by Anne Malcom
His finger landed on Shelby, and her flinch was immediate and violent.
“Looks liked you win, sweetheart,” he said, showing yellow, rotted teeth as he smiled. “I won’t lie. I wanted it to be you!”
He crept toward Shelby, his spindly fingers groping for her. He carried a glint in his eyes that Orion hated. She despised everything about the Things, but it was that look. The ownership in it. The possession, as if they were just inanimate objects for the taking. Like this was his right. Nothing more than instruments to him. Pets.
Orion was worried for a second that Shelby would chicken out. That she wouldn’t play her part. Ri knew that Shelby wasn’t the type of girl to stab a man, but she hoped somehow she would find a way. For them . . . for freedom.
“Please, no!” Shelby cried, scuttling backward toward the wall as Thing Two advanced.
“Hush, girl,” he snapped, grabbing a clump of her hair.
She cried out as Thing Two rifled in his pocket for the key to her cuff with his free hand. He was too distracted to notice Ri and Jaclyn standing up behind him, staring at him hungrily, watching his movements, waiting for the perfect moment. They readied their own weapons.
“Do it, Shelby!” Orion screamed.
Thing Two turned his head, an eyebrow arching. “What’d you say, bitch?” he snarled, eyes wild. “Sit the fuck back down!”
Orion ignored him, looking past him and focusing on Shelby, her heart in her throat. “Now, damnit!” she screamed.
Shelby didn’t move. She was still shaking, weeping. Frozen.
Orion was about to scream, about to try and reach him, to stab him herself if she could. But Shelby turned slowly toward Thing Two, and something in her changed, something took over, and in one quick motion, her hand just a blur, she drove the piece of metal down into Thing Two’s carotid artery, right where Orion told her to.
Orion couldn’t tell who was more surprised, Shelby or Thing Two.
Shelby shrieked at the blood that poured from the wide gash in his neck, and she pulled her hands back, leaving the metal right where she put it.
Thing Two’s eyes went wide, his face ashen. His hands met his neck, and he stumbled back. Neither Jaclyn or Orion hesitated. They rushed forward, stabbing their own shanks into him in quick succession. After carving up his throat and face, Orion embedded her bloody pen into his eye with a squelch, leaving it there. He fell back onto the floor liked a downed tree, his head making a sick thud when it hit the concrete. He groaned weakly.
Jaclyn chuckled, much the same way many monsters had laughed at her own pain. She lodged her toothbrush shank into his other eye, leaving it there, silencing him for good.
Orion didn’t laugh. She just stood there, watching him bleed out, feeling an exhilaration she hadn’t ever felt before. It wasn’t because she was one step closer. It was because killing someone who had caused her so much harm, so much pain, so much grief, felt like a drug. She felt invigorated, like a tiny little crack in her soul had been filled in.
As Shelby vomited beside Thing Two’s bleeding body, Orion snatched the keys from the floor beside him. She made sure to take one last good hard look at him. Her stained hands fastened around the keys, tight enough to cut through the skin on her palm. She cocked her head, analyzing the way the blood pooled around Thing Two’s skull.
And then she smiled.
It was the perfect summer day.
The sun was still shining.
Kids were still playing.
Fathers had stopped mowing their lawns; they were mostly positioned in front of the TV, third beer in hand, a sports game on TV. Others were in backyards, cleaning grills for parties. Some were playing catch with their children in the front yard.
That was what Henry Rollins was doing with his daughter. His son Andy, wasn’t interested in sports. He liked to read vampire books. His wife told him it was nothing to worry about, so he tried not to worry. Tried to support him and not show how weird he thought it was. He thought he did it well. He loved his kids, and only wanted the best for them. He didn’t want them to be bullied or turn out to be serial killers.
Hannah had a good arm and a passion for sports. His wife told him that did not make her gay. That disappointed him. He would much rather his little girl be gay. Men were pigs.
He heard the sound of the front door across the street burst open, and his eyes immediately lifted. Pig was a good description of the men who lived there. That was why he never let Hannah out there on her own. Why he made sure she was with a group of friends if she wanted to ride her bike. The guys across the street gave him the creeps. He didn’t like the look of them.
But it wasn’t one of the pigs.
He squinted at the form of a woman covered in blood and wearing pajamas emerging from the door. And then there was another behind her. The last sprinted out before collapsing on the yellow grass.
“Dad!” Hannah yelled, her eyes on the scene too.
“Get inside now,” he said. “Call 911.”
Then he raced across the street.
His green baseball mitt landed on the lawn.
He wouldn’t be able to pick it up again without thinking of this day. Those women. Those broken girls.
Three
Maddox was tired.
He also had a thumping in his skull thanks to the Jameson he drank the night before. He wasn’t proud of the amount of liquor and beer bottles in his recycling bin every week, but he didn’t really care much about what people thought of him either. He never drank on duty, and he never made a mistake on the job. So, what of it if he caught a little buzz after a hard day’s work? He had earned it.
He often told himself things like that throughout the years. That his drinking was simply a way to blow off steam. That it was the only thing that could help him sleep. But he knew deep down he drank because of her. Because she had left him with a feeling unlike any he’d ever had before in his sixteen years of life, and then, without warning, she was gone. Vanished into thin air.
The Clark County Sheriff’s Department never really did open an investigation on Orion’s disappearance. As the largest county in the state of Missouri and situated smack dab in the middle of meth country, Clark County didn’t have time to waste on teenage runaways. They looked at her home life, at the previous runaway attempts, at the mental institution stay when Orion was twelve, and they determined she most likely ran away again. The police never looked for her, her parents never looked for her, and her memory was left to wither away to nothing.
Detective Maddox Novak, one of only two detectives working out of the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, couldn’t accept that. He never believed she would up and leave, not without saying something, at least. She would’ve contacted him. Even before their kiss, even before he confessed his feelings, he had grown up with her. He wanted to believe she cared for him like he did her. Maybe that’s why he ended up joining the department.
When the call came in from the sheriff on his weekend off, he was thankful, if he was being honest with himself. He grew to despise days off. Much like the alcohol, work became a way for him to forget, to busy himself numb. His sister had taken the early shift on the Saturday that would flip his whole world upside down, so he was left alone and miserable, with too much alcohol in the fridge and a service revolver that beckoned him, as it often did when the depression was particularly bad.
The call from the sheriff was unusual. Three women found in a suburban neighborhood, covered in blood, confused and with signs of abuse. He’d been at the scene, and it was clear that these women were abused. The fucking prison in the basement told him that. The filthy mattress and the chains, the albums upon albums upon albums of child pornography told him that. He wasn’t comfortable with the thoughts of Orion that hit him when he searched the premises.
Once forensics arrived, and the coroner soon after for the dead meth head in the basement, Maddox was sent to the Cook County Regional Hospital with his partner, Detective Eric Baptiste, to interview the gir
ls who had escaped. He hadn’t checked the case file yet, hadn’t seen her name among the women. Had he seen it, he wouldn’t have made his way so leisurely to the hospital.
He stopped in the doorway of their room, staring at the three women wearing hospital gowns only briefly before his jaw dropped. His heart beat so hard, it felt like it might burst from his chest.
Orion Elizabeth Darby.
He couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t speak. He just stared as Eric continued jabbering on beside him about the Cardinals and who they needed to trade for.
There were four beds in the room. Three beds had been slept in, the sheets messy, but all three of the women were crowded together on the fourth bed. Not touching, but close. That told him things. That there was a bond between them. From captivity. Abuse. Murder. He felt comfortable, if only slightly, in knowing she at least had them in that wretched place.
The TV perched on an extendable arm in the corner showed Maury Povich, and the three women were captivated by it.
“Hey, you hearing me?” Eric asked, but his partner continued into the room, toward the women, ignoring him. Eric scoffed and then followed him in.
Maddox cleared his throat after standing motionless for a second. He cleared it a second time, louder then, but the women stayed glued to the television.
Maddox was about to do it a third time when Eric put a hand up, chuckling, and said, “Uh, ladies . . .”
“Can you not see we’re busy, motherfuc—” Jaclyn’s mouth formed an O and it stayed there as her almond eyes discovered the badges hanging from chains around their necks. “Well . . . alrighty then.” She let out a nervous chuckle, the glint in her eyes rebellious.
Orion chuckled, not seeing Maddox just yet, then turned her head to see who Jaclyn was talking to. And in a heartbeat, her smile faded, her jaw going slack, eyes wide.
The thumping in his head dissipated and a dull roar in his ears replaced it.
He stepped forward slowly, never taking his gaze from her wide hazel eyes, tears forming in his own. “Ri,” he choked out.
The woman with the familiar eyes sat up straighter. Stiffened. Cleared her throat. Seemed to dismiss him just as quickly as she’d recognized him in awe. “Um, hey, Maddox,” she said casually. “What’s it been, five, ten years?”
She was hallucinating. That had to be it, right? The shrink with the glasses and the pointy noise told them all about it not an hour before she laid eyes on Maddox for the first time in ten years. Post-traumatic stress disorder would treat them to things like flashbacks, nightmares, panic attacks, cognitive delays, and a whole other laundry list of things they had to look forward to. You don’t just get out of what they went through unscathed. They were damaged for life. Broken. Orion had known that the second the sun shone on her skin and feelings of happiness or freedom weren’t anywhere to be found. She knew that cell had followed her out. It was attached to her black soul.
The shrink had a soft voice, said all the right things, and made sure to comfort them, but Orion still saw the glint in her eye. The hunger. She wanted to get her talons into their brains. Unpack them. Dissect them. Put them up on her wall as some kind of achievement . . . a badge of fucking honor. Fuck, she probably wanted to write a book on them.
The Missouri Three. Or The Lost Girls. Maybe The Broken Ones. Surely, they’d come up with some stupid fucking name as soon as everything hit the news, if it hadn’t already.
Orion didn’t know how much they knew about everything. She couldn’t remember how much she’d said. All she knew was that her ankle felt too empty without the chain, her body too clean, stomach too full. The room was too wide. Bright.
There was too much white.
Then there was too much Maddox.
She knew it was him immediately. She shouldn’t have. After all, it had been ten years. It shocked her so much, that instant recognition, that instant longing, that she forced nonchalance, but she was as surprised as he was to be face to face again.
“Ten years, nine months, and twenty-six days, actually,” Maddox corrected her. His voice was scratchy. Choked. Hesitant. The rest of him wasn’t. Everything about him was strong, confident, but he carried an air of mystery she didn’t remember him having.
She eyed him for a moment. Studied the new darkness in his eyes. The badge on the chain around his neck. Polished. Clean. The gun in a holster on his hip. The T-shirt that was so worn the print on the front was too faded to decipher. Muscles underneath the shirt. Sculpted biceps. Sinewy arms. Large hands. Man hands. He had certainly grown.
She snapped her eyes back up to the man with the strong jaw and five-o’clock shadow.
“Ten years, Ri,” Maddox said, stepping forward, eyes wide in wonder. “I always knew you were alive, you know? I never let them tell me otherwise . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head, a small grin at the corner of his mouth.
She hated him in that moment. For smiling. For growing up well, with clean clothes, muscles, control over his hair, his life. Fucking smiling at her like they were on that porch again. Like this world gave you reasons to smile. Like him thinking they were still alive after all these years somehow took away all the pain those years had brought.
“It’s Orion now,” she said stiffly. She made sure to hold herself completely still so she didn’t shake. She didn’t want him thinking of her as that little girl anymore. No, that little girl was gone. A shell is what was left of her, and a shell is what she gave him. “When can we leave?” Her tone was nasty. Too nasty, she thought. But she disregarded his feelings.
His smile faded.
She was glad for that because she could breathe again. She could forget that it was the same beautiful smile that he flashed her way so long ago, after giving her that first kiss. His teeth were still perfect, white and beautiful, and she had herself a little chuckle over that. Good to be the dentist’s son.
“We’re gonna get you out of here as soon as we can, Ri,” Maddox said, and he looked like he regretted it almost immediately.
She gritted her teeth. “My name is Orion.”
“Orion . . . sorry.” He hung his head, and her eyes caught his badge once more.
She nodded her head toward it. “What’s up with that?”
He glanced down to the badge and chuckled. It was forced, grating. The sound was attractive and hideous at the same time. “Hard to believe, huh? I fast-tracked after high school.” He paused. “After everything.”
Everything. She saw the way his shoulders slouched just a little more when he said it, and his forehead scrunched and nose twitched, just as it did when he got nervous as a kid.
She thought about that word again. Everything. Ah. That was a handy little word to encompass ten years of hell. All the rape, you mean, Maddox? The torture?
Orion kept her cool, her eyes steady on Maddox, Jaclyn and Shelby watching her every move, like Maury Povich had popped out of the TV. “It’s certainly hard to believe the guy who got me stoned for the first and only time became a cop,” she said, not trusting herself to grin, even if she wanted to.
The first time she’d smiled in a decade had been when the blood drained from Thing Two’s neck, her pen shiv sticking out of his eye, and the memory then, just as it did many times after, filled her with a sense of satisfaction unlike any other.
“Yeah, well,” Maddox said, rubbing the back of his neck with his arm. He chuckled. Nervously, this time. He glanced toward the buttoned-up black man beside him, his partner, she guessed. He was handsome, but Orion didn’t really understand how to classify men as handsome anymore. How to classify them as anything but monsters hiding underneath flesh. She knew that was unfair. To lump them all in with The Things. But life wasn’t fair. “I never touched the stuff again. Kind of lost its luster after you . . . left.”
“Left,” she said, laughing condescendingly. “Is that what I did, Maddox?”
“Aww, that’s Maddox?” Jaclyn drawled, her voice saccharine sweet, taunting the moment. She knew who Maddox was. St
ories were all they’d had in The Cell.
Orion glared at her. “Shut up, Jaclyn.” She turned back toward Maddox and pointed at the man beside him. “So, who’s this?”
The man stepped forward, flashing white, perfectly straight teeth, a movie-star smile if she’d ever seen one, and she shook her head. Does everyone but me have great teeth?
“Detective Eric Baptiste,” he offered in a smooth voice. “Nice to meet you, ladies.”
Orion arched a brow and looked toward Maddox. How did they connect? A polite black man in a neatly pressed shirt standing next to the white man who hadn’t shaved in days, and obviously never changed his shirt.
“My partner,” Maddox explained.
Eric chuckled. “His better half.”
Shelby sat up, having been half hiding behind the two of them. Her eyes were wide and darting between the two men. “Seriously?”
Orion wanted to roll her eyes at the woman’s gullibility, but then again, to come out of what they’d been through and still be naive took talent. And some strong denial.
“No, no,” Maddox said. “My work partner.”
Eric shook his head. “He’s always denying our love. But, one day, we’ll be life partners too.”
Maddox rolled his eyes.
Playful, Orion noted. Sense of humor. Kind eyes with a hardness around the edges. She didn’t trust her taste in men at this stage. Anyone who wasn’t raping or beating her could be considered “good.”
Shelby giggled. Both Orion and Jaclyn glanced back at the sound. It was foreign. She decided she wouldn’t knock out Eric’s teeth. Not yet at least.
“So, you were saying . . . about us getting out of here? Haven’t we been locked up long enough?”
Maddox straightened, jutting his chin up ever so slightly. Orion watched a mask—a cop mask, she thought—settle over almost all of his face except his eyes. They gave him away. He cleared his throat. “The doctors are done with you. We’ve got one of our clerks bringing toiletries, a few changes of clothes,” he said. Cop voice too. He didn’t take his eyes off Orion. “If it’s alright with y’all, we’re going to get you out of here and over to a hotel in Edwardsville for the night. We’ll have uniformed officers there all night to keep you safe.”