by M K Farrar
“We’ll go. Take Lucas with us.”
Shawn nodded. “Okay, but we should wait until we can get some backup.”
“We don’t know how long that’s going to take. If we wait, Paige might pay with her life.”
“We can’t go on our own, Swift,” Shawn insisted.
She knew he was right. “Get backup to meet us there.”
That would have to do. They couldn’t risk wasting time waiting around for more officers. Had Ben taken Paige to use as a hostage? There was one positive note to hold on to, if that was the case. It would mean that Paige Arland was still alive, though for how much longer, Erica had no idea.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Paige didn’t know where she was.
Her face throbbed, and she couldn’t breathe through her nose. This pain was worse than before—worse than the morning where she’d woken to the news that Adam Humphries had been murdered. She blinked open her eyes, but even they felt swollen, her eyelids glued together.
What the fuck had happened?
Paige gulped back a sob. Someone had hurt her, but she didn’t know who.
Her eyes started to get used to the gloom. Light filtered through slats of what appeared to be large, curved, wooden double doors—bigger than those needed for just people to walk through. Doors meant she could get out, though she was sure they’d be locked. The ceiling above her was made of stone and curved as well.
She suddenly realised she wasn’t alone.
Paige let out a yelp and tried to push herself backwards. A figure filled a chair in front of her, just sitting there, watching her. It was the same person who’d hurt her, she was sure.
Lucas?
She blinked again, willing her eyes to open just that little bit more, needing to see who was there. The face blurred and swam, and she squeezed her eyes shut again. She was sure she recognised the set of their shoulders.
It couldn’t be Lucas. She’d seen the detective handcuff him and drag him away, though not for Jasmine’s murder. Could he have been released again? No, there was no way they’d have released him only minutes after first arresting him. Could he have escaped then? That seemed more likely, but then why would he use his freedom to come after her? Wouldn’t he have just run?
“Hello, Paige.”
Paige jerked at the sound. She knew that voice.
She strained her eyes again, and the face swam into her vision. “Ben?”
Confusion filled her mind. Why was Ben sitting on a chair in front of her?
“Good,” he said, “you’re awake.”
“What... what am I doing here?”
A hideous possibility occurred to her. Had he brought her here to rape her, too. Had he figured she was easy bait, and wanted to get some of what Lucas had had? She didn’t think she was strong enough to survive going through that again—assuming he didn’t kill her afterwards to keep her quiet.
But then she realised this was different to last time. She didn’t see lust in his eyes—quite the opposite. He was looking at her as though she was something he’d scraped off the sole of his shoe.
“I had to get you away from all those fucking cops. I should have done it far sooner, but I hadn’t realised you’d remembered what had happened. If I had, I would have dealt with you before you’d had the chance to tell Jasmine, and then I wouldn’t have been forced to shut her up as well.”
His words were like a punch in the chest. “Jasmine? You hurt Jasmine?” So, it hadn’t been Lucas at all. “You mean you killed her?”
“Yeah, I was the one to kill her.”
Her mind was reeling. “Why would you do that? Jasmine never hurt anyone!”
“She was looking for Lucas. She asked me where he was, and I said I didn’t know, and do you know what she said to me? She asked me if I even knew Lucas at all, and then said that according to you, he was a fucking rapist! Do you think I could just allow her to go around campus spreading bullshit like that?”
Paige shook her head. “It wasn’t bullshit. Lucas did rape me.”
“That’s my best friend you’re talking about,” Ben growled. “Why the fuck would he need to rape someone like you? He could have any girl he wanted.”
“But I didn’t want him!”
“You should consider yourself lucky someone like Lucas would even glance in your direction.”
Paige stared at him. “Do you have a thing about Lucas? Is that what this is all about? Are you jealous? Is this whole thing about protecting him just crap you’ve made up to yourself because actually you wanted Jasmine dead so you could get Lucas all to yourself again?”
“No!” He lurched up from the chair, his fist balled. “Shut the fuck up, you fucking bitch.”
Paige reared back, certain she’d find his fist connecting with her face. She’d struck a nerve, though, she knew she had.
Realisation hit her, and through her terror and anger and fear, relief flooded through her. She’d never been the one to hurt Adam Humphries. The blood in her bed that morning had all been hers. She wasn’t her father’s daughter.
“And what about Adam?” she dared to ask. “Why did you kill him?”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Ben looked down at the bloodied, pathetic girl sitting on the hard, stone floor and shook his head in disgust. He had nothing but contempt for bitches like her. Like her, and her friend, Jasmine.
“I had to kill Adam. He’d seen what Lucas was doing to you, and I knew he’d never have kept his mouth shut. He was one of those New Age pricks who would have reported it immediately. I was protecting Lucas.”
“Lucas has been arrested for killing Adam,” she spat. “How do you think that’s protecting him?”
Ben paced back and forth, clearly agitated. “I’ll fix it. I don’t know how yet, but I’ll fix it.”
He hadn’t minded Jasmine hanging around initially. She was the popular one and always brought along a couple of friends with her. The friends weren’t as pretty or flirty as Jas, but they were all right. He tolerated them. But then it had seemed every time he saw Lucas, Jasmine was there as well. The worst part was that Lucas didn’t even seem to mind. Ben had preferred it when it had just been the two of them hanging out, and Lucas just had Jasmine around with a plan to fuck her and then move on to the next girl, but then the two of them had grown close. Lucas actually seemed to enjoy the girl’s company, which pissed Ben off. They weren’t free for the first time in their lives only to get tied down again. He didn’t know what Lucas was thinking, but he was screwing everything up.
Ben had wanted it to go back to just being the two of them again.
He hadn’t told Lucas what he’d done for him, though a part of him thought Lucas might suspect the truth. Before Paige had spilled the beans, he’d been tempted to tell Jasmine what Lucas had done himself—that would have been bound to send the girl running in the other direction, so he’d have Lucas back again—but he was more than aware of his part in events. He hadn’t wanted to get either of them in trouble.
“Let me go,” Paige begged. “You can’t fix anything if you kill me, too.”
He gritted his teeth and tried not to give in to the cold anger settling inside him. It was all to do with these fucking girls. In his experience, all trouble originated with them.
“Shut up!” he yelled.
But infuriatingly, Paige shook her head. “No, I won’t. I was silent for too long, and look what happened.”
“You fucking girls ruin everything!” he spat.
In Ben’s mind, they did. Before his mother had found out about his dad’s multiple affairs, everything had been fine. Sure, his dad often spent the night away due to ‘work’ or was late back home, but they’d been a happy family. It was those other women’s fault for luring his dad away. They were all sluts, the whole lot of them. They’d known he was married, Ben was sure, but they’d all still come on to his dad, flirting with him, fluttering their eyelashes and wearing tight clothing. Fucking whores. It had broken his mother in the end
. She’d tried to kill herself on several occasions. Ben had even found her one time, lying in the bathtub, with her wrists slashed. She hadn’t even done it the right way, the stupid cow. Everyone knew you cut up the inside of the wrists, not across. She hadn’t even been able to get that right.
He’d been grateful to escape that fucking mess to come to university, and he’d thought everything was going to be great. It had been, too, until Paige and Jasmine had come on the scene, and then everything had fallen apart.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Paige’s mind spun with how unfair his accusations were. How had she ruined everything? All she’d ever tried to do was keep her head down and live her life. Seemed to her that it was the men in her life who’d been the ones to screw everything up, but she knew she couldn’t think like that either. She didn’t want to share a single thing with someone like Ben Redding, and that included the way he thought. There were good men in the world, just like there were good women. Being good or bad had nothing to do with whether you were male or female and everything to do with your values and who you were in your soul.
“Just let me go,” she tried again. “I never asked for any of this, Ben.”
“Yes!” He got up in her face, his finger pointed, jabbing. “Yes, you did! You made Lucas think you were into him and then you changed your mind at the last minute and made him look like the bad guy.”
She let out a frustrated sob. “I never made him think I was interested! I’d barely ever even spoken to him before. I thought he was into Jasmine.”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it. You deserve everything you get.”
“And what about Jasmine?” she tried. “What did Jasmine ever do to deserve you killing her?”
“That was your fault, too. You told her everything, and she believed you.”
Paige’s heart lifted for the briefest of moments—Jas had believed her and had remained her true friend, despite everything—but then it dropped back down. Jasmine was dead, and it was partly her fault. If only she’d kept her mouth shut, Jasmine would still be alive today.
“So, what if she believed me? It was the truth!”
“Yeah, and she was ready to blab that shit all over campus. I intercepted her on her way over to confront Lucas, and she was already raging, shouting her mouth off and saying she was going to make sure everyone knew he was a fucking rapist.”
“He is!”
He barked laughter. “What? According to you, you mean. I saw the state of you that night. You were so drunk you didn’t even remember what had happened. How do you know that you weren’t begging him for it and then decided to change your mind at the last minute?”
“Even if I had, that wasn’t enough of an excuse for him to do what he did.”
“Men have needs. You can’t expect to get us all riled up and then just walk away.”
“That’s some masochistic bullshit if I ever heard it.”
Maybe she should be more frightened—she was frightened—but she was also angry. More than angry—she was furious. Fucking bastards, the pair of them! Both Adam and Jasmine, and now most likely her as well, dead, all because Lucas Gill couldn’t take no for an answer. Fury boiled beneath her skin; she was surprised steam wasn’t pouring from her ears and nostrils.
“Fuck you!” she screamed at him. “Fuck you, you fucking piece of—”
Several strides brought him directly in front of her, and his knuckles connected with her mouth. Her head rocked on her neck as she fell backwards, so she was lying on her back on the floor. Stars flashed in her vision.
Ben straddled her, his knees pinning down her arms, his torso towering over her
“I’m going to kill you, you bitch. And I’m going to enjoy every second of it.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
From the rear seat of the squad car, Lucas directed Erica and Shawn to the place where he thought Ben might have brought Paige. Erica drove, navigating the back streets until they finally pulled up in a spot that was a good distance from any high streets or housing estates. They were in an industrial area, though most of it appeared abandoned.
Shawn radioed in their location for backup. Since they hadn’t known where they were going, they hadn’t been able to get the other uniform squads to meet them at the final location, so instead made sure they weren’t far behind.
“It’s over there,” Lucas said, motioning to the structure on their right.
The place didn’t look like anything from the outside—an old stone railway bridge arch that had been closed in with double wooden doors, big enough that they must have thought there might be a need to store a train in it again one day—or perhaps part of the planning application was that it remained in keeping with the area. An old sign with the name of the club it had once been, the paint peeling and barely legible, still hung above the doors.
“You need to stay in the car,” she told Lucas as she opened her door.
“No, I still need to take you where Ben might be. It’s through those doors, but you’ll still need to find him.”
She didn’t know whether to believe him or not. She decided on not.
“We’ll take it from here.”
Lucas sat forward in his seat. “No, wait! I can take you right to him. You don’t want to risk stumbling around in the dark. If Ben hears you coming, he’ll kill Paige, you know he will.”
Erica hesitated for a moment, and then relented. “Fine, but don’t try anything stupid.”
She climbed out of the car, Shawn on the other side. Shawn opened the back door and hauled Lucas out to stand with them. He was still in cuffs and he slouched, his head hung.
Erica had no reason to believe that Ben Redding carried a gun. She didn’t doubt he was dangerous, but he didn’t fit a gang profile, where the chances were more likely that he’d be armed, and he hadn’t shot any of his potential victims. If there was a chance he had a gun, she’d have been able to get their authorised firearms officer out.
Instead, she had her Taser and baton, which would have to do, plus she had Shawn with her, and backup were on their way.
“In there,” Lucas said, jerking his head towards the closed doors. “He brought me here a couple of times—one time with Jasmine. We couldn’t smoke on campus, so we came here instead.”
They kept their voices down so as not to alert anyone inside to their presence. Erica worried that if she warned Ben they were there, he might take Paige’s life, if he hadn’t already.
“How do we get inside?” Erica asked him.
“The lock is broken. We just kind of shoved the doors open.”
Shit. There was no way to sneak in. They were just going to have to do this fast and hard.
She looked to Shawn. “Ready?”
He nodded. “Ready.”
Erica approached the doors and prepared herself to donkey-kick them open. No matter how it seemed on television, this was never easy, and it hurt.
She counted herself down, “Three, two, one...”
The sole of her boot hit the wood and the doors flew open, flooding the dark space with light.
In the middle of what would have once been the dancefloor, Ben Redding sat astride a barely conscious Paige, his fist lifted to punch her again. The girl’s eyelids fluttered, her face covered with blood, but she was alive.
Erica didn’t hesitate. She threw herself at Ben and collided with his torso, knocking him off Paige. They rolled together across the stone floor, hands grappling. Erica managed to get on top of him, with him facedown and she wrestled his hands behind his back.
“Get off me, you fucking bitch,” Ben cursed.
Anger rose inside her. “What did you just call me?”
Shawn’s shout snatched her attention. “Lucas!”
He must have let go of his hold on Lucas in order to help Erica.
Erica glanced over to see the figure of Lucas darting away from the open doors. The little shit was making a run for it.
“Go get him back!” she yelled to Shawn.
Lucas was handcuffed and wouldn’t get far, but she didn’t want him doing something stupid like running out into traffic. If he died or was injured on her watch, that would be on her head.
The wail of sirens cut through the air. Backup was almost here.
“I called you a fucking bitch,” Ben said again, snatching her attention from what was happening outside. He lifted his chin from the floor, straining against her. “All of you are bitches.”
She grabbed the back of his head and shoved it down again, grinding his face against the stone. In her mind, she pictured another young man who’d recently come into her life and had left only after taking a vital part of it with him.
Red descended over her vision.
Erica pushed her entire bodyweight onto Ben’s torso, crushing his lungs. She knew, then and there, that she had it in her to kill him. No other officers were present, and Paige wasn’t conscious enough to report on what had happened. No one was here to stop her.
Remember Poppy. Remember your dad. They both need you. Nothing is going to change if you kill him. Your family are the ones who will pay for it.
Her family. She needed to remember her family, or at least the ones that were left. Killing this bastard wasn’t going to bring Chris back, as much as she might wish it could.
She forced herself to raise her weight off his back. She was breathing hard and felt cold and shaky, though sweat ran down her spine.
“Ben Redding, you are under arrest for the murder of Jasmine Newton and Adam Humphries, and the kidnapping and battery of Paige Arland.” She clipped the cuffs onto his wrists.
A moan came from beside her, and she turned her attention to the girl. She’d regained consciousness.
“Paige, are you okay?”
Shawn reappeared in the doorway of the railway arch, Lucas in his grasp.
Ben caught sight of Lucas standing with Shawn. “I did this for you, Lucas,” he called out. “I did all of it for you.”