by Rachel Caine
“Louisiana, outside Baton Rouge. There’s a derelict house there, right on Killman Creek. Triton Plantation. That’s where it will be held.” He tries a smile. “You need me, though. You need me to order it to stop. You can’t get there in time.”
“We don’t have to,” Mike says. “That’s the great thing about modern police work. All I have to do is make a phone call and get everybody out there arrested.”
Rivard’s not quite broken. He bares bloody teeth now. “In Louisiana? I don’t think so. We own many, many police officers down there, and we’re not careless. You have no assurance that the police on the other end will do anything. Even if you get lucky, find an honest cop, that area is very well defended. You’ll never get her out alive. Or Melvin. You need me to—”
Mike yanks the expensive silk handkerchief out of Rivard’s pocket and shoves it in his mouth, then roughly strips off the man’s tie and cinches it in place as a gag. “Sick of your voice,” he says, then turns to me. “I’m calling a guy. He can keep Rivard on ice until we have enough proof to put him away.”
My throat’s dry, fried with anger and adrenaline, and I have to try twice before my voice works properly. “You believe him about the police?”
“I think it’s possible. Worst thing we could do is call the local cops and tip his men off down there.”
“You think he’s telling the truth? That he can call it off?”
“I think if we let him near a phone, the first call he’s going to make will burn that place to the ground and kill everybody in it,” Mike says. “Because a cockroach like this? He knows how to survive, first and last.”
Mike steps out of the van and makes a call, and I hear Rivard making muffled noises, but I ignore him now. He’s meaningless. I’m trying to calculate how far it is to Baton Rouge from Atlanta, and what the chances are we can get there in a few hours. Not good. The flights up and down the East Coast are a mess from the storm, and even if Mike can somehow work his FBI magic again, the storm’s moving southwest, which means it’s between us and where we need to be. It’ll cause rolling chaos.
We have to get Gwen out of there. The idea that she’s in that house, with him, makes my skin crawl and my stomach turn. I don’t care how it happens, but I want her safe. I want to hold her again and tell her how sorry I am that I let this happen to her.
And every passing minute means the chances are smaller I ever will.
Mike’s first call is brief, and when it’s done, he says, “My guy’s on the way. He’ll make the van and Rivard disappear until I say different.”
“He understands who Rivard is, right?”
“He knows. He’s solid, and he owes me.”
I wonder what kind of person is solid against the wealth Rivard has, but I have to trust he’s right. “What about the cops?”
“I’m calling the New Orleans FBI office instead,” he says. “Rivard could well own half the cops in that parish down there, but I know the NOLA folks. He doesn’t own them.”
Except, when that call ends, I can tell it doesn’t go well, and my blood pressure spikes up again, pounding my temples. “What?” I ask him.
“Major stuff going down in New Orleans. Terrorist alert,” he tells me. “My guys say there’s no way they can break loose to help us. They say call the locals.”
“What about the state police?”
“Most of them are going to be stretched thin, and dispatched to New Orleans to assist. Besides: same problem as the locals. We don’t know who Rivard’s bought off, and I don’t have any personal friends down there I can count on.”
I check my watch. It’s just gone six o’clock. Gwen’s murder starts at midnight, streamed live.
We have seven hours to get to her. Time zone change gives us the extra hour.
Hold on, I think. Jesus, Gwen, hold on for me. You promised.
Hold on.
25
GWEN
When I wake up this time, I wake up in bed.
The nausea hits me immediately in a violent rush, and I curl in on myself to try to hold it back. My head pounds so hard I think my skull will crack, and I can feel myself trembling—not cold now, but shaking from the aftereffects of the drug. Once that begins to recede a little, and the burning bile calms in my stomach, I feel other things. The same pains from before, but with more added. My back feels raw. I think the rough wood of the crate left a small forest of splinters.
When I open my eyes, I try to make my foggy mind tell me where I am. The room’s dim, but I can make out white sheets over me. They feel damp and smell like someone else’s skin. A stench gradually creeps over me: mold, an old smell: bodies in the ground. The reek of age and decay.
The fear creeps back sluggishly, too tired to continue . . . but it brings clarity with it. Purpose.
I shift to relieve a torturous cramp in my hip, and I feel the bed shift in a way that isn’t due to my motion at all. I freeze. There’s someone next to me in the bed. I can feel the animal warmth of his body, and every instinct in me screams at me not to move, as if like a child, I can make myself invisible. Staying still won’t help me.
I have to help myself.
I try to edge away, hoping to slide out of bed quietly, but I stop when I realize I can’t move my left wrist.
The one that aches so badly.
My wrist is tightly handcuffed to the old wrought iron bedstead. I must have broken something, maybe a small bone in my hand, because trying to pull at the restraint, however gently, earns me a pulse of agony so bright it takes my breath. I want to scream, and I can’t.
I’m not in my clothes. Someone’s changed me into an old, stiff nightgown. The nylon feels brittle, as if it might crumble into dust if I move too aggressively.
The light outside the window is getting dimmer. The sun’s going down. I turn my head, and I can just make out the features of the man who’s lying next to me.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s Melvin Royal, but I am. Seeing him here, asleep without a care in the world, is such a shock that it feels like a punch to my heart. A fatal blow. I feel a scream gathering in my throat.
Kill him is the next thought that rushes into the void of my mind, and I bend my right elbow and lunge. I’m trying to bury it in his throat, lean my weight on the point of it until I shatter his hyoid bone, and for a second it feels like I’m going to accomplish that. I feel my elbow bear down on his throat and I start to push . . . and then he’s rolling away. Laughing.
I claw at Melvin, drag my fingernails through any piece of him I can reach, and take strips of flesh off him as he escapes. I’m yanking savagely at my pinned wrist now, and every pull sparks an agonizing burn, like fireworks in the palm of my hand. I don’t care. The fury in me is stronger than the fear, the pain—stronger than anything.
Melvin, rolling to the far edge of the large bed, stares at me as I flail at the edge of my reach. He props himself up on one elbow and watches me with awful fascination. I’m livid with rage, burning with it like a candle, and it doesn’t leave room for more sensible emotions, like fear or confusion or horror.
I just want to kill him.
“Is that how you thank me for letting you have one last comfortable rest?” he says to me. “I should have put you in the cellar. Let you worry about the rats and roaches for a while.” He twists and looks at the deep fingernail gouges I’ve left in the flesh of his side. He’s lean now. Fit. He’s been spending his prison time lifting weights, I think, but he’s the pale color of something that lives in caves. He was only allowed an hour of yard time a day, I remember. It didn’t do him much good. He’s grown a beard. But other than those changes, he’s exactly as I remember him.
He’s capable of anything, and I damn well know it. I’ve seen it, in decaying flesh and broken bones and drying blood, a sculpture of horror and agony he made. But cowering isn’t something I do anymore. “Put me in the cellar. Rats and roaches would be better company,” I say. It comes out more like a growl. I wonder if my eyes
are bloodshot. It feels that way. Feels like every vein in my body is bursting with fury. “You bastard.”
He shrugs, and that slow, cool smile makes me want to claw it off his face. “You were such a nice woman when I married you. Look what being single’s done to you. I don’t like the muscles, Gina. When I start cutting, I’ll get rid of those first. I like my ladies delicate.”
My white-hot anger flickers a little, but I deliberately feed it images of his victims. I’d rather be enraged than terrified, and those are my only choices now. This is what I signed up for, back on that road in Tennessee when I thought about darting into traffic and ending it all. I told Sam that I’d rather give my life this way, keeping Melvin occupied, tied down, so that he could be found.
Rage is better than fear. Always.
“I’m not one of your ladies,” I tell him. I wonder how many bones I’ll have to break in my hand to pull it free. Three? Four? He’s put the cuff on very tightly. But he’s too calm. Too prepared. This is a trap, and I think he wants me to hurt myself.
“You’re my wife, Gina.”
“Not anymore.”
“I never accepted that,” Melvin says, as if that settles everything. He checks a watch he has on the nightstand on his side of the bed. “It’s nearly seven. You should have something to eat. It’s going to be a very long night.”
I realize now that he’s wearing faded old pajama bottoms. They’re a little large on him. Antiques, like the gown he’s put on me. “Where are we?” I ask. “How did you get me here?” It’s not Tennessee. It doesn’t feel like that, smell like that. There’s a different weight to the air here, and it’s warmer.
“This place belongs to a friend of mine,” he says. “A grand old place, back in the day. The front of it used to look like the White House, but you can’t tell it anymore, between the rot and the kudzu that’s taken over. As to how I got you here . . . let’s just say I had some help.”
“A plantation,” I guess, because this all feels Southern Gothic, and the kudzu gives it away. “You think you’re the lord of some decaying manor now?”
“Think of it as a place where special events are filmed. Commission pieces get done here. My friend’s got a few other location sets around. You’ve even found a couple of them. The warehouse was one. That cabin you blew up was another.”
Special events. I remember the darkest trade that Absalom does, in rape and torture and murder on film, with a sick, gritty taste in my mouth. “You were part of it,” I say. “Absalom.”
“I was a customer who graduated to being a supplier,” he replies. “I had talent. Made a good career out of it for nearly ten years. I was careful. I suppose I got careless, at the end. I should have put that last one in the lake while I had the chance. If I’d cleaned up the garage the night before, like I intended, we’d still be married.” He pats the mattress. “Still sharing the marital bed, too. I know you’ve missed it. I have.”
He sounds so normal. Wistful. It’s disorienting. Who would I be now if he’d kept hold of me for these past nearly five years? What would he have done to our children? I don’t want to imagine it, but I do: poor, passive Gina Royal, afraid to meet anyone’s eyes for long, scuttling through life with rounded shoulders and the mentality of a victim. Showing her children nothing but submission.
My kids might be damaged now, but I have fought for them. I’ve made sure they’re strong, independent young people. He can’t take that from them. Or me.
“You going to rape me, Melvin?” I ask him. “Because if you try, I’m going to rip as many pieces off you as I can reach.”
“I’d never do that to you. Not to the mother of my children.” I’ve gotten to him a little. He stretches and tries to make it look natural, but I can see he’s frustrated. I’m not playing the role of cowed victim. I’m not submitting. “Not that I can see her much in you now. Look what you’ve done to yourself. And for what? To survive? Not worth it, Gina, especially since you’re going to die this way.” His eyes take on a wet, opaque shine, like ice. He’s already started taking me apart in his head.
“Fuck you,” I tell him. I start working on the cuff. The pain is extraordinary, a supernova of red-and-yellow flares that burn like phosphorus as I twist my hand. Something gives with a wet, crisp snap, and the sensation is so overwhelming that I don’t feel anything for a blessed second. It’s like my body is trying to give me time to escape.
I break another bone, and my fingers burn like I’ve lit them on fire. I let out a cry, but it’s an angry one. A victorious one. Pain is life. Pain is victory.
I’m going to get free, and I’m going to kill him.
“Gina,” he says. “Look at me.” The tone’s almost gentle. “I’m sorry it has to be like this, in front of the cameras. I didn’t want that for you. I wanted it to be just you and me. But Absalom wanted to get paid back for what they’ve done for me. And what they’re going to do.”
“You’re apologizing?” I can’t help it. I let out a bitter, barking laugh. “God, what next. What’s Absalom going to do for you, do you think? Get you out of the country? Set you up somewhere with new victims? They’re using you, you idiot. When they get what they want, they’ll kill you, too.”
“Don’t call me an idiot,” he says, and the gentleness melts out of his voice and leaves it flat and cold. “Don’t ever do that. I played you, Gina. All the way down.” His chin lowers, and his eyes almost seem to shutter. There’s no humanity in them now. Just the monster. “Brady’s been calling me. Did you know that?”
It hits me under the shield I’m holding up, and all my wonderful, freeing anger gutters out in an instant. I stop trying to get free. I don’t want to give him an inch, but I can’t stop myself from asking, “What are you talking about?”
“Our son. Brady.” Melvin sits down on the edge of the bed. “I arranged for him to be given a phone when our friend Lancel had him—remember that? That phone was Brady’s lifeline, if he needed it. Turns out he did. First you abandoned him. Then he discovered you lied to him. Just enough doubt to exploit, to get him talking. It almost worked.” There’s a terrible, bitter disgust in the twist of his mouth now. “But you made him a weak, sad little rag doll, our son. You did that to him. He’s worthless to me the way he is. I’m going to have to toughen him up now.”
This is not the calm, polite Melvin that other people knew. It’s not even the Melvin I knew, back in Wichita; he never would have said these things, not about his own son. This is the toxic sludge at the bottom of a black lake spilling out of his mouth. Hearing him talk about my son this way makes me sick, and it also makes me terrified.
“You’re lying. You couldn’t have been talking to him,” I say, because that’s the only thing I can cling to. “He would have told me.”
“He didn’t use the phone right away—you kept him on a tight enough leash. But once he started, he just couldn’t stop.” Another cold smile. “Like father, like son, I suppose.”
I remember suddenly who found that awful video. Connor. It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t Absalom. Melvin did that to our son. He did it deliberately. “You son of a bitch.”
“It’s not my fault you left him with strangers,” Melvin says. “You made him vulnerable. Easy to break, and I broke him. I was planning to have him here with us. I think that would have been fitting, for him to see you break, and then I could take him with me and teach him how to be strong. But it didn’t work. Instead of Brady, we got Lily.”
It’s coming too fast, and it’s too much. I don’t have time to feel the shocks. I’m drowning in them. “You mean Lanny?” I’ve said her name, and I wish I hadn’t, because he can see the cracks now. The fear. He feeds on it. “You don’t have her.”
“You’re right. I don’t. She got in the way when Absalom’s transport man went to get our son. By now she’s up in the hills, at another of our . . . special places.” He shrugs. “I told them to make some use out of her, one way or another. She’s not as marketable as she would have been younger,
but—”
“Shut up!” I scream, and the raw edge to it surprises me. I feel heavy and cold, like my body is already giving up. I want my rage back. The fear is too hard. Too heavy. Lanny, oh my sweet precious girl, where are you, what’s he done . . .
I remind myself, somehow, that Melvin Royal is a liar. A deceiver. A manipulator. And he knows where my undefended weaknesses lie. My children are how he hurts me. I have to believe they’re safe. I have to.
“You’re a very bad mother,” he says into the weighted silence. “I’m going to get my son and make him mine again. I’ve already got your daughter. You think about that until I’m ready for you.”
He knows when to strike and retreat. He stands up and goes to the door, and for the first time I realize that this bedroom has other furniture in it—an old, leaning dresser, some framed prints half-eaten by mold. A cracked mirror that shows the world in two badly reflected pieces.
In it, I’m torn in half, as if he’s already started destroying me.
I know I should get myself free. I know I should fight. I have to fight.
But all I can do, as Melvin leaves me, is lie there, shuddering. I claw the sheet over me, because the cold seems so intense, despite the thick, tepid air. I need my anger back.
I wonder if anyone knows where I am. If Sam might be looking, or if he even cares to try.
Maybe this is how I end.
Maybe, before he destroys me completely, I’ll buy my children’s safety with my blood.
That’s all I can wish for now.
26
SAM
It costs Rivard three broken fingers, but he finally agrees to call the airfield and has them ready his private plane for us. That gets around the impossible tangle of canceled flights out of the commercial lines, but it throws us another curve: it takes time to get the plane fueled and ready, and when we board, we find that the pilot’s not there yet. He’s going to be another hour coming in.