“Did he hurt you?” Darlie asks, tears brimming in her eyes.
“It’s not so bad. I’ll be fine.” I very slowly lean over to reach out for a roast beef sandwich with my free arm, and Julie grabs one and hands it to me.
These are people with compassion. Decent human beings who don’t deserve this. And there is absolutely nothing I can do to help them.
Joshua, what the fuck is taking you so long?
I give up on trying to hide my chest and start chewing, mechanically, not because I’m hungry, but because I need to keep my strength up for whatever comes next.
“Why is he doing this to you?” asks Robin, who looks to be the oldest, looking bewildered. “He doesn’t do this to the other girl, or to us.”
“You do know he’s listening to everything we say, don’t you?” I ask her.
“Yes.” She flicks a glance at a corner of the room, and I follow it and see a camera mounted on the ceiling. She turns her head so the camera isn’t pointed at her, and mouths something that looks like “motherfucker”, and I manage a little smile.
I carefully explain as much as I dare. I don’t tell them the full story about Joshua. I just tell them that I’ve been staying with Micah’s twin brother, and Micah hates Joshua and believes Joshua loves me, so that’s why he’s using me as an instrument of revenge.
“Who is that other girl?” Astrid asks me. “The one who’s chained up in the room with you? The one who never talks?”
“She used to be my neighbor. It’s a very long story. Robin, can you pour me some tea?”
As I eat the sandwich in small bites, Astrid quietly tells me about her husband’s deal with Joshua. Joshua was paying millions of dollars to keep his brother locked away in an asylum.
She only found out about it six months ago, after Micah escaped. Her husband rushed home one day in the middle of work, in a panic. He confessed everything to her and told her they needed to leave the country.
She thought her husband was lying. It was the craziest thing she’d ever heard. She stood there watching him dragging suitcases out of the closet, wondering if he would end up in a straitjacket in his own hospital.
Then Micah walked in with the barrel of a gun pressed against her youngest son’s head. And her family’s life has been hell ever since. He always keeps a few of them prisoner here, and the ones who are free have to go out in public with Dr. Barnard and pretend everything is fine, in case they’re being watched by Joshua’s men.
She had to pull all her children out of school and pretend that she was homeschooling them. They stopped talking to their friends, stopped doing everything except living in fear.
“It’s torture for me when he has my children here and I’m not with them,” Astrid whispers. Darlie sniffles, and Astrid quickly pats her knee.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t talk about it. We’ll be fine,” she says bleakly, in a leached-out, despairing voice that convinces no-one.
As we talk, I’m scanning the room. No windows. One door. Nothing but the sofa, a couple of overstuffed chairs and a TV mounted on the wall, a very heavy coffee table that I wouldn’t be able to move even if I had my full strength, and a remote control for the TV.
I don’t see anything I can use, and it fills me with despair. The Barnards were useful to Micah as long as he needed them to fool Joshua. Now Joshua knows Micah is free, he doesn’t need them to carry on that charade anymore. Astrid, a nurse, is still useful to him as long as I’m alive. But what will he do to them when I’m dead? They’ll be a liability. They could testify against him if he let them go.
They’re as good as dead. Do they realize it? From the heavy silence in the room, I’m afraid they might.
“Let’s talk about happy things,” Robin says in a tight voice. “Who’s your favorite band?”
“I like the Killers a lot.”
“The Killers! Get out of town, Gramma,” she says in a joking voice. Then she gasps and looks horrified. “I’m so sorry. After everything you’ve been through…”
“Don’t be sorry,” I say quickly. “Please. I haven’t messed with anyone in ages, especially a member of the Justin Bieber fan club.”
“Ewww.” She and her sisters laugh. “He is so last year. Ed Sheeran!”
“She’s MrsEd3725 on Twitter,” Julianne confides. “She like totally stalks him. She wants to have his little ginger babies.”
“Oh, my God, you witch. I’ll get you for that.” Robin fake glares at her.
So we spend the next hour talking about our favorite music and our favorite movies, and the girls paste on smiles and pretend everything is fine, and Astrid’s eyes are haunted and her hands tremble as she eats. The air is staticky with misery and fear.
Then the door flies open, and Micah comes in, marching Heather in, his hand gripping her arm. Her hands are free, but her ankles are shackled. She’s barefoot and wearing a cheap-looking white rayon tank dress. She looks angry and confused. And in his free hand, he’s holding a very sharp knife.
We all stand up as he approaches us, our eyes drawn to the blade. I feel a chill of fear, and I move forward so I’m in front of Astrid and the girls, my bruised body groaning in protest with every twitch of my muscles.
“I’m getting bored,” Micah says to me. “You break so easily, I haven’t been able to play with you in days. I don’t deal well with boredom. So we’re going to play a little game. It’s called Who’s Going to Die Today?” His eyes are glowing with unholy glee.
“Micah. You’re angry at me, not them,” I say, keeping my voice very steady and calm.
“I can kill your best friend, Heather, right here and now, or I can kill Astrid. You get to pick.”
Shock jolts me. He couldn’t have just said that, but he did.
He promised he wouldn’t hurt Astrid and the girls.
I’m a fucking idiot for believing the promise of a sadistic lunatic.
Heather stumbles back with a shriek and almost falls, and he catches her by the arm. He holds her with an iron grip as she tries to yank her arm from his grasp. “You’re lying!” she whimpers, her eyes huge with fright. “You wouldn’t kill me, you wouldn’t!”
“No!” Julie screams.
“You promised! You said you wouldn’t hurt us!” Robin cries out at the same time.
Darlie just goes stiff with horror. Her skinny body shakes violently, and tears start pouring from her eyes, but she doesn’t make a sound. Astrid steps in front of her girls, her eyes blazing.
“I told you the rules,” Micah says, flicking a bored look at the woman he’s threatening to murder in front of her children. “And you disobeyed, Astrid. You smuggled in a cell phone and tried to make a call.”
Color drains from Astrid’s face. “That…that was months ago,” she whispers. “I didn’t even know you knew. I never tried again.”
“Doesn’t matter. You broke my rules. You suffer the penalty.”
“Ah,” I say, nodding and keeping my voice calm even though my heart’s hammering against my ribcage in panic. “I get it now. You let me hang out with Astrid and her daughters for a while so that I’d get to know them a little bit and it would be that much harder for me to make the choice, right?”
“What? You’re going to choose me!” Heather screams. “I’m your best friend. I’m only here because of you. Choose me! You don’t even know these people!”
I don’t even spare her a glance. I just stare straight at Micah, keeping my face blank as I consider my next move. This is it. It ends today. We’re going to have to gang up on him, and some or all of us will die.
Goodbye, Joshua.
“I must say, your poker face is superb.” He smiles at me. “Or maybe you don’t care about any of these annoying little bitches. Maybe my brother and I found you so appealing because like calls to like.”
“Please, don’t flatter yourself.” A surprising calm descends on me, and I start to understand Joshua a little better. So this is how he feels when everything’s crashing down around him. Cool as i
ce. “And it’s an easy decision, given that Heather has been working with you all along.”
Micah raises his eyebrows in polite inquiry.
“No, I haven’t!” Heather whines. “That’s crazy.”
I rake her with a scornful look. “I’ve had a lot of time to think since I came here. Nothing but time. I’m actually embarrassed it took me this long to figure it out. Micah recruited you to help him throughout this whole scheme. From the very beginning, back in New York. You only made friends with me because he asked you to. That’s why you kept trying to push me to make a pass at Joshua. It was like you were freaking obsessed with it.”
“You were the one who was obsessed! I was trying to help you! I was being a friend!” Heather’s face goes bright red.
I ignore her. “It really didn’t fit your personality. You were entertaining and all, but you were totally self-absorbed and vain. You didn’t give a damn about what I did with my life other than that. You know, I should have figured out that you were working with Micah when he came to pick me up and had you tied up in the van. I was a little foggy at the time, but I figured it out eventually. There would be absolutely no reason for him to bring you. It would increase his risk of getting caught, transporting someone he’d kidnapped all that distance. You were his partner, not his prisoner. And when I woke up here, actually, you looked pretty damn healthy. Not a mark on you. You looked way too good for someone who supposedly was abused by a psychopath for the last six months.”
“No!” Heather howls. “You’re freaking crazy! None of that’s true! You can’t let him kill me, Tamara, you can’t!” She looks at Micah, who is watching us with interest.
Astrid’s girls are huddled behind her, sobbing.
I shift where I’m standing, and wince. It’s all right. All my pain will be over soon.
“It explains a lot of things. Like why you kept trying to interrogate me about how Joshua would find us, and how when I tried to tell you to be quiet, you yelled louder. You’re a decent actress, Heather, but you’d never win an Oscar.”
“But he beat me up!” she snivels. “He Tasered me! You’ve seen what he did to me!”
Astrid and her daughters stare with horrified fascination. A gentle smile is curling Micah’s mouth. He’s enjoying this.
“Of course he did.” I shrug. Ouch. “You’ve got a sick, twisted relationship.”
“He raped me!”
“It wasn’t rape. It was role-playing.”
“Relationship is going a little far,” Micah breaks in, smirking at Heather. “I don’t do relationships.” Then he looks at me. “She was a tool, and not a particularly effective one. She’s been boring the fuck out of me lately. I’m glad you chose her. I should have gotten rid of her a long time ago.”
At her shocked look, he laughs. “What? You think you deserve to live? A woman with no loyalty, a woman who would betray her best friend knowing she’ll be tortured to death?”
Darlie lets out a little scream and claps her hand over her mouth. Robin hugs her sister fiercely.
“No!” Astrid cries out in horror. “You’re not going to torture Tamara to death! You’re not!”
Heather suddenly lunges at Micah and grabs for the knife. He dodges her easily, and in one smooth move, he stabs her in the stomach.
She makes a choked sound of disbelief. We all freeze in place and stare as he gives the knife a vicious twist and then yanks it back out again and the air fills with the smell of blood. It occurs to me that he dressed her in white to make sure that the blood showed. Heather makes horrible screeching noises and falls toward him, landing on him and throwing him off balance.
While he’s distracted, Astrid tries to grab the knife, and he punches her in the eye.
Suddenly, Darlie lunges at him and bites his hand savagely, clinging to him like a pit bull, and the knife falls to the ground. He raises his fist to punch Darlie, and I somehow thrust aside all my pain and weakness, just for a moment. I hurl myself at him and headbutt him so hard that I hear his nose crunch. Stars explode behind my eyes, and I stagger back.
Robin lashes out and kicks him behind the knee, making him stagger and almost fall, at the same time that Julie snatches the knife from the floor and plunges it into his thigh. The smell of blood is choking me. All my food comes up in a rush, and I vomit on the floor. My body is seizing up, and my eyes are watering and I can’t see.
“Side of the neck! Hit him with the heel of your hand!” I scream to anyone who’s listening. “In front of the ear! Hard, hard!”
There are screams and grunts and then a thud, and my vision clears a little, and I look down at Micah. He’s lying on the floor, eyes rolling back in his head. Oh God, it worked! Julie is standing over him, panting with triumph and looking at her hand. Robin’s trying to pull the knife from his leg, but it’s stuck.
Heather is lying in on her side in a red lake of blood, twitching feebly. Her eyes plead with me and her mouth opens and closes like a fish, but no sound emerges. She’s as good as dead, and she deserves it. I make no move to help her.
Robin stomps repeatedly on Micah’s throat. She’s only wearing sneakers, though.
“The door!” I cry. “The retina scanner! Pick him up, we have to go!”
Astrid and Robin manage to lift his dead weight, and they wrestle him over to the door. He groans. Julie grabs a handful of his hair and lifts his head and peels back his eyelid and presses the button on the panel. And the door clicks open.
My heart pounds with wild elation.
Oh my God. Oh my God.
We might actually make it. We might not die here.
I limp behind them as they drag him down the hall, leaving a long trail of blood from his leg. The knife is still sticking out of it. We get to the front door and repeat the procedure with the retina scanner there, and it opens. He’s starting to wake up now, grunting and struggling.
The front door opens, and Astrid and her daughters drop Micah on the floor. He lands with an agonized groan that warms my heart. I kick the knife in his leg, which sends agony pulsing through my battered body, but his strangled cry is reward enough.
Astrid and her daughter run out the door, and I limp after them. The front yard is wild and overgrown, with waist-high weeds. A long paved driveway curves behind tall trees. I try to follow them, and something grabs my ankle with a death-grip.
Micah.
As they run, they’re glancing behind them to make sure that Micah’s not chasing them. When they see what’s happening, they stumble to a halt and stand there, unsure.
No fucking way am I letting them die when freedom is so close. Their escape? That’s my happy ending.
“Go!” I scream at them. “Get help!”
It won’t be in time, but it doesn’t matter.
They’re free.
They turn and run for their lives, legs churning.
He clenches my ankle, and I kick at his face with my bare foot, but he twists away and pulls me down to the ground with a thud.
A shockwave of pain rolls over my bruised, battered body, and I shriek.
But they’re safe. They’re safe.
Tears pour out of my eyes as I watch them disappear around the corner, past the tree line.
It’s over.
“You better cry, you fucking bitch,” Micah pants. “You have any idea what I’m going to do with you?”
He doesn’t understand why I’m crying, because he can’t comprehend caring about someone else more than you care for yourself.
Run, girls, run.
Chapter Eight
Sergeant Ruiz
After a lifetime of shitty luck and being dealt every bad hand, I was beginning to doubt my faith. I thought God hated me.
Rosa and Valentina were sweet and innocent and kind, my reason for waking up in the morning, and they were both taken from me. I fought to bring their killers to justice. I believed in the system, and the system spat in my face.
I threw myself into work, and I busted kiddy-diddlers an
d drug-dealers, just to watch them go dancing out of the courtroom, high-fiving their lawyers when they beat the rap.
I prayed and prayed to see justice done, only to have my prayers fall on deaf ears.
But finally, today, the angels are smiling on me.
Yesterday afternoon, that creepy bastard Joshua Smith gave me some information that he swore up and down came from someone who’d been at Micah’s house. He said Micah was in Tehama County and he described a bridge, a farm that smelled like manure that was half an hour from the house, and a bunch of other markers that would help narrow down the location. He refused to tell me where he got the information, but for now, that’s not important.
What’s important is that Micah made a mistake. I bet he thought he was being smart getting a house out in the country. Lots of privacy, no neighbors close enough to hear the screams. But actually it was pretty stupid, because there aren’t that many parcels of land here, and to make it even easier, I only had to look at places that were rented or purchased in the last five or six months.
I narrowed it down to five possibilities. I have an old army buddy who’s working for the Feds now, stationed in San Francisco. I’ve hinted to him a little, telling him that I’m working a private case trying to track down a kidnap victim, but he knows I’m not doing anything official.
He did a search on the utilities for all five properties. And bingo. This morning he called to tell me that one of the utility accounts was opened under a fake name, a ghost who only exists on the lease, and who used fake ID to rent the property.
This afternoon, I drove out here to do some scouting. I’m not bringing Joshua with me, or any of his security team. I don’t trust that motherfucker any farther than I could throw him. And as I drive down a narrow rural road that passes the suspicious address, I see a woman and three girls running toward me, waving their hands frantically.
The Trials of Tamara Page 7