB inside and placed him in the trunk of Bug’s Volkswagen Passat. Psycho had gotten rid of the van used to take QB captive days before, dumping it in a canal where she said hundreds of other vehicles had been laid to rest. They had no choice but to take her word for it and hope it was never found.

  Under the cover of darkness, The Crew set out for Pollock Pines, a heavily wooded area with a population of six or seven thousand. It would take an hour to get there.

  As Psycho had suggested, Harper drove with her in her electric-blue Mini Cooper, while the others followed behind in Bug’s car. Since Bug was injured, Lily drove while Bug slept in the back seat. All cell phones had been turned off. Nobody was allowed to text or make calls. The closer they got, the lower the temperature dropped.

  They took Exit 57 off US-50 East to Gilmore Road, then to Barrett Pass Road. Looming on both sides were tall gray pines and blue oaks. It wasn’t long before Psycho made a left onto what might have once been a road but was now overgrown with forest debris that cracked and popped beneath the tires. They drove at a snail’s pace less than a half mile from the road when Psycho brought the car to a stop and killed the engine.

  The car following behind did the same.

  Doors opened and closed as they all climbed out, everyone zipping and buttoning jackets tight to protect themselves against the cold wind.

  Bug was wide awake now, making apologies as she insisted on helping.

  “You can come with us,” Psycho told her as she strapped a band with a light around her head, “but you can’t help carry the body. I’m not in the mood to sew you up again, understand?”

  Bug nodded.

  “Okay,” Cleo said, opening the trunk of Bug’s car. “Let’s get this done.”

  From the beginning it had been clear that Psycho was The Crew’s leader. Once they made plans, she never wavered. And tonight was no different as she grabbed a section of the tarp and led the group through the forest with only the light on her headband to guide her.

  It might have been an easy walk had there been daylight and they weren’t carrying a dead body, but as it was, they lost the trail more than once.

  The gusty wind caught them all by surprise. If they happened by anyone, the plan was to make it appear as if they were setting up camp. But that didn’t happen. Psycho knew the area so well it prompted Harper to wonder if they were anywhere near the cabin where she’d been held captive in an underground room.

  Harper kept her thoughts to herself.

  “This is good,” Psycho said. “Let’s set him on the ground and roll him out.”

  The body did indeed roll out from the tarp that Cleo clung to so the wind wouldn’t take it from her grasp. Thick brush stopped his body from rolling out of sight. They would have preferred to leave him fully dressed, but his pants and shirt and socks and shoes were covered in Bug’s blood, and his clothes would need to be burned. If they’d done their jobs right, investigators would have a difficult time figuring out how he got from point A to point B. And an autopsy would reveal that he’d died of a heart attack.

  They arrived back at their cars without any mishap.

  Harper looked up at the night sky, refusing to feel guilty. Those men—QB, Otto Radley, Brad Vicente, and even her father—had all gotten what they deserved. Her only regret was what her involvement with The Crew had done to her marriage. She might not be able to change the past, but she would do everything in her power to win back her husband’s trust.

  On the way home, Psycho told her that a reporter named Sawyer Brooks had paid her a visit. It was clear by Psycho’s tone that she knew Sawyer Brooks was her sister. Apparently Sawyer was doing a follow-up story on the Black Wigs, a.k.a. The Crew. They had gained a lot of notoriety after chopping off Brad Vicente’s penis.

  It wasn’t a big surprise that Psycho knew her real name. Most of The Crew had been involved in court proceedings and trials. Their stories were sensational and easy to find on the internet. But The Crew had decided early on to use aliases to try to protect themselves when sending electronic messages. Their nicknames caught on quickly, and there had been no reason to call one another by any other name.

  Although Psycho said she wasn’t concerned about Sawyer’s visit, she thought it best not to mention it to the rest of the group.

  Harper was thankful for that. She was also thankful that Psycho didn’t know her sister. Sawyer might look harmless, but when it came to solving a case or finding answers to a puzzle, Sawyer was a bloodhound, following trails for days on end until she was satisfied.

  It made sense that Sawyer would be doing a write-up about the Black Wigs since the media exposure had already gotten out of hand. It didn’t mean Harper liked it, but her hands were tied.

  At three in the morning, Harper arrived home where she’d lived with her husband, Nate, for half her life. It shamed her to think she’d simply let him walk away when all he wanted to do was make things better. He’d been her rock since the day she’d met him. She’d lived in this house all these years, surrounded by love and enveloped by warm arms, and yet the wounds from her childhood continued to hang on like a drowning man clinging to a life raft.

  Quietly, she made her way into the house. She’d texted her son early in the day, asking him to fix Ella dinner and make sure she did her homework and went to bed on time. He’d answered with the thumbs-up emoji. Good kids. Great kids. And yet her quest for revenge had taken her down a very dangerous and slippery slope. Her husband was already onto her. He knew she’d lied to him. If she got caught, her kids would find out what she’d done.

  As soon as she walked into her bedroom she locked the door, then made her way into the bathroom and turned on the water in the shower. Standing in front of the mirror, she stripped out of dirty clothes. There were bloodstains on her pants that she hadn’t been able to scrub off at the construction site. She rolled the jeans up and stuffed them into the cabinet beneath the sink. Tomorrow she would wash them in bleach and then decide how best to discard them.

  Hot water sprayed and rolled down her body. She opened the shampoo bottle and poured it on top of her head, scrubbing the dirt and blood from her hair and body and watching the stream of brownish water disappear down the drain at her feet.

  Everything that had happened with The Crew already seemed like a lifetime ago. She didn’t know who she was any longer. No. That wasn’t right. She’d never known who she was. That’s why she was so obsessed with cleaning, always trying to scrub away her feelings and emotions.

  For the first time in a long while, Harper smiled.

  Instead of feeling remorse for the part she’d played in ridding the world of those awful men, an unexpected release of tension lifted from her shoulders. She was a survivor. And now the world was a safer place.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Early the next morning Sawyer’s phone rang.

  It was Aria.

  Unable to sleep, she’d been lying in bed for hours thinking about what happened last night, chastising herself for acting so hastily. She picked up the call and said hello.

  “I know you’ve been suspended or fired,” Aria said, “but you’ll never believe who just called.”

  Sawyer rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t suspended or fired. Palmer told me to take a few weeks off and let it blow over.” She sat up and adjusted the blankets. “So who called?”

  “Bob Fucking Upperman. He did have a piano lesson immediately after Riley Addison on the day she went missing. He said he’d been taking lessons for six months to surprise his fiancée
since she’s been playing the piano for most of her life—”

  “And?” Sawyer asked, cutting her off.

  “And he never saw Riley Addison, but he did see a woman shutting her trunk. He said it was odd because she was wearing a sling.”

  “Why would he think that was odd?”

  “Because she used the arm in the sling to reach up and shut the back compartment.”

  “Why didn’t he tell the police what he saw?”

  “He said he thought about it, but the idea of calling to report seeing a woman in a sling seemed silly. Once he learned of Mark Brennan’s arrest, he was doubly glad he hadn’t called it in.”

  “Did he remember the make or model of the car the woman was driving?”

  “He said it was silver and was the size and shape of a Highlander. He never looked at the license plate, so he had nothing helpful to offer in that regard. He did say he was having a difficult time believing Mark Brennan had anything to do with the girl’s disappearance.”

  “Because Mark Brennan is a nice guy?” Sawyer asked.

  “Pretty much. Don’t you think you should at least tell Palmer about Bob Upperman?”

  “Not yet. He’s not happy with me, and it’s just another piece of circumstantial evidence. If he had seen Riley in the car, that would be something else entirely.”

  As Sawyer talked to her sister, texts flashed across her screen. Most from her coworkers offering sympathy and asking her to call. What they really wanted was the scoop—details of what happened last night.

  “Harper is taking Ella to school today,” Aria said, “so I thought I’d grab coffee and doughnuts and come over for a bit before work. Sound good?”

  A part of Sawyer wanted to be left alone to soak in her misery, but she knew it wouldn’t do her any good. “Sure. I’ll be here.” Her phone buzzed. “Hang on for a minute,” she told Aria. “Paige Owens is calling.”