by J. Lea
“I put them away. You don’t need anything. At least not where we’re going.”
“We’re leaving? Where are we going?” Hope springs up in me. Perhaps I can find a way to escape if I’m not locked in the house anymore.
“Not yet. Soon.”
I can’t hide my disappointment. “I’d just like my bracelet back. It means the world to me.”
“No, you can do just fine without it. Don’t you know you’re the most beautiful without any accessories and unnecessary make up? People don’t appreciate natural beauty enough. But not me. I know what beauty is when I see it. And your beauty, my love, comes from within. I want to preserve it forever. There aren’t many people with a heart as beautiful and big as yours.”
I don’t respond.
An hour ago, Ronnie sat me on the couch and joined me, forcing me to swallow a painkiller. He keeps talking about our union in eternity. Every time he says that, shivers erupt all over my body. I don’t know what he’s waiting for. He says he needs to prepare me. For what, I have no clue.
“Where are you going?” Ronnie lifts his head when I slowly get up from the couch, teeth clenched.
“My ribs hurt like hell. I’ll go grab some sleep. The couch is uncomfortable. I can’t get settled.” I hope I’m believable enough so he won’t keep drilling me.
“Still?” he pinches his eyebrows together. “The pill hadn’t started working yet? Do you want me to get you another one?”
“No, no!” I quickly shake my head. I’m already dazed enough from whatever was in that syringe and I need my mind clear and sober. “I just need to rest, that’s all.”
“Okay. And I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t want to drug you, but you left me with no choice. You’re stuck here and it’ll be easier if you accept your fate.” I keep my mouth shut. “Go rest, my angel.” He stands up, too, and caresses my cheek with the back of his hand. Turning my head to the side, I move away. His touch disgusts me.
I let out a sigh of relief when I reach the bedroom I first woke in. The first thing I do is to search all the closets and drawers. I won’t let pain and fatigue get the upper hand, so I keep digging. I find some clothes in the closet that look like they’re my size, but none of the stuff I had on, on the day of the accident. I bend down to check under the bed, wheezing and panting, and I find it impossible to lift the heavy mattress to check under it. I look into every nook and crevice of the room and, when I don’t find anything, I sit down on the bed, defeated. I’ll never get out of here if I don’t find the bracelet. Think, April, think!
About an hour later, when I return to the living room, Ronnie is nowhere in sight. I check the kitchen too, but there’s no trace of him anywhere. Has he gone out? Hope blooms in my chest again. This is my chance to find a way out.
In the days I’ve spent here, I discovered I was in a log cabin built completely out of wood. The heavy wooden shutters on all the windows are closed from the outside and wouldn’t budge even a little when I tried opening them when Ronnie wasn’t around. The front door is always locked and I never hear any sounds outside that would indicate cars driving by or people walking past the cabin.
I open the living room window and am instantly greeted by the chilly air invading the house. I try to push the shutters open with no luck. I pick my brain to see if I’ve seen anything in here that could help me at least loosen them. My gaze lands on a chair in the corner. I drag it to the window. Lifting it is proving to be difficult because of my injury. “Damn it,” I breathe.
“What are you doing?” Ronnie is standing in the middle of the living room, watching me, and he seems hurt by what I’m doing.
“I… Umm…”
“You can’t get out of here. I made sure about that. Can’t you see? We’re going to spend our last days here.” He grabs the chair and carries it back to its usual spot. Then he grabs my forearm and takes me to the bedroom, pushing me inside. Giving me one final look, he slams the door in my face and locks it. No!
“I’m sorry about that,” I hear his muted voice. “Until you start behaving, you’re going to have to stay in there. You leave me no other choice. If you need anything, just shout. I’ll be right there.”
“What the fuck?” I yell, banging on the door. “Let me go!”
He walks away, but his words still play in my head: We’re going to spend our last days here. I’ve been turning a blind eye to the truth so I didn’t lose hope about finding a way out of this hell, but now I’m pretty certain I’m never getting out of here alive.
Seventeen
Jude
“Steph, tell me you found something,” I answer the call from our aunt a few hours later.
“Actually, I did,” she announces proudly.
“Do you have a name?”
“Not only that. I did some digging, looked for any offenders, criminal records, compared pictures, and then I focused on people with prior stalking charges. Your footage helped a lot. One name popped up—Ron Jensen. Does it ring any bells?”
“No, haven’t heard of him before. April never mentioned him.” When April compiled a list of people Leo associated with we interrogated everyone, and Ron Jensen wasn’t one of them. “But there was a man named Ron Smith.”
“I’ll check and call you later about it. As for Ron Jensen, when he was twenty-one he stalked a girl from college. Apparently, he couldn’t handle the rejection and didn’t take no for an answer. Her family filed a restraining order against him but it didn’t help, since he still showed up at her doorstep talking about love and sacrifice, so they were forced to call the police. He was arrested but got out pretty quickly for good behavior. The girl’s family had to move out of state because they were afraid for their daughter’s life. Ever since he got out of jail, he hasn’t done anything illegal. He doesn’t even have speeding ticket. He laid low.”
“No doubt,” I hiss, “he moved onto a new girl, and I’m sure he started planning how to get to April. When was he released?”
“A little over two years ago.”
“Can you get all the data on him? His picture, address, phone numbers, bank records, medical records, anything you can find on social media? I need everything, even though it seems insignificant.”
“I’m way ahead of you, Jude. Sending you an e-mail as we speak.”
“You’re a darling, Steph. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“You’d be helpless like a newborn,” she sings.
“True,” I chuckle. “I’ll talk to you later.”
I turn on the desk computer and open my e-mail account, refreshing the page every few seconds to see if I already received Steph’s mail. A few minutes seem like an eternity and I’m nervously tapping my fingers on the table. When I finally get the email and open the file she attached, I click on Jensen’s picture. It takes another eternity to open. “Come on, come on,” I mutter, “damn slow internet.” And then I see him - first his blond hair, then his dark brown eyes, a small scar under his left eye, wide nose, thin lips and strong jaw. “That’s him!” I jump up so my chair rolls on its wheels backwards, hitting the desk of the policeman behind me. “Sorry, man.” I raise my hand in apology when he raises his eyebrow.
“I know this guy,” Guzman approaches with a cup of coffee in his hand.
“You do?” I ask, surprised. “How?”
“It’s the guy from Miss Brookes’s list. Devlin’s best friend. Ron Smith or something. I went to his place when we were still looking for Leo. We thought he might be hiding at Smith’s place. He told us he hasn’t seen him for weeks.”
“His name is Ron Jensen not Smith.”
“Well, Miss Brookes gave us this name.”
“Which address did she give you?” I ask. “Is it the same?”
“Give me a second to look for it.” Two minutes later, he returns with his address.
“It’s different,” we both agree.
Finally, all the pieces are getting together. That’s why we never thought of Ron. When the police c
hecked his fake name, his record was clean. He lied to April this whole time. And to us. He was living a double life.
We got you now, you motherfucker!
I head to the Captain’s office, knock and stick my head inside.
“Got a second?”
“Come in,” he waves me in.
“I have the name of the guy who kidnapped April and killed Leo.”
“I’ll be damned. How did you manage that?” His eyes sparkle with excitement.
“I sent my assistant the photo from the parking lot footage. I swear, Steph can do magic. She can do the impossible.”
“She sounds like someone we could use here at the station.”
I update Captain on Jensen. His bank records show he withdrew his paycheck the same day he got it every month so that’s a dead end. It would’ve been too easy if he used his credit card on a daily basis so we could see where he used it last and where. Phone call logs reveal nothing special except for two calls to a local pharmacy. We know Leo Devlin was drugged before he was killed- injected with the same sedative as me. But the specific brand he used can’t be obtained without a prescription, so he must have called there for information and got his hands on the sedative in an illegal way, which he’s apparently really good at.
Our first objective is to search Jensen’s apartment and search for clues that could lead us to April.
“Jude, get over here,” Guzman yells as I’m rummaging through Ron’s bedroom. I find nothing out of the ordinary, just clothes in the closet and a few books and magazines on the nightstand.
“Did you find anything?” I hurry to the study where I find Guzman holding a stack of photos in his hands and, when I get closer, I see they’re all of April - April laughing, April with a serious expression on her face, April running, drinking coffee or staring into the distance. They’ve all been taken from afar, except for the biggest one. On it she’s grinning, looking truly happy, with laughter in her beautiful blue eyes. Wind must have been blowing that day because she’s holding her hair down with one hand. I run a finger across the photo. Clenching my jaw, I move on to the other contents of the cabinet. I find women’s things—shower gel, a hair brush, some pairs of underwear, bracelets. April’s stuff.
“This man is crazy,” Guzman shakes his head.
I open the cabinet door to the right and take a look inside. Jensen used it to store his documents, plans, letters and all sorts of other papers. Before I touch anything, I take pictures. I find information on several sorts of sedatives he printed off the internet, about their effects, how long they last, how strong they are, and I stop scanning the document when I get to the brand he used on Leo and me. Looking at the recommended dose, I see the amount he used on Leo was much bigger than what he used on me.
“Fucker,” I curse. “He must’ve planned this for months! Look,” I say to Guzman, pointing to the date on the top of the document. “Six months ago.”
“What is this?” Becker mumbles and pulls another stack of papers out the cabinet. “Sacrifice? This guy really is wacked. Seriously? Like it’s the Middle Ages.”
“Sacrifice? Let me see.” I read the article note on the procedure of sacrifice and life after death. There’s even a picture of a man and a woman laying on the floor next to each other, holding hands, with forearms split open, their blood flowing out into a well or something.
“Didn’t that Devlin guy have his hand cut open like this?” Guzman raises his eyebrow.
A chill runs down my spine. Is he intending to sacrifice April? But why did he need Devlin then?”
“Yes,” I say, letting out a colorful string of curses.
“Do you think he plans to do the same with Miss Brookes?” Guzman asks a question I haven’t been able to voice aloud myself.
“I don’t know. He’s definitely planning something, otherwise he wouldn’t have taken her. Maybe Devlin was a guinea pig and April’s the real deal.” My stomach clenches at the sound of it.
“There are two people on the photo of this article, but we only found one victim, Leo. Is there another body out there? Or is April going to be the second victim?”
“That’s the million dollar question,” I tell him. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. I only hope we won’t be too late.”
Ron Jensen is an electrician which explains the state of the art cameras we found in April’s house. I find two more in the making in one of the drawers in the hallway closet. He planned the whole thing for a long time, and very thoroughly, I realize.
If we don’t find April soon I’m afraid it’s going to be too late and I can’t let that happen. But the fact is we’re running out of time. And I still have no clue as to where Jensen could be hiding her. My heart is breaking. I would give anything to trade places with April right now.
We bag everything as evidence and take it to the police station. I thought I’d feel better once we learned the psycho’s name, but it doesn’t mean anything if we can’t find him anywhere. And unless I find another way to get to her I’m afraid April’s going to be his next victim. The guy is obsessed with the idea of possessing her, and madness has taken over his mind. He’s not thinking straight, and I’m worried I might be too late.
April
“It’s time.” Ronnie hurries into the bedroom, dragging me off the bed.
“Time for what?” I exclaim. On the surface I try to maintain a calm façade, but on the inside I’m shaking with fear, my heart pounding. I know what he’s planning to do and I still have a shred of hope inside I’m somehow going to escape this fate.
“For our eternity.”
“Ouch!” I yelp. “That hurts.” His grip on my arm is so strong I feel it all the way down to my ribs.
“I’m sorry.” He loosens the grip slightly. “Soon, you won’t feel pain anymore. It’ll all feel so much better.” He pulls a set of keys out of his pocket and drags me to the door I presume leads to the basement. I don’t dare do anything to provoke him as he’s holding a syringe in the other hand.
When he unlocks the door, Ronnie turns the lights on, which blink a few times before they light up, and I’m dragged down the stairs. It smells like something crawled down here and died. The walls are made of stone, as opposed to the rest of the house. It’s really cold. When we reach the foot of the stairs, the first thing I notice are two hospital beds in the middle of the room.
“What are we doing here?” I’m looking around, taking in the room I’m in. There’s a wooden table in the corner of the basement and beside it an old metal closet with tools and a chair. It’s a small room.
“Sit down,” he nods to one of the beds.
“What are you planning to do?” My voice is shaky.
“Do you believe in life after death?” he asks over his shoulder, standing at the wooden table.
“Not really,” I answer carefully.
“I do. And they believed in life after death in the past, too.” He slowly walks toward me with a syringe in his hand. My eyes are focused on the giant needle. I start backing away from him, not wanting him to drug me again.
“You don’t need that thing,” my voice is shaky and laced with terror. “I obeyed. I did everything you asked me.”
“I kind of doubt you’ll lie down willingly on the bed. This will make things easier.”
“I’ll lie down, I promise. Please, I’m afraid of needles,” I try stalling. “Why are we here?”
“I already told you. It’s time. Today is the day we’ll be joined in eternity, sacrificing our bodies so our souls will be forever united in the afterlife.”
“What? You actually believe this shit?”
“This is no shit. In the past, people were sacrificed to gods to prove their faith. Now, I’m sacrificing us in exchange for our eternal love. If you can’t love me in this life, you’ll love me in the next one.”
“I won’t love you in any fucking life, this one or the one after death!” I yell. “You’re out of your mind. How can you even think that death is the solution?” Pani
c starts overtaking my senses. “If you loved me you wouldn’t want to kill me.”
“I’m doing this for us. It’s better this way.” How can he be so calm?
“For whom? Definitely not for me,” I try to reason with him. “Why today?” Think, April, think. You need to find a way out of here. You can only stall him for so long.
“Don’t you remember? Exactly two years ago, we first laid eyes on each other. And today, we’ll be united in eternity. It can’t be more perfect than that,” he says softly.
I choose this moment to push the bed on wheels into him, causing him to fall to the ground. I run as fast as I can to the closet in the corner, pulling the door open, searching for a weapon or something that could get me out of here. There’s nothing on the shelves except for some plastic containers. Looking around, I suddenly notice something metal and shiny, half covered with a blanket, but I recognize it immediately. It’s the decorative plate on my purse. I pounce on it, pulling the zipper open, and rummage through the contents, praying he put all my belongings in there. Where is it? Where is it? Please, be here. Please. I'm feverishly rummaging through my purse, my panic increasing with each passing second. Dumping the contents onto the floor, I’m about to give up all hope when my eyes finally land on it and, sighing with relief, I squeeze it tightly in my fist. My way out of here.
Unfortunately my relief is cut short as, in the next moment, I feel an already familiar pain starting to spread all over my body.
“No!” I shriek weakly, and my eyes widen as my limbs are turning to lead. Awkwardly, I reach toward the source of the pain, but my arm doesn’t want to obey and my vision turns blurry, faster this time. I manage to turn around. He’s standing in front of me with an empty needle in his hand and I’m slowly falling to the ground...
Jude
I’m going crazy with worry and I’m not the only one. Max’s been calling me every two hours demanding updates and my answer is sadly the same every time – we have nothing. I feel horrible for letting Max down. He hired me to protect his little sister and I failed miserably. It’s been three days since she’d been taken and the statistics say there’s less chance of finding her every hour that goes by. First 48 hours are crucial and they’ve long passed. Why hasn’t April used her bracelet? Has she lost it in the accident? Is she so badly injured she can’t use it? I don’t want to think of that scenario. I’m still hopeful I haven’t lost her. We’ll find her somehow, and she’ll be alright.