Blurring Lines
Page 4
“Mackenzie.” The concern in my father’s voice caused a tremor of unease to roll down my spine. “Oh, sweetheart, thank goodness …”
“Dad, what’s wrong?” My heart beat faster, and my pace quickened as I navigated my way through the darkness, careful to avoid bumping into a tree – or worse – a snake.
“You two need to come home,” my father yelled. “Right this instant, Mackenzie … a girl from Alabama … on the news … police … a curfew …”
“What?” I could barely hear my father’s voice so I checked the volume on Cade’s phone. It was up full blast. “Dad, are you in a bad area or something – I can hardly hear what you’re saying… aggghhhh …”
My voice caught in my throat the second a sweaty, tobacco-scented hand clamped over my mouth, and I was dragged into the darkness.
****
Cade
“Agghhhh …”
“Kenzie?” I called out.
I was starting to panic.
Tossing the stick I’d been using to poke the fire out of my hand, I scrambled toward the woods – towards where I last saw her. “Kenzie?”
Everything was quiet.
Too damn quiet.
“Mackenzie!” I roared, as my eyes searched the deserted woodland. Where the hell was she?
“This isn’t funny, Kenz,” I shouted, even though deep in my heart I knew this wasn’t a joke. This was wrong. Something really bad was happening and dread was blooming in the pit of my stomach.
“CADE …!”
My heart stopped in my chest the second I heard Kenzie’s terrified scream.
“Kenzie?” I roared and I was frantic now, running through the woods, dodging trees and bushes in my race to find her.
“Cade … please … help me …”
“I’m coming,” I snarled, following her voice, running so fast I could barely breathe.
Reaching the edge of the woods, I broke through the last of the shrubs and bushes and skidded down the dike into a clearing.
Landing on my hands on knees, my gaze locked on the headlamps lit up and illuminating the men who were shoving Mackenzie into their truck.
Every bad thing that had ever happened to me paled in comparison to how I felt in this moment.
“No,” I roared as I ran at full speed, chasing after the truck as it pulled out of the clearing.
This can’t be happening…
This can’t be happening…
I ran after that truck until it went out of sight.
And even then I kept running.
I ran until I vomited.
I ran until my legs gave out beneath me.
And then I crawled on my hands and knees, praying to God I was dreaming, and this wasn’t happening, because if this was really happening I was going to have to beg the Lord to strike me dead, because I knew in my heart and soul that I would never be able to live with this.
****
Part Two
The separation …
Summer 2002
Age 15
Cade
Caitlyn Davis, 20, Tulsa, Oklahoma –– abducted: May 13th, 2002.
Letitia Monroe, 23, Alabama –– abducted: May 15th, 2002.
Barbara Scott, 19, Houston, Texas –– abducted: May 18th, 2002.
Denise Helford, 22, San Antonio, Texas –– abducted: May 19th, 2002.
Hannah Walsh, 24, Las Vegas, Nevada –– abducted: May 20th, 2002.
Mary Cage, 21, Birmingham, Alabama –– abducted: May 25th, 2002.
Mackenzie Moore, 15, Preston, Alabama –– abducted: May 25th, 2002.
Seven girls.
Seven daughters.
Seven sisters.
Seven friends.
All missing.
All stolen.
My eyes trailed over the list placed on the table in front of me and the anger inside of my body threatened to boil over. My mother was sitting on my left, weeping softly into a handkerchief. Mackenzie’s father, Mitch, was on my right, crying hard and ugly.
“Think, Cade,” a female officer said in a soothing voice. She leaned over the desk that separated us and touched my shaking hand. “One description, a digit on the number plate, the hair color of one of the men – anything you remember could help us.”
“Do you think she’s …?” Dead. I couldn’t say the word. Not out loud at least. I couldn’t think of Mackenzie cold and blue and six feet under the earth. Death was for the elderly – not beautiful fifteen-year-old girls with their whole lives ahead of them. Not her …
“We think Mackenzie, along with the six other girls listed, was targeted by a gang of sexual predators who run an illegal prostitution ring in Mexico. Cade, if you can remember anything it is imperative you tell us so we can stop those men before they get Mackenzie across the border …”
“I can’t think,” I choked out. “It was dark and the lights … the lights on their truck blinded me … fuck.” I yanked at my hair in frustration as I desperately tried to force the memories of tonight to the surface of my mind.
“What are the chances of finding my daughter – of getting Mackenzie back?” Mr. Moore asked and I froze. I couldn’t look at him. I could barely breathe through the guilt and the pain.
The male officer sighed wearily. “If our assumptions are correct, Mr. Moore, and they’ve moved Mackenzie across the border …”
The police officer’s voice trailed off and he shook his head sadly.
****
Mackenzie
June 7th, 2002
I had never thought much about the word ‘rape’.
I never had to.
It wasn’t something I had ever come into contact with …
Until now.
Fear like I had never known before spiraled through me. I stood barefoot on a cold concrete floor with my wrists in manacles, tied in chains above my head.
I was naked and I wasn’t alone.
Six other girls were tied to the same ceiling as me. They were naked as well, and I had a feeling one of those girls was dead. The redhead. She hadn’t made a sound for hours. The rest of the girls were weeping – myself included.
I was so thirsty that I was surprised to be still alive and breathing. My lips tasted of dry blood and vomit. I could taste my lips, but I couldn’t feel them. I couldn’t feel my hands either. I wished I couldn’t smell anything. The smell of blood and urine was so strong it was nauseating ...
“No … God, please stop,” the black-haired girl I had come to know as Mary cried out, but he didn’t stop. He continued to force her and laugh cruelly when she begged for mercy.
The men hurt Mary worse than the rest of us because Mary always fought back. They beat her and whipped her. They raped her and tortured her, and Mary always fought back.
“You fucking animals,” she screamed and the men laughed. They forced Mary onto her back on the ground and then one man – the man who was hovering over her – started entering her mouth. Two other men held her legs apart as the man Mary was told to call Master knelt between her legs …
I couldn’t look a second longer.
Clenching my eyes shut, I fought to hold in my sobs. I wanted to scream at him to leave Mary alone, but I couldn’t because my voice was gone. I had worn it out screaming for Cade to save me while those men took turns with me.
“Pretty Sunshine …” His breath – my Master’s breath – was on my neck and I gagged. He released my wrists from the manacles and immediately I fell to the floor, bone-tired and defeated. With my eyes closed, I held perfectly still as several pairs of hands groped at my body. Someone grabbed my hair and the sound of a whip lashing cut through the air.
“Not this one.” I heard a man with a thick Spanish accent roar seconds before I was dragged roughly to my feet. “This one is special.”
Moments later I was lifted into a man’s arms and carried out of the holding cell.
I shook my head, but I was weary. I was so tired. “Please,” I rasped. “I want to go home …”
<
br /> “Hair like the sun,” the man who was carrying me told me. “Very rare. You make Dimitri lots of money.”
I clenched my eyes shut and thought of Cade.
Cade …
Cade …
Cade …
****
Winter 2002
Age 15
Cade
December 25th, 2002
“Cade, you have to eat,” my mother sobbed as she sat at the edge of my bed. I knew she was worried about me, but I couldn’t make her feel better. I didn’t have the energy. I didn’t have an ounce of strength left in my body. It was taking everything from me just to breathe.
“Please, sweetheart,” Mom whispered, stroking my hair. “Come downstairs for a little while. It’s Christmas.”
“Leave me alone,” I managed to say, though it was a struggle.
“Cade …”
“Go away,” I hissed, clenching my eyes shut.
I waited for my mother to leave before I rolled onto my stomach, buried my face in my pillow, and started to cry.
I didn’t give a fuck who saw me.
They could call me a pussy for crying. It didn’t matter to me.
The only thing that had ever mattered to me had been snatched away.
Mackenzie …
The image of her face infiltrated my mind, the sound of her screams the night she was snatched played like a broken record in my brain, causing my sobbing to turn into hard, ugly crying.
Jesus Christ, the pain was killing me.
I couldn’t live with the guilt …
****
Mackenzie
December 31st, 2002
My skin was burning – blistering and weeping. The sun, flooding through the holes in the ceiling was blinding me, paralyzing me, and I couldn’t see a thing. I was so thirsty – so desperately thirsty. Strangely, I wasn’t hungry, even though I hadn’t eaten in three days. But, then again, I didn’t think I would ever eat again. Not after what had been forced into my body ...
Rocking back and forth, I wrapped my arms around my skeletal legs and wept silently. I couldn’t live like this anymore. I wanted to die. I wished I were a stronger person, so that I when I tried to hold my breath and suffocate myself, my body would comply. My mind wanted to die. But my traitorous body kept inhaling the precious air needed to keep me alive.
“Don’t let them get into your head,” I heard Mary croak. “They want to crush your spirit – they get off on that. Do not let them win. Fight them. Fight back and never stop fighting …”
Mary and I were alone in the cells. Usually, I was never brought down here. But yesterday I’d been bad. I’d vomited during an act and that had made Master furious.
“Sunshine – are you listening to me?”
Flinching, I curled up on my flea-infested mattress and clasped my hands over my ear. “Don’t call me that,” I begged Mary. I hated that name. “Never call me that.”
“Okay, I’m sorry,” she rasped, as she crawled over the urine-stained concrete floor towards me. It took all of Mary’s strength to get to me because she collapsed on my mattress the second she reached it. Mary was the thinnest of us all. She was also the one with the worst scars and wounds. Sometimes I was afraid to be too close to Mary. It was scary watching all the bugs crawl on her skin and hair.
Master told me never to touch the others – never bathe their wounds or share their food. I wasn’t supposed to talk to them either. They were dirty. But so was I …
“What’s your name?” Mary asked me. She was breathing fast and hard and I wished I had some water, because if I had, I would give it to her. She needed it more than me.
“I can’t remember,” I sobbed. I had purposefully blocked everything out in an attempt of survival. If I thought too much about what my life had been before the nest, I would surely lose my mind. Only one name broke through my resolve.
Cade …
Cade …
Cade …
****
Summer 2003
Age 16
Cade
May 26th, 2003
It had been over a year since Mackenzie disappeared and I felt as tortured now as I had then.
Nothing had changed for me.
I still felt like I was living inside a sick and twisted nightmare.
It was my birthday the other day – same day as her. I could only hope she turned sixteen like I did.
Nobody understood the pain I was feeling – the burden of responsibility that hung heavy on my shoulders, weighing me down.
I shouldn’t have taken her camping. If I could go back in time; stop her from walking into the woods; ignore that phone call that had led her into their clutches …
I quit the football team this year and the basketball team too. It didn’t seem right to carry on with my life when Mackenzie was out there somewhere having God knows what done to her.
My friends kept telling me that I needed to move on, go forward with my life, but I couldn’t. To move on would be to admit Mackenzie was never coming home. I couldn’t do that, not when the only thing keeping me going was the small spark of hope inside of me that she still might.
The police still had no leads. It was as if she vanished into thin air. But she didn’t just vanish. I was proof to that.
Our parents were getting a lot closer these days, and I wasn’t sure how to feel about it. Mitch spent a lot of time at our house lately and had even taken to spending the night. Fuck if I knew how to handle it all. God, I needed Mackenzie with me right now. I needed her gentle touch and kind nature.
I thought about the night Mackenzie was taken every spare minute of the day. I obsessed over it. I overanalyzed every damn thing about that night, until I felt like I was losing contact with my sanity. I spent my free time down at the creek, looking for clues. But I never found any. I never found her …
My breath caught in my throat, and I blinked away the tears that were filling my eyes as I continued to sit at the exact spot where we’d kissed, looking out onto the water. The water was still and calm, unlike the tsunami of emotions raging inside of me.
God, I felt like I was dying inside. It felt as if my entire life had been put on hold and the only thing that could bring me back to life was Mackenzie coming home.
The pain of her absence was worse than anything I had ever felt in my life and I was surprised my heart was still beating.
This long-suffering agony should have killed me by now.
****
Mackenzie
May 26th, 2003
It had been twelve months since I last saw Cade. Twelve months since my world turned upside down. Twelve months since I lost the will to live …
I continued to scream against the piece of fabric that had been stuffed into my mouth, even though I knew that no one would hear me – no one who cared, at least.
I screamed until my lungs felt like they were going to burst into flames and my head began to spin. Everything was dark, cold and wet and all I could hear echoing around me was his voice. Master’s voice …
Master called me his ‘pretty sunshine’ and stroked my hair while my whole body continued to shake. Master liked my hair. Master said I was special because of my hair. I made him lots of money because of my hair.
Pretty sunshine.
Pretty sunshine.
Master talked to me in English. I wished he wouldn’t. It made things so much worse when I understood him – understood what he wanted from me.
Master clamped his beefy hand down on the back of my neck, and I knew that I never wanted to feel the sun against my skin or the icy water on my toes again for the rest of my life.
I wished things were different. I wanted so badly to go back to the night I was taken and be in Cade’s arms with his lips on my mouth and his arms holding me tightly. I loved Cade. I did. I had never realized just how much until now. Oh, God, I wished that I’d told Cade I loved him that night.
I wanted my Dad.
I wanted to sleep in my bed agai
n.
I wanted to shower in clean water without an audience.
Oh, God, I just wanted to go home …
“Good girl,” Master whispered into my ear and his breath made me physically gag. I clutched my stomach and bent over heaving. “Very good.”
I changed my mind.
Now I wanted to die.
Let me die.
Let me die.
Please, Lord, stop my heart from beating …
Master didn’t care that I was sick. Master didn’t care that he was hurting me and making me feel like setting my body on fire. Master didn’t care about the blood between my thighs or the bruises on my waistline.
Master just carried on the same as he had done every day that I had been here, gutting my skin, roasting my body in agony. And I float away the same way I always had: out of my body, out of this cell, and away from this pain.
“The stars will have to wait … I need you on the ground with me …”
Cade.
“The stars will have to wait … I need you on the ground with me …”
Cade.
****
Summer 2004
Age 17
Mackenzie
May 5th, 2004
Almost two years had passed since I saw Cade Mathews, and I was beginning to forget what he smelled like. I tried to make myself remember but it was hard because there were so many men – so many men – with so many different scents.