Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jeff Holloway stood at the bottom of the stairs, his eyes moving from my face to the locket swinging from my fingers.
"You shouldn't have come down here, Cassidy," he said in a voice that was deadly quiet.
I took a step back, my mind racing. "Where's Dorothy?"
"When she told me you were down here, I sent her on an emergency errand to talk some sense into Cole before he leaves town. She won't be back…in time."
His last two words sent a wave of panic through my body, but I tried not to show it. "Then I'll just go back to the inn."
He moved closer, his big, broad body, blocking my exit. "You're not going back to the inn." He paused, his gaze turning very dark. "No one ever goes back."
I swallowed a knot in my throat, telling myself to stay calm, to think. I needed to keep him talking until I could figure a way out. Maybe Dorothy wouldn't find Cole. Maybe he'd already left with Sophie, and she'd come right back to the house.
"Nothing to say?" he challenged. "You? The woman who has so much to say to anyone who will listen?
I've enjoyed your podcasts, listening to you scramble to find some reasonable explanation for what happened to Natalie.
You wanted to tell a true crime story that would fascinate your listeners.
But you know what's more fascinating than talking about murder? "
I really didn't want to answer that question. "Where's Natalie, Jeff?"
"She's not here. But you are. And you look like her with your brown hair and your dark eyes—eyes that are filled with fear right now. But you don't have to be afraid. You won't feel anything."
My heart was beating so fast, I thought it might jump out of my chest. "What did you do to Natalie?"
"You'll find out soon enough." An evil smile twisted his lips. "This will be fun. Not as good as planning, waiting, lying… But the spontaneity will be a nice change."
"Were there other women, too?"
"Of course. But no one came looking for them.
I didn't think anyone would come looking for Natalie.
She told Dorothy she was all alone. Her family hated her.
Her ex had moved on. No one cared about her anymore.
She was going to start over in a new place, create a new life.
That's what they all think they're going to do, what they all want to do. "
His voice took on a dangerous, nostalgic quality that made me shiver.
"Dorothy sent the women here? To you?"
"No. She wouldn't do that. She just told me about them, about the ones that made her sad, the ones who were all alone in the world, the ones who looked like you. She had no idea she was helping me choose."
"Choose?" I echoed, my voice barely above a whisper as the horror of it all settled in on me.
"Natalie wanted to be loved, to have someone obsessed with her, to feel that passion, and I provided that."
"She didn't choose you," I said, certain of that.
"She didn't know what she wanted. I did. I needed her. I needed all of them."
"Why?"
"You ask a lot of questions, Cassidy."
"If I'm never leaving this basement, then what's the harm in answering them?"
"You're right. It won't matter."
"Why did you pick women who looked like Natalie?"
"Because I couldn’t have the one I wanted. But I could have them."
"Who did you want?" I asked.
He stared back at me for a long minute. "This is actually perfect that it's you."
"Why?"
"Because you're David's daughter. And David was one of the reasons I couldn't have her."
Realization dawned on me. "Are you talking about Lily?"
"They fought over her all the time—Tom and David. Lily went back and forth between them. She couldn’t say no, even though they didn't treat her right. Tom hurt her physically, and David hurt her heart because he was going to leave her. I was right there, but she didn't see me; she only saw them."
"You killed Lily because she didn't want you?"
"No," he shouted, anger raging through his eyes, making me inch back toward the wall behind me. "She killed herself. Because of them, because of what they did to her."
"Then why didn't you kill your brother? It sounds like it was his fault that she committed suicide. Why hurt innocent women? Why are they paying for what Lily did?"
"Because they were just like her, running away from men who loved them, choosing the wrong person to make them happy. When the right person is there in front of them."
He was sick, delusional, definitely not in his right mind.
I didn't know if that condition came and went, if he was normal sometimes and other times not, but it didn't matter.
Right now, he was nothing but pure evil, and he was going to kill me.
I couldn't let that happen. Not just because I really didn't want to die, but because I couldn't let him get away with another murder.
"Trying to think of a way out, aren't you?" he asked, his momentary rage turning back to confidence and a nauseating interest in me. "They all did. They all got the same look on their faces that you're wearing now."
"How many?"
He shrugged. "Not that many fit what I wanted, what I needed."
"And you've never felt any guilt about taking their lives?"
"Well, they didn't really want to live in the end, but, sure, sometimes I thought I was sick, that I took after my old man more than I wanted to. He used to beat us up, you know. And there's a good chance he killed my mother. I didn't want to be like him, but sometimes the dark takes over."
"You can choose something else," I said.
"That's what Natalie said, too."
"How did you get her to this house?" I asked, desperate to stall as long as I could. "Did you use Dorothy to lure her here?"
"No. I used my brother."
Surprise dropped my jaw, and he smiled. "You weren't expecting that answer, were you?"
"I wasn't."
"Tom and Ellen have their own operation going.
You think they're better than me? They're not.
They've been trafficking women for years.
And it's always the same routine. The women are driven to the shopping center in Cork Harbor before dawn.
Then they walk to the bus stop and get on the number twenty.
At the first stop, they get picked up and taken away.
Sometimes, I'm the one who takes them away.
They think they're on some journey to freedom, but they're not. "
I didn't really understand because fear was making it difficult for me to think. "What about Jessica? She got on a boat?"
"I don't know what happened to her. She didn't follow the routine. Maybe they changed it up after all the people came asking questions about Natalie."
"And your brother doesn't know what you're doing?"
"That's the best part. Tom thinks he knows it all, but he knows nothing." Jeff's hands clenched into fists. "My brother destroys everything and everyone that he touches. And no one ever holds him accountable."
"So you kill innocent women to punish him?"
"To punish all of them!" His voice rose, echoing off the concrete floor. "Every woman who thinks she can walk away from me."
I glanced at the stairs. He was blocking them, but maybe if I could get past him—
"Don't even try. You'll just end up in more pain before this is over," Jeff said, reading my intention. "And there's nowhere to go, no one to help you. Do you think anyone in this town will be anything but happy if you disappear?"
"I'm not like the others. I'm Ellen's granddaughter. You don't think she'll look for me?"
"She has too many sins of her own to cover up."
"Someone will figure out what you're doing, and then you'll be the monster and your brother will be the hero when he puts you in jail. He'll win again, just like he always does."
"Shut up."
"But you could turn against him," I continued. "You said that Tom and Ellen are trafficking women. Why don't you tell people that? Why don't you take him down? Then you'll be the good one, and he'll be the bad one."
"I said shut up!" Jeff lunged forward, catching my arm and throwing me back against the hard wall behind me.
My head bounced off the ragged wood, sending a shocking pain through my temple.
But as he came toward me, I kicked him hard in the groin, the way I'd learned in the self-defense class I'd taken when I moved to Manhattan.
He let out a yelp of pain as he staggered backward. I tried to run around him, but he grabbed me again and dragged me toward him, a furious rage giving him what seemed like superhuman strength.
I twisted and kicked, finally breaking free. I scrambled away from him, my eyes darting around the basement for something I could use as a weapon. Old gardening tools leaned against the far wall, but Jeff was between them and me.
He stood slowly, touching his lip, which I'd somehow made bloody with my fist. He looked at his fingers with something like surprise, then smiled.
"Good. I was hoping you'd make this interesting.
" This wasn't the jovial man I'd met at the inn.
The one who'd joked about Dorothy's stories being better than reality TV.
That man was gone, replaced by something dark and twisted and utterly insane.
"Let me go. I won't tell anyone. I'll leave town."
"You had your chance to leave, but you didn't take it. You wanted your listeners to feel what Natalie felt. But they won't feel it; you will."
He rushed forward, shoving me backward, and I crashed into a stack of boxes. They tumbled down around me, old Christmas decorations and moth-eaten blankets spilling across the floor.
I grabbed a heavy box—filled with something solid—and swung it at him as hard as I could.
It connected with his shoulder. He stumbled, cursing, and slugged me in the face.
I made it to my knees before he caught me, throwing me down again, and as we hit the concrete floor together, the impact drove the air from my lungs.
His weight pressed down on me, crushing. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think.