As he pulled her up, she pulled the gun from the holster and shoved it into his gut. She had almost forgotten that he liked to laugh maliciously when he beat her as a child—almost, but not quite. That laughter had finally been silenced as he looked down quickly and then slowly up until his eyes met hers.
“Step. Back. Just one step.” He took a step back, and she smiled coldly at him. “That’s right. Good boy. Not so nice when the shoe is on the other foot.”
Her hand shook as she aimed the gun at him. Swallowing hard, she fought to steady the trembling but settled for stabilizing her shaking hand on her cast. She could not, would not, let him see her shaken. If she was going to die, she would die with the satisfaction that she hadn’t gone down without a fight because the bastard that haunted her dreams, the puppet master of her childhood was now standing in front of her with a gun pointed at him. He didn’t deserve her fear. He didn’t deserve anything from her. And she would do everything in her power to stop him, even if it meant dying. Because she could not live with herself if he harmed another child because she let him walk out of there alive.
The days of Quinn running were long gone because Quinn could live with his blood on her hands. She could not live with another innocent child’s. When she had walked away all those years ago, a scared teenager, she had stupidly convinced herself that he would stop, that he would be watching over his shoulder every day terrified that she had told the police and that they were coming for him. Now her naivete astounded her.
“Put down the gun, Jenny. We both know you won’t use it on me. My darling little girl. You wouldn’t hurt your daddy, would you?”
“You. Are. Not. My. Father,” she ground out between gritted teeth. Her anger steadied her hands. “You are just the son of a bitch who bought me from another of your ilk, another monster who was allowed to roam this earth far too long.”
The monster of her dreams smiled that perfect reptilian smile and laughed again. If there was anything she wanted it was to silence that laughter, the laughter that made Quinn’s blood run cold. Something about the way he was laughing wasn’t right. As if he knew something she didn’t know. Like he was in on a private joke she didn’t know the punch line to. And then he clapped his hands together in glee.
“You never figured it out, then, did you?” He tsked at the look of puzzlement on her face and then flashed that grotesque smile at her again. “Your parents didn’t sell you. I took you from them when you were just a wee little one.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Don’t listen to him, he’s a master at lying, manipulating people into believing everything he says.
“Your real parents loved you quite a lot, actually. They were just young and inexperienced and turned their back for just a moment.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You should believe me. After all, I’m the one who took you. I saw you that day at the park, and I just had to have you. You understand, don’t you? I mean, you were such a beautiful little girl. I guess one could say you turned into a beautiful woman, too. If you like that sort of thing.”
“That sort of thing? You mean if you like adult women versus children? You sick son of a bitch!”
“You really shouldn’t judge something you don’t understand. As a therapist, aren’t you supposed to help me, sympathize with me, tell me that I can be fixed?”
“There is no fixing you. The only way to humanely stop someone like you is to put them down.”
“Darling Jenny, you sure have gotten angry in your old age.”
“Don’t call me that name. Don’t you ever call me that name! Jenny died in those woods—Quinn emerged, she survived.”
The sound of that name on his lips resulted in a flash of anger so profound that her body felt superheated with the intensity of it. Surely, she could use that anger as a weapon. If she’d learned anything, she’d learned that there were many ways to skin a rabbit, and she was looking at the rabbit.
“I groomed you from a young age, didn’t I? I raised you, took care of you. I can call you whatever I want. I did such a good job that you never even thought to check after you got away, did you? You never wanted to find them because I told you how terrible they were to you.”
She stumbled backward at his words until her back was against the cement wall. Blood was still dripping from the wound in her head, but she barely noticed. She shook her head vehemently as if she could shake the words out of her head, never hearing them. Never know that he had ruined her perception of her parents.
“Liar. You are lying!” she yelled, even though she knew he wasn’t. But she wanted so badly to believe that he wasn’t being honest, that she hadn’t wasted all these years without loving parents.
“A simple Google search would have netted numerous links to articles where your parents are pleading for your safe return.” He glanced down at his nails as if they were the most interesting thing in the room, as if he were bored. “Even on the anniversary of your abduction this year. They still held out hope twenty-five years later that you would turn up alive and well. This year was especially somber since it was the silver anniversary of your disappearance. Though I have to admit, they did sound less believable this year in their claims that you’re alive. Of course, you would have had to have known your real name, your real age, where you were really from to find your true identity.” Her real name? “Feeding you all the wrong information just in case you ever got away and ever searched was pretty genius. It was also necessary to break you down and make you think your parents hated you. If you had Googled, you would have found the exact parents I told you were yours. Unfortunately, they did have a child go missing, it’s also unfortunate that they OD’d. Convenient for me, though, that there are so many stories like that out there. I find it immensely useful when I groom my girls.”
Quinn’s knees felt weak. Nothing could have sucked the wind out of her sails more than this. It was as if she had been sucker punched. Her parents loved her, had never stopped looking for her, and she had never tried to find them. She had never known her name, their names, their address. Even if she’d wanted to find them, she couldn’t. She didn’t even know her age or birthday to make an educated guess. He had made sure of that. He had played her so well, she couldn’t have found them even if she’d tried.
“Liar…” she whispered. Her denial even sounded phony to her own ears, because she knew every word of what he said was true. As the truth sunk in, she began to feel a renewed will to live. She had to get out of there. If only for the fact that she owed it to her parents to find them, to tell them how sorry she was for not looking for them, for not trying sooner.
“You know as well as I do that I’m not lying. You just don’t want to acknowledge that you didn’t care enough to find them.”
“I would have cared if I had known they existed. I would have moved heaven and earth to find them.”
“It’s all semantics, isn’t it?’
“You bastard, you unconscionable bastard. I cared. I would have looked. I did look.”
She choked on a small sob. All she’d found was the OD’d drug addicts like he’d wanted. It was another secret she’d not wanted to share. The final secret, in a world of honesty amid forced secrets, there was just this one that she hadn’t told Ethan. She had bared the rest, but not this, not the fact that she’d searched for her parents, and that all she had found was they had died. Only they hadn’t, had they?
“Ah, so my subterfuge did work, then. Lovely. It’s so much more rewarding to know that you did try to find them and were blocked by my manipulations.”
“You mean your lies!”
“Once again, semantics.”
Suddenly a thought occurred to her, and she could have shot him then and there if she didn’t still need answers.
“We were never married. If my real name isn’t Jenny and you stole me. You asshole, you manipulating asshole.”
“All these years you believed that? That really is something else!”
>
Her hand was no longer shaking, her aim was true as she pointed it at the monster in front of her. There was no doubt in her mind as she clicked off the safety that she was going to shoot him between the eyes and not lose one second of sleep over it, but she needed to know her name first. Her real name. She chambered a bullet and stared him straight in the eye, and for one fleeting second, he looked hesitant, as if he knew she wasn’t bluffing and wasn’t going to let him out of there alive.
“What’s my name?”
“Come now, do you really think it matters? You aren’t going to be able to do anything with the knowledge anyway. You’re not getting out of here. After all, you’re heavily guarded.”
“What’s. My. Name? You will tell me my name before I bleed you dry,” she ground out between gritted teeth.
“I love your guts, but you’re the one who is going to be bled dry.”
“I don’t think so. You see, I’m looking at you, so I have a distinct advantage.”
“How so?” he asked, sounding cocky once again.
“Because you can’t see the red dot on your forehead from the sniper.”
His face blanched. He didn’t know if she was lying or not. He knew it could be a ploy to buy her more time—she’d always been resourceful. Her acting must have been Oscar worthy because he definitely believed her. The police had arrived, she knew that, but there was no red dot on his head. Pity.
“Ah, you didn’t really think I would come here without a backup plan, did you? Judging by the look on your face, you did think that. Such a shame that you always underestimated me. It really is a bummer for you, but I can tell you this much, all those guards you have, they have been systematically disabled for the last thirty minutes while you blabbered on and on.”
Quinn was still shaken by the bomb of information he’d dropped, and she hoped that her bluff wasn’t really a bluff. Harrison had let her know that he would be working to help her out of there. He had also told her to keep him talking, to do her best to implicate him in her abduction. The room she was in was the one room in the house that didn’t have a camera. It was the room he took the girls to test them out. Harrison had whispered to her that while Vance wanted to be able to tape his visits with the girls and boys, he didn’t want any photographic evidence. That is, until Harrison slipped one to her before he left the room.
Quinn was no longer terrified of the man in front of her. If anything, she was grateful he had decided to taunt her. Now she knew she had parents to look for. A family, a history, a past worth acknowledging, one that didn’t have him in it, because he had already taken up too much of her life. She could also thank him for allowing her to cleanse herself of his very existence.
“How does it feel to be the one in the cage? Huh, Vance? Daddy. I suspect that you’re just about pissing your pants right now. Good. You deserve it and everything else that’s coming your way.”
“Stupid girl, nothing else is coming my way. I won’t be taken by the pigs you have outside. As long as I have you as a hostage, they won’t move on this room.”
“Bet me? If that’s what you think, then you definitely don’t know the detectives out there. Did you know that your network was infiltrated for the better part of a year?”
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If there was anything that could make her smile, it was the look of pure unadulterated rage and panic on his face. The wolf had now become the sheep, and she loved every minute of it. That expression was all it took for her to realize that she didn’t want to kill him. She wanted him to go to prison and get to see the other side of the world for a while. She wanted him to learn what it was like to be prey.
“You didn’t know, did you? How was it that you worded it before? Lovely. It really does feel good to have the shoe on the other foot. At least, it does for me. Probably not so much for you, though.”
“Impossible. There’s no way someone was inside my network and I didn’t know.”
“Personally, I’m looking forward to putting you away. Rumor is that child molesters and rapists don’t have it easy in prison. How do you think you’re going to like it when you become some guy’s bitch?”
“You stupid bitch, I’m not going to prison.”
“Yeah—yeah, you are. Trust me, there is nothing I would rather do than make you worm food, but I think that you getting gang raped daily is a much better option. And to think, dear old Paulie gave us all we needed to take you down. Even from beyond the grave. You know that day he saw me? After he called you and told you that he saw me, he did a little soul-searching, and he figured some things out. Little Paulie put two and two together that I was also the same one who had helped rescue Becky. He had already called you with the good news, but then he realized that I could be his ticket out of this whole freaking mess. He’d already turned CI and had hooked up with the undercover officer. Once he figured out that I was the one who helped the officer get Becky out, he knew that he could use that to his advantage.”
“He wasn’t a CI, and there was no one undercover in my operation.”
“Who do you think gave me the gun, asshole? Anyway, that’s what got him killed. The real buyer, not the go-between, figured it out. The other two were just collateral damage. It wasn’t hard for them to figure out how he was selling you out to the police. Unfortunate that he lost his life doing what was right.”
“The competition didn’t kill Paulie. I killed that crooked son of a bitch. I knew that asshole was getting soft on me. I freaking knew it; that’s why I ordered the hit on him. The other two weren’t collateral damage. They were strategic kills to get my buyer back in line. I knew all along that those idiots were just the go-between. They actually thought they could take over the market later. Idiots.”
“Gotta admit, I’m not the least surprised that it was you who took Paulie’s life. Thank you, though, for clearing that up. I mean, Paulie did say in his letter that if he ended up dead, it would be by your hand.”
“You lying, stupid bitch. There is no letter.”
“Of course there is. How do you think the police found this place? Why do you think I was so easily scooped up by your guys? You really should’ve done better vetting. The guy you sent with your little clean-up guy, what’s the name you call him? Oh, that’s right, The Fixer. Anyway, the guy with him when they grabbed me is none other than Officer Black. Man, you just can’t get it right today, huh?”
“If he’s an officer, why did he let my guy kill the guard?”
“He got separated from him and couldn’t stop him. Don’t worry, your little fixer guy won’t be fixing anything for you anytime soon. Pretty sure if he isn’t dead, he will be soon.”
“The only one dying here is going to be you.” He backed to the door and knocked on it twice.
“You just aren’t seeing the bigger picture, are you? You killed Paulie, and how did that work out for you? Your buyer seems to have run for the hills on you. Or maybe not. Maybe your buyer decided that we were getting close to them, too. Sure, he’s scum, but he knew there was only one way out, and that was to turn state’s evidence or maybe not. Maybe your buyer isn’t dumb, and neither was Paulie. It seems his mom had taught him not to keep all his eggs in the same basket. At least, that’s what he said in the letter he left.”
“You keep talking about a letter. It’s a nice bluff, but how would Paulie have had time to get a letter to you? He was working all day to get those kids for the order.”
“No, he wasn’t. He grabbed them all at the last second and then called Officer Black and clued him in on what was going on. That was officially the last straw for him. You pushed him too hard. He’d already left the letter, but it was never intended to be opened unless he died. Then you pushed him to get all those kids, and he was just done with you. It was a surprise, though, when your backup clean-up guy took out Paulie and the other two. The officers certainly weren’t expecting that.”
She could see when he finally started to accept what she was saying was true. When he realized that the polic
e were set up a little too quickly that night. That was when he finally accepted he’d been had, and it was a glorious moment. Quinn couldn’t stop herself from taunting him some more.
“Of course, by the time I got the letter, I already knew you were the one behind it all since you sent Jasmine to me.”
“Was that her name?”
Gritting her teeth, she ignored the attempt to get under her skin.
“You couldn’t stop yourself from sending Jasmine with that subtle message. He was clever about delivering that letter, though. Got to give him credit where it’s due. He walked right into the hospital, strode right into Becky’s room, and hid it in her Get Well Soon gift bags. The only unfortunate thing was that it took her so long to look in the bag. It really is a shame you underestimated him, Becky, me. If only you hadn’t killed him. If only you didn’t think you were infallible. Did you get everything you need? If so, come on in.”
The door burst open, and a half dozen of DFPD’s finest rushed in, all of them yelling at Vance to get down. But he didn’t move to lie down. Instead, he reached for the gun on his waist. The shouts switched over to yelling that he had a gun and to drop it. Quinn was shoved to the ground and pinned there as gunshots rang out, but her eyes were open as she saw the monster, who was only a man, take several shots center mass. She didn’t blink, wanting to make sure he was gone, really gone. She watched as his lifeblood spilled out onto the ground and his eyes went vacant. After the last hour of terror, it was all over in one anticlimactic moment. The room became quiet after the ringing from the shots subsided, and then someone called all clear, and the body on top of her eased up.
“Did I hurt you? God, tell me I didn’t hurt you!” Ethan said, studying her face closely. “Quinn?”
“No, no, I’m fine. He’s really dead?” she asked, still staring at the sightless eyes of the man in the growing puddle of blood. The crimson color of that puddle entranced her as if she was tied to it and unable to tear her eyes away. All she could do was stare. Ethan pulled her to her feet and helped guide her out of the room.
Breaking Shadows (Darkness Falls Book 2) Page 30