Started this? We started this?
“I mean, you guys were both there with her, both had a chance to stop it. But you didn’t, did you?”
She heard the bathroom door being thrown wide.
“Or maybe you’re not even here anymore, Mrs. Adams. Maybe it’s just you, Jeremy. But that’s okay. I’ve waited a long time to avenge her death, and I can wait a little while longer to finish this. But mark my words, I will finish it.”
Chase tried not to think too much about Martinez’s words, and instead tried to prepare herself for the plan that she and Stitts had constructed.
The door to the bedroom was closed, and what little light eked in from beneath it darkened completely as Martinez stopped in front of it.
Chase held her breath as Martinez’s knuckles brushed against the wood and it slowly started to open.
“Knock, knock, who’s there.”
CHAPTER 50
The light flicked on and Chase raised her eyes to stare at Martinez. The man was holding a pistol in one hand, a cell phone in the other, and his blue snow jacket hung open.
His hair was slick with sweat or snow and his eyes were squinted.
Chase had hoped to surprise the man by taking Stitts’s place, but the only thing she saw on his handsome face was a combination of deep-seated anger and satisfaction.
Martinez opened his mouth to say something, but before he could speak, Chase leveled her own pistol at the man and started to shriek.
“Stitts! Now! He’s here! Come now!”
Martinez tensed, but only for a second before his eyes darted to his cell phone.
He laughed.
“Ah, Chase Adams… Chaaaaaaaase Adams, you gave Stitts your coat, didn’t you?”
Chase said nothing; she only scowled.
“Yeah, yeah you did. But here’s the thing—” he turned the cell phone to her and she saw what looked like a map, “—I put a tracking device in the red jacket I gave you… and it looks like your man Stitts is long gone by now. Long, long gone.”
Chase felt her jaw go slack. Between breaks in Martinez’s words, she thought she had heard the electric thrum of the microwave start up.
“Why are you doing this?” she demanded, trying to keep Martinez talking so that he didn’t pick up on the sound himself.
Martinez scowled.
“You still don’t get it, do you? It took me years to set this up, to plan everything out perfectly. To avenge her death,” he glanced at the cell phone. “It hasn’t run as smoothly as I’d hoped, but it’s almost over. If Stitts thinks he can make it to his four-by-four and then head into the city for help, he’s sorely mistaken. I emptied the gas tank. It’s going to get cold out there tonight, and jacket or not, he’s going to have no choice but to come back here. And when he does, I’ll be waiting. Waiting with you, Chase.”
Another sharp intake of breath.
“You forgot one thing, Martinez,” Chase said softly.
“Yeah, and what’s that?”
“I’ve got a loaded gun aimed at your head and I’m not afraid to pull the trigger.”
Martinez laughed again.
“Stitts said that you were smart, but… but I’m beginning to think that maybe he overestimated you. Sure, you figured out that I was the one responsible for the murders, but maybe that was just a fluke.”
“I don’t know what you’re rambling about, but you have three seconds to drop your gun before I start shooting.”
“Oh, Chase, you think you can hit me? You already missed three times by the road. What makes you think you can hit me now?”
“It was cold outside, and I was bleeding. But I won’t miss again. Not in here.”
Martinez shook his head.
“You don’t get it, do you? The gun is filled with—” blanks, she knew he was going to say, but he was interrupted by the sound of gunfire coming from the kitchen.
CHAPTER 51
Martinez whipped his head around toward the sound of the shots, a curse on his lips. He led with the gun, and crouched as he spun.
Chase tried to stand, but the pain that gripped her side kept her seated. She could feel her blouse clinging to her cold flesh, and the waistband of her jeans was soaked through.
“Stitts! Did you—” Martinez shouted, but the gun powder in the final shell in the microwave went off, and this time, he ducked.
As he did, Agent Jeremy Stitts stepped from the shadows. He grunted as he swung the fireplace shovel in a wide arc, and it twisted in the air.
If it hadn’t been for the last blank, the shovel would have surely struck Martinez directly in the face, knocking him out cold. But Martinez had ducked, and instead of smashing his nose and mouth, the corner struck him in the center of the forehead. It made a thick groove in his flesh, and dragged all the way to the corner of his eye, tearing his lower eyelid down.
Martinez shrieked, but while he staggered from the impact, he didn’t go down.
“Stitts! Get him! Get him!” Chase yelled from her spot on the floor. Again, she tried to rise, but only raised a few inches before slumping back against the bed. The gun was heavy in her hand, and even though she knew there was only one round—a blank—in the chamber, she pulled the trigger anyway.
It clicked, but the round didn’t go off.
“Stitts!” she screamed.
Stitts, sporting the red parka that was two sizes too small, lunged at Martinez, trying to take advantage of the other man’s stunned state.
But Stitts had been strapped to the bed frame for god only knows how long; he was tired, beaten, and dehydrated.
Even if they had both been fully rested, Chase doubted that Stitts would have had much of a chance.
She knew that Martinez was heavily muscled, had seen his bare chest flexing as he thrust into her. And even though blood poured from his forehead and leaked into his deformed eye, Martinez managed to swat the second blow aside with his forearm. Stitts had put so much into this swing, that his body followed the trajectory and he stumbled.
And Martinez was on him.
“No!” Chase screamed. But screaming was all she could muster even as Martinez started to rain down punches on Agent Stitts.
“You let her die!” Martinez screamed as his fists collided with Stitts’s face. “You let her die! I told you she was out there, but you didn’t believe me!”
Blood was streaming from the cut on his forehead and sprayed from his lips.
Chase closed her eyes, trying to block out the sickening sound of first flesh on flesh, then bone on bone.
After several more dull thuds, the beating stopped and Chase had no choice but to look again.
She watched as Martinez stood, his back heaving with deep breaths. He reached over and grabbed the shovel from Stitts’s lifeless hand.
Chase felt tears spill down her cheeks, and she knew that this was the end.
Martinez walked toward her, his massive chest still heaving, his hands twitching slightly.
With blood covering half of his face, he looked like an animal who had just devoured his kill.
“It could have been easy, Chase,” he said as he closed the distance between them. “It could have been so easy.”
Without waiting for a response, he swung the shovel with one hand.
Chase heard a final thud, and this was the last thing she heard for a long time.
CHAPTER 52
“I can make you forget. I can make you forget everything, Chase. Just one hit… that’s all you need to forget all about your sister, about what happened that day.”
Chase felt herself nodding, and then she closed her eyes as the needle broke the soft skin on the inside of her elbow.
“Brown sugar will make everything go away. Everything.”
CHAPTER 53
Chase’s eyelids fluttered and she felt her arms being twisted behind her.
Her left side erupted in agony, which intensified when she was hauled to her feet.
“Stand up, Chase. This isn’t over yet.
But it will be… it’ll all be over soon.”
This time when Chase’s eyelids fluttered, they didn’t open.
CHAPTER 54
Chase gasped as cold water splashed her face.
She sputtered and shook her head. Instantly, her vision began to swim and she felt an odd thickness to the right side of her cheek, as if someone had injected plasticine beneath her skin.
“Wakey, wakey,” a male voice said. Shadows clouded her vision, and everything seen by her right eye had a pinkish tinge to it. But as she blinked, Chase finally began to make out a familiar shape.
Martinez’s shape.
His forehead was still bleeding and his right eye appeared to slump in the socket. She could see more of the white globe than she would have ever wanted.
Panic coursed through her, and she tried to shift her head and look around, to find Stitts’s body, but her movements were restricted.
Martinez had bound her hands behind her and around the bedpost. He had also looped a rope around her neck.
As for Stitts, she could only see his legs, which remained motionless on the floor.
“You wanna know why?” Martinez asked suddenly, his tone changing to something softer.
Chase swallowed hard, but offered no response. It was clear, however, that Martinez didn’t require any encouragement.
“Anna Martinez… she was only twenty years old at the time, Chase. My beautiful sister was just twenty,” his voice hitched, and he had to take several deep breaths before continuing. “And they gave up on her… the NYPD, Seattle PD, and the FBI. Shit, the FBI, the Agency I worked for, they gave up on her. Told me I couldn’t get involved, conflict of interest and all that shit—that I was to stay out of it. Then they had the fucking nerve to tell me that she—that beautiful Anna—had traveled to New York, that she had become one of the Skeleton King’s victims. What a fucking joke! My sister, dead at the hands of a serial killer… because why? They found a strand of her hair at the scene? Really? A single strand of hair?”
There were tears streaming down his cheeks, which mixed with the blood to give his face a pink sheen. Martinez brought his gun into full view and caressed her swollen jaw with the barrel.
Chase’s mind was racing, trying to piece together the ramblings, to figure out what it all meant, and most importantly, how she fit into this picture.
“She was only twenty years old… just twenty. And they gave up on her. But I didn’t, Chase. I didn’t give up. I went looking, I did everything I could to find her, and you know what?”
He twisted his head to one side, showing her his gleaming eyeball.
“I found her. I fucking found her. I found what was left of my sister.”
Martinez was so close that she could smell his sour breath, the reek of his blood.
Of their blood.
“Please, Chris, let me—”
Martinez silenced her by applying pressure to her jaw with the gun.
“That bastard Tyler Tilsdale got her addicted to heroin and whored her out until there was nothing left of her. I had no choice but to put her out of her misery.” When he spoke next, his voice was but a whisper. “Imagine what that does to a man.”
Chase’s heart skipped a beat.
Tyler? Tyler Tisdale?
~
“Chase… just one hit. Trust me, if you like that other stuff, this is going to blow your mind.”
Chase stared at the small baggie of the yellowish powder. Tyler was smiling, but not in a creepy way. He was smiling in a knowing way, a look that told her he knew she would try it.
Chase lowered her gaze.
“I know you want to forget, Chase, forget all about your sister,” Tyler whispered.
Chase shut her eyes, trying to keep her tears at bay. But she couldn’t. It might have been the lack of sleep or the exhaustion that finally broke her down, or maybe it was just the damn job. For a full month, she had been around the drugs, the girls with their eyes rolled back in their heads as a sweaty fat man lay on top of them, grunting and thrusting, and the whole time Chase could do nothing.
Spend enough time in this world, and you become part of it. A little bit of yourself is lost, a bit that can never be recovered.
Like that day, the day when the man in the van had taken Georgina. The day when Chase had turned her back and ran.
Without opening her eyes, Chase raised her arm and pulled back her sleeve.
“Help me,” she whispered, tears still streaming down her cheeks. “Help me forget.”
CHAPTER 55
“I told you,” Agent Martinez hissed. “I told you that I did my research. I know all about you. I know that you were there.”
Chase’s entire body racked with sobs.
“I brought him in,” she gasped. “I brought that bastard Tyler in.”
He tried to do the same to me! I was a victim!
Martinez pulled away from her.
“Yeah, I’ll give you that. You did. You brought him in, and he’s rotting in prison because of you. I should be thanking you for that. But you were too late. Did you see her? Did you see my sister there? Whoring herself?”
Chase shut her eyes, but this didn’t stop the images from flashing in her mind.
Images of the girls, some young, some old, eyes rolled back to the whites…
“I tried,” she whispered.
Martinez laughed.
“Tried? You tried? Anna tried. She tried to get away. Just like Yolanda and Francine. They tried to get away, too. Don’t you see? I researched all of you.”
Chase finally opened her eyes.
“Yolanda? Francine?”
“They were her friends, or at least they claimed to be. They were the ones that told Anna to take her first hit, to get high at that fucking shitty Barking Frog. Just one fucking hit, they said. But it wasn’t one hit for Anna, it never was. Never could be—Addictive personality, moderation didn’t exist in her vocabulary. She did the exact same thing that they did, but they could stop. Anna couldn’t. And do you know what they did when she got addicted?”
Chase tried to shake her head, but the binding around her throat was too tight to move. Martinez stormed back toward her, and Chase prepared herself for another blow that never came.
“They fucking abandoned her!” he shouted in her face. Blood and spit speckled her already damp cheeks. “They gave up on her, just like Jeremy Stitts did. He was my fucking partner for Christ’s sake! And he bought it… bought the party line that she was a victim of a serial killer.”
Martinez brought the gun up and tapped his chest.
“But I knew… I knew she was still out there. And she was dying. She was being killed, slowly, each and every day with a needle, with a fucking prick. And Stitts refused to listen, denied.”
And there it was, the final piece to the puzzle.
Chase felt her chest tighten, and at first thought it was the wound again, but then realized it was something else.
Agent Stitts hadn’t helped Martinez, and Yolanda and Francine had been there the first time Anna had taken a hit. Oren Vishniov and his partner Julie Cooper had sold them the drugs. Martinez hadn’t said as much, but Chase could read between the lines.
And Chase… Chase had been there when Anna had been.
With Tyler.
Undercover.
But also addicted.
Emotion suddenly overwhelmed her.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m—”
A flicked of movement from behind Martinez drew her eyes.
Stitts’s legs were no longer visible.
Chase wanted to say more, to keep him talking, but Martinez brought something up in front of his face, something that took her breath away.
A saw.
The blade was speckled with dark brown stains, but Chase knew that this wasn’t rust.
It was blood.
Francine’s blood. Yolanda’s blood.
Oren’s.
Julie’s.
And soon it would be
hers.
Martinez brought the saw out in front of him now, the cold steel reflecting a shaft of wayward moonlight that had burrowed its way into the cabin.
“You’re sorry? You’re sorry? Well that makes it right then, doesn’t it?”
Chase shook her head, no longer caring about the way the rope burned the smooth skin of her throat.
“No,” she croaked. “It doesn’t.”
Martinez ignored her.
“I guess I’m sorry too, then,” he said softly as he raised the saw to her neck.
Chase’s eyes went wide.
“I’m really, really sorry. But, you see, I’m also sorry that when Anna cried out, there was no one there to listen. So, when you shout, no one will help you either. Yolanda and Francine? Anna tried to walk away. She couldn’t. And so did those girls. Anna reached for help, just like Oren and Julie. But there was no one there to hold her hand, to get her. And you—you were there, undercover. And I bet she cried to you, cried every night as she was being raped by another nameless man just so that she could score another hit. And I bet—”
Agent Stitts suddenly appeared behind Martinez, his face a swollen, bruised mess.
He held her pistol in his hand, and slowly raised it.
The saw was cold against Chase’s throat—impossibly cold. Her entire body felt frozen, spreading from the hole that the bullet had made when it had passed through her side to where the tine of the saw bit into her flesh.
“I’m sorry,” Martinez said as he started to move the saw, and this time, he actually sounded remorseful.
Chase spotted Agent Stitts stumble toward them, saw him raise the gun, and she closed her eyes.
I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry that I let him take you, Georgie. I’m sorry that I ran and that you stayed.
She waited for the saw to slice through the soft skin under her chin, but when it didn’t happen, Chase opened her eyes.
Martinez’s face had gone slack.
“Put the—” Agent Stitts growled, but he never completed the sentence. Martinez started to turn, and as he did, Stitts squeezed the trigger.
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