Chapter 35 Abi
ABI
Istare at Kaplan, certain that I must be wrong. That I’m hallucinating.
He grins at me, baring his teeth. “Surprised to see me?” he asks as he saunters into the room. I press my back against the wall and squeeze my hand tighter around the rope.
He kicks the door shut, making the walls rattle. “Answer me, bitch.”
Blood rushes into my ears. “Yes,” I finally croak out, dizzy with fear.
He nods at that and saunters up to the mattress. I curl away from him on instinct as he towers over me. I’m used to seeing him in his sheriff’s uniform, but he’s dressed in dark tactical clothes now.
“I do think we need to have a little chat before we get started, though.” He ambles around the mattress, and my heart feels like it’s going to erupt out of my chest. But he doesn’t touch me.
He just bends down and picks up one of the photograph print-outs I knocked off the wall earlier.
“I always hated that bitch,” he mutters.
“Ms. Staunton, esquire.” He rolls his eyes as he says the final word, then throws the photograph over his shoulder.
“She sucked my cock good, though. I think she thought it would save her life.”
Nausea rises in my stomach, but I know I have to focus. I squeeze the rope. You’re free, I tell myself. You’re free, and he doesn’t know it.
Kaplan crouches down beside me, his arms draped over his knees. For a long time, he doesn’t say anything. Just stares at me, his face cruel in the shadows. Then he licks his lips.
“I know you’ve got questions for me,” he says. “The other ones did. But you’re keeping your mouth shut.”
He reaches over to me like he’s going to cup my face. I jerk my head away, and he immediately slaps me. Pain blooms on my cheek.
“Look at me,” he orders. “There aren’t any fucking stairs for you to push me down now, are there?” He grabs my chin and jerks my gaze over to him. “That’s your M.O., isn’t it? You did it to Blake. You did it to Julian, too. I don’t give a fuck where they found his body.”
Another surge of nausea. There were two of them. Julian Bernet, a stranger, and Sheriff Kaplan. All his disrespect over the last two years suddenly feels far more sinister. A sign I should have seen coming.
“Is that what you did to Julian?” Kaplan asks, leaning forward. “Shove him down the stairs?”
I shake my head, and Kaplan slaps me again. Harder this time. Tears brim along my lashes.
“Don’t play stupid with me,” he snarls. “You and I both know Julian didn’t drink himself into a stupor out on Pier Fourteen. You killed him and then got that pathetic fucking simp to dispose of the body. Didn’t you?”
I look up at Kaplan through the glimmer of my tears, and I realize, with a jolt, that he’s talking about Nameless.
Kaplan doesn’t know he’s a killer, too.
“I always knew you were a danger to this community,” Kaplan continues. “A little lying murderess. My nephew was your first, wasn’t he?” Kaplan grabs my chin again, and anxiety spikes hard through my chest.
Blake Fletcher was Kaplan’s nephew. How did I not know that? No wonder he tried to oppose my appointment.
And no wonder he killed Olivia Pearce and Heather Staunton.
“I can’t believe you got off for that shit.” Kaplan leans in close to me, his breath blowing hot over my face. I shudder, trying to squirm away from him. “And those two cunts helped you. Accomplices, as far as I’m concerned.”
He shoves my head back, and it slams hard against the wall. The room spins as he stands up, his eyes still fixed on me. “Well,” he says. “They’re finally dead. And soon you will be, too.” He smiles. Then, with a slow, deliberate movement, he adjusts his crotch.
I stare up at him, my fist tight around the rope. “Julian attacked me,” I finally say. “Just like Blake did.”
Kaplan freezes, rage crawling over his face. I know it makes my situation worse, pissing him off, but there’s also something satisfying about it. Knowing how easily I can get under his skin.
“Blake never hurt anyone,” Kaplan snarls. “Blake was a fucking All-Star offensive lineman.”
“Blake was an asshole,” I shoot back. “A bully. And a rapist.” Heat floods through my face. “Just like you.”
Kaplan hits me again, and it’s not a slap, either. His fist connects with my cheek, and my head slams hard against the wall. Pain blooms in my temple, and the room blinks in and out of focus. All I hear is a kind of fuzzy static. Then—
“—a lying cunt.”
I blink up at Kaplan, who sneers down at me, his face twisted and ugly. For a moment, it reminds me of Nameless’s mask, and I feel a twist of sorrow inside me. A simp, Kaplan called him, but Nameless isn’t here to protect me. He didn’t come to me when I needed him most.
Now, I’m trapped in this terrible room, and it’s like when I was sixteen. Blake had leered down at me, too. Smirked as he flung me up against the wall and shoved himself inside me.
And I was alone. No one came to save me. So I had to save myself.
I squeeze the rope in my fist. It’s not much, but it’s all I have. Just like I had the stairs when I was sixteen.
“I’m going to enjoy this so much,” Kaplan says, running his hands down his dark jeans. “You have no idea how hard it was to hold off until the time was right.”
There’s too much space between us. I have a rope, and I need to get it around Kaplan’s throat. I need him on me, a thought that fills me with a sick, squirmy disgust.
“How long have you been planning this?” I ask, the first thing I can think to say. He’s already shown that he’ll attack me if I piss him off enough. I just need to rile him up enough, then make my move before he can hurt me too much.
Kaplan smirks. “Since you showed back up with your fucking fancy degrees. I’ve been taking the trash out of this county for years.”
My map flashes in my head. The deaths I marked with white.
The “accident” at the church. Lacerations to the throat.
Kaplan covered it up. He didn’t have to make it look like an accident because he’s the sheriff. He just had to say it was one. He might have done the same with the suicide on the beach. With any of the other white pin deaths in this town.
“How many people have you killed?” I rasp out.
“Not people,” Kaplan says. “Subhumans. Like you.”
I squeeze the rope tighter. He’s not angry enough. He keeps leering at me, his eyes hungry, but he’s savoring it. Savoring my fear.
Nameless’s leering mask flashes through my head. You’re the focus of everything I do, Abi. And yet I trusted him, a killer of nine people that I know of.
Of course I did. I’m a killer, too. A killer of one.
If I’m lucky, a killer of two.
We’re all killers, all three of us. We all have that darkness burning like a black flame in our chests.
I pull on my rope, my breath tight. “Who was Julian?” I ask. Maybe that’ll get him upset.
But Kaplan just scoffs. “He was another good man that you killed. That’s all that you need to know.”
I don’t take my eyes off Kaplan’s face.“He said that he killed Olivia Pearce.”
Kaplan’s eyes narrow at that, and I sense a thrum of anger.
“He didn’t do shit,” Kaplan snaps. “Julian was a pussy. Couldn’t handle the killing.
He collected you whores for me. Happy to do it as long as he could have his way with ‘em first.” Kaplan’s mouth splits into something like a smile.
“Did you fuck him before you killed him?” he asks. “Just like you did with Blake?”
Rage surges inside me, a hot column of fire, and it takes all my willpower not to fling myself at him. My muscles quake with the force of not moving.
Kaplan laughs. “Oh, you don’t like that, do you?” He reaches down and unzips his fly. Nausea surges into my throat, and I shift against the wall, holding onto the rope like a life preserver. This is it, I think, as Kaplan pulls out his half-limp cock and strokes it, watching me with a grin.
“I’m tired of talking,” he says. “It’s time to get started.”
Kaplan throws himself on the mattress, jostling me backward. Then he reaches down and extracts a big hunting knife from his side. I hadn’t noticed it before, but it must have been in a sheath on his thigh, blending into his black clothes.
I stare at it in horror now, the blade big and silver in the sallow light. All I have is a fucking rope.
“Let’s get these clothes off you.” Kaplan slides the blade up into my shorts. “Give me something to work with.”
I can’t stand the feel of his hands on me, wet and warm from perspiration. I can’t stand the cold blade of the knife. I can’t stand him, this monster who made my life hell in more ways than one.
So I act. I move in one frantic motion, knowing I only have one chance.
I drag my arms forward and fling the rope out so that it slaps across Kaplan’s face.
He howls, more in surprise than anything else, and I scramble forward.
That’s not what I meant to do. I was trying to wrap it around his throat.
“You fucking bitch,” he shouts, stumbling backward. “How the hell did you—”
I roll off the mattress and run for the door. Kaplan roars behind me, and I throw the door open and scramble out into the hallway. It’s windowless. Dark. But there’s a thin sliver of light up ahead, and I run toward it, arms pumping, keeping my eyes fixed on my escape—
A sudden, freezing coldness explodes in my upper back. I scream in agony and slam face-first onto the dusty floor. The pain brightens, and something hot and sticky flows down my back. I try to reach out, and I feel it, the handle of the knife, sticking out of the muscle of my upper back.
I also hear the footsteps behind me. Slow. Heavy. Mocking.
“You didn’t really think you could get away from me that easily, did you, bitch?
” More pain, in my scalp this time. Kaplan has me by the hair, and he wrenches me around so I can no longer see the exit.
I sob, grabbing at his arm as he heaves me backward down the hallway.
This is it. I lost my weapon. There are no stairs for me to shove him down, and the killer I told myself I could trust wasn’t there when I needed him.
Kaplan wrenches the knife out of my back, and I scream again, feeling the blood pulse thick and hot out of the wound. He shoves me against the wall and straddles me, pinning me down against the floor. Pain tears up from my wound.
Then he slices at my clothes, not caring if he cuts me, either.
Blood splatters across my chest and my face and my arms in hot drops.
I push against him, screaming and fighting him and trying to cover up my breasts all at once.
And that only seems to excite him more. His breath blows hot across my face in sharp rasps, and he laughs like he’s delighted.
“This is going to be so much fucking fun,” he cackles as he rips my clothes away. “You have no idea what you’re—”
He freezes. I stare at him, blinking through my pain and terror. I don’t understand what made him stop.
“What the fuck was that?” he hisses, shoving his arm up under my chin to hold me in place. I squirm against him, choking down small gulps of air. He doesn’t have his full weight on my trachea, but it’s enough.
Kaplan looks away from me, squinting into the darkness.
That’s when I hear it, too. Soft, heavy thuds.
Footsteps. The same footsteps that followed me into my examination room weeks ago.
And although it shouldn’t, hope blooms in my chest. Because Nameless came for me after all.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Kaplan snarls.
I manage to twist my head around, hope and fear warring inside myself. A figure steps toward us: tall and broad, big enough that he almost seems to fill the hallway.
It’s him. Nameless.
“Let her go,” he says, taking another step forward. And that’s when I realize it. He’s not wearing his mask. For the first time, I can see him.
Rowan Hanover has come to save me.