Chapter 38
Thirty-Eight
“Courtney?” How could it be true? Erin had given up hope of ever seeing her sister again.
But even if she had shown up, this certainly wasn’t the scenario Erin had expected.
She couldn’t believe this was happening.
She realized that she’d tried to forget Courtney.
She’d had to deal with the death of her parents.
Thinking about Courtney was too much. Now, memories came rushing back.
Courtney had been jealous, even mean sometimes, when they were children.
But how could she despise Erin enough to do something like this? Planning her death for years?
“I don’t understand,” Erin said. “How could you hate me this much? You’re my sister.”
“Your sister? Your sister? Our parents always loved you. Babied you.” Courtney’s face was a mask of loathing. “They gave you everything I wanted. The Barbie, the Beanie Baby, the bracelet . . . even the stickers.”
Erin had no memory of Courtney being upset over what their parents had given her. “That’s . . . that’s not true,” she said. “They gave you the toys you asked for. They never preferred me over you.” She frowned. “And I never got the Barbie.”
“Oh, they bought you your precious Barbie. It was hidden in their closet. After they died, I found it and took it. You had no right to that doll. I asked them for a Barbie when I was younger than you, and I didn’t get it.”
“Courtney, I remember your Barbie.”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“No,” Erin said, “but you did have a Barbie.”
Courtney laughed. Erin had never heard a laugh that sounded so angry before. It was chilling. “But not a special edition like the one they bought you. Mine was a plain old Barbie. Cheap. I hated it. I pulled its head off and burned the body in the backyard.”
What could she say to calm Courtney down?
The shock of realizing who the UNSUB was and that Courtney had killed innocent people only because of her hatred for her own sister made it hard to think.
She had to come up with a way of escape.
She needed to think. And to stall Courtney while she came up with a plan.
“I’m . . . I’m sorry, Court. I wish I’d stood up for you. I was just too young. I didn’t understand how you felt. Please forgive me.”
For just a moment, Courtney’s expression shifted. But as quickly as it had transformed, it reverted back to the rage that had clearly consumed her sister. Reasoning with her wasn’t going to work. Help me, God. Show me what to do. Please.
“Where did you go after the accident?” Erin asked. “We looked for you. Aunt Karen and I. But we couldn’t find you anywhere.”
Courtney shrugged. “Bought a Social Security number from some guy I bought drugs from. Used it to get a driver’s license.
From there it was easy.” She glared at Erin.
“I don’t believe either one of you really looked for me.
Our dear Aunt Karen made it clear that she blamed me for our parents’ deaths. ”
This was news to Erin. Karen hadn’t told her that she’d said anything like that to Courtney.
“She said you both blamed me,” Courtney said in a low voice.
It was clear to Erin that Courtney was unraveling, right in front of her. Her hands were shaking, and she was blinking excessively.
“I never said that, and I never heard Aunt Karen say it either,” Erin said, trying to stay calm.
It was true that Aunt Karen had partially blamed Courtney because her brother and his wife had to drive to the hospital that night when the roads were icy and dangerous, but in the end, the road conditions were to blame, not Courtney.
Aunt Karen had cared about Courtney and so did Erin.
If she said something like that to her sister, it was probably in a state of grief. Karen and their father were very close.
Again, Courtney looked startled by Erin’s statement. But as before, hatred won any kind of a battle her emotions might be waging. Even psychopaths could feel rage. What they lacked was empathy. Love. This war wouldn’t be won by appealing to Courtney’s love of family. She had none.
“In the end it doesn’t matter, little sis,” Courtney said. “Today, I’ll finally have the last laugh. You’re going to die. And it will happen according to your own imagination.”
“If you wanted me dead, why didn’t you just kill me?” Erin asked. “Why kill four other innocent women?”
“No one’s really innocent, little sister,” Courtney snapped.
“Besides, where would have been the fun in that? This was perfectly planned. I gave you every chance to stop me. To figure it out. I even left a bit of a clue in that dumb manuscript I wrote and Kaely read. It was about a sister killing another sister. But she didn’t get it.
If she had, we might not be having this conversation right now. ”
Of course, Courtney hadn’t mentioned that when she told Erin about her story.
She wasn’t certain it would have changed anything.
She still wouldn’t have figured out who Shannon really was.
“Why here?” Erin asked. “Why in Virginia?” She knew the answer, but she was still trying to keep Courtney talking.
Courtney sighed. “I told you, I already lived here. That makes it . . . what is it you call that? A comfort zone? This is my comfort zone. Besides, I wanted to pit my intellect against the police and the FBI. And most of all, against the great Kaely Quinn-Hunter. The profiler’s profiler.
And I beat her.” Again, Courtney’s eye’s blazed with insanity.
“Up until the moment you take your last breath, you’ll know that this time I win.
Maybe our parents loved you more than me.
Maybe you got everything you wanted, and I got nothing, but this time . . . this time, I win. I win!”
“What happened to Patricia Long?” Erin had to calm Courtney down.
If she didn’t, Erin was afraid Courtney would lose control and decide it was time to kill her.
Besides, in case Erin was able to find a way out of this, she needed to know if Pat was still alive.
And where she was. Erin couldn’t give up hope that Kaely and Noah were trying to find her.
Although she was afraid Pat was dead, this would give Courtney a chance to gloat about abducting her. Would it work?
Courtney stared at her for a moment, her green eyes dead. Then she laughed. But again, it was cold. Chilling.
“I told her that I had a partner. Someone who would kill her daughter if she didn’t come with me.
She willingly got into my car.” She grinned at Erin.
It reminded Erin of the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland.
She remembered Courtney as being selfish and sometimes mean, but this?
She never would have believed that her sister would become the crazed woman sitting only inches away from her.
Suddenly, a deep wave of sadness washed over her.
This was her sister. The only family she had left.
And the most important goal in Courtney’s life was to kill her?
“But where is she now?” Erin asked, trying to ignore her emotions.
“You need to think back to the book she wrote before Grin,” Courtney said.
Erin’s mind fought to remember Patricia’s books.
It had been quite a while. What was the book before Grin?
Suddenly, an image of the cover flashed in her head.
The title was Cry. There were blank eyes with bloody tears on the cover.
But what was Courtney referring to? Her mind clicked through the plot. Suddenly, she remembered something.
“You . . . you buried her alive?”
Another round of maniacal laughter.
“When? Is she dead?”
Courtney made a big show of looking at her watch. “Probably not yet, although I doubt she has much time left.”
Cry featured a killer who buried his victims alive, putting them in a box with a hole in the top, a long thin tube sticking out of the ground.
The killer did it to draw out the victim’s death, making it more torturous before they went mad with fear.
How long had Patricia been under the ground?
And with the rain, could she possibly still be alive?
Erin had to survive this encounter with Courtney.
It was the only way she could save Pat. She’d do whatever she had to. No matter what.