Unlike the magician’s trick, this skewer was slick with blood.
“Oh, Jesus. Laneesha.”
Sara knew Lester was coming. Martin would be back soon, too. She and Jack had to get out of there. But she wasn’t going to leave Laneesha here with these monsters.
That posed a problem. There were dozens—perhaps over a hundred—of these skewers sticking in the cabinet. Did Sara even have time to remove all of them? And if she did, would Laneesha bleed to death?
She looked around for an answer, and saw two things on the floor that made her stomach churn. A car battery with jumper cables, and a handheld blowtorch.
She had to get Laneesha out of there.
“Laneesha, honey, it’s Sara. I’m going to help you, okay? I need to get these things out of your face first. Jesus, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry…”
Sara lifted her hands, hesitated, reached closer, hesitated, and then pulled the six skewers out of the outline of the head as fast as she could, Laneesha’s cries of pain scarring her soul. Then she opened the door to view Laneesha’s face.
“Kill me,” Laneesha croaked.
Sara recoiled in horror. The blood. The damage. The agony the girl must be in.
That’s when Sara sensed someone behind her.
She didn’t hear it. She sensed it. Like feeling a glance from across a room. Since the door Sara came through hadn’t opened, the person must have come from the other door in the room.
Not Lester. Not Martin. This was the one who had done this to Laneesha. This had to be Taylor, the owner of the Magic Box.
Sara spun around, tugging the utility knife out of her jeans, ready to stab.
It was a man. A fat, scarred man, naked except a black rubber apron that stretched from his chest to his thighs. He’d come out of the door—the bathroom door—Sara had been about to open. His greasy hair was shoulder-length. His pocked cheeks glistened with sweat over several days’ worth of stubble. His patchwork skin was lined with long, parallel scabs, like stripes, some of them still bleeding.
And in his crippled right hand he was clenching a meat hook.
Lester’s rage was a diesel engine in his chest, pumping and burning and threatening to blow. The pet was special to Lester. He came to the island with Martin, and Lester had bitten off some of his sensitive parts, but left him mostly untouched. He liked the funny uhhhnnnnnn sound the pet made. But he didn’t care for the begging, or the attempts to get away. So Doctor fixed him for Lester. Fixed his brain so he stopped talking. Fixed his arms and legs so he couldn’t run or fight back.
For years, Lester had taken good care of the pet. He was Lester’s friend.
But now someone had killed him.
The doctor was in the lab. Martin was out. The stairs were the only way up to Lester’s room, and he didn’t pass anyone while bringing the hay.
That left one person. The only other person on the second floor.
Subject 33.
Lester looked around for a weapon, wrapping his large hand around a filet knife. Razor sharp. Perfect for detail work.
He stormed out his room, heading down the corridor.
When Marshal Otis Taylor was a little boy, he wanted to kill people when he grew up. If his parents had known any abnormal psychology, they would have noted little Taylor wet the bed, started fires, and liked to hurt animals. These behaviors were documented precursors to psychopathy.
But they were too busy physically and sexually abusing Taylor to notice that he might be a little off-kilter.
Perhaps they should have paid more attention, because when Taylor turned twelve he turned on the gas stove, blew out the flame, and waited in the back yard while the carbon monoxide filled the house and poisoned them to death.
It was deemed an accident, and the neighbors corroborated that Taylor was a handful and his parents sometimes made him sleep outside.
Taylor did the foster home shuffle for several years, eventually running away at fifteen and joining a travelling carnival. He learned how to be charming there, and how charm was the key to deception. He was taught street magic, and the art of the hustle, and may other carny tricks. He also learned how to drive the double-clutch eighteen-wheelers used for hauling equipment from town to town.
By age nineteen his boyish good looks had bloomed into masculinity, and he’d saved and swindled enough money to buy his own truck.
The truck-stop hookers thought he was so cute, they often gave him freebies.
He killed his first one in Wisconsin. His second in Nebraska.
Over the years, Taylor’s route, and his hunting ground, encompassed the entire lower forty-eight. He killed one in every state, and after that lost count.
When they finally caught him, he was only charged with twenty murders, which wasn’t even a third of them.
Taylor received the death sentence, and he had memories of being strapped to the table, the prison doctor hooking up the IV that contained the lethal injection.
Then his memories got fuzzy.
He remembered snippets of things. Some sort of military training. A special forces unit. Foreign countries. Missions that involved even more killing. Screaming people. Lots and lots of screaming people.
And coyotes. Taylor remembered the coyotes, eating him alive while he was unable to fight back.
Then somehow, well over a year ago, sewn back together like a crazy-quilt, Taylor had wound up here.
He wasn’t even sure where here was.
His good looks were ruined. His body didn’t work like it should have, due to muscle loss, his voice was gone, and his fingers jutted out at odd angles and were barely functional. The insane doctor who kept him here—Doctor Plincer—had tinkered with Taylor’s brain.
Before the tinkering, Taylor had enjoyed causing others pain.
After the tinkering, causing pain was the only think Taylor lived for.
It was an addiction, stronger than any drug.
And the doctor fed his addiction, for the most part, supplying him with a steady stream of victims.
Of course, the one victim Taylor longed for most was the doctor himself.
He just had to get the bastard in his Magic Box.
The box was based on months of testing and experimenting. Every skewer positioned and angled so it wouldn’t hit anything vital. Taylor’s biggest wish was to get the doctor in there, and make him suffer for weeks.
But until that day came, he had other victims to play with.
Like this tender little morsel clutching a baby.
The woman was cute. Cute ones were so sexy when they screamed.
But the baby…
Taylor had never done a baby before.
It sounded like a lot of fun.
Sara was paralyzed with fear. A tiny part of her brain recognized what a cliché that was. But it was true. She was so terrified, so overwhelmed by dread, she couldn’t move.
Taylor stared at her. Through her. Sara knew he could read her thoughts, sense her helplessness.
He lowered the meat hook and gave her a lopsided grin. Then he limped slowly to Sara’s left, his gait wobbly and twisted, like he had a degenerative muscle disease. But Sara noticed it wasn’t a disease—beneath his scarred skin, some of his muscles were simply gone.
Taylor stopped at a dresser, his bloodshot gaze drilling into her.
Run! Sara yelled at herself. Get out of there!
But her feet remained planted, her veins felt filled with cement. She couldn’t even turn her head, staring at her abductor out of the corner of her eyes, watching as he slowly pulled open a drawer. He put his hand inside, grinning, obviously enjoying himself, and then removed a rope.