by Ciara Shayee
“Snap out of it,” she hissed quietly, forcing her mind and hands to cooperate. Putting pencil to paper, she let out a long sigh, searching her mind for something to draw. Memories of her younger years assaulted her. Before she’d even finished deciding which one to recreate, her hand was flying across the page, the quiet sound of the pencil leaving its marks on the sheet marring the silence.
A face swiftly took shape beneath Indie’s pencil. Her once-awkward grip was now far more comfortable, and it only took a minute or so for strong, sharp features to come to life. It was only when the penetrating gaze of the teenager on the page became too much and made her shiver that Indie realised Laker was watching her. He had been for quite some time, too.
His eyes were open now, following the movements of her hands as they twisted the pad and pencil to achieve the best angles. “What’re you drawing?” Laker asked softly.
“I, er…” Blinking, she refocused her wandering mind, dropping her eyes to the page. The portrait jumped from the paper. The landscape drawing wasn’t her best, but it was good. Indie remembered the memory it stemmed from well. All five of the Ashby and Davies kids, as well as Laker, were playing in Tugwell Park, just a short two-minute walk away from their houses. They’d been there for hours when it began to rain, soaking them to the bone, so they ran home giggling and squealing. They’d hustled as fast as possible towards Peter’s house, where Reagan and Peter were putting together Heidi’s and Pippa’s twin beds, but they were dripping wet and soggy by the time they got there.
They’d been corralled into the kitchen to get dry, towels handed out as well as Grace’s hairdryer. As Indie helped Grace tie her hair back, she’d glanced over at Archie and Laker, the pair stripping off their shirts at the time. At eight years old, and used to her brother strolling around shirtless, she was unperturbed by the boys’ naked torsos. She caught Laker’s eye, grinning when he tossed her a playful wink while using the towel he had draped around his shoulders to dry his scruffy hair.
It was that moment Indie had drawn, Laker’s brows furrowed in concentration as he stretched up to scrub his hair. A shiver rippled through Indie’s body which, of course, Laker noticed. He always noticed.
“Are you okay? Cold?”
“A little,” she murmured, wanting to get away from Laker’s watchful eyes for just a minute. “Please, can you grab my blanket? I left it in the car after my doctor’s appointment.”
Always willing to help, Laker rose quickly, striding to the door separating the living room from the hall. “It’s in your dad’s car, right?”
Indie nodded, thankful Reagan had decided to go with Peter in his van today. A few moments later, she heard the soft click of the front door closing behind him. Sighing heavily, she leaned her head back against the sofa, letting her tired eyes slide shut. She was thirty-four weeks pregnant, and feeling it, too. The baby had caught up with his or her weight now she was eating a better diet; subsequently, Indie had ballooned in the past month. Carl-Roman often commented that she was a bump walking around with an Indie attached, and everybody was inclined to agree, including Indie. She was sick of being pregnant, but couldn’t bring herself to wish her due date closer. After all, with the baby still inside her, he or she was safe and growing steadily.
It was getting harder and harder to sleep, her growing bump wreaking havoc on her back, so she’d taken to napping in fits and starts during the day. Marley had finally started getting better at sleeping in her own bed but still wouldn’t take naps in the daytime, so Indie often left her with Laker while she rested. Not that Laker or Marley seemed to mind. They’d only grown closer; the pair were as thick as thieves.
Daily, she wondered how Marley would cope when Laker went back to Italy, though he hadn’t mentioned any plans to leave just yet.
It’s funny, isn’t it, how hindsight is twenty-twenty?
If Indie hadn’t been so tired and had managed to keep her eyes open, she’d have seen the shadowed figure of a tall, thin man as he moved down the hallway into the entrance to the living room.
She’d have been able to scream before he took the first of six silent steps towards her.
Someone might have heard those screams before the chloroform-soaked cloth was pressed tightly over her mouth, a bony hand clasping her wrists together where they lay atop her sketch pad.
When her eyes did fly open at the shock of the chemicals seeping into her airways, they were just inches from the sickening, narrowed hazel eyes of her tormentor.
There wasn’t time, and she lacked the strength to fight him off.
Only seconds later, she slumped backward.
Blackness engulfed her. The open pad fell to the carpet.
At the top of the stairs, Marley huddled into a ball, whimpering the same words over and over around her thumb.
“Bad-man. Bad-man. Bad-man.”
~ oOo ~
“What the…” Rousing slowly, Indie groaned and inhaled a shallow breath, gasping at the chill it sent through her body. Wherever she was, it was freezing.
A moment was all it took for Indie to realise she was blindfolded and bound at the wrists and ankles, completely at the mercy of her captor.
It was during that first, interminable amount of time when she could see nothing, hear nothing but the steady, far-off sound of water dripping, that Indie deeply regretted asking Laker to get her blanket. Thoughts of him flooded her mind—an endless reel of his facial expressions, the sound of his voice, his laugh, the feel of his arms wrapping her up in the motel to save her from the inferno he started. He’d never let him get to her. Never. Not without a fight.
Oh, Laker…
She sniffled. The first of many tears to come slid over her cheeks from beneath the blindfold, wetting the scratchy material.
A loud, amused chuckle echoed around her. She let out an involuntary yelp. “Oh, you’re awake! Finally! I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again.”
A harsh shudder ripped through Indie’s body. “Wh-where is he?” she stuttered. The biting cold was getting to her. An ache was spreading through her body, the chilly air nipping at her skin wherever it could reach.
“He? Who’s ‘he?’ Your little friend you made me kill, you mean?”
Kill…
Indie’s heart skipped a beat before taking off at an agonised sprint. Without her sight, she couldn’t read his expression; couldn’t see his eyes to know if what he was saying was true.
He can’t be dead. Not Laker. He can’t be dead.
The words became a desperate mantra as she listened to the scraping of metal on what she assumed was concrete; it certainly felt like she was sitting on concrete. Then, there was an ominous click.
Thanks to a bear that had wandered too close to the ranch house one day while she, Grace, and Ryan were working in the barn, she knew exactly what that sound was.
A gun.
Indie shuddered, trembling violently against the cold, hard floor. Her awkward position, on her side with one arm going dead beneath her weight, wasn’t comfortable in the slightest. Her stomach ached, its weight largely unsupported. She’d had to use a pregnancy pillow when sleeping for the past few weeks, but she doubted Garrett would’ve thought to steal it for her.
“How are you even here? How did you know I’d be there?”
Garrett laughed. It was a sickening sound; one that sent an unpleasant shiver down her spine. “It was easy. A friend helped me out getting me over here, and it was easy enough to get one of my men in once we’d disposed of the guard on duty.” Garrett tutted. “Shame he had to die, really. Got a wife, apparently. Never mind. They’ll be finding his body soon.”
Indie’s heart raced in time with his heavy footsteps.
“Once he got the bug planted it was just a matter of biding my time until you were alone. And it was just too poetic that your neighbours, the Joneses, are away, freeing up their van.”
He leaned in close, hot, foul-smelling breath washing over her face; Indie heaved. “Apple red, just
like the first time.”
Flashes of memories filled Indie’s mind.
An unseasonably warm, February day.
The exhilaration of being allowed to walk home without an adult.
The quiet rumble of an engine; nothing to worry about, so they thought.
The reflection of a candy apple red van in the windscreen of the parked car ahead.
“Up we get.”
A shrill scream burned its way from her throat as his bony fingers suddenly yanked her from the ground by her upper-arms, shoving her onto what felt like a plastic chair. Her weight was uneven thanks to her stomach, so she stumbled backward and hit it painfully hard. He then ripped the blindfold from her head, the fabric pulling at the hairs tangled around it as he did so. She was torn between wanting to keep her eyes shut, and needing to have them open to be able to watch him. Sitting upright was slightly more comfortable except for her arms, which were bent at an awkward angle against the back of the chair. Indie felt a shudder ripple up her spine, wincing at the pain that accompanied it.
“Oh, you poor thing. You must be frozen. Pardon my manners.”
Indie’s heart pounded, her eyes widening at the soft cooing coming from Garrett’s mouth. She’d forgotten how to deal with his mood swings. She was out of practice at keeping up with him.
He walked behind her, his boots loud on the concrete. She listened intently to his footsteps, counting how many it took before the creaking of a door bounced around the room. His strides were longer than hers, so she added some extra to compensate for her shorter legs. He returned a few moments later with the dark red blanket Laker had gone to fetch from the car.
Indie’s blood ran cold.
For him to have the blanket, he must’ve done something to Laker. And while she thought about it, to get in the front door so quietly he must have taken the key from him, too.
“Here we go, darling. We don’t want you to catch a cold, now do we? Your mother won’t be happy with me if I let her precious daughter get sick before we meet up with her,” he continued in his low, crooning tone as he draped the blanket around her shoulders, loosely knotting it over her bump. She jumped when his fingers brushed her, feeling sickened to have any part of him that close to her precious, innocent baby. He didn’t seem to notice, stepping back with an almost adoring smile.
“Wh-why are you doing this?” Indie whimpered, shoving the mention of her mother from her mind.
His eyes softened. “Oh, darling. Don’t you know we were always meant to be this way? You, and me, and your mother.” Garrett sighed, pulling a worn photograph from the pocket of his dirty black jeans. “My Penny…so beautiful. You look just like her, you know.”
“Where are w-we?”
“I’ve waited forty years, but we’ll be together soon. You, too.” His lips pulled up into a sickening grin as Indie’s breaths grew frantic, shooting pains rippling over the surface of her bump. “I knew you’d be excited to see her again. It’s been…what, sixteen years? Seventeen?”
Indie’s spine tightened, a cool breeze stealing its way through the darkened building. Thanks to the lack of light, Indie’s eyes could only see ten feet or so away before the blackness swallowed up the rest of her surroundings. It was disorientating be only to able to see a grey circle around herself, the single, other living thing within it being the man responsible for twelve years of torture. She couldn’t even see where the power cord for the lone lamp ended; it disappeared into the shadows. The air was damp and smelled sour, like sweat and mould.
“She-she’s dead. She’s not c-coming back, you idiot,” she gritted out, tears stabbing at her eyes.
Garrett flipped. He let out a roar of anger, his eyes ablaze and maniacal when he turned them on Indie. She immediately knew he was about to hit her with another mood swing.
“You stupid little girl! You think I meant for them to die? For her to die? It was supposed to be him!”
It took a handful of seconds for Indie’s mind to grasp what he was insinuating, but when it did, she was forced to ponder, was it his fault Mum and Auntie T died? Was it an accident, or something more sinister?
How could he have done it? The police put the driver in prison, and he was killed in a riot a few weeks later. Nobody had been in the car with him—there were too many witnesses, and they’d caught the car on a traffic camera a mile back.
Puzzled, cold, and cringing with every pain in her mid-section, Indie attempted to refocus on Garrett as he paced.
“Goddamn moron was supposed to check first…should have just done it myself. At least I didn’t have to pay him after he screwed up. He deserved to die after he killed my Penny.”
Curiosity peaked, Indie listened intently to his mumblings; hoping, praying, he’d say something she could use.
“If that idiot hadn’t gotten so drunk, my Penny might be with me. That bastard should never have had her. I suppose it’s all working out well now. We’ll be together again soon, and we’ve got our daughter, even if she is a spoilt brat. Hiring that moron as a hitman might just be the best thing after all—”
A feral, keening wail erupted from Indie’s slight body, echoing harshly in the dark somewhere he was holding her captive. Too wild to care that she wouldn’t get far with her ankles tied, Indie threw herself from the chair in Garrett’s direction, her body hitting his full-force, side-on. She wasn’t crazed enough to forget about the bump jutting from her middle, though the pain emanating from it was making her a little disorientated.
Suddenly, it all made sense.
“You killed them! All along it was you, you sick, messed up bastard!” She screeched, pent-up pain and loss rising and spilling out of her as she beat him with her head, knees, and feet, jabbing her elbow hard into his stomach until he finally regained his wits enough to shove her back to the floor. She hit the ground with a sharp cry. Something within her tore; a pain so intense she almost passed out spread through her veins.
Panting, Indie mustered the energy from somewhere to continue screaming at him. “You ruined lives! You killed my mum! How could you do that?”
Garrett growled and pushed her away. “Shut up! Shut up, just shut up!”
He tied her to a pillar just out of the circle of light, looping a rope through the cable tie binding her hands before securing it around the base. He crouched in front of her, hissing when she spat at him with a furious glower, tears tumbling over her cheeks.
It hurts so much, she thought desperately.
The baby…oh God, something’s wrong with the baby. Please, don’t let anything happen to my baby.
“Don’t you think I know I killed her? Don’t you think I regret it every damn day?”
“Get the hell away from me. You’re a murderer!”
“He wasn’t meant to kill Penny or the Davies woman! God,” two bony, calloused hands tugged hard at more-grey-than-brown hair. “It wasn’t supposed to be them.”
“She would never have been with you. Never! She loved Dad. You’re a psychotic asshole and that’s why Mum hated you,” Indie spat her words, losing her fight but running purely on adrenaline and anger.
Garrett neutralised his expression before rising up to tower over Indie. His frustration amplified when she refused to cower as she always had before. He wouldn’t be getting that reaction again.
She was stronger now, even as her body tore itself apart.
Instead of lashing out verbally, as she expected, Garrett turned from his panting prisoner and slipped into the darkness. By the time she realised that he was returning with another sedative soaked rag, it was too late to fight.
She slumped against the concrete post at her back, Garrett’s shadowed, smug smile the last thing she saw before her world went black.
chapter twenty-six
A frigid breeze slithered into Laker’s bones, dragging him coughing and spluttering into consciousness.
Sharp, stabbing sensations began at his temple, spreading through his head. He tried to move, but he held still when nausea sma
cked into him full-force. With tiny black spots infiltrating his sight, Laker slowly pushed himself up to a sitting position with fawn-like awkwardness, gazing around unseeingly for a few long moments before it all came rushing back.
As his heart beat a frantic tattoo in his aching chest, Laker managed to rise to his feet, stumbling into the front door. It swung open to deposit him face-first on the hardwood, hallway floor with a thump, which was quickly followed by an anguished groan. He didn’t need to see the living room to know he’d failed to protect Indie. Inches in front of his face were dirty footsteps, the mud prints far too large to be hers, never mind the ‘no shoes in the house’ rule Reagan enforced.
Half-formed memories rushed in.
The distant barking of a dog, a woman, carrying her baby inside after closing her car door with a slam, then quiet footsteps. Something sharp against his lower spine, a muffled huff of laughter, and the heavy impact of something metal hitting his temple…
“No. No, no, no, no, no…” Laker began whispering his desperate litany even as tears spilled over his cheeks, blood from the gash on the side of his head mixing with the salty moisture as he dragged himself through the hallway into the doorway to the living room. His cream t-shirt was stained with his blood and tears, drops hitting the floor silently as his veins ran cold. It took almost a full minute for him to make it, but as soon as he did, he fell back onto his haunches, a choked roar scorching his throat on its way out. His eyes found the empty sofa.
“Laker? Laker!” Marley flew down the stairs; her small body hit Laker’s so hard that he fell into the doorframe. He muffled his grunt of pain into her hair, rocking their bodies side-to-side as she sobbed into his chest. “Bad-man. Bad-man. Bad-man.”
It took him a few seconds to understand what she was mumbling. Bad-man. The bad-man had been there. Marley loved everyone. To her, everyone these days was a hero. Only one person could be the ‘bad-man’ she mentioned.