It Ends With Her

by Brianna Labuskes

  “How did I not know?” she asked, her voice just a quiet breath of exhaled air, and she felt a sharp shard of glass cut into her heart for the boy he’d been. Maybe he was lying. There was a good chance he was. The scars could have come from his time before the Crosses, a time she knew little about. But someone had put them on his body. That’s what hurt.

  A careless shoulder lifted, then dropped. “They did a good job of hiding it from you. I wasn’t going to tell you.”

  She closed her eyes against it all, wishing she could shut it out. Shut out the undeniable proof. Shut out the words. Shut out the fact that everything she’d ever known in her life was crashing into pieces around her.

  “It doesn’t . . . you can’t. You can’t kidnap people,” she said. He had been abused. But that didn’t mean he had a free pass.

  “I was saving you, pet,” he said, as if confused by why she’d think anything else. “I made a promise to come back and get you as soon as I could. I needed money, though. To give you the things you want.”

  “You could have told me what happened, then. I would have come with you.”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  They both knew why it wouldn’t have worked. She wouldn’t have gone with him. The photos. Those photos of the other girls, the ones who looked like her.

  They sat in silence after that, and it was broken only by the slow and steady click of the clock’s second hand counting down her fate.

  “You left me, though,” he said finally, his voice quiet. “We could have been great together. Our love burns so bright.” His eyes flicked to her hair. “So bright. Like the stars.”

  “I never loved you, you sick excuse for a man,” she bit off.

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I never loved you. You make me sick.” She didn’t know where it was coming from. The words seemed to spill from her lips unbidden. Rising from the bile that roiled in her belly.

  “Take that back.” His voice was hard again. And he stood, pushing the chair out of the way.

  She wanted to take it back. She wanted to soothe and comfort and tell him that if he just didn’t kill her, she’d let him show her how great they could be. But all she could see was him thrusting into her as tears ran down her cheeks into the pillows. She’d rather die than live that future.

  And she wanted to lash out and strike him the way he hurt her. Ruin any remaining bond that was left between them from years of shared secrets and sweet summer nights.

  “You’re just a sad, pathetic excuse for a man. I used to laugh at you,” she said mockingly. “I would laugh at you. You think we would ever be together? I would never be with someone like you.”

  His jaw worked, the muscles there clenching and bunching. And then he slapped her again. Fast and hard. She licked out and tasted the blood from her cut lip as he bent to release her from her restraints.

  He wasn’t gentle as he dragged her from the kitchen, up the stairs. When she stumbled, he simply kept going so that she was half scrambling to keep up with him.

  “Took you long enough,” Matthew said when Simon pushed her into the room in front of him. She took it in at a glance. Matthew leaned against the windowsill, the gun held loosely in his hand. The Crosses were on the bed, which was saturated with blood. It looked like it was just from Mr. Cross’s gunshot wound, but she couldn’t tell. There was so much of it everywhere.

  “It’ll be worth the wait,” Simon said, not looking at him. He manhandled Adelaide over to the old radiator where a pair of cuffs was already waiting for her. He forced her down, locking her to it. “Front row seat for my girl.”

  She kicked out and managed to catch his shin. But it was just a glancing blow, and it earned her another slap in return. At least now she could hold a soothing hand to her abused cheek.

  He grabbed her chin in his fingers, forcing her to meet his eyes. “Remember that time you said you wanted to marry me? It was the Fourth of July, and you had been here only a couple months. And you fell down and some kids laughed at you and your knee bled. And I chased them off and cleaned you up. And when I put the Band-Aid on, you told me you wanted to marry me.”

  She didn’t remember that. That year had been a blur. But she remembered so many moments that were just like that. She didn’t say anything.

  He smiled. “We won’t be kept apart, Adelaide. One of these days you’ll finally realize that. We’re meant to be. You knew it enough for both of us then. And I know it enough for both of us now. I love you, Adelaide.”

  It was the last thing he said to her that evening. The last time he looked at her.

  By the time the police arrived, it was too late for the Crosses; Simon and Matthew had disappeared, and Adelaide couldn’t stop screaming.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CLARKE

  July 17, 2018

  It was one minute past midnight, and Clarke couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept. The low level of adrenaline pulsing through her, though, was enough to guarantee she wouldn’t be able to, even if she tried.

  Not that she’d be trying anytime soon.

  She watched now as the chief studied the picture in her hands.

  “Let me get this straight,” Bradley said, looking up to meet Clarke’s eyes. “This is your father.”

  “Yes,” Clarke said even though they’d gone over this at least two times now. And it hadn’t been a question. They sat huddled in the chief’s office. She’d called in Lucas and Roger as well for this little briefing, and Clarke had explained the photo when each newcomer had arrived.

  The chief wiped a hand over her mouth, as if to collect herself. “But this isn’t you.”

  She flipped the photo to Clarke, pointing to the toddler in the picture. She was a little blonde angel, smiling up at the big, burly man who was gazing at her like she hung the moon.

  “No.”

  “And this isn’t your mother.” She tapped the picture again where a waiflike woman perched next to the man, her hand caressing the nape of his neck, her expression one of pure love. Clarke turned away from it.

  “No.”

  The chief flipped the picture back around to study it once more, but Clarke wasn’t sure what new thing she thought she’d see there.

  “So what does this mean?”

  The room, which had been filled with the low buzz of shifting limbs and breathing, dropped dead silent.

  “I think it’s fairly obvious what he’s implying,” Clarke finally said, not trying to keep the bite out of her voice. If they were offended, they could leave. “He’s trying to show that my father had a child with another woman.”

  “And this couldn’t be another relative, right?” Roger asked.

  She glanced at him. “I guess there’s always the possibility. But, no, I don’t recognize them. And the woman doesn’t look anything like anyone in my family. Plus . . .”

  “Plus, what?” Roger prompted when she didn’t finish her thought.

  “Look at their faces,” she said quietly, tipping her chin toward the picture she couldn’t even see anymore. “That’s not . . . that’s love.”

  “He knew you’d know immediately,” Sam said, speaking for the first time.

  She nodded once. “The clues. They’re all meant for me and Bess.”

  It hung there in the air. A live wire rippling between them.

  “So you think . . .” Roger made a vague gesture as if afraid to finish the thought.

  “That Bess is the girl in the picture, yes,” Clarke said for him. “It’s possible it’s not. Maybe he’s just messing with me. You could probably explain it away if you tried. But taken in the full context of everything else that’s happened, I think that—at the very least—he wants me to think Bess is my sister.”

  “It’s a trap,” Sam said.

  “Yeah,” Clarke agreed. “It’s the first time in a long time he’s had anything over me. Anything I’ve cared about or wanted to keep safe. I’ve made sure not to give him any ammo on that front.”


  “How would he know you wouldn’t hate the girl?” Lucas asked.

  Sam bit off a little laugh, and Clarke glanced over at him before answering. “Let’s just say I have a certain weakness when it comes to family, and he knows it. And has used it in the past.”

  “What happened?”

  “It makes sense, though, doesn’t it?” she asked, ignoring Lucas’s question. “It’s why he broke all his patterns with this one. It’s because he had a very specific target in mind.”

  “Bess,” the chief murmured, her gaze returning to the picture she still held.

  “No,” Sam said, and Clarke shifted to look at him. “It’s Clarke. It’s been Clarke all along.”

  “How does he think this is going to end?” It was Lucas who broke the silence in the room. They’d all been poring over maps, real estate contracts, and town documents for the past three hours, looking for any reference to a Brodie. It was inching toward 4:00 a.m.

  “What do you mean?” the chief asked.

  “Well. Let’s say his main target is Clarke here,” he started, in his slow, thoughtful cadence. “He just gave her the biggest clue possible about where to find him.”

  “And once she figured out what the clue means, she would tell us, and we would descend upon him,” the chief finished.

  “Okay, so Clarke”—he waved in her direction and she tipped her head in acknowledgment that she was listening—“Clarke comes to us, we go in with our full manpower, including our lovely FBI agent guests. We take him down immediately.”

  “He does have a hostage,” Roger reminded them, his voice raspy from not talking in hours.

  “Right,” Lucas conceded. “But he’s not a hostage taker. He’s a serial killer. The rules are different. I’m guessing the average hostage taker has to be willing to kill the hostage, but this one would do it with pleasure.”

  “And his target is Clarke, not Bess,” Sam said. “He wouldn’t even have to follow any rituals with Bess, because she’s not important to him outside of how he can use her to manipulate Clarke.”

  “You’ve lost me, sorry,” Lucas said.

  Clarke shifted. “When serial murderers kill, there are very specific patterns they have to follow to fulfill the urges that are telling them to do it in the first place. Cross’s involve strangling and torture, among other things. If he ended up having to kill a girl in a way that didn’t fit his rituals, he would be enraged. It matters to him to maintain that, because otherwise it doesn’t—for lack of a better way of putting it—scratch his itch. And, for a serial killer, that’s the worst itch you can imagine, times about four billion. So he wouldn’t be happy.”

  “Understatement,” Sam said.

  Clarke nodded. “But. But since he’s not using Bess to scratch that itch, not only does he not care if she lives or dies—he does not care how she dies.”

  “The same with Anna, I think, at this point,” Sam ventured.

  “Yeah.”

  “Jesus,” Lucas drawled, running his fingers through his tangled hair. “But why go through this at all? He knows where you are. You’re highly trained, sure, but wouldn’t it just be easier to come after you directly? Instead of this elaborate scheme?”

  Clarke laughed. “Do you know how many times I’ve wished he would just come after me? No, if he’s planning on ending it, he would never let there be any variable he couldn’t control. The amount of effort he’s put into this? And to have his grand finale—presumably killing me—be anything short of perfection? No, he couldn’t stand that.”

  “Okay.” Lucas processed the information. “So that leaves us with the original question. What is his endgame here?”

  From across the room, Sam caught her eye. Held it. She tried not to blink.

  “I think you all are working on a false assumption,” Sam said, and she willed him to shut his mouth. Don’t make it hard, Sam. There was a way this had to end. And it would be easier if the locals didn’t have their guard up to try to stop her.

  “What’s that?” the chief asked, her gaze slipping between Sam and Clarke.

  “You think Clarke will tell us when she figures out where he’s hiding,” Sam said. “And you know what the truly funny—and by ‘funny,’ I mean messed-up—thing is here? Simon knows her better than that.”

  Clarke hated proving Sam right.

  They’d put her under guard. Not with so many words, but in the hour since Sam had dropped his little insight on the group, she’d felt at least one pair of eyes on her at all times. About twenty minutes ago she tested her theory by standing up to stretch. The minute she shifted to move, everyone turned to her, and by the time she got to her feet, both Roger and Lucas had come slightly out of their seats.

  As if they would, what, tackle her to the floor? Fucking Sam.

  She was already annoyed with him for giving her up, but when her finger dragged over the line on the paper in front of her, she cursed him with every swear word she knew, including ones in different languages.

  This was it. She’d found it.

  The chief had pulled old articles about some of the buildings they were looking at and included them in the folders for each property. This one was an old house on the edge of town, if Clarke remembered the streets correctly.

  It was vacant now, but the previous occupant had been a John Davenport. Before that it was owned by a Kathryn Blight. There was an article—printed out from the local paper’s archives—slipped in behind the paperwork. Kathryn had been a prominent member of the community, and it had been notable at the time that she was selling her beloved family’s house. Which apparently she could no longer bear to live in after the tragic death of her fiancé.

  Brody Jackson.

  The words almost blurred under her tired eyes. She rubbed the heels of her hands into them and blinked fast to clear away the sleepiness. Then she looked again. Different spelling. Just different enough, really. It made sense. She couldn’t be sure, but if she checked it against a map, she’d alert whoever was her current watcher. Even though she’d promised them she wouldn’t run off by herself, she was a liar. She knew it and they knew it, and she wasn’t even insulted about it. Because it was true. She would cross every ethical and moral boundary set by society in her efforts to stop Cross.

  For good.

  So she couldn’t check it against the map, which was spread out carefully over the chief’s desk, with little makeshift paperweights holding down the corners.

  Muscle by muscle she consciously relaxed into the seat. If she looked tense and alert when she glanced up, they would sense it. Sam, at least. She had a tell, and he knew it.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said, and four pairs of eyes were on her in an instant. She simply smirked at the room at large. “Who’s coming with me?”

  Don’t be Roger. Don’t be Roger.

  They all glanced at each other. It wouldn’t be Sam. They couldn’t trust him to keep her in check. He was on her side. Little did they know he would have been their best hope.

  Lucas stood up. “I’ll go.”

  Jackpot.

  She didn’t look back at Sam when she left the room.

  Lucas’s long legs kept easy pace with her stride.

  Her eyes swept the dimly lit hallway, looking for the right opportunity. She found it in the vending machine near the bathroom. It would be perfect.

  When they got close, she stopped.

  “I’m starving, actually. I’m going to . . .” She waved vaguely at the rows of chips in front of her. Lucas stuttered, a few steps ahead of her already, and then maneuvered himself so that he was standing next to her, his body blocking the exit.

  He tilted his head in the universal gesture to get on with it, and she slipped a hand in her pocket as if digging for change. “Shit,” she said. “Can I bum a dollar?”

  The corners of his lips tipped down, suspicion written in every tense muscle of his body. She schooled her expression into something hopeful and neutral, needing him to relax for even a seco
nd. He grumbled, but then dropped his guard, reaching for his wallet. With his eyes off her, finally, she could move.

  In one swift, brutal strike, she brought the edge of her hand down right into the crease of his neck. He shouted, more in surprise than pain, she knew, and she ignored it. Instead, she stepped closer, digging her heel into the instep of his foot hard enough to get him to bend in an instinctual move to protect himself. It was exactly what she’d hoped he would do. Now his neck was unprotected and exposed. She found his carotid artery with her fingers and pinched. He was down ten seconds later.

  She took off running, knowing that she had, at most, thirty seconds before Sam and the others got suspicious. She’d tucked away the folder she’d been looking at under a few other documents, but Sam would find it. And know.

  She’d bought herself a good twenty-minute head start, though. That was if she managed to get out of the building.

  She slowed to a stroll through the lobby.

  “Morning,” she tossed at the officer pushing through the door. It wasn’t quite 5:00 a.m. yet. He was getting an early start. But he only returned her greeting and kept on his way.

  When her feet hit the stairs outside, she picked up her pace, heading for the rental car conveniently parked three spots down.

  She slid in behind the wheel, and no one had come out chasing her yet. She might just make a clean escape, after all.

  It’s going to end now, Simon.

  One way or another. She was either going to send him to hell or take him there with her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  BESS

  July 17, 2018

  Another basement. Jesus Christ. If Bess got out of this mess, she’d never go in a basement again.

  This time she was tied to a chair, not locked to the floor. She didn’t know why that mattered. But it did.

  Simon had been pissed after Anna escaped, and Bess had the new bruises to show for it. He hadn’t killed her yet, though. She’d thought he was going to, thought that she wouldn’t wake up after the world started going hazy and black around her while he dragged her up the stairs. At least she’d told herself that she would have gone down fighting.