Only when he bit out an “I’m waiting” did she realize she hadn’t responded.
“Why should I answer your questions when you don’t answer mine?” she asked.
She almost felt him smile through the phone.
He wanted to get in her head; that was the purpose of this. That was always the purpose. So she pushed back, kept him out, and instead listened for anything that would give him away. There was more muffled movement, his calm breathing, a little hum of discontent. And then she heard them.
The bells. They couldn’t be heard all the way out by the lake, but their peals cascaded through town every hour on the hour.
She saw the sharp turn onto the cabin’s road just ahead and made it before coming to a stop and cutting the engine.
Did he know she could hear them? Did he know what it confirmed? Had he planned it?
When he finally spoke again, his voice was laced with a combination of warning and amusement. He was having fun.
“Just because I can’t use my knife on you yet, my love, does not mean I cannot use my knife.”
The scream shattered the silence, an ice pick against her eardrum. Black curtains started to shift at the edge of her vision, and she laid her forehead against the wheel, praying she didn’t pass out.
She gulped in air as quietly as she could. He’d wanted to know where she’d been going? Fine.
“I got my period and needed to go get tampons. Go fuck yourself,” she said and snapped the phone shut. She threw it against the inside of the passenger side door and then slid out of her own. Her knees hit the dirt moments before her palms.
Don’t kill the girl, don’t kill the girl. It was a silent plea. It was useless. But it was the only thought she could form in that moment.
The sun beat down on the curve of her back, hunched as it was against all the evils in the world. Strands of hair hung limp around her face, but she didn’t move to push them away. Not yet. The sounds around her were normalizing again. They had been muffled and distant for a moment there.
She gave herself thirty more precious seconds on the ground before pushing to her feet. She didn’t know why, didn’t want to think why, but for some reason this case was different.
He kept giving himself away.
She already had her phone to her ear when she pushed through the door of the cabin. It went to voice mail. They were probably at the press conference.
“I think he’s in town, Sam,” she said. “Get a list of abandoned buildings from the chief. A place someone could scream and no one would hear. But within the town limits. Close to the station.”
She ended the call without further explanation, then texted him the same information for good measure.
He would trust her. But he would certainly ask questions later.
Cross wouldn’t have had enough time to drive somewhere and get inside the building. The timing just didn’t work out. He’d been on foot. He’d seen her, walked to his lair, and then called her. Even if he’d had binoculars, he wouldn’t be able to go far. She wanted to go back to the station, to try to re-create his steps.
One thing at a time, though. She shut out the memory of the girl’s scream.
She grabbed the Anna Meyers file, then swept an arm over the kitchen table to clear it of the loose papers and bric-a-brac that had accumulated there.
When she was finished laying out the photos in the order she received them, she stood on a chair to get an aerial view.
The first one. Bar in Maine.
Clarke picked it up, holding it close to her eye as if that would help. Instead, it just blurred and pixelated.
She grabbed a pen, then lay stomach-down on the floor, flipping over one of the papers that had fallen to the floor earlier.
Maybe it was just coincidence that he’d picked a waitress in Arizona. The human brain liked to recognize patterns even when they didn’t exist. It would create links, organizing chaos into something that resembled order just because that was more pleasing.
What if she was seeing something in nothing? What if she had just been thinking about the past too much on this case? What if the memory of that drunken vow to run away from her carefully cultivated life had been sitting at the forefront of her mind, ready to be plucked by eager hands wanting to arrange pieces in a puzzle even if they didn’t really fit? What if.
But their lives were a series of what-ifs that had led them here. It wasn’t something she could just dismiss.
So back to the first one. Maine. The picture had been maddening to figure out. But eventually they’d identified the logo of a ski resort on one of the patrons’ beanies and followed that to a quiet town nestled in the shadow of the mountain.
But this wasn’t about finding the bar. This was about her.
If this really was about her, she had to find herself in the picture.
He thought he was so clever.
So be clever. Think details.
The pad of her thumb traced over the corners of the picture. It wouldn’t be obvious.
She squinted, pushing up to a seated position.
Then her hand crept to the spot just below the soft hollow of her elbow in a gesture so familiar she almost never even noticed it anymore. Her fingers pinched at the skin around the tattoo that lived there.
Scrambling to her feet, she found her phone to call Della.
It took the computer wiz only six minutes to verify that the partial label on the beer bottle at the edge of the bar was indeed from a brewery called Phoenix Rising.
“Thanks, babe,” she murmured into the phone, staring at the empty wall of the rental.
“Stay safe, Clarke,” Della said, before disconnecting.
Phoenix Rising.
The dots and lines of the ink on her arm burned. She’d had the constellation etched permanently on her skin years earlier when she’d first discovered the little grouping of stars that came together to make the Phoenix. It was an oft-overlooked constellation, just a small gathering in the Southern sky.
But once she read about it, an itchy feeling had started, at first at the soft spot behind her ears. Then it slowly crept out to her neck, in between her shoulder blades, down her spine. It had relented only with the first brush of needle and ink against skin.
Simon Cross was a man of details; the brain saw patterns it wanted to see. It could go either way.
Still, she wrote down “Phoenix constellation” on the paper, before moving on to the next photo.
It was a busy scene. A nightclub caught in the flash of a camera, which had turned the exposed skin of the closest dancers a blinding white. Blue and green filtered through at the edges, and in the smudge of shadows was the drum kit for an underground band that played only in one seedy club in downtown LA. It had taken them precisely seven days to find the location.
She ignored the familiar taunt on the back, the reminder of the ticking clock, and concentrated on the figures that had been captured by the lens instead. The main focus was on three teenage girls. Their limbs, long and slim and smooth, tangled together in wild abandon, clearly buzzed on alcohol or drugs or each other or just the danger of sneaking into a club with fake IDs. She studied them, finding nothing of herself there.
Then a lone figure just off to the side caught her eye. The girl was dressed similarly to the three dancing, but she wasn’t joining in. Her hands were at her sides, her body stiff. Clarke could see the sharp cut of her jaw by the way her head was tilted just enough to watch the group.
There was something familiar in her profile. Clarke ran her fingers over her own chin. Even the girl’s haircut was similar to the one Clarke had when she’d worn it short, cut close to her head. She dropped her gaze to the girl’s shoulders, which were only covered by the thin straps of a camisole. The delicate white lines on her skin wouldn’t be noticeable except that the flash had sharpened everything, had laid secrets bare.
Patterns. The brain sought patterns to ease the chaos.
She wrote “scars” on the paper.
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br /> Shifting the waitress photo into the pile with the Maine and LA ones, she turned her attention to the remaining five. It took twenty minutes of poring over them to dismiss four. The fifth was a church, with the main focus of the shot on the elaborate crucifix that hung over the altar. There was nothing obvious about the picture, but there was an itch along her spine when she tried to move it into the pile that she hadn’t figured out.
The priest stood slightly off to the side, dressed in severe black, his arms widespread. With his head tipped down, he was a small echo of the tableau above him. But that wasn’t what caught her eye. It was the gray hair, the thick caterpillar eyebrows, the stocky boxer’s body that couldn’t be hidden beneath his robes.
Her pen hovered over the paper. Then she jotted down “Sam?” The black letters were harsh against the white, and she immediately scratched them out.
Just as she was about to push to her feet, her phone rang.
Finally.
She snatched it.
“What the hell was your message about?” Sam said before she could say anything.
Patterns or details? Chaos or clues? She breathed deep.
“Come to the cabin,” she said. “Bring Roger.”
“Tell me what’s going on. We’ve lit a fire under the locals’ asses about the abandoned buildings, but we need more to go on. Come to us.”
This needed to be in private. Or at least not in front of half of Roger’s agents and all the local cops.
“Please, Sam.”
He must have heard the desperation in her voice. “You’re scaring me, kid. But we’ll be there in a few.”
“Okay,” she said, dropping her forehead toward the floor so she was crouched in a fetal position. “And, Sam? Fair warning. You’re not going to like it.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BESS
July 13, 2018
Simon was excited. Bess could tell now. She didn’t particularly like that she could read his moods, but here they were. She could. And he was excited.
Bess didn’t know if Anna was ready. They’d practiced. They’d practiced over and over again in the dark. They’d talked through the whole scenario. Even when Anna had come back from her trips to the room and her voice was broken and her spirit was broken and her very being was broken, they practiced. Bess would chatter on endlessly until Anna eventually responded. And when the words came out finally, Bess would always feel something in her relax. Because as much as Simon wanted to strip Anna of everything she was, everything she could hold on to, Bess wouldn’t let him. Anna wouldn’t let him.
And somewhere in the process, being strong for Anna had let Bess reclaim the girl she used to be. The one who fought back when she was pushed, whose backbone hadn’t been ground down to mere dust, who had a toughness in her that didn’t flinch and cower when it met resistance. It was heady and rusty and . . . powerful.
She didn’t know if Anna was ready. However, when opportunity knocked, you opened the door. Ready or not.
“So close, my love,” he cooed to Anna. Bess could see only the hunched outline of his back, but she imagined him petting Anna’s cheek as he said it, and she had to swallow hard against the ball of rage and disgust that lodged itself in her throat.
She heard him unlocking the chain. Bess shifted to her knees and hoped Anna would understand what was happening.
Bess hadn’t talked much to Simon after he’d slapped her. And for some reason he’d paid almost no attention to her. He’d take her to the bathroom after giving her something that made her limbs pliable and her body lethargic. Then he’d lock her back on the floor without so much as an inappropriate grope. She pretended to be cowed whenever he came for Anna, even though she wanted so desperately to kick him so hard his testicles would lodge in his throat every time he laid a finger on the girl.
“Restraint” had been her mantra. Lull him into thinking she didn’t pose a threat. It would make him all the more surprised.
She locked eyes with Anna and dipped her head in a tiny nod. Even in the dark she saw the girl flinch in recognition.
Simon was careful. He wouldn’t have gotten away with his sick fantasies for so long if he weren’t. The act alone of keeping two girls in a basement, one for more than three months, meant he was a meticulous planner. Sloppy mistakes did not seem to be his style.
That’s where Anna came in.
He’d stopped drugging the girl. She could barely walk at this point anyway, let alone put up a fight. They subsisted on mostly chicken broth and stale Wonder Bread. After the first few days of the diet, Bess had found herself dragging her tongue over the smooth surface of the plastic bowls, searching in vain for any remnants that might be clinging to it. Just one more grain of salt would make all the difference, her starved brain told her.
Then she’d lost her appetite completely. That was after the blinding headaches, though. She was still light-headed at all times, and the blackness hovered on the edge of her vision as a constant and inevitable threat that accompanied every movement. She wondered what three months of it would do to her.
Bess had faith, though. She had faith that Anna would find whatever strength was left in her, that animalistic instinct that bared its teeth when it was hurt and bleeding and facing down certain death. Because if she didn’t have faith in Anna, she had nothing.
And here it was. The moment of truth. She drew in a shattered breath she hoped he didn’t hear.
Then it happened.
Anna stumbled against Simon, her body a deadweight crashing into his. If he’d been expecting it, her slight frame wouldn’t have done much to jolt him, but they had the element of surprise on their side, and he shuffled a few steps. That was all Bess needed.
She used the momentum that came from launching herself to her feet to drive the heel of her hand into his nose. Her palm connected with bone, and she felt sick and victorious when it gave way and cracked.
He let go of Anna, who bolted for the hook by the stairs where he hung the keys to the door. Meanwhile, Bess went for his eyes. He was recovering from the shock but still managed to block her, and she knew she had maybe only one more good strike left.
She didn’t have much room to maneuver, since she was still chained to the floor. She knew what she needed to do; years of practice had prepared her. Instead of moving back away from the blow she saw coming, she shifted closer. She wrapped her arms around his rib cage, burying her head against his neck. She felt the shock of it roll through his body like a wave. His arm paused midair; his entire body froze for an instant. And in that moment, she brought her knee up into the V of his legs. She drove her leg directly into his balls, lifting him, just slightly—ever so slightly—off the floor.
The air left his lungs in a hot rush of breath against her face, and he bent slightly in an aborted attempt to get into the fetal position. She didn’t relinquish her hold.
He recovered too quickly, though. He brought the sharp point of his elbow down on her upper arm, and the pain of it broke her grip on him. Then he shoved her to the floor, his eyes on Anna, who was on the stairs, heading for the door, keys in hand.
His roar of rage and desperation sank into the marrow of her bones. He crossed the basement floor in three strides and made it up five steps in two. Bess cringed when he managed to grab a handful of Anna’s hair, his fingers tangling in the limp locks that hung down her back. He pulled hard, and she didn’t stand a chance.
Anna’s body slammed into Simon’s, but instead of catching her, he let the girl’s momentum carry her backward until she ended up crumpled on the floor. He stood over her, his boots bracketing her slim waist, before yanking the keys out of her hand. He had to dig his fingers under hers to get to them. Anna was sobbing—deep, gut-wrenching, sloppy sobs that pierced Bess’s heart.
Be strong, be strong, she silently told the girl.
Keep the faith, she silently told herself.
Simon still hadn’t said anything since the incident started. It seemed to her that it had gone on
for hours, but probably it had lasted less than a minute. His silence in the face of their defiance made her skin tingle.
Bess was huddled on the floor; Anna was sprawled on her back several feet away. And Simon loomed between them. He walked over to the ring where he hung the keys and returned them to their place. A power move to show that he was not concerned about their attempts at freedom. Then he crossed back to Anna.
He shifted his body weight onto one foot, and it was clear he was about to kick her directly in the ribs. And she was going to lie there and take it.
“Hey, Simon,” Bess called out. She kept her voice casual, with the same intention she had when she’d wrapped her arms around him. Do the unexpected. It was the only weapon they had. “How’re your balls doing?”
He pivoted in that way of his. The unnatural stillness of his body at odds with the tension vibrating in the air around him. She thought of that fleeting moment when they’d first met and she’d found him attractive. All she saw now was a monster.
“You might want to get your sperm count checked after that kind of blow,” she said, chewing on her lower lip as if she were concerned, when the actual thought of him attempting to procreate made her want to break out in hives.
He stepped closer to her. If there was anything in life that was predictable, it was the rage men felt when women mocked them. It hadn’t been just Jeremy who had taught her that. It was an infallible truth, and this time she would exploit, use it, twist it to her own advantage instead of it being used against her.
“Actually, do you think you’ll even be able to get it up after that?” Again, with the faux concern. Another step. She could tell he didn’t want to leave Anna there without the comforting knowledge that she was chained. Keep going, she told both herself and him. “Hmmm. I’m guessing you had issues in that department anyway, long before I arrived. Am I right?”
One more step and he was in front of her, and then they were eye to eye. He was studying her, and she didn’t like the gleam she saw lurking there. Because behind the controlled rage that was simmering, there was curiosity. He was wondering what her game was. Their efforts had failed, so why was she provoking him?
It Ends With Her Page 16