He was talking about her. Melissa. Alvarez was admitting to being a witness to what happened to her that night but denying he ever saw Wade. It didn’t make sense.
It’d make perfect sense if you’d just listen to me, darlin’. He ain’t the guy.
“That girl had a name.”
Sabrina looked up and over to see Val standing in the doorway, hand rubbing over her protruding belly in a circular motion. She was looking at Alvarez like she wanted to deck him. He must have seen it too because he started to stutter. “I know, I just—I mean—”
Sabrina jammed the Kimber back into the holster on her hip and wiped a hand over her mouth. “Ms. Hernandez, please, if you would just go back—”
“No.” Val shot her a look that said she was seconds away from blowing her cover before she wheeled around and pinned Alvarez with her dark gaze. “Her name was Melissa Walker and she was my friend.”
“I know,” he offered. “I remember and I’m sorry.”
“Never mind that,” she said, shooting Val a stay out of it glare. “Why were you there? What were you doing inside a church in the middle of the night?” she said. She’d gotten the story from Father Francisco but she wanted to see if Alvarez’s account lined up with his.
“I …” He trailed off, his gaze skittering across the table, stopping when it landed on Vega. “I was hiding from my uncle,” he said, his admission followed by a humorless laugh. “At least I thought he was my uncle. I was told he was my only family.”
“Why were you hiding from your uncle?” Sabrina said, leaning her hip against the counter before crossing arms over her chest.
“Because his favorite hobby was getting drunk and beating me until I couldn’t walk.” Alvarez looked away. “And that was when he was feeling generous.”
“Is that why you killed him?” Sabrina said, forcing her tone to remain as flat and emotionless as possible. “Because he beat you?”
He looked at her then, gazed as rigid and fixed as his jaw. “The beating I could handle. It was the other stuff I couldn’t take.”
It wasn’t an admission of guilt but it wasn’t a denial either.
“What his name?” The question came from Vega. “Your uncle —who was he?”
“Tomas Olivero.” Alvarez followed his answer with a short bark of harsh laughter. “He worked for your uncle as a field foreman for years. He was the right-hand man.”
Tomas Olivero was the field foreman who’d found Rachel Meeks chained up in that abandoned pump house. They’d given Magda’s second son to a trusted employee. One who’d never question his origin. Santos had mentioned Olivero was dead, but he hadn’t told her how.
This is all sorts of fascinating, but how the hell is any of this gonna help?
“Did you kill him, Alvarez?” she said, tuning Wade out completely. “Did you kill your uncle?”
Shame lowered Alvarez’s eyes, anchoring them into the table’s smooth surface. “I wanted to, but—”
“But you didn’t do it,” she said, shaking her head. “You didn’t kill him. You couldn’t.”
“It was a Friday night—payday. He’d gone out drinking … I found him in his truck after midnight, my field knife sticking out of his chest.” Alvarez shook his head. “I was eighteen and I already knew how it’d go—everyone knew what he did to me. No one would believe I didn’t do it.”
You remember what that’s like, don’t you? Running away … only, the way I remember it, you really did kill the guy who got after you.
“You ran.” This came from Vega, who was listening to the story with a mixture of guilt and relief planted on his face. He’d been the lucky one. The chosen son, while his brother had been discarded and abused.
Alvarez nodded. “Yeah—Father Francisco gave me money and I bought a ticket to Tucson.”
“That’s when you became Mark Alvarez,” she said, filling in the blanks. Buying fake papers was easy enough if you knew where to look. “Why did you come back? Why not stay in Tucson?”
“Ellie,” he said, giving her a shrug. “She was in Tucson for training and recognized me. I worked with her father in the fields. She would come see him sometimes. After he died, she kept coming to see me in the fields until I left. She believed me when I told her I didn’t kill my uncle and she convinced me to come home. Said no one would remember me and she was right—no one did.”
“But someone did remember you.” She looked at Vega, directing her next question at him. “What was your relationship with Father Francisco like?”
“It was an open family secret that he was my father,” Vega shrugged. “But we never talked about it,” he said, looking at Alvarez. “We never really talked at all.”
“Together, the two of you had everything our killer wanted.” She pointed at Vega. “You had the money, the prestige of being a Vega,” she said, before shifting her focus onto Alvarez. “And you had a father’s affection. He believes he’s Magda Lopez’s lost son—but Father Francisco, the man he believes is his father, rejected him in favor of you. That’s why he raped Rachel and killed Olivero. He was trying to take those things away from both of you.”
Look at you, talking like a real-life profiler. Our daddy’d be so proud.
Something Alvarez said earlier snagged on her brain and she reached for it, prying it loose. “You said, I saw what’d been done to that girl—but I never saw the guy who did it,” she said carefully. “But you did see someone, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.” Alvarez shook his head. “But he’d been at Saint Rose all night, same as me. And he was just a kid—no older than I was, really.”
“Wade Bauer was barely eighteen years old when he killed his first victim,” she told him. “He was ‘just a kid’ when he took Melissa Walker. He raped and tortured her for eighty-three days before he was even old enough to legally buy beer.”
Aw, darlin’, you say the sweetest things.
Alvarez nodded. “He was an altar boy. Always at the church. Probably more than I was, but …”
“But what?”
He shrugged. “I don’t—I got the feeling Father Francisco didn’t like him much.”
That had to be their guy. “What was his name?”
“I can’t remember his name, but it was him,” Alvarez insisted. “He was the one I saw standing over Melissa Walker that morning, right before she started moving.”
She pushed, tried to remember that night, but couldn’t. “What was he doing?” she said quietly, not sure she wanted to hear the answer. “When you saw him standing over her?”
Alvarez looked away for a second before he met her gaze. “He was smiling.”
Seventy-six
The wires kept slipping out of her fingers. It was the blood. It was everywhere, welling and dripping from where her wrists had been cut and rubbed raw by the wire that bound them together. Ellie kept trying, even though she’d given up hope.
She fit the top scrap of wire into the keyhole, working it under the tumblers while the bottom scrap worked its way past them. It was an arduous process, one she had neither the time nor the dexterity for. It’d taken her a few minutes to find the paper clip and then bend and work it into two separate pieces. Her fingers were starting to cramp, having been pinched together for so long.
Her head felt like it had been split open. It throbbed with every bump and lift she made against the lock. She worked the top wire up and down a bit, slipping it past another tumbler.
Up and down. Not jiggling. Slow and easy. That was how Nulo taught her to do it, using paper clips to pick old padlocks he’d found in the bed of his uncle’s truck, but that was a long time ago. They’d been kids then …
Mark. He wanted her to call him Mark now.
The top wire slipped under the last tumbler and she lifted, allowing the bottom wire to push forward. Holding her breath, Ellie turned the lock inside the handle.
<
br /> The door swung free, opening onto a dimly lit hallway. She wasn’t blind after all. She could see shapes and shadows but her vision was blurry, wavering, like she’d opened her eyes under water.
Stepping forward, Ellie looked to her right. Stretched in front of her was a long corridor, dotted haphazardly with doors. All of them were shut.
Despite the warning ringing in her head, Ellie lurched across the hall. This door was locked too. Pressing her ear against it, she listened. Nothing but silence.
She shuffled forward, shoulder dragging against the wall as she went to keep herself upright. The floor pitched and rolled under her feet, like the deck of a ship. Her head throbbed, the pulse of it slamming in her ears, keeping time with her heart. Ahead of her was another door. This one was cracked open, brighter light spilling into the hallway.
The way out.
Reaching the door, she nudged it open. Widening the crack with a bump of her shoulder, she peered inside. The room was long and narrow. Windowless, its only source of light was one of those portable shop lights hanging from a hook set in the ceiling. An extension cord fed it power, a bright orange snake that wound up the wall to disappear through a hole drilled near the ceiling. At the far end of the room was an IV pole standing sentry over an empty hospital bed. Directly in front of her was a privacy screen.
She lurched forward and reached for the screen, but it clattered over, folding in on itself before hitting the floor. She cringed at the noise. Squeezed her eyes closed, awaiting discovery, but she heard no one.
She opened her eyes. Blood. Cast-off patterns crisscrossing along the walls. Gravitational splatters surrounding the …
“What is that?” She breathed it out loud, shaking her head, trying to find her bearings.
It took her a few seconds to understand what was in front of her. She stepped forward, drawn closer by the horror of what she was seeing. It was a breeding stand, stained with blood and … other things.
“They shit and piss themselves sometimes while I’m doing it. Rachel did.”
She froze, bound hands clasped together in what felt like prayer. The voice behind her came from the open doorway.
“She screamed and cried. Begged me to stop …” He stepped into the room, his shadow swaying in the light that spilled across the floor in front of her. “She didn’t get it—what I was trying to do for her. None of them did.”
Stay calm, draw him closer, she counseled herself. Find an opportunity. “And what’s that?” she said softly. “What were you trying to do?”
“What was I …” He let out an impatient huff. “I gave them a chance to deserve what they’d been given. I gave them a chance to become,” he said, moving closer. “The same chance I’m giving you now.”
Wait …
Her fingers laced around themselves, clenched tight. “Become what?”
“A saint. Like my mother,” he said, his tone hushed in reverence. “She sacrificed her life for mine. She was a miracle and she gave that miracle to me.”
She shook her head, eyes fixed on the shadow that swayed around her feet. “You’re sick.”
“I’m sick?” He laughed at her. “You have no idea what I am, Elena.”
“Then tell me,” she said softly, pulling him closer. “Explain it to me. Make me understand.”
Wait …
“I’m a miracle—just like you.” He was standing over her now, close enough to touch. “It was supposed to be you that night. Rachel was going to get it too, but it was you he wanted,” he said quietly, his breath brushing against her nape. “He had such plans for you, Elena, but God intervened. He saved you.”
“Oh, yeah?” Her hands twisted, fingers clenched together. “What did he save me for?”
“He saved you for me.”
Now!
She spun, exploding back, giving her arms room to swing up and out. Her fisted hands caught him under his chin, the force of them crashing his teeth together, snapping his head back even as he fell.
He went down hard, skull bouncing off the concrete floor he’d been standing on just seconds before. He was stunned but still conscious, face painted bright red with blood. “Oh, Elena,” he said, laughter bubbling up behind bloody teeth. “You really shouldn’t have done that.”
Seventy-seven
“Call my partner. Tell her what’s going on—Santos too,” she said to Alvarez before tossing a glance at Vega. “And take him home. Stick with him until I call you.”
Before either of them could launch a protest, she moved, crossing the kitchen to head for the front door before any of them could stop her.
That’s right, darlin’. You just keep on goin’. You don’t need any of them. Not when you have me.
“Wait—” The front door slammed behind her, cutting off the person following her, but she didn’t stop, kept walking at a fast clip down the driveway. She needed to get the hell out of there before she completely lost it.
The door opened and slammed again. “I’m pregnant,” Val huffed behind her as she followed her across the street. “You’re really gonna make me run?”
Goddamnit.
She stopped long enough to dig her car keys out of her pocket. Long enough for Val to land a hand on her shoulder and spin her around. “Just stop for a second,” she said, her dark eyes shiny with tears. “Nothing? You’ve got nothing to say to me?”
She took a deep breath and let it out. “Ms. Hernandez—”
“Oh, don’t you dare,” Val hissed at her, the hand on her shoulder slipping down to clamp around her wrist. “Don’t you dare do that to me, Sabrina.” She whispered her name, the tail of it catching on a stifled sob. “You can’t just pretend—”
I know where she is. I know where he took Ellie.
Wade’s words echoed in her head. He sounded nearly as desperate as she felt. “I don’t believe you,” she said, fully aware she sounded crazy. “I can’t trust anything you say.”
“Sabrina?” Instead of pushing her away, her insane outburst drew Val closer. “What are you talking about?”
I’ve never lied to you. You think about that, about all the times I’ve helped you. Showed you the way. I’ll do it again, but it’s gotta be now, darlin’.
“He has Ellie,” she said, twisting herself from Val’s grip. “I don’t have time for this. She doesn’t have time for this.”
Val’s hand flew to her mouth, her head shaking. She knew what her friend was thinking. What she was remembering. Not so long ago, it’d been Val who’d been taken. David Song had taken her and it had been Sabrina’s fault, just like it was her fault now.
“He almost took you once. Wade,” she said, watching as her words leeched the color from her friend’s face. “He wrote about it. About how you flirted with him over cherry pie and the only thing that stopped him was the fact that he had other, more pressing matters to attend to.”
“Andy Shepard,” Val breathed, her hand dropping away from her face. Shepard had been the boy Wade stabbed to death in a gas station bathroom before severing his hand. He’d done it because Shepard had hit on her. Grabbed her ass.
He shoulda kept his hands off what didn’t belong to him. He’d still be alive if he’d minded his manners.
Sabrina turned again, using the key fob to unlock the car. “You should’ve stayed in San Francisco,” she said, sliding into the driver’s seat before reaching out to snag the door, slamming it closed between them.
Seventy-eight
Run.
The word rang in her head, pushing her forward, blind and panicked. Through the door and down the hall she’d just traveled. She realized, too late, that she was heading in the wrong direction. The way out was behind her—blocked by the man she’d just knocked down.
Ellie kept pushing forward, hands and wrists aching. Head pulsating with every footfall. She felt her knees unhinge, pitching her forwa
rd. She staggered to the side, her temple scraping against the rough block wall. It stung, the pain thin and bright compared to her head and hands, but it didn’t matter. She was still standing. Still moving.
Behind her, she heard him. Hands and feet gripping and scrambling across the floor, her name an angry bellow that chased her down the corridor. She moved faster, though she wasn’t sure how. Every step she took threatened to topple her over but somehow, she kept moving. Kept herself from falling.
The corridor ended in a T and invisible hands pushed her, guiding her left. She couldn’t afford to stop, even for a moment. “Is there another way out?” she said, breathless with the effort of running, hands outstretched in front of her to keep her balance.
Another door. This one closed. She could hear him behind her, still talking—whether it was to her or the person who was with him, she didn’t know. Throwing her shoulder against the door, she turned the knob, pushing it open, and was instantly repelled by the stench of rotting flesh. This room was just as dark, just as small as the others, but this one wasn’t empty.
There were bodies. Naked and rotting. A haphazard pile of decomposing limbs and mottled flesh. She recognized the body on top, his face aimed straight at her like he was waiting for her to arrive. He was missing person case Mark was working. His name was Robert.
She started to gag, shaking her head from side to side, not wanting to take another step. “No, no, no …”
But necessity pushed her inside and she turned, shutting the door just before her captor reached the top of the corridor. She listened, trying to breathe silently through her mouth, sure that he’d come barreling down the hallway, throw the door open, and drag her back—but he didn’t. He must have turned right instead of left, and now he was moving farther and farther away until the sound of him faded almost completely.
She reached for the doorknob. She’d sneak back out, make a run for it.
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