The Last Echo: A Body Finder Novel

by Kimberly Derting

  This is just perfect. Violet sighed, rolling her aching shoulders as she shuffled back toward the kitchen, the knife hanging loosely at her side now. On top of everything else, she either felt a draft or she was on the verge of a fever. She wondered if her mom had forgotten to shut a window again. Her timing sucked since they were in the middle of a rainstorm.

  But when she reached the kitchen, her back stiffened and her grip around the knife’s handle tightened reflexively. She stood motionless as her eyes, still irritated from the imprint of burnt rubber, scanned the room.

  She didn’t see anyone, but that didn’t matter. Violet knew she wasn’t alone.

  The back door stood wide open, and she tried to imagine a scenario when it had ever blown open before, even during a windstorm. She knew it had never happened.

  She opened her mouth, meaning to call out, to see if maybe her parents had come home. But her instincts told her to be still. Silent. So she waited.

  And then she saw it, and her throat tightened to the size of a needle, making her breath come out on a painful wheeze.

  It was her purse, with its familiar jeweled skull and crossbones, sitting in the center of the kitchen table as if it had never been missing at all. As if she’d never dropped it in the first place.

  She thought of James Nua’s brother, and the threatening calls Sara had received, but she knew now that he had nothing to do with this.

  Each beat of her heart was palpable. Each breath excruciating as she stood there, wondering where he was, suddenly understanding the prickling sensations. Suddenly understanding why her hands and feet stung so violently, and wondering how she hadn’t caught on sooner. She knew too why her eyes burned. And she recognized another imprint, one she’d dismissed because it was overshadowed by the smell of charred rubber . . . it was the bitter taste of rubbing alcohol.

  These weren’t Carl’s imprints; they were Caine’s. These were the echoes of the dead girls he’d wanted to love.

  What happened next was so sudden Violet barely had time to blink. From behind the kitchen counter there was a flash of movement, and then he was there, out in the open and descending on her. It was both lightning-fast and molasses-slow. She was just clearheaded enough to get a good look at his face, to recognize what Rafe had meant when he’d said he understood why the girls wouldn’t be afraid of him.

  He was handsome. So very, very handsome, she thought just as he collided with her, knocking her flat on her back. And before she could even breathe again, his knee jammed in her stomach and her eyes went wide as she exhaled loudly, noisily, painfully.

  He didn’t speak to her. In fact, he remained awkwardly silent as he gazed down at her, his expression less than predatory. If Violet hadn’t known better, she would have sworn she saw regret in his eyes.

  “Please. Don’t . . . do . . . this . . .” Violet panted, gasping for breath beneath his weight.

  He didn’t respond to her, just continued to watch her with that same remorse-filled gaze.

  If she could just make it to the door, she told herself. These were her woods. Even in the dark, she was sure she could lose him.

  With a sudden burst, Violet rolled swiftly and unexpectedly to her side. She still had the knife in her hand, and even though her fingers shook, she knew she could use it if she had to. And she was almost certain she would have to.

  Caine was pitched off balance by the sudden movement and she slipped out from beneath him as her survival instincts kicked in. She heard him topple behind her and she jumped to her feet, staggering dizzily for a moment before gaining her balance.

  It wasn’t until she felt his hand close around her ankle, his fingers gripping her firmly, that she turned, and without thinking swung the knife. She watched as it arced through the air and her heart stopped.

  But what she didn’t count on was losing her balance.

  He jerked her foot, the one he was clutching, and Violet reeled, falling out of control. She careened forward, toward him, and even as she flailed, she still hoped she might cut him with the knife she clutched in her fist.

  She heard his sharp gasp just as she felt the knife, and its sharp point, slide uselessly across the floor beneath her. And then she hit the ground too, all the way this time, landing in a panting heap on her stomach, her hands splayed clumsily around her. She scrambled, moving as quickly as she could, struggling to get up. But her right hand slipped in something wet and slick on the hardwood, and she slid back down, banging her cheek against the floor once more.

  She heard him above her. “Shh . . . it’s okay,” he assured her, his voice as beautiful as his face. Quiet and soothing. The voice of a devil. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you now.”

  Violet turned her head, tears filling her eyes as she looked at him again, wondering why he’d chosen her. Wondering what she’d done to deserve this.

  She saw the blood then. On the floor and on him, and realized that she had cut him. Just not badly enough.

  She watched as his hand came toward her, grasping a cloth that was once white, but was now stained red with blood from his hand.

  “No,” she whimpered. “Pl—” But the cloth was already covering her face now, and she could no longer smell the stench of burning rubber. All she could smell was a cloying sweetness that seemed to seep into every part of her.

  She felt dizzy, and her limbs went limp . . .

  . . . and then there was nothing.

  Chapter 22

  THE FIRST THING SHE WAS AWARE OF WAS HER breathing. She was still breathing. She knew because each breath took far too much effort and wasted far too much energy. Yet she couldn’t stop them from coming, the breaths. One, and then another, and then another. Each one was slow and shallow and difficult.

  No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t pry her eyelids open. They were heavy, as if they’d been weighted down. With rocks or maybe bricks. Something immovable.

  But it was her mouth that was the worst. So parched. So dry. Her tongue felt withered, like desiccated old leather. And there wasn’t enough saliva to keep it from shriveling further.

  She was dying. Not dead yet, maybe, but dying for sure.

  She didn’t want to believe that, but she knew it was true.

  Somewhere . . . somewhere very, very far away . . . a sound.

  Grinding. No, rumbling.

  She knew the sound, recognized it.

  A chain saw.

  But it was so far away. So very, very far away . . .

  Time passed. She counted not by days, but by dreams. She never awoke. Never stopped dreaming.

  Sometimes while she slept there was a voice, a soft, gentle voice, reassuring her that she was okay. That she was still “his girl.”

  An image of a boy flashed. A boy with laughing eyes and sandy-colored hair.

  But the voice was all wrong. It wasn’t the boy’s voice she heard.

  Still, the voice was there. And he lifted her head and cradled it gently, giving her water. She drank until she choked. Until she gagged. She felt the water trickle down her chin to her neck. And then he’d lay her back down again, and he’d wipe her dry, holding her hand and waiting until her body stopped convulsing.

  Then she was alone again.

  The moment she felt the skin of her eyelids parting, she nearly whimpered out loud. But somehow she held it back. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself; she didn’t want the voice to know she was awake again.

  She rolled her eyeballs one more time, using them to pry her lids apart, to unstick them, and the opening grew . . . first on her right side, and eventually, on the left one too.

  She didn’t mean to, but she let out a soft sigh.

  “I was wondering when you’d wake,” the voice said from somewhere nearby. From right beside her, she realized.

  She blinked, glad that she could, and let her head follow the sound, trying to locate him.

  He wasn’t hard to find; he sat beside her on a bed. In a room she didn’t recognize. It was dark outside, no light co
ming in from behind the curtain, but there was a light fixture overhead, and it was bright enough to let her see her immediate surroundings.

  She saw varnished pine walls, a checkered quilt, a ruffled canopy overhead. It was a little girl’s room.

  “You’ve slept almost the entire day. I thought you’d miss dinner.”

  A day? She struggled to remember the last time she’d been awake, but she was certain it had been far longer than just one day.

  She tried to focus on his face, but her vision blurred. She blinked again, this time squeezing her eyes shut and reopening them.

  His features were vaguely familiar, in a strange and elusive way. She couldn’t quite put her finger on where she’d seen him before, but that didn’t dispel the unease she felt in his presence. The prickling sensation warned her that he was not to be trusted.

  Somehow, she knew he was the reason she was here.

  “Whe—” She tried to talk, but it was too difficult. Her voice didn’t even register; it was just an arid breath. Dry, like dust.

  “Shh.” He pressed his finger to her lips, and that was when she smelled it.

  The blistering stench of burnt rubber.

  And everything came back to her in a rush.

  It was him.

  Caine.

  And she was Violet.

  She understood the feeling of needles that stabbed at her skin. The way her eyes burned from the acrid stench. And the hint of rubbing alcohol on her tongue—not an antiseptic at all—but an echo.

  They were all coming from him. He was the carrier of these imprints.

  He stored them—wore them—completely unaware that she knew about them. But Violet knew who—and what—he was. A killer.

  She turned away, unable to bear the onslaught of emotions that overwhelmed her, knowing that she too might end up part of his collection.

  “If you’re good,” he explained, ignoring her rebuff and holding a bottle of nail polish in front of her face, “I’ve brought you a treat for after dinner.”

  The sound was back, the chain-saw noise she’d heard before. It seemed like forever ago, but after what he—Caine—had told her about sleeping all day, she was fairly certain it had only been yesterday.

  This sound, she knew, wasn’t an echo. It didn’t come closer when he was near. Unlike the other things: the astringent taste of alcohol, the tingling, the burning rubber that made her eyes sting.

  The chain saw was just a chain saw. But why?

  She glanced around the room again, at the rustic feel, and several things struck her at once. It was morning. She’d slept all the way through the night, yet there was a cloudiness that clung to her, a haze that muffled her clarity, and she realized he must have drugged her. Again.

  The soup.

  She’d wondered at its taste, if it was only the strange echo he carried lingering on her tongue or whether there really was an underlying flavor of something almost . . . medicinal.

  She remembered, after eating it, the way her eyelids had fluttered while he’d held her hand, painstakingly working on her fingernails. She remembered wanting to draw her hands away from him, to make him stop, but she’d been unable to. She’d been too weary and weak, too disoriented to put up any kind of fight.

  Instead she’d watched him, blinking sleepily as she wrestled with the grogginess while he meticulously painted each nail.

  But now she was awake . . . and alone. Now was her chance.

  She tried to sit up, but panic welled up from her gut as she realized she was going nowhere.

  She couldn’t see her feet, but she knew it wasn’t their weight—or her inability to summon her muscles into compliance—that kept them from responding. They were bound beneath the blankets that covered her—the too-charming, pink-and-white checkered comforter—one tied to each post at the end of the bed. Her shoulders ached, her back too, as her hands were stretched up and to her sides. She could see that he’d fashioned strips of torn bedsheets as makeshift ropes to secure her wrists to the canopy bed she lay upon. Several strenuous tugs made it clear that the bindings were sturdy.

  Still, she kicked and thrashed anyway. Not caring that it was pointless. Not caring that she was alone and trapped and wearing out her precious reserve of energy.

  If she could have, she would’ve screamed too. But the gag across her mouth muffled her voice, making it feel like a hoarse murmur. The anemic sound was lost in the uneven grumbling and humming of the chain saw outside.

  The exertion exhausted Violet, and she collapsed, spent, her heart racing out of control as she tried to forget who he was . . . Caine. Tried to forget the things he’d done and the girls he’d killed.

  And then she remembered what Rafe had told her about those girls—about Caine himself.

  That he wanted them to love him.

  Violet settled back, trying to allay her fears. Trying to calculate and plan.

  She needed to get out of here. She needed to find a way to make him trust her.

  To make him believe she could love him.

  It was the only way.

  He didn’t visit during the day, she noted. It wasn’t until the sun fell that he ventured into her room, creeping silently.

  She knew now that this wasn’t the house Rafe had told her about, the house in the city with a dungeon in its basement. She knew he was keeping her some other place.

  She silently thanked her father for teaching her to use the sun as an indicator of time during their treks through the woods. She knew how to mark the passage of hours in the day, and even through the thin gingham curtains, she’d been able to track the shift from morning to afternoon to dusk.

  Dusk had been easy, though. That’s when he came.

  He carried another tray of dinner, another bowl of pharmaceutical-grade soup. The last thing Violet wanted to do was to eat the soup, though. Not that soup. Yet her stomach growled in protest. She needed the food, she knew. Eventually she’d have to give in; it would do her no good to starve to death. Then she’d never be able to escape.

  But it would do her even less good to sleep if this was the only chance she had to gain his trust.

  She kept her gaze on him as he switched the overhead light on. Just as she had the night he’d come into her home and attacked her, she couldn’t help noting his golden looks, and she wondered what had made him so dark and sadistic on the inside. She wondered if he even realized that’s what he was, or if he somehow deluded himself into thinking this was okay. That everything he did was okay.

  He smiled sheepishly as he came to her side of the bed, and she struggled not to recoil from the imprints that clung to him. “Are you thirsty?”

  Against her better judgment, Violet nodded eagerly. The water could easily be drugged too; she wasn’t stupid. But she was so, so thirsty. More so, even, than she was hungry.

  “No screaming,” he warned, his eyes narrowing, his hands poised at either side of the gag. She noticed it then, the bandage on his right hand, much smaller than she’d imagined he would need after seeing all the blood at her house. She’d barely nicked him, it seemed.

  Her heart beat an erratic rhythm and her chest constricted, but Violet nodded again, this time forcing herself to keep eye contact with him. She needed to make him believe she could love him.

  When the rag fell from her lips, she sighed. “Thank you,” she croaked aridly. She tried to smile, but her lips were cracked—the skin too dry, too brittle—making her wince instead.

  He frowned as he reached behind him, searching the bedside table. He turned to look, and then balled his fist. Violet could read frustration in every tensed muscle of his body. “I’m sorry,” he ground out. “I should’ve had something for your lips. It’s just . . . this isn’t the right place . . .” He banged his fist on the table and the dishes rattled noisily.

  Beside him, Violet jumped too. “It’s . . . okay . . .” She didn’t want to cry, but she was so vulnerable, trapped here with a madman.

  He nodded, accepting her acquiescence
, and he settled down again, smiling once more. His mood shifts were erratic, not at all subtle, and Violet worried she wasn’t sharp enough to keep up with them.

  “Here,” he offered, lifting a glass of water to her lips.

  Like the night before, she gulped at it, desperate for as much water as she could get. But he held back, drizzling it slowly, doling out a little at a time.

  When he pulled it away, she strained to follow, but the strip of sheet wound around her neck tethered her. Her head snapped, a brutal reminder that she had only so much leeway.

  She bit back the desperation that threatened to overwhelm her. “Wh-what’s . . . your name?” Her pulse pounded in the base of her throat and her skin tingled all over. She had no idea what she was doing, if she was saying the wrong things or not. It felt like a dangerous game.

  His sharp intake of breath was jarring, and she held her own, worried she’d played him wrong. He glanced down at his hands, a frown on his face as he studied the fists lying in his lap. He’s been quiet for too long, she thought. I pushed him too soon.

  The bed shifted, and panic shot through her. He was leaving. He was going to leave her all alone again. No food. No more water.

  And then he whispered, his voice softer, and much more hesitant, than hers had been. “It’s C-Caine.”

  Violet’s eyes widened. She didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t like Sara. She wasn’t a trained profiler with years of experience behind her. She was a seventeen-year-old girl being held hostage by a killer. And she was terrified, afraid that any misstep might be her last.

  She swallowed, telling herself she could do this. “Th—” Her voice shook. “Thank you, Caine.”

  His gaze flew to hers, searching, she knew, for the truth in her statement. Or probing, more likely, for the lie. This was it. This was her chance to show him.

  She inhaled and let the corner of her mouth move up. Ever so slightly. Just the barest hint of a smile.

  But she had to be careful.

  Too much and he’d see it; he’d know it wasn’t real. That none of it was real.