Chapter 35 #2
He heard Kara screaming for him, and he prayed she had left with Nathan, that she didn’t come back inside, that she didn’t
risk her life. He was not going to die in here.
Behind them, the stairs caved in with a thunderous crash, an entire section folding in on itself.
The house had gone crooked, like it was being swallowed sideways into the basement. He heard nothing except the screaming
of wood, glass, metal. Every step was a fight uphill. Walls buckled. The floor dipped then rose. A cabinet fell in the kitchen
with a deafening bang, hitting him in the shoulder and causing him to lose his grip on Lily. The table slid across the scarred linoleum floor.
“Keep going!” Matt shouted above the noise of destruction. He reached out for Lily again, sparing a glance behind him when
he couldn’t feel her.
She tripped and went down hard on one knee. She screamed and reached out.
“I got you!” he said as he yanked her up just as the table slammed into his side, knocking the wind out of him. He barely
held on to her wrist. He would not let go.
The windows blew out one by one all around them, glass bursting inward. The sting of shards slashed his cheek, but he didn’t
stop. He saw the light from the open front door. It was higher than it should be as the center of the house was falling down
into the basement . . .
And then he smelled it.
Gas.
It hit him like a wall: thick, raw, metallic. The stove. He looked—just a glance—and saw the pipe ripped loose from the wall,
the stove askew.
“Faster! It’s gonna blow!”
The front door swung open and closed as the house undulated, a gaping escape that looked farther away than it should have.
He lunged toward it, dragging Lily as the floorboards dropped away in chunks behind them.
Almost there. Almost there.
The floor heaved. The house jerked to the side like something had punched its foundation. Lily’s fingers slipped from his.
“Matt!” Lily screamed.
He lunged for her, but she was gone.
Audrey turned onto the long gravel road as the factory loomed in the distance. She smiled.
Her factory. Her prison.
When she’d bought this property last year, it had been the farmhouse she was most interested in. It had a cage in the basement!
That’s when her plan for Emily Masters Rowe soon-to-be Henderson fully gelled. She’d break Emily. It would be easy.
The factory just came with the land, practically giving it away, and she hadn’t even gone inside.
Until Emily and her pathetic, crying husband escaped.
Garrett had to go back to work. No choice. If he disappeared now, the questions would start—too many questions. The police
were already sniffing around the resort, asking about the Hendersons. But Garrett wasn’t nervous. They had planned this down
to the smallest detail. No direct connection. A clean alibi. By the time the newlyweds vanished, Garrett was already halfway
through his shift. Six hours later, when no one was looking, they drove through the night to the farmhouse in Georgia with
two unconscious bodies in the back of the van.
They pushed them through the cellar doors like sacks of meat and the bodies rolled down the stairs. Splashed into the water
in the basement.
Maybe they could just let them drown, Audrey had thought. But that wasn’t fun. And when they heard Josh and Emily moving and groaning from below, they knew they had to restrain them.
They went around to the front of the house, down the basement stairs, and dragged the two half-conscious people into the iron
cage, the prison that had been built in the corner. Garrett had thought it was odd and disturbing that someone had a jail
cell in their basement, but Audrey thought it was exciting. Her own prison!
For bad, bad girls who looked down on her. For bad, bad girls who took things from her. Her man. Her job.
Garrett had to go back to work. Audrey stayed behind.
When Emily and Josh stirred—groggy, confused, scared—Audrey’s hands trembled. This was new. She’d never had prisoners before.
But fear melted fast. Curiosity took over. Then glee. She turned it into a game.
And it was delicious.
She put Emily on trial. Dragged her into the center of the cellar like some medieval court, tied her to a chair, and listed
every petty, poisonous thing Emily had done to Audrey. Stolen Charlie. Stolen her idea. Stolen her promotion. She presented
the “evidence” with theatrical flair—the acting coach who kicked her out of his classes clearly didn’t recognize talent—grinning
while Emily sobbed and shook her head. Denial, denial, denial.
Until the hunger set in.
After a day and a half without food or water, Emily cracked. She confessed everything through tears and cracked lips. Josh,
her new husband who sat crying in the cage, told her he loved her.
Pathetic.
And then Emily thought Audrey would let her go. Begged her.
“Please. Please let us go. I won’t tell anyone.”
Right. Did she think that Audrey was stupid? That she’d fall for that?
Yet . . . Garrett wasn’t due back until tomorrow. Audrey still had time. So she invented another game.
A dangerous one.
She left the basement to set up the traps, and an hour later returned, unlatched the cage, and whispered, “Run.”
She assumed they’d take the road—the obvious way out—straight into her row of bear traps, perfectly hidden beneath leaves
and dirt. But they didn’t. They bolted through the fields instead, toward the old abandoned factory.
Wrong move. And for a minute, Audrey was worried. That she had made a mistake, that they would get away, that she’d have to
leave everything behind, including the love of her life.
Except, it ended up being the perfect move.
Audrey retrieved her gun then followed them silently through the fields. They were crying, telling each other to be quiet,
breathing heavily, slowing down as they fought the increasing wind. Audrey stayed fifty feet behind, the moon only a tiny
crescent obscured by clouds. It was going to rain tonight. It was all she could do to not laugh out loud. They thought they
were getting away!
Maybe she’d shoot them and dump them in the creek. Except . . . if someone found them, they’d find her farmhouse and the factory
and Audrey wouldn’t be able to use her new prison again.
Audrey watched from the edge of the overgrown field while Emily and Josh stood outside the door and debated what to do. They
were both angry, upset, and Audrey knew their so-called love was fake as they argued. Emily wanted to hide. Josh wanted to
find help. Finally, Audrey grew bored and fired her gun into the ground. “Time’s up,” she said.
They ran into the factory and Audrey came in behind them, just in time to watch as Josh ran into a pile of junk and impaled himself. Emily screamed, but didn’t even try to help him as his body jerked and blood poured out of both his mouth and the hole the rebar made in his chest.
The bitch. Typical.
Instead she ran farther into the factory. As Audrey pursued her, she realized this factory had so much potential! It would
be far more fun to play here than in her farmhouse prison.
Emily ran blindly, falling, splashing through the water, trying to push herself up, wearing herself out.
Adrenaline could only take you so far, Audrey mused.
Thunder roared in the distance, and Emily screamed, tripped, collapsing in the shallow water that had flooded the factory.
Audrey came up from behind, shined her flashlight. Emily was sobbing, gasping, falling into the water and pushing herself
up. She was bleeding, too, her face all cut up. Emily reached out for her, begging for help, calling her by a name no longer
hers.
“Clara . . . please . . .”
Audrey just smiled. And watched.
Watched her fade.
Then she handcuffed her to a piece of machinery and Emily didn’t even fight her.
The next twelve hours were intoxicating. Audrey wandered the factory’s maze of metal and rot, every corner a potential trap,
every hallway a perfect dead end. She could see it all so clearly now.
This wasn’t just a hiding place.
It was an arena. A stage.
With Garrett’s help, they would build the most exquisite escape house the world had ever seen. It would be a masterpiece.
It would be so much fun.
And it had been fun until the stupid FBI ruined it.
Audrey stopped the van next to the hidden door around the side of the factory. She loved having this game room. She was going to miss it. The two agents deserved to die slowly for what they did, but her gun was going to have to end them.
It really wasn’t fun to shoot people. She’d only done it once, and that bitch hadn’t even had the good sense to fall over
and die and make Audrey’s life easier. No. She had to run, creating untold problems until Audrey finally caught up with her.
That was then. Now Audrey was smarter.
She pulled up her phone and checked the cameras to make sure her prey were still on the factory floor.
Frowned. The cameras weren’t working. Those fucking asshole feds! What had they done?
Then she realized she didn’t hear the generator.
Gun in hand, she walked around the side of the factory and stared at the broken window.
No.
No!
When had they gotten out? It couldn’t have been long ago, because there wasn’t anyone around. No cops, no sheriff, no feds,
no one. But her heart pounded; she couldn’t stay here for long.
There was blood—good, they were hurt. Maybe dying. She walked along the unpaved road a few feet, looked toward her house,
which she couldn’t quite see.
Could they have . . . ?
She pulled up her phone and looked at the cameras at the farmhouse.
They were down, too.
She growled. These people were just impossible. They couldn’t just play by the rules! She hit the archive and watched in high speed for a few minutes.
Damn, damn, damn!
She would just have to take care of all of them.
Audrey started toward her van when she heard something in the distance. She stopped, turned toward the house, hand up to shield her eyes from the late afternoon sun.
She saw a flash of something, then heard a distant crash, as if boulders rolled down a cliff like an avalanche.
Then . . . nothing . . . but she knew what was going to come.
One.
Two.
Three.
Boom!
An explosion shook the ground beneath her. A fireball exploded where the house had been.
She sneered. Served them right thinking they could cheat the game. No one cheated her. She won.
I won, I won, I won!
Clara Audrey Amber Hope Reid always won.
She laughed and climbed back into her van.
Then she stopped laughing. There was a chance—a small chance—that the FBI agents had reached out to someone. A small chance
that she might be exposed . . . She couldn’t go back for Garrett. Not yet.
Soon. Maybe.
Instead of heading south toward Jacksonville, she headed north, then east, toward her family’s vacation house.
She called Garrett. He answered on the first ring.
“Babe?”
“Boom.”
“You’re sure?”
“I saw.”
“Okay. Franklin screwed us. We need to use the escape plan.”
“I am.”
He was silent.
“Tomorrow, slip away and join me,” she said.
“That wasn’t the plan.”
“I’m concerned that the FBI might—might—be onto me. I’m not coming back.”
“They’re watching me.”
“Unfortunately, the lawyer’s family went boom, too.”
Silence. And in the silence, Audrey heard weakness. She had loved Garrett because he wasn’t weak. Now she didn’t know what
to think.
“Audrey,” he said, his voice low. “You killed a kid?”
She frowned. He knew that might be a possibility, and he sounded so . . . critical. And worse, he knew not to say those kind of words on the phone.
“Of course not,” she snapped.
He sighed. “Okay. Okay. Just—I’ll find a way to leave. I’ll meet you on the island. Are you sure your friends won’t be there?”
“I’m sure,” she said.
She loved Garrett, but she had never told him she (sort of) owned half the fucking island. It was easier to say it belonged
to friends, anyone except her very, very, very wealthy family.
“It might be a day or two.”
“Don’t be followed. I love you, baby. I can’t wait to see you.”
“I love you, too . . . Clara.”
She froze. She had never told Garrett that name. She almost forgot it was her name.
“Who’s Clara?” she asked, maybe waiting a beat too long, her heart pounding.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He knew. Who told him? How did he find out? “It was a long time ago. My parents disowned me. I didn’t want the name they gave
me.”
“Do you remember what I told you when we first met?”
She swallowed. “Of course. No lies, no games.”
“You lied to me.”
“I didn’t. I legally changed my name to Audrey. It’s more sophisticated than Clara. Don’t make a big deal about this.”
“I’m not,” he said. “I’ll see you soon.”
He hung up.
Dammit. She had a lot of thinking to do.
She loved Garrett, really she did, but it might be time for a divorce, of sorts.
Her instincts were sharp, and there had been just a teeny tiny hesitation in his voice. He doubted her. And she couldn’t have
that.
How did he find out? Had the FBI . . . had they gone through her house? Through her personal items? Those bastards. And they told him, which was why Garrett thought that Franklin wasn’t with them. Franklin facilitated everything, the asshole.
Damn him. She was glad his family was dead, he deserved to suffer.
She’d go to the island, but she wouldn’t be there when Garrett arrived. If they were meant to be, he would find her.
And if they weren’t meant to be? He would be dead.