“He owes me a life, okay? Oh, and his son. He owes his son a life, too.” She drew hard on the cigarette, then shot a stream of smoke out the side of her mouth.
“You have a boy together?”
“Mmm. Roberto…well, I call him Bobby, but Fernando, do you think he cares? Does he come and see his son? Pay me child support?” She sighed. “Not when he’s running around with that woman.”
Montoya didn’t say anything, just took a long drag on his cigarette and listened.
“She’s poisoned him, you know. Driving his car, meeting him at school. College. He was going there to better himself, become an accountant like his sister and then…then he met this…this actress and all of a sudden he wants to write plays!” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously, her nostrils flared. “And what does he do for me? Dumps on me, that’s what. Doesn’t even take his own damned shift because he has to be with Jada.” Her lip curled in disgust and she flicked the rest of her cigarette onto the gravel. “You know, if it weren’t for Roberto, I swear, I’d kill that son of a bitch!”
Olivia heard the steady thump, thump from above.
Over the creaking and settling of everything inside her floating prison came the sound of footsteps.
Someone was on the boat.
She didn’t doubt for a second that it was her tormentor, so she didn’t cry out, didn’t want to risk the chance that the psycho would gag her again.
God, if she only had some kind of weapon.
The best she could do would be to fling her jug of water on the woman and soak her through the bars. But other than startle her or infuriate her, it would accomplish nothing.
Suddenly the lights snapped on and Olivia blinked hard, her eyes adjusting to the sudden brightness.
Her captor slowly descended the stairs, lugging a case with her. “So how’re we doing?” she asked with feigned cheer.
Olivia wanted to respond with “just peachy,” but thought better of it. Olivia reasoned that the best way to deal with the woman was to stand her ground. Not so easy when she was the one confined to this disgusting cage, but if Olivia could keep the woman talking, she could work toward extracting information while letting her abductor vent her frustrations.
If she could keep her cool. Reign in the terror that ate at her.
“So you ate, I see. Good, good. Necessary to keep your strength up.”
Olivia froze. Where was this going? The woman didn’t know about the baby, did she?
Of course not. No one knows. Not even your husband, and the way things are going, he may never know.
She closed her mind to that train of thought. She would find a way out of this damned boat. She had to. For the baby.
“So, hungry?” the woman asked as she pulled a plastic bag from her case. She tossed another wrapped sandwich and plastic bottle of soda into the cage.
Once again Olivia, wanted to slap her.
But she couldn’t.
Keep your cool. Keep her talking.
“Who are you?” she asked again.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” She smiled to herself, as if amused at playing the part of a smarmy seven-year-old.
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I would. And that coy thing you’re doing? It’s not working.”
The woman’s lips twisted in a rare moment of fury. “Oh, I think it is. I’m the one outside the cage.”
“Who are you?”
“A friend…well, make that a close friend of your husband’s,” she said with a trace of bitterness.
“But you knew Jennifer.”
The woman’s eyes darkened.
Olivia had hit a nerve. Why? What was she to Jennifer?
“I really wasn’t too into that bitch,” her captor said as she smiled at a sudden thought, “but I’ve become, over the years, close with some of her friends. You know, the kind that just love to share secrets.”
Olivia’s stomach dropped. “You pumped them for information and then you killed them?” Of course she’d suspected this evil maniac was behind Shana and Lorraine’s deaths but saying it aloud in the gently swaying hold of a boat, confirming what she’d surmised, observing this woman’s smug self-satisfaction made it all the more real. More terrifying.
“They never saw it coming.”
Olivia wanted to throw up.
Stay cool. Use your wits.
“And they just got in the way.” She was assembling a camera and tripod, adjusting the legs, securing them with clamps she screwed into the floor and clipping all the pieces into place. Her nose wrinkled and she looked around. “God, it still smells down here. My father, he used to haul his dogs from port to port. Great Danes.”
“So you called me? You’re the one behind the phone calls, right?” Olivia asked, forcing the woman on topic, trying to learn more.
“My, God, you are just so sharp,” her captor mocked. “Your IQ must be in the stratosphere. Except you can’t be all that clever, can you, considering the circumstances? Here-” She bent down, flipped the photo album to a new page, one of Rick and Jennifer’s wedding, the bride in a white lacy dress and long train, the groom, so much younger than he was now, proud and handsome in a black tux. Again, there were blood drops on the plastic, drops that had been drizzled and smudged over their faces. “Here’s a good one.” She nudged the book forward with her toe and turned back to her camera.
Olivia’s skin crawled. “What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Setting up things so that you can pay.”
“Pay?”
“For your husband’s sins.”
“I don’t understand.”
The woman glanced over her shoulder and smiled smugly. “Of course you don’t.”
“Listen. Why don’t you just let me go?”
“Oh, right, after twelve years of planning, of waiting, of searching for just the right person to play the part of Jennifer, I should give it up. Because you think it would be a good idea?” She stared straight at Olivia, her eyes narrowed and cold as a demon’s touch. “You don’t get it, do you? I want Bentz to pay. To feel the pain that I felt. To know what it’s like to lose someone dear, to go forward each and every day of his life realizing that he not only let you die, but he destroyed his own life as well. To be alone, totally and infinitely alone.” She was working herself up, talking more loudly, more vehemently, more passionately, her face reddening, her fists clenching.
She had to visibly force her rage down, straighten her fingers. When she did, she spoke in a harsh whisper. “That man put me through hell, ‘Livvie,’ and now it’s his turn. Time for him to feel a little pain. To know what it’s like. He never knew that I killed Jennifer, didn’t so much as suspect. Some great detective he is! All his awards for acts of heroism? Ridiculous!” As if reading the shock registering on Olivia’s face, she let out a disgusted laugh. “That’s right. You didn’t know, did you? Jennifer is still rotting in her grave, at least she was until she was exhumed.
“It’s her all right, in the coffin. That sick, twisted bitch who had Bentz wrapped around her little finger. He loved her, you know. Was obsessed with that two-timing slut! It was sickening. Despite the fact that she cheated on him over and over again…fucking betrayed him, he loved her.” Still assembling the camera, she was shaking in rage. “Even after her affair with his half brother, a goddamned priest, the real father of his kid! Jesus H. Christ, he still came back for more. Talk about a masochist!”
This woman was really off her nut. Filled with hate and a craving for revenge.
“It’s all ancient history,” Olivia pointed out.
“Don’t you even want to know how I did it? How I took care of her?”
“Jennifer.”
“Of course, Jennifer! We’re not talking about the friggin’ queen, are we? It was so easy,” she bragged. “I doctored her pills, and her vodka. Waited. Then followed her as she drove and made certain she had an accident.” She paused, savoring the memory. “It was an impersonal attack, I know. The coward’s way out with the car, chasing her down, freaking her out. But it worked.”