“There’s no shame in crying, little one. Scream, if you must. Nobody will pass judgment on you here.”
While he pulls her toward the hallway, she half-crawls, half stumbles across the dusty floor. The light in the hallway is stronger than a million suns. Her watering eyes adjust. Before she makes out her surroundings, he hauls her into a kitchen. The floor lacks several tiles, and two long rust smears mark where a refrigerator once stood in the corner. There’s a small refrigerator in its place, the size a student takes to college. A roach lies belly-up on the counter, and a black spider the size of Jennifer’s palm hangs in the corner, presiding over a graveyard of flies and mosquitoes. But it’s the spray painted face on the wall that makes Jennifer’s heart race—the same leering smile painted on their house in Genoa Cove. The mark of the Full Moon Killer.
Using the handcuffs, the kidnapper locks Jennifer to the leg of a wooden table. She curls on the floor while he runs water in the sink. The liquid comes out brownish-gray before it clears, then he fills a glass and sips.
When the hair tingles on the back of her neck, she senses they aren’t alone in the kitchen. Someone else is here.
A strange girl stands in the entryway. Her arms hang at her sides as if clipped to her body by thumbtacks. The girl’s eyes appear lost and vacant. At that moment, Jennifer thinks this is the girl the kidnapper carried down the hallway last night. No, that girl appeared heavier and younger, no older than Jennifer and Sandy. This new girl looks older. At least twenty. And there isn’t an ounce of fat on her body.
“What are you staring at?”
The new girl jumps when the kidnapper speaks. She opens her mouth to respond and closes it, defeated. Her eyes drop to the floor, and she flinches when the man closes on her. Is this his wife? Daughter?
“You’re too dull to answer,” he says, gritting his teeth. Consumed by fury, he makes a concerted effort not to strike the girl. “I don’t want to look at you today. Go to your room, or get lost in the forest for all I care. It’s no skin off my back.”
The girl’s eyes move to Jennifer on the floor. When she sees the handcuffed prisoner, her lips tremble and her eyes glass over.
“Don’t look at her!” Spittle flies from his mouth when he screams at the older girl. “You’ll never capture her beauty.”
The older girl spins and vanishes from the kitchen. Footsteps trail from room to room as if the girl can’t find the exit. Then the front door opens and closes, and the house becomes quiet again.
Until the older girl fled, Jennifer held onto a fleeting hope the girl might fight on their behalf. Even now the possibility exists the girl will bring help, but the girl’s submissive demeanor convinces Jennifer she won’t turn on the kidnapper. Jennifer is abandoned, left for this madman to rape and murder her.
Something breaks inside Jennifer. She cries, gulping sobs that burn her chest and scar her lungs. This isn’t a nightmare she’ll wake up from. She will die in this rundown house, and no amount of fantasizing over heroes breaking down the door will change her fate. Nobody knows where she is. If anyone did, they would have found Sandy already.
The rim of the water glass presses against her chapped lip and splits the surface. She tastes blood as he nudges the glass forward, squeezing her lip against her teeth.
“Drink.” She shakes her head. “Drink or you’ll die.”
He shoves the rim into her mouth, drawing more blood when he gouges her gums. With her free hand, she swats the glass away. Water splashes against the walls as the glass shatters on the floor. Silent tension follows like the moment before a bomb drops. Enraged, he snags her by the ponytail and wrenches her head back. A hard slap knocks her neck sideways.
When her eyes clear, she spies a piece of broken glass beside her knee. She snatches the shard between her fingers and slices it at his face. Quicker than Jennifer, he clutches her wrist. Squeezes until she feels the brittle bones crackle under the pressure. He pulls back on her hand, bending until her knuckles are inches from her forearm. The pain is exquisite, maddening. But it’s proof she’s alive and fighting, not teetering on death’s edge like Sandy in the dark bedroom. Finally, the pain is too much to bear. Her fingers release the shard.
“You will learn to obey,” he growls, snaking his arms under her chin and around her neck.
She squirms and flails. With the muscles of his forearm and bicep acting like a vise against her carotid artery, she blacks out and goes limp in his arms.
The dreamlike levitation invades Jennifer’s thoughts as it had the night he captured her. She imagines herself riding atop a black and purple storm cloud, the skies bruised, a tube tornado shattering a small town as she floats weightless above the storm. When she awakens, she’s handcuffed to Sandy, wrist attached to wrist. The dying girl’s eyes open and stare, and there’s fear, intimidation in Sandy’s eyes. It isn’t until they lock that Jennifer realizes Sandy’s nose bleeds, her top lip split.
Jennifer twists her head around and finds the kidnapper leaning against the door frame. He studies the two girls the way a hurtful boy watches a bee inside a jar after introducing a hornet.
“You beat her? Why?”
The kidnapper folds his arms and smiles.
“I did nothing of the sort. You did this.”
“I heard screaming and came inside to find you hurting Sandy.”
“That’s bullshit. You put me to sleep. How could I hurt anyone?”
“You’re a violent girl, Jennifer.” Her spine turns to ice. He knows her name. “You had your hands around Sandy’s throat, and you kept striking her face. I pulled you off before you went too far. So angry, so much hatred. But I don’t blame you for wanting to hurt Sandy. She’ll only get in the way. It proves you’re the only one for me.”
Jennifer rubs her eyes. The room shifts out of focus for a second. Cuts from her forearm to her wrist mark where the handcuffs tore at her flesh while she slept. Her knuckles are red with blood, but not all the blood is hers.
“No, you grabbed my arm while I was asleep and made me hit her. You just want to turn us against each other.” Jennifer touches Sandy’s arm. The girl flinches as though electrocuted and slinks away, dragging Jennifer’s hand with her. “Please, Sandy. You can’t believe I did this.”
But no words can convince Sandy that Jennifer doesn’t mean her harm. The kidnapper strolls to Jennifer and tugs her into a sitting position by her shirt collar.
“Now, watch and learn. The next time she goes to sleep, you put your hand like this and cover her mouth and nose.”
His hand engulfs Jennifer’s face and suffocates her. With her free hand, she digs her nails into his arms and scrapes. Two nails break off as she carves thin rivulets of red down his arm. He doesn’t seem to notice. As she bats at his hand, he squeezes harder, crushing her nose. Her struggles slow as her brain grows foggy.
Everything goes dark.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Emily Vogt. The girl who could have been Jennifer.
As Darcy expected, Tipton matched Vogt’s picture to the girl in the field. The girl’s parents are en route to the coroner’s office to ID their child.
Inside the warm break room of the county sheriff’s office, Darcy sits alone at the table with a cup of tea bleeding condensation circles. The department ordered out for dinner, and the roast beef sandwich Deputy Grasser handed her sits untouched on a cheap porcelain plate with floral markings. Lettuce and mustard spill onto the plate, and the onion scent tempts Darcy to wrap the sandwich in a plastic bag and stuff it into the garbage can. But she knows she has to eat, needs to sustain herself if she wishes to pull night-long vigils until she finds Jennifer. She takes a bite. Chews. Swallows. It’s a mechanical process geared toward survival rather than pleasure. The pieces sit like lead on the bottom of her stomach. After two bites, she pushes the plate aside, unable to look at the sandwich anymore.