by Kerry Taylor
“I just need her back.”
“Then let’s go and get her. Save this rage for when we find the fucker who has her.” I said firmly. As a CPDdetective I couldn’t let him kill the sonofabitch, but I would damn well let Kyle beat the shit out of him before I slapped on the cuffs. Hell, I’d fucking help if one hair on Livy’s head was hurt.
Kyle nodded and I knew I had gotten through. Now I just needed to find Livy, because without her I knew my whole damn world was going to come falling down around my ears.
CHAPTER 17
OLIVIA
I’m pretty sure I never fully blacked out because I felt myself moving and heard sounds around me, but for a long time I was pretty, let’s say, spaced. Then things started to slowly come back to me.
First it was sounds, of footsteps walking on what I guessed was a hard floor around me, then my wildly fuzzy vision slowly cleared and I saw the figure of a man walking around me, busily doing something. I tried to move my head to follow his path, but my body still seemed not to be cooperating. Scared and confused, I closed my eyes and tried to centre myself. Instantly an image of the guys came to me and I clung to it tight. I stayed that way for as long as I could, but as time passed the footsteps around me got louder and more hurried and I started to feel parts of my body once again, my back pressed against a hard floor, my hands tied together in front of me, resting on my stomach, the desperate pain in my throbbing head, and mangled ankle.
The memory of the crazy guy laying out his plan was what made me snap my eyes open in a panic though. I looked around, my vision now much clearer. For a few moments I was dizzy and nauseous, but as I breathed slower, it passed.
I looked around and couldn’t believe my eyes at what I was seeing. All along the wall to my right was some kind of machine. It filled the entire wall, floor to ceiling and was likely about three metres square. I could tell this man had built it himself, because it was a rag tag heap of random electricals all wired together. I saw a microwave and several tower’s from PC’s, all mixed in with components from who knew what else. It had a huge metal closet looking box at it’s centre and there were several screens all lit up with rows of data. As I studied I realised two things. One, this was his time machine, and two, he was bat shit crazy if he thought that thing was taking him anywhere. It looked like an out of control school science fair project.
“Good. You’re awake. We only have a couple of hours to prepare now. I have around half of your blood.” He held up a huge clear bag filled with my blood. It was darker than it should be and I knew it would be clotting now it was out of my body. I suddenly realised why I had felt dizzy, I was missing a hell of a lot of blood!
“The rest won’t take long. I’ll start draining it half an hour before the exchange to be sure I have time. Don’t worry. Your loss will be worth it when I save my family.” He said, like that would make all of my fears and concerns so much better.
“You’re fucking crazy!” I spat out scared and angry. My words were slurred and so hard to get out, but I was mad and needed to vent. This was not how I wanted to die! I fought to survive for years, so that one day I could actually live. I did that. I got out and I found a life amongst all of the loss and darkness. I found my guys, friends and family. I found some level of peace and happiness, and now just weeks after fleeing hell, I was going to die at the hands of some other depraved monster. He got angry, and I was sure he’d hit me again, but instead he just smiled, which was terrifying.
“You’re scared, I know you are. Let me help you relax.” He said, then he pulled another syringe out and no matter how hard I tried to make my arms move to stop him, they didn’t, He injected me and I floated off to La La Land once again, wondering if I would ever wake up again before he ended me.
KYLE
Kade had been right to make me pull myself together. I had lost it earlier and it had only slowed down the search for Liv. As soon as Kade headed out on a call from the office I had taken a shower to calm myself down, then dressed, ready to do whatever it took to get Liv back from the clutches of that motherfucker.
I had been an idiot, out near the national park, losing it on some asshole who was seriously a huge douche, but not bad enough for me to tear apart as I wanted to.
Lucky for me Rob had stepped in quickly and smoothed the situation over, then he’d shoved my ass in my car and told me to get home and stay there. He was right, but it didn’t make it any easier to not be out there searching for Liv when I knew damn well she needed me.
Now it was after eleven and Liv had been gone for way too many hours. It tore me apart to think what could have happened to her in that amount of time. All I could think about were the scars she had shown us, and the fact that fucker was likely causing her more, fucking torturing her!
“Kyle, eat! You haven’t had a thing in days have you?” Matt asked as he placed a huge sub down in front of me. I tried to pick at it, knowing I would need some energy to find Liv, but I felt guilty eating when I knew she was likely laid in the dark somewhere, starving and scared.
“Anything?” Cole asked as he appeared from the office and sat in the seat at the island beside me.
“Not yet, but Kade’s on the phone and has been for almost an hour. You?” Matt handed Cole a sandwich too as he spoke. Cole too just looked at it with disgust.
“Either I’ve fucked up the math, or that message is really weird. I’ve found a chunk that relates to time travel theory?”
“Why the fuck would that be in a message related to murders?” Matt asked.
“The guy’s a fucking wacko. Who knows what rationale he’s using for these murders?” I cut in, and they both nodded.
“Whatever he’s doing, it’s weird. Did he take blood from the victims?”
“I don’t think so, why?” He had me interested now and since there were no leads on Livy, we might as well do what she was determined to do, save another innocent life.
“The words between the numbers, blood keeps on coming up and there’s a ton of focus on equality and purity. It made me think of cults and rituals and shit.” Cole explained with a shrug.
“Pass it all on to Kade. You could be onto something.” I suggested.
“Yeah, time travel and blood rituals. I bet that will narrow it down.” Cole snorted.
Kade came running into the kitchen before anyone else spoke and we all jumped up, terrified for the worst news.
“We have to move. We have a lead on the location of that car.” That was all he said before he ran out and we all followed. We piled into Cole’s truck, since it was the biggest, now Kade’s SUV was totaled. Kade, who was driving, set off like a racecar driver.
“So you think that was the guy, the one lurking in the beige estate?” Matt asked.
“Traffic cam footage picked the car up on the same highway at the right time. That was suspicious enough, but then one of the techs working this case and the murders, recognosed the damn car from traffic cams near the murder last week. We checked and the same car was right outside the motel where the third body was found.” He explained hurriedly, never taking his eyes from the road.
“So you think the fucking murderer has her?” Cole yelled.
“I think the math at the last murder scene was some kind of trap. He wanted to see who could figure it out, so he wrote a puzzle you had to see, to solve, and he waited to see who came. He wanted her for something because she understood his math.”
“Like what?” I asked, confused. If a murderer took our girl, we could be too late and that realisation near stopped my heart. “Please tell me we’re not headed to a motel?”
“Oh Fuck! Are we, Kade? Is she dead?” Matt asked frantically.
“It’s not a motel. It’s a house in the middle of nowhere. Highway patrol spotted the car on their route because I put a BOLO out for it. She’s not fucking dead, she can’t be,” Kade growled as he gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white.
“This is what he wanted.” Cole, who had been quiet
for a few minutes said. I turned from the front passenger seat to look at him and he was pale.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The message!” He cried. “That’s what it was about, all the equality shit. Whatever he’s doing, something to do with time travel I’m sure, he thinks he needs the blood of his equal. That’s why he set up those murders and the messages, to find his equal, the person who was smart enough to solve his puzzles.”
“So he could take her blood?” Matt asked with dread and I felt it too.
“Fuck! Kade drive fucking faster. Can’t those patrol uniforms go in?” I asked, just needing her to be safe.
“Back up is ten minutes out and they can’t go in without it.”
“Fuck that! She could be dying in there!” Cole yelled, taking the words from my mouth. “How far out are we?”
“About the same.”
I wanted to scream and shout for Kade to drive faster, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. He already had his foot down, as desperate to get to Livy as we all were.
“Just hold on for us, Princess. We’re coming.” I whispered.
OLIVIA
I came around to a sharp stab in my arm. My eyes snapped open in panic and I found my captor looming over me, pushing what looked like an IV in my left arm, except it wasn’t like the modern clear plastic tubes and a delicate little needle I had seen in the hospital. This thing looked like an antique, the tube thick brown rubber and the needle huge and thick.
“Get away from me!” I yelled as I tried to struggle free of the needle which likely held millions of bacteria and who knew what else? But I couldn’t struggle, couldn’t move at all. I was tied to what looked like a heavy wood dining table. My wrists were bound with rope and tied together under the table and my ankles were tied to the bottom table legs. There was also a ton of rope around my torso, bound round and round me from just beneath my breasts, right to the bottom of my stomach, binding me solidly to the table. There was no way I was getting loose.
“Don’t try to fight now. It’s time for me to go back.” He said as he stepped away from me with the other end of the long rubber tube in his hand. “You’re making history here, Livy.”
“Yeah, serial killer victims history.” I retorted. This was it. I was going to die. I’d already lost too much blood and I knew as soon as he started taking more, I’d just drift away. Time was up and I had no way to escape. I could try talking him down, but I knew it was useless. He believed this was going to happen, that he would travel back in time in his magic closet.
I watched as he attached the end of the tube to what looked like an IV bag which was integrated into the bottom of his pile of crappy electricals, time machine. Beside it sat the first bag of my blood he took, now almost turned black. The sight of it turned my stomach and I felt nauseous and dizzy all at once. My entire body was trembling once again and my fight or flight instincts were screaming at me to do something!
Instead I closed my eyes and tried to picture my guys, my fiercely protective Kyle, and the way his entire face lit up when he smiled and laughed, the dangerous looking edge to him when he was mad. When he held me, I just knew he would push the whole world away for me if I needed him to. My beautiful gentle giant Cole, laid beside me in bed, telling me stupid stories until I hurt from laughing, and the way I felt so small and protected wrapped in his huge body. My sensitive and understanding Matt, who always knew what I needed, sometimes before I did, I heard him speaking to me in spanish as we snuggled together, the way he looked at me with that lazy half smile. And my thoughtful and caring Kade, who I could always turn to when I needed to feel some solidity and calm. He always knew just what to say to calm me and when he surrounded me with his huge, built body I just knew nothing could ever hurt me.
I wished I could just have a few minutes with them all again, to tell them how special they had made the brief few weeks we got together, to tell them how much I loved them all.
“It’s time!” He shouted excitedly, pulling me from my thoughts. I looked up just as he climbed into his metal box and slammed the doors closed.
I almost laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation. That crazy freak had just climbed into a closet, and now sat in there waiting for this heap of junk he had built to carry him away in time. What the fuck? As Kyle would say.
How could someone intelligent enough to generate the maths I had worked on, be this crazy? It really would have been funny if it weren’t costing me everything.
I looked down to my blood flowing down from my arm, down to the bag in the machine and it made me feel even more nauseous.
Knowing there was nothing to be done I closed my eyes, laid my head back and allowed the darkness to seep in. My last thought was that maybe I had always been destined to spend my life in the darkness.
KADE
When we pulled up at a rundown old farmhouse, just outside the city several other patrol cars, and three members of my team, including the chief, were just arriving too.
I swerved Cole’s truck into a space beside the beige estate, parked a short distance from the front of the house and we all jumped out.
Anticipating Kyle would charge off, I hurried around and grabbed his arm.
“We need vests. We know this guy has a gun. He shot one of his victims.” I said calmly.
“Screw that! We have to get in there!”
“Maxwell! Any chance I can convince you to hold back on this one?” My Chief asked as he approached.
“Not gonna happen. Kyle and I are going in.” I said, and Cole and Matt both stepped to me menacingly.
“No way guys. You need to wait out here,” Kyle agreed with me before I said a word.
“She needs us!” Matt growled, looking more pissed than I had ever seen him.
“We’re going to get her out of there,” I said confidently. “You two be ready to go to the hospital with her,”
My chief handed Kyle and I vests, and we both checked our guns were fully loaded and ready to go. No one was stopping us from getting our girl out of there.
The uniforms went in first lead by the chief, ten officers I knew well from my precinct. Kyle and I followed behind as the rooms in the farmhouse were cleared one by one. The place was a crumbling shithole in need of demolition. It was clear it hadn’t been lived in for many years.
Kyle motioned me to the stairs and nodded to footprints through the inch thick layer of dust everything was covered in. I signalled the uniforms around me to follow and we started up the stairs, guns at the ready. The first room Kyle went into had been recently decorated, painted bright yellow and in the centre sat a single chair with ropes on the floor, like someone, likely Livy, had been tied up there. I tried not to panic at the thought she wasn’t there anymore. There were multiple reasons he would have moved her. I told myself over and over, it didn’t mean we were too late.
I indicated next door and Kyle followed close behind. I tried the handle while Kyle watched my back, but this one was locked. I stepped back and nodded once to my brother, that the only signal he needed to know what I was going to do.
I lifted my foot and kicked up, smashing the handle clear from the door as it flew open. Kyle moved in, gun raised and I was right behind him.
Livy was bound to a table in the centre of the room, not moving, her eyes closed and she looked deathly pale. My heart stopped as I realised she looked very much like we were too fucking late. She had some archaic looking IV in her arm, leading down to way too much of her blood in bags, attached to some kind of crazy looking monster of a machine.
I stood frozen for a moment, losing my shit because I was sure she was gone , but Kyle kept it together. He tapped my shoulder and directed me to what looked like a huge metal closet in the centre of the pile of machinery. When I looked over at it, I heard a voice from within it, and realised Kyle was telling me someone was in there. I could barely focus though, in my panic for Livy.
Pulling myself together I nodded and pointed to Livy, telling him to help he
r while I took care of the motherfucker who took her, now hiding in the fucking closet.
Two uniforms walked in behind us and I beckoned them to follow me. They spread out before the closet, guns at the ready. Sure they had me covered, I released one hand from the butt of my gun and ripped open the closet doors.
“You can’t stop me!” The fucker yelled as he raised a gun. Before I pulled the trigger on my raised weapon, shots rang out and he crumpled to the bottom of the closet, two shots clear to see in his chest, both uniforms having fired first.
I stepped forward and kicked his gun clear away from him, but I knew he wasn’t ever getting back up.
“We got him from here, detective.” One of the uniforms behind me said as they both stepped forward.
“Kade! She’s barely alive! Her pulse is weak as fuck! Get EMT’S in here!” Kyle yelled, as I hurriedly across the room to him. I unclipped the radio from my belt to report the house clear, and request EMTs, then I fell to my knees and started trying to help Kyle free her from the yards of rope she was bound with.
“How bad?” I asked Kyle as we worked. He wasn’t a medic, but he knew a lot from the time he served, so I knew he would be able to tell me.
“Bad. She’s lost almost her entire blood volume.” Kyle didn’t stop cutting the ropes with his penknife as he spoke. “She needs fluids and we have to get her to the hospital fast.”
We got her free of the ropes just as two EMTs came into the room and set to work. Kyle and I stood back and let them work, but I had never felt as scared in my life as I did in those few moments. She was too still and too pale. I was sure we had already lost her and it tore me in fucking two.
“LIVY!” I looked up to the door as Cole and Matt came running in. I had known the uniforms wouldn’t be able to keep them outside for long.
“She’s still alive, but it’s not good guys.” Kyle explained as he stopped them from getting the way of the EMT’s. “She’s holding on, but she’s lost way too much blood.” Kyle’s voice breaking as he spoke and I knew he was having to fight to keep a rein on his emotions.