43. forty-one
forty-one
. . .
CREW
The impact of my body on a hard surface jolted me to consciousness and knocked the air from my lungs. While I struggled to regain my breath, I took a beat to take stock of myself. A sack of some sort had been placed over my head, though the material was thin enough to tell the sky was still light. I hadn’t been out long then. My wrists were bound together in front of me, but my ankles were free.
A strike to my side had me groaning in pain.
“Get up and walk.”
The voice was no longer distorted, and I should’ve been ready for it. After all the information Wyatt had spilled at the sheriff’s department, I should’ve been prepared for the voice of my abductor to be a woman—to be Mrs. Saunders.
I wasn’t. If I hadn’t already been prone on the ground, the sound would’ve taken me out at the knees.
That boot found my ribs again, and with a grunt and some careful maneuvering, I heaved to standing, breathing hard and squeezing my eyes shut as my head spun.
Some blunt instrument—likely that fucking gun again—pressed into my spine, urging me on, so I tentatively shuffled forward. I strained my ears for an auditory indication of where we were. The only thing I heard was the soft swish of grass beneath my feet and crickets chirping, which led me to believe we were likely far from town. I continued moving forward, and without warning, my boots collided with some uneven surface, sending me sprawling. Unable to break my fall with my hands, I twisted to the side. My shoulder to take the brunt of the impact, and I hissed as I felt the joint pop out of place.
Shifting my knees under myself without further aggravating my shoulder wasn’t an easy task, but I managed. Once I sank back on my haunches, I tried to get my bearings. The air around me had shifted, becoming overly warm and stale, like I’d entered some sort of building. It didn’t feel like a wide open space like a warehouse would, though, so I guessed we were somewhere smaller, like a home or a cabin.
“Where am I?” I asked. “What do you plan to do with me?”
“You don’t get to ask questions,” the woman snarled.
Once again, a sharp sting in my neck accompanied a sizzle through my body, and the world blacked out.
When I came to again, the sack had been removed from my head, but my arms were still bound.
And I was no longer alone.
“Parker?” I croaked.
The boy sat against the exterior wall of what I could see now was an older log cabin, the chinking uneven and yellowed with age. His wrists were zip tied together, and he had the thousand yard stare and trembling limbs of someone in shock. A quick scan of his body didn’t reveal any obvious wounds, which I considered a good sign.
I cleared my throat and said his name again. This time, the boy’s head moved slowly in my direction. He was looking at me, but I could tell he wasn’t really seeing me.
“Parker, what are you doing here? What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
He squeezed his eyes shut, and my heart cracked as tears leaked free and spilled down his cheeks.
“Walking home from work. I picked up a summer job as a dishwasher at the diner,” he explained. “Gary pays me under the table, and it keeps me out of trouble, you know?”
A slight smile curved his lips, and I nodded.
“That fucking park, man,” the kid said, dropping the expletive like a well-practiced swearer instead of a sixteen-year-old boy. “I always cut across it. And this person came out of nowhere. Completely blindsided me. I tried to get away, but then there was this pain in my neck and a weird current through my body. Next thing I knew, I was waking up here.”
“You were tased,” I explained calmly, though nothing about my current mood was calm .
Coming after me was one thing. I was a grown man who had spent the last three months investigating this case and playing host to the one woman that escaped the clutches of death at Mrs. Saunders’ hands.
Going after an innocent kid and dragging him into this mess was unforgivable.
Think, Crew. Think , I silently willed myself. There had to be a way out of this. A way to save myself and Parker.
First and foremost, I needed to get the fuck out of the restraint around my wrists.
I got to my feet as carefully as I could, my shoulder screaming in pain with each movement, and took stock of the cabin. My first order of business was, obviously, to check the door. Unsurprisingly, it was locked tight from the outside, and no amount of yanking on it mattered. The windows were all painted and nailed shut.
Nearly a perfect square, with the walls at the front and back a little longer than the sides, the structure couldn’t have been more than six hundred square feet. Parker and I were in a small living space that held an ancient couch, reminding me of the one in Missy Plano’s house, and a heavily nicked and scarred coffee table. The most modern part was the combination TV and VCR that rested on a squat hutch against the wall where Parker leaned.
In the opposite corner was a tiny kitchen, the counters and upper cabinets arranged in an L-shape. A fridge stood about as tall as my chest next to a two burner gas stove, and the microwave was so old it had a dial instead of buttons.
Beside the kitchen was a walled off bathroom with a toilet, standing shower, and pedestal sink. A set of narrow stairs led to a loft above.
I moved toward the kitchen, using my left hand—my good arm—to pull open drawers and cabinets, searching for something to cut me and Parker free. Unsurprisingly, Mrs. Saunders had cleared the place out, leaving nothing to be found but crumbs, dust, and mouse poop.
That was fine. I was a big, strong dude, right? It would fucking hurt, but I could break myself free. Then I could help Parker. Heading back into the living room, I braced my foot on the edge of the coffee table, mentally psyching myself up.
“What’re you doing?” Parker asked, rising to his feet.
“I’m going to snap the zip tie.”
“How?”
“I should be able to strike my wrists against my knee and, with enough force, put enough pressure on the weakest point”—I indicated the spot where the tie came together—“to break it.” I tried to smile reassuringly at him, but it probably looked more like a grimace. “Wish me luck. ”
The kid chuckled softly. “Good luck.”
Taking a deep breath, I knew I’d have to move quickly and surely, both in deference to my dislocated shoulder and to get enough momentum. On the count of three, I quickly raised my arms up, gritting my teeth against the shooting pain radiating down my right one, and swung them down, hard and sure, tensing and driving my knee up into the blow simultaneously.
With a satisfying snap , I was free.
“Holy shit!” Parker crowed. “You did it!”
This time, my grin was genuine.
“Your turn.”
Parker’s expression sobered instantly.
“I’m not sure I’m strong enough.”
“It’s not about strength,” I assured him. “It’s about timing and force and angles.”
Parker snorted. “I’m shit at all that stuff.”
“You can do it,” I promised.
Together, we took a few practice swings, with me correcting his form where needed.
“Keep your arms slightly bent and tensed,” I told him. “The last thing we need is you dislocating an elbow on top of my dislocated shoulder.”
He followed each of my directions perfectly, and when I was certain he was ready, I instructed him to give it a shot.
“Will you count down?” he asked.
“Sure. You ready?” He nodded. “Okay. Three…two…one…go!”
His arms arced high and swung down. He squeezed his eyes shut as he braced for impact, doing everything I told him exactly as I’d explained.
Another beautiful snap echoed through the room, and the plastic tie fell to the floor.
“I did it! I did it!” Parker danced around in place, chanting the three words over and over. Hooking my good arm around his neck, I hauled him in for a hug.
“Fuck yeah you did. Now what do you say we get the hell out of here?”
“I’m afraid I can’t allow that.”
Parker and I startled at the new voice, turning to the door. In all the commotion and excitement, we’d missed Mrs. Saunders coming inside. She set a bright orange gas can at her feet, then folded her arms over her chest and stared us down.
“Mrs. Saunders?” Parker asked, eyes wide, tone completely disbelieving.
Yeah, buddy. Me too.
God, I’d known , and still nothing could’ve prepared me for her appearance. The black clothing, gloved hands, menacing expression. Gone was the teacher and high school principal who led the school with kindness and grace—although the crossed arms was a stance I’d personally seen from her numerous times before.
“You should stop working out so much,” she said to me, her tone full of malice. “You’re looking awfully disproportionate. I suppose that explains why you’re all brawn and no brains. Letting a little woman like me get the drop on you.”
She smirked proudly, like she’d somehow bested me.
“You knocked me over the head and tased me,” I snorted. “And threatened me with a gun. You had an unfair advantage.”
“Whatever,” she said flippantly. “You’re still here, and you’re still going to die. My final kills before I ride off into the sunset, never to be seen or heard from again.”
“But…why?” I asked.
“Because I can,” she said simply.
“There’s gotta be more to it than that.”
“You think I wanted this?” she asked, sweeping her arm out to encompass the whole scene. “You think I wanted to be born with this weird mental mutation that gets off on setting fires and killing people? No, but we all make do with the hand we’ve been dealt.”
“What happened on your prom night all those years ago?”
I knew if I kept her talking, it would give me time to figure a way out of this. My life wasn’t the only one on the line, and Parker was counting on me. I’d at least had a chance to live , but he was only a kid, and he deserved the chance to escape and experience all the shit I already had.
Well, maybe not all of it.
“Made the connection, did you? Figured out my little riddle? I’ll admit, that first email I sent to Miss McKay was a bit impulsive, but I loved toying with her so much I couldn’t help myself.”
I blinked in surprise. Aspen had thought that riddle had come from someone unconnected to the killer. We should’ve known that was merely another way Mrs. Saunders taunted her.
“Roger Stanhope was my best friend, did you know that?” I shook my head, but she wasn’t even looking at me, eyes focused in some middle distance, here but not really here . “Trey and Wyatt remind me a lot of us…or what we could’ve been if he hadn’t gone and fucked everything up.”
“Trey and Wyatt aren’t together. They never have been.”
Mrs. Saunders snorted. “You think I don’t see the way they look at each other? It’s honestly a matter of time now. She’s going to need someone in the aftermath of all of this, and you and I both know Trey will be there to pick up the pieces.”
Hard to argue with that.
Parker, seemingly tired of standing around, sank to the floor and started toying with his shoe laces. Mrs. Saunders didn’t even spare him a glance.
“It was supposed to be me and Roger. He was my best friend, yes, but I loved him so much more than that—and he loved me. Vicky and all the other tramps he got with were distractions. A way to pass the time of our high school years until we could move away from this godforsaken town and start our lives together. When he asked me to prom, I knew the time had finally come. It kills me every day that he’s dead, that we never got that chance.”
“ You killed him,” I reminded her, following Parker’s lead and taking a seat on the arm of the couch. Might as well be comfortable while I listened to the psychobabble.
“Only because I had to! He betrayed me.” She inhaled a deep breath, her eyes fluttered closed as she transported herself back forty years. “That night should’ve been the first night of the rest of our lives. I was going to give him my virginity, remind him my heart and body belonged to him, and his to me. We were going to move to California after graduation. Get married, have babies. There was a plan . And he ruined it when he couldn’t stay away from that slut. Vicky Lee.”
She spat her name with four decades worth of venom, like she couldn’t get past her hatred of the girl despite being the reason she was dead. You’d think a gunshot wound to the head and setting her body on fire would’ve been enough to take the edge off, but apparently not.
“I was coming out of the ladies room after freshening up when I saw them sneak out together. They were laughing, holding hands, stealing kisses between steps out the door. Their stupid prom king and queen crowns shone on their hair. The way he looked at her…I realized then he’d never look at me that way.
“And if I couldn’t have him, no one could.”
I couldn’t help but snort. What a fucking cliché. Parker cut me a glare, a silent plea to be quiet, but Mrs. Saunders was so lost in giving her killer monologue that she didn’t even notice us anymore.
“I followed them up to the ridge, watched as they steamed up the windows of his car. I was so furious, you know?” The rhetorical question was accompanied by a burst of manic laughter, and poor Parker curled further into a ball, putting his head down as though that would protect him from the madness. “Roger was mine . But then this strange sense of calm came over me, and what I had to do became perfectly clear. I’d taken Daddy’s truck to the dance because Roger wanted to hang out with his buddies before, so we agreed to meet there. And Daddy’s shotgun was hidden beneath the seat as always. So I took it out and approached. God, you should’ve seen the looks on their faces when I tapped on the window with that barrel pointed right at their heads.”
She sighed, as though savoring the memory, and nausea roiled in my gut. This woman was fucking insane.
“Roger rolled down the window, but before he could speak, before he could try to spew some pretty bullshit to get me to back down, I blew a fucking hole in his face. Vicky was screaming her head off, coated in Roger’s blood, and I fired on her too.
“But that wasn’t enough, you know? They were dead and it still wasn’t enough . So I took the pack of cigarettes sitting in the cupholder—Roger was a Marlboro man—lit every single one, and dropped them on the seats and floors. Then I waited and watched as it burned and burned and burned. That fire was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. The fucking power I felt. A few days later when the story ran in the paper, accompanied by a tipline where the police were asking for information. I’d gotten away with it, and I knew once would never be enough.”
The blue-green depths of Mrs. Saunders’ eyes met mine, the same shade as her daughter’s, swirling with excitement.
“Twelve seemed to do the trick. I wanted to go for thirteen, but Miss McKay managed to survive. You see, Crew…that’s why you have to die. Your life for hers. It’s a bit poetic, since you were the one who saved her.”
“What about Parker? He didn’t do anything wrong.”
“He narced,” she said, a single shoulder rising and falling in a half shrug. “What’s that old saying? Snitches get stitches? Or in this case, little boys who go and tattle to the police get burned alive. ”
“Please,” Parker gasped, getting to his feet and shuffling over to her before falling to his knees in front of her, hands clasped, begging. “Please, Mrs. Saunders. You don’t want to kill me. It’s not like they figured you out from what I told them.”
Mrs. Saunders seemed to consider that, cocking her head to the side and regarding him. Then she glanced up at me.
“You know, he has a point. How did you figure it out?”
I grinned, baring all my teeth. “Missy Plano. And your daughter.”