by C. J. Lyons
“And what exactly are we rescuing? Or is it a who?”
“My investigation. Records and recordings and data.”
That piqued Morgan’s attention. “Data?”
“Everything I was able to collect from the All American call center computers before tonight. It’s all there. Can’t you drive any faster?”
Morgan hit the accelerator, but at this time of night, with the bars closing, there were sobriety checks all up and down the main roads, so she nudged it barely past the speed limit. Zoe wasn’t happy with their progress, bouncing in her seat and pushing her right leg down as if she were driving.
“All those years with Curtis Troy… If you don’t want to talk about it—” In Morgan’s experience, inviting someone to stay quiet was the surest way to get them talking. Just let the silence linger long enough and they’d itch to fill it.
Zoe was no exception. “At first it was like—you know those old banks with the vaults and the doors so thick that you’d go in there and the door would close and you’d run out of air? It was like that. I’d let him take me into the vault in my mind, close the door, and do whatever he wanted, and I’d just suffocate out the memory.”
She traced a finger along the scar on her face. “But then I realized that wouldn’t work. He needed me to be her, be his perfect Angel, all the time. God, how I grew to hate the sound of my own name! Where’s my perfect Angela, my little Angel?” The last was done in a high-pitched parody of a man’s voice. “So that’s what I did. I locked my real self inside the vault and became his little Angel.”
“And now you’re Zoe.” As far from Angela the innocent little girl as possible, at least alphabetically. Morgan suspected in other ways as well. “Don’t you want to reclaim your life? Find yourself again?”
She shook her head, more quick, furious shakes that whipped her hair against her eyes. An errant strand stayed stuck to her right eye, but Zoe didn’t move to swipe it away, despite the fact that it must have stung. “She’s gone. Dead and buried in that vault.”
Morgan slowed to a stop for a red light, then reached over and gently slid the strand of hair away from Zoe’s face. “And your family?”
“I’m telling you, the girl they knew is gone. Didn’t you hear? Curtis Troy murdered her.” She bared her teeth in a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “He’s on death row. No changing that. She’s dead.”
Angela’s family would argue the point, Morgan was certain. But she also understood the extreme effort it took to escape a man like Curtis Troy. More than physical restraints, predators like Troy manacled their victims by warping their minds, controlling every thought, every feeling, every move they made. She should know; her father had been an expert.
The only way Morgan had survived and been able to walk away from—or at least try to move past—her own violent upbringing was with the help of her friends. Friends she had been reluctant to acknowledge; and yet now here she was, doing everything in her power to return to them.
“I can help.” Morgan’s words surprised herself. She was here to stop a killer, and time was short. It was after midnight. Only five days left until her self-imposed deadline, Micah’s birthday. But Zoe was Morgan. The Morgan before she’d met Lucy, Nick, Jenna, Andre, and most of all, Micah.
Zoe needed a friend. Morgan had never tried to help anyone, not like this. Doubt surged through her. This was a bad idea. Emotional support—who was she kidding? She’d only barely just come to acknowledge that she possessed any emotions herself.
“Help? What would you know about it? About anything?” Zoe snapped.
“My father was Clinton Caine.” Morgan almost choked on the name. She’d sworn never to say it again, but somehow it felt good, taking ownership of her heritage. After all, she couldn’t change the past. All she could change was what she did with it.
In her mind, she saw Nick nodding encouragement at her insight. Maybe she did have something to teach Zoe after all.
Chapter Eleven
“When did things change? And you decided to escape?” Morgan asked, as the light finally turned green.
Zoe hesitated, then slumped in her seat, resigned. “When I got older, he starved me so I wouldn’t have hormones, but they just came anyway. He was so furious. He decided it was time I had a little sister. So he started to take me to playgrounds; he wanted me to make friends with little girls, to find one he’d like. Kids, though, they’re smart—they wouldn’t have anything to do with me. But that only made him madder. And I knew he’d get his new little angel one way or another. Then I heard him talking on the phone. It took me awhile to figure it out—they were talking about me. About paying him money for me and him insisting that they take care of all the evidence. I realized he was trying to get rid of me but didn’t have the guts to do it himself. He was trying to sell me to someone else to use in a snuff film—you know what that is?”
Morgan nodded.
“Curtis, he wants ten thousand dollars, and they have to get rid of the body. The body—that’s me, that’s all I am to him after he stole everything from me. I gave him my life, and all he cares about is how to get rid of the evidence and make a few bucks. But you know the one thing I had all those years locked up alone when Curtis was at work? He left me with the TV. Five years—that’s hundreds of hours of shows about how to get away with murder and poisoners and faking your death and all sorts of useful stuff I learned. Do you know how many things around the house can kill you dead, and the cops will never find out? A cigarette you soak the nicotine out of. There are plants—some of them growing in Curtis’s garden. Foxglove and belladonna and monkshood. Mercury from an old thermometer. Carbon monoxide.”
“But you didn’t kill him.”
“No. I thought about it. Thought real hard. I imagined so many ways—it was all I could think about. But I was so angry—he chose me, me! And then just because I was growing up, he rejected me, wanted me dead. After I gave him everything. No way. Death was too easy. I was going to steal his life away just like he stole mine.”
“So you drugged him. Faked the 911 call.”
“Just like on TV. The only hard part was sneaking the sleeping pills so he wouldn’t notice any missing and then putting them in his beer without his knowing. Once he was asleep, the rest was easy.”
Morgan remembered the stories of the supposed murder scene—it couldn’t have been all that easy. Zoe must have cut herself pretty deep to get all that blood. The scar on her left arm? Morgan assumed Zoe had endured the pain the same way she had the torment Troy put her through—via dissociation. But she also understood the other girl’s determination. “You ran.”
“Grabbed his cash, his computer, and took an old bicycle I found in the garage. I figured the cops would wonder if his car went missing, and I don’t really know how to drive. I rode and rode—it was night and I was scared I’d gone the wrong way. He’d only taken me out a few times to try to get me to meet other kids, to get them to come with him, and when it never worked, he stopped. But then I saw the lights of a town, and cars started coming past, so fast they knocked me into the ditch. No one stopped. It was like I was invisible. So I picked myself up and kept on riding.”
“Meanwhile, everyone thought you were dead and buried somewhere out in those fields or dumped in the river. And what did you do then?”
“The first few days I just wandered. I had some cash but was too scared to show my face, so mainly I stole what I needed. I slept outside under the stars…it felt so good. Finally I made my way to Augusta.”
Interesting. The first victim that Morgan had located had been killed in Augusta, Georgia. “Why Augusta?”
“It’s where Curtis arranged to meet the man he sold me to. Only instead he found me waiting. And I had some questions for him. Took him a long time to tell me what he knew. I hadn’t planned on that, on how messy it would be.” Her tone was nonchalant. Then she pointed out the window. “Turn here.”
Morgan spun the wheel and followed Zoe’s directions, but her
mind was elsewhere. The victim in Augusta had been tortured via electrocution, beaten, and then strangled with an electrical cord.
She glanced at Zoe, who shared Morgan’s slight build—no wonder, after years of captivity and deprivation. Could she be the killer Morgan was tracking?
A strange and unfamiliar mix of emotions settled its weight upon her shoulders. Sorrow, regret. Zoe was the closest thing to a friend that Morgan had found here so far from home…and she had the feeling that she was one of the few friends Zoe had. Certainly the only one who knew and understood her secret past.
“Here. Pull in here.” Morgan turned into the dark and deserted nursery. Bright plants colored the night, fighting for attention in the moonlight. Zoe didn’t seem to notice. “Park back behind that storage shed.”
Morgan parked and killed the headlights, and Zoe leaned forward, eager with anticipation. Was this a trap? Maybe she’d been lying about the data to gain Morgan’s trust. Was she intending to kill Morgan next?
“That’s my trailer on the edge of the lot. Can you see it?” She pointed across a stretch of shrubs and small trees to the trailer court in the distance. A few still had lights on, but other than that there was no sign of life.
“I’ll go on foot from here. Honk if you see anyone coming.” Zoe opened the door. “Be right back.”
Morgan watched and waited. She didn’t want to hurt Zoe—most definitely did not want to kill her. That was the whole reason she’d come here; to learn how not to kill.
But Zoe had been right, what she’d said earlier. The little girl who had once been Angela Parsons was long gone. Only Zoe, cold blooded, determined, ruthless Zoe, had climbed out of that hole in the ground four years ago back in Alabama.
If Zoe was the killer, then Morgan had to stop her.
Could she also save her?
Chapter Twelve
As Morgan watched and waited, her phone rang. Micah. They talked almost every night, but tonight he was calling later than usual. Then she remembered why. “Hey,” she answered. “How was your date?”
“It wasn’t a date. It was prom. And I only took Bethany because her date ditched her at the last minute. And I asked if you were okay with it first, if you may recall. Besides, it wasn’t even my prom, it was hers.”
Poor Micah, he didn’t even try to hide his emotions. He’d lost a year of school when he’d been unjustly kept in juvenile detention, and all his friends were now graduating without him.
“Besides,” he continued, “she’s just a friend.”
Bethany the bitch—as Morgan thought of her—had been lucky enough to know Micah all his life, and now she was trying to steal him from Morgan, insinuating herself into Micah’s life, tutoring him for summer school, baking him cookies, asking him to take her to her prom.
None of which touched Micah’s heart—evidenced by every moment recounted to Morgan without a hint of desire for Bethany. She almost felt sorry for the girl. Except how could she, when Morgan was a thousand miles away and Micah clearly desperately needed a friend?
“Should’ve seen me in my tux,” he said.
“James Bond, I’ll bet.” She paused. “What did Bethany wear?”
“She looked amazing. This green dress made of this silky stuff that you could almost see through in the right light. It was like overnight she grew from the girl I used to try to dump off the teeter-totter into a real woman.”
For the first time ever, Micah actually seemed interested in Bethany. A sudden feeling of dread crept over Morgan. She needed to get home or she was going to lose him.
“Did you get pictures?” She forced her voice bright and cheerful. After all, how was she going to kill Bethany without knowing what she looked like?
No. She swallowed a sigh so he wouldn’t hear it. She wasn’t going to go anywhere near Bethany. Because if she made Micah happy when Morgan couldn’t…Micah of all people deserved to be happy.
“I’ll text them to you.”
“Great.” She blinked hard, Zoe’s trailer blurring in her vision. Her grip on the phone tightened. “Well, it’s been a long day. Good night.”
“Wait, so soon? We just started—”
“I’m glad you had a good time at the prom, Micah. Bye.” She hung up. And cursed herself a fool twenty times over. A thousand miles away from home, on the trail of a killer who might end up being a girl exactly like herself, and she was worried about hurting some guy’s feelings?
If Zoe was her killer, then Morgan totally understood why she’d abandoned her emotions. People were too damn hard.
This time her sigh escaped her, rattling around the empty car. There was one person she could talk to about feelings. Nick. He’d hate her for calling so late—so would his wife—but it was all part of his job as a psychologist, so instead of worrying about the hour, she dialed his cell.
She explained the situation with Micah—leaving Zoe out of it. Nick was too damned perceptive, and if he thought for a second that Zoe might hurt someone, he’d report her to the police, his relationship with Morgan be damned.
“You’re telling me you’re lonely,” he said when she’d finished. “Why not come home? Talk to Micah yourself?”
“Just because I choose to be alone doesn’t mean I’m lonely. I just don’t like people crowding me, looking over my shoulder, always asking questions.” Like nosy-parker therapists, even if they did have her best interests at heart.
“You choose to live alone. But you’ve also chosen to be with people. After you left your father, you could have run anywhere, become anyone you wanted.”
Except she couldn’t have, not really. The Morgan she’d been while with her father was a marionette, manipulated to act out any fantasy he needed in the moment. It was how she’d survived. But it had left her hollow inside, devoid of any idea of who she was, much less who she wanted to be.
Exactly like Zoe. Only Zoe’s scars still bound her; she was still Curtis Troy’s creation instead of her own person.
“You didn’t run,” Nick continued after one of his trademark pauses designed to make her think. “You chose to stay. Why was that?”
“You know why. I needed to learn how to survive with Norms without killing all the idiots who piss me off.” The words sounded spiteful. Yet she didn’t regret her choice.
True, she’d blackmailed Jenna into giving her a job. At first Andre had accepted her only because he wanted to protect Jenna—and the rest of the world—from her, while Nick had come on board because she was a fascinating clinical challenge and to insulate his wife and daughter from Morgan. “It’s not like any of you were my friends.”
“Were,” Nick emphasized. “What about now?”
“Now?” She’d almost died several times over—and they had also sacrificed for her. Did that make them friends? They didn’t socialize, there was no small talk outside of whatever case they were on, there were no birthday cakes or presents or stupid ear-candling sessions or ride-your-unicycle-to-work days.
Because of Zoe, Gavin was dead—yet she didn’t seem to feel any remorse. Maybe it was too soon? Or maybe she couldn’t—maybe she was like Morgan that way. “I’m not sure. What makes a friend? For Norms, I mean.”
“Usually it’s someone you share a past history with or common interests.” His pause was a bit awkward, as they both did the math on that. Morgan’s past was filled with torture and bloodshed, and her only interests were criminal psychology; better ways to steal, con, or manipulate; cybersecurity and hacking; and, of course, new and more efficient ways to kill.
And the odds of finding someone with that shared history and common interest? She would have said zero. Until she’d met Zoe.
What future could she and Micah have? Their only shared past was the short time they’d spent in juvenile detention together—and most of that had been spent fighting for their lives. Their only common interest was…well, nothing. They had nothing in common. Yet, somehow she could spend hours on the phone listening to him tell her about his day and never get bored
…but maybe he did? Maybe he was just too polite to tell her?
“I didn’t exactly grow up with slumber parties where we all sat around braiding each other’s hair,” she reminded Nick. As if he needed reminding.
“No. But you’ve made it clear that you still need people in your life. Can you think of a way you could have a relationship without hiding behind a mask?”
“I don’t know. Is there a Tinder for psychopaths?” she asked. “Maybe you should invent one. We’re four percent of the population. You’d make a killing.”
She hung up on him. And instantly regretted it. Nick was trying to help—he’d devoted a lot of his time and energy to helping her and had never gotten anything but grief for his trouble. He didn’t deserve to suffer her petty tirades.
Maybe that was just the kind of friend she was. Or the kind of person. A self-centered, petty, narcissistic, sociopathic bitch.
Her phone buzzed with a call. She checked the screen, expecting it to be Nick. It was Micah. He’d also sent a picture of him in his tux—thankfully without Bethany.
Morgan glanced around the empty nursery. No wonder she’d ended up alone. Again. The phone continued to ring. Her finger hovered over the accept button. It didn’t matter how hard she fought to fit in with Norms, nothing would ever make her actually deserving of their affection or friendship or trust.
Or love.
She dismissed the call from Micah and curled up into herself, staring out into the black sky. There was still no movement from the trailer park—no lights even from Zoe’s trailer. Smart girl, not chancing being seen.
Suddenly a brilliant orange glow sparked in the night. Flames wavered and grew, reflected from behind glass. More than candlelight—a fire. Inside Zoe’s trailer.
Chapter Thirteen
By the time Morgan started the car and began driving down the dirt path between aisles of horticulture, Zoe’s trailer had become engulfed in flames along with a halo of smoke that shone blue-silver against the indigo sky. She hit the accelerator, plowing through a snow fence that marked the boundary at the end of the nursery’s property line, went airborne for a few seconds as the Ford flew over a narrow irrigation ditch, and hit the ground with a thud that made the wheels spin until she regained control.