She picked up the broom again and began winding her hands around it. We both stood still for a moment, the tension between us building until we could almost taste it on the wind.
"You'll get a splinter if you do that," I eventually said and marched indoors.
She was quick on my heel and caught up with me in the kitchen.
"I need to know how you do it!" she pressed. "Because I feel like I'm falling apart."
Beneath our feet, the sobbing continued. It wasn't long since I'd fed them but it was cold down there and dark. No place for a child. Not unless they were expected to be hidden. At least the noise they made wouldn't attract suspicion. The nearest house was half a mile away and you could see the old farmer coming in his red tractor, waving and smiling his toothless grin as he approached.
"We're all falling apart," I said. "Every single one of us."
That wasn't the answer she was looking for. She cornered me beside the refrigerator and grabbed my shoulders. Beside her, I was just the frail old woman I tried to forget I was. Her youthful hands dug into my skin as I looked up into her fiery eyes.
"How can you do it? Listen to the sounds of them crying all the time. You couldn't hear it back at Waters. But here you can hear it all the time!"
I took a deep breath and felt my body tremble.
"Just because you couldn't hear them before doesn't mean they weren't crying."
I pushed her away and strode through the house. But she wasn't giving up. Her legs were so much longer than mine, so much stronger. She pounced on me from behind before I could lock myself in my room.
"Don't you have a heart?" she cried.
"I did," I replied. "A long time ago."
Her face softened and she began to whimper into her sleeve, wiping away salty tears as new ones took their place.
"I can't stand it," she said. "I don't want to be here. I don't want to hurt children. Can't we take them somewhere safe and-"
I slapped her face to silence her and she dropped her mouth open in shock. Raising her hand to her cheek, she continued to cry in silence as her tears dripped from her face.
"You know fine well we can't rescue them!"
She lifted her hand from her face and I could see the bright red handprint I had left on her porcelain skin. If I didn't feel guilty before...
But hitting and screaming was all I knew how to do. There were times when I fantasized about rescuing the children. About even rescuing the girls and scooping them all up and kissing and hugging them like the mother I always wished I could have been. But the judge wouldn't let me do that.
He'd hardened me. Made me cold and unfeeling. He'd made me do things I'd forever regret and made me think that somewhere deep inside him, he had a certain capacity to love me if I did what I was told.
It was all lies.
He never loved me.
I was just his pawn.
"I'm sorry," I said and held her hand. "I didn't mean to do that."
Kirsty was still stunned. Her mouth still dropped open.
"Please. Come inside. I'll make you some cocoa and we can talk. Would you like that?"
She nodded and meekly wandered into my bedroom.
"There's a good girl."
She sat on the edge of the bed and stared out the window.
"I'll be back in a moment," I said but she didn't respond.
I waited until the door clicked shut behind me before I let my own tears fall.
The house was beginning to drown.
~
The metallic surface of the toaster showed my grotesque reflection. The face that stared back at me wasn't one I recognized. The features were enlarged like a caricature's. The skin was mottled and dark red. I touched my fingertips to my cheek and thought I resembled a gargoyle.
When I pulled my fingers away, the feel of the scar was still on them, ragged and keloid.
The pain from the burn Kennedy gave me had healed but the hurt inside still ran deep. Each time I looked in the mirror it was there, purple and crimson and raised off the surface of my skin like rail road tracks. He'd disfigured me. Made me feel hideous but it wasn't anything I wasn't feeling already.
I wiped my face dry and shook myself back to reality.
Below, the crying was starting to fade as the children fell asleep. I hoped they wouldn't dream or if they did, that they imagined being held in their parents' arms.
Stirring two spoonfuls of cocoa into the boiling milk, I added a generous scoop of sugar before topping it off with some whipped cream.
When I returned to my room, I presented it to Kirsty with a certain amount of pride. Her eyes widened when she saw it and she lifted herself from the bed to take it gratefully in her cold hands.
"It's freezing in here,"I said with a shiver and moved to switch on the electric heater.
It smelled like dust as it warmed up but the heat against my shins was a welcomed sensation.
"Thank you," said Kirsty as she dunked her finger into the cream and sucked on it. "It's been so long since I've had cocoa. My mom used to make it for me when I was a kid."
"That wasn't so long ago," I observed.
"Nah, I suppose it wasn't.”
The bedside lamp cast a glow across her youthful features. She didn't look too dissimilar to me when I was her age. Although I was starting to forget what my life was like all that time ago.
Occasionally, at times like this, memories came to me in rose-tinted visions where life was sweet and the most important thing I had to worry about was what shade of lipstick suited me. It had been years since such trivia occupied my mind.
"It's quiet downstairs now," I said.
To emphasize my point and the isolation of the house, a gust of wind blew through the broken tiles on the roof. Somewhere beyond where the fields met the forest along the skyline, a fox screamed.
"Really quiet," said Kirsty as she sipped on her cocoa with a sigh.
She leaned back against the headboard and looked out through the threadbare curtain.
"Can you sleep when it's this quiet?" she asked. “I like to fall asleep to the sound of the traffic.”
"I don't sleep," I said.
"I'm not surprised."
There was a curious glint in her eye. She gave me a sideways glance and hugged her cup to her chest.
"How did you get caught up in all this?" she asked.
As always, I knew what she meant but feigned ignorance.
"What do you mean?"
"You know exactly what I mean..."
Her eyes were stormy.
"You're a woman like me. We're supposed to be caring and nurturing but here we are with a basement full of kidnapped children. It's not what I wanted when I ran away from home. I wanted a better life. There was a time when I even dreamed of being a mom myself but that can't happen now! Not with all this... With all this..."
She waved her hand around unable to grasp the horror of her thoughts.
"We're not supposed to be doing this," she said. "Is there no way we can..."
"Rescue them? No. We'll all die if we do that. Judge Kennedy won't allow it."
She drained her cup and set it down on the window ledge.
"I'd die for them," she said. "I'd die if it put a stop to all of this."
I would too but the truth was that I was too scared to.
"So how do you propose we save these children. Call the police, eh?"
I snorted with derision but inside I really wanted to know if there was a way we could do it. A way we could all live in peace and the children could return to their parents.
"I know we can't call the police," she said. "I'm not stupid. I know who's involved, who pays us. There just has to be another way."
Bosworth, I thought. He wanted to save the children more than anyone but he wanted us all dead first.
I couldn’t blame him. I'd wanted to be dead myself for so long. But I didn't know what scared me more, staying alive living in this quagmire of filth and depravation for the rest of my life or
dying and discovering there really was a God.
God wouldn't let me pass in peace. He'd send me to hell to suffer until time no longer existed. He would make sure I'd endure myself what I'd created up here on Earth. Sooner or later I would have to find out if there was an afterlife. Until then, I was living each day as it came with the belief that somehow it would all turn out to be okay.
"I'm sorry. I need to make a phone call," I blurted out and bolted from the room. "You can stay here tonight," I said over my shoulder as I departed. "If your room is too cold."
"Thanks," came her murmured reply. "I'll make up a bed on the floor."
Back in the kitchen, I pulled my phone from the top drawer and tapped the name that was always top of my call list. It rang and rang as my heart pounded. There was a silent terror inside me that panicked that I'd never hear his voice again. I hated him but he was all I lived for and no matter how much I hated him, I hated myself more.
"Phaedra?" his voice eventually reached my ear.
"What took you so long to answer?"
He made a peculiar noise like a cough mingled with a laugh.
"Why? Did you miss me?"
I touched the scar on my face again.
I hate you, I thought. I hate you so fucking much why won't you just let me go and be done with all of this?
"The file was delivered," I said. "I just wanted to let you know. The girl from the station came to the house just as we were packing."
"Very well," he said.
"You don't sound so thrilled."
"Thrilled?" he laughed. "Oh, I'm thrilled alright because I don't need Bosworth’s file or any more of Berger’s pointless work. I have the real thing right here."
"You have Bosworth?"
He laughed again and hung up.
The only other person who cared about the children... He was with Kennedy now and I didn't know what that meant. I felt the blood rush from my head down into my feet. I collapsed into a chair and clutched at the sides of the table until my knuckles turned white.
When I was a child, this table was where we had countless family dinners. It was where birthdays were celebrated. Where cakes were brought out with sparklers on top and presents were unwrapped as my mother sang in her shrill out of tune voice.
Now it was collapsing under the weight of my misery. It was brittle and broken and so weak I worried that my breath would send it crumpling to the ground. With nothing else to do, I let my thoughts take over my mind and buried my head in my hands.
"Kennedy you piece of shit. I'll take you down eventually. You can't get away with it forever."
With newfound anxious energy, I leaped up from my seat and hurried out into the hall. The door to the basement lay beneath the rug. I ripped it back with my knotted arthritic fingers and felt the brass ring. I pulled on it and the door gave way to reveal a staircase that plummeted down into the darkness.
Hushed voices came from the shadows and the sound of bodies as they trembled in fear.
“Shhhh….” I heard a voice whisper in with its babyish cadences. “The witch is coming.”
The witch? That’s what they call me down there?
I thought about my burned face and the way my bones protruded. The way my voice rasped and how my hair was always pulled up so tight the veins in my forehead pulsed.
“Witch…” I said to myself. “Witches burn.”
I lowered myself into the whole and took a tentative step down into the black space beneath the house. It smelt like sweat and filth.
“I’m not a witch,” I told the children.
I couldn’t see them but I could hear them scuttling in the darkness like insects.
“Don’t be afraid,” I whispered although it was pointless.
These poor mites had never been more afraid in their lives.
“Please,” I begged. “Don’t be scared. I’m going to get you out of here. I’m going to get you home to your parents.”
A gasp came from the corner.
“You mean it? You’ll take me home to mommy?”
“I’ll try,” I said. “I’ll try my very hardest. Now go to sleep. You’ll need to your rest because you’ll be going on a long journey.”
I gulped down my doubt and headed back up the stairs. With no idea how I was going to save them, all I knew was that I would do it even if it killed me.
Chapter Four
Lincoln
The red spiral. It had been tattooed on the inside of my father's wrist, faded but still visible over the iciness of his blue veins. It was the last thing I would see at night before he clamped a hand over my mouth to stifle my cries.
"Red spiral..." I said to myself.
Kennedy and O'Neil looked over at me.
At last I was talking.
After not saying a word for over two hours, their patience was wearing thin. But I didn't know what they wanted me to say. We were trapped in an impossible situation. If they killed me to hide their secret, their world would come crumbling down. No one kills a billionaire. Not without creating the mother of all shitstorms.
"Well, what do you know? The canary's singing," said O'Neil.
"Enough of your clichéd cop talk," replied Kennedy as he rolled his eyes.
A rift was starting to form between them. Through the stress of holding me captive, cracks had begun to form between in their alliance. I was starting to think that the chief despised the judge but was powerless to act on his hatred.
There were glances between them. Hateful looks looking out from under O'Neil's cap as he watched Kennedy strut in front of him in his Italian mohair suit.
"I'm not talking to you," I said. "I was talking to myself."
I leaned back against the wall and felt the rope burn my wrists again. My freedom from them had been short lived and the moment Kennedy's footsteps were heard outside the door before it creaked open, O'Neil kept his promise and trussed me up.
"He's losing it," said the chief.
I kept my eyes on the floor.
Since being locked in this... place. Wherever that was. I'd had time to think, to remember. The red spiral. All the girls had washed up on the beach with it tattooed on their ankles. All of them thought to be part of a gang. If only people really knew what it was.
To me, I wasn't even sure myself why I began tattooing the red ink across their corpses. At first, I thought I was exorcising a demon, the memory of my father. Then it became something else. In a way, I was sending them to their deaths in the same pit of hell he now resided. Maybe down there he'd recognize the symbol and they'd all join hands in their own fiery fiendish cult, burning in a special part of hell reserved for the worst that humanity had to offer.
"The red spiral," I said again.
I almost told them what it meant but I bit down on my lower lip to stop myself. I'd never tell Kennedy a thing.
But he was edging over anyway, his breath coming labored as he approached. I looked up and saw his stomach hanging over his belt.
He wasn't exactly fat but he wasn't fit either. He had the body of a middle aged man who was too rich to refuse fancy dinners but also had the money to afford a personal trainer.
Still, his slight paunch was being pinched into by his pants and as he lingered in front of me, his crotch remained disgustingly close to my face.
"Get the fuck away from me, Kennedy."
He laughed.
It was a reflex action of his he only performed when he had nothing to say but was trying to maintain the upper hand. Laughing, to him, was a way of showing he was unshakeable, unable to be controlled. I guess we all have our quirks and defense mechanisms. In the moment, mine was staring down at the floor, analyzing each inch of the concrete until my brain began making up patterns.
"I told you to get away."
He sniffed and I looked up just in time to see him wipe his nose with his the back of his hand. From where I was sitting, there was a small smattering of blood just below his nostrils, fresh but on the cusp of drying.
A co
caine addiction at his age...
I thought he was smarter than that. Although it did explain his absences and constant need to venture outside ever hour. It also explained his anger, his arrogance, and his infamous raging sex drive.
"Get away from you?" he repeated and bent down to talk to me like I was a naughty dog. "I'm not going anywhere and neither are you."
I took a deep breath and let the air fall out of me.
"How long can this go on? You can't hold me here. The hospital needs me. People need me. Thousands of people depend on me and my business. How long until I'm discovered, eh? You think the local police department can simply kidnap me?"
"Huh..."
Kennedy said no more.
"I'll have you pay for what you've done to my girls. There's a place for murderous scum like you."
"And there's a place for pedophile trash like you. You think anyone cares about what I did? I'm a hero. A fucking hero!"
He licked his lips and sniffed again. There was a manic look in his eyes. His pupils were dilated and his eyes were bloodshot. Purple circles were beginning to form beneath his eyes. I wondered how long he could last in this state of limbo without collapsing.
"Where's Etta?" I asked. "Just tell me she's okay."
"Oh... She's fine," said Kennedy. "She's been given the special treatment considering she's... useful."
"Useful?"
He coiled his fingers around one another and I noticed the nails were bitten down to stubs.
"Useful," he confirmed.
He bent down again. His eyes were dark and soulless despite being bright and blue. For a second, the world around me shifted. His features seemed to morph. I was no longer looking at him anymore. It was my father's face in front me. At long last I had lost my mind.
"Don't be afraid," he said and planted his hand on my shoulder.
That voice... it’s... it’s...
"Get away from me!" I screamed and clenched my eyes closed.
My voice shocked us both. When I opened my eyes, Kennedy was smiling and rubbing his hands together.
"Where did you go?" he asked, gloating. "You disappeared for a moment."
Dad's face was gone but the man in front of me was just as monstrous.
"I'll kill you," I said. "If it's the last thing I ever do."
Jewels And Panties: (Book 1-15) Billionaire Romance Series Page 29