Chapter 41
41
ALTA
“ S urprised?” Sarah quipped as she nonchalantly stepped toward the man groaning on the ground. “Jerry, Jerry, Jerry,” she said like she was disappointed. “You had to go and fuck all this up, didn’t you? Fucking horny bastard.”
This was a dream. It had to be.
Sarah squatted beside the man and turned back to look at me, her eyes narrowing. A flash of anger passed through her eyes as she pursed her lips and turned back to him. “Did you break his nose?”
I kept quiet, not because I knew it was best, but because shock still had a grip on my vocal cords. Even if I wanted to say something, there was no way I could.
“Good for you. Stand up for yourself. I like that in a woman. We don’t need men like him thinking we’re property, am I right?”
She turned, obviously expecting an answer I still wasn’t able to give.
“Jerry, no touching, remember?” Sarah’s cold, detached laugh was more terrifying than her calm voice. “See what you don’t know is I know about the last one. One fucking rule.” She pressed the barrel of the gun into his temple. His eyes went wide. “It was fun while it lasted. Bye, bye, Jerry.”
“I didn’t touch them. I fucking swear. We had a deal. I didn’t?—”
I shrieked as Jerry’s skull exploded, scattering blood and bits across the room. In the now deafening silence, she turned, her face splattered with blood, and smiled.
She was crazy. Sarah was mad.
Slowly she stood and wiped the gore from her hands down the dark denim jeans she wore. Turning, she gave me a sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry he hit you, but nothing else, right?” Her gaze shifted down to my disheveled sweatshirt. A frown marred her lips. “Right. Well, enough of that. He’s gone. And you know what? Good riddance. He served his purpose, and when I learned that he touched the last girl, I knew his time was short. See, you have to keep men like him in line or he’d just be raping every woman we brought in here.”
“What’s going on? Sarah?”
“Damn, for someone so observant, you’re pretty stupid, you know that?”
“I don’t understand.” I shook my head. “Tell me what’s going on.” The metal wire sliced deeper into my wrists as I attempted to wiggle free. Warm trickles of blood dripped steadily down my palms and leaked off my curled knuckles.
“Seriously? You don’t understand? This, Birdie.” A sneer tugged at her upper lip at my name. “This was all about you. Every woman, the move from the Smokies to here. You were one hard bird to find. I spent so long tracking you to Tennessee, and what did you do right before I got there? Up and left, again.”
“Me?” I had to keep her talking. The longer she spoke, the more time Cas had to save me.
“You sound surprised. Yes, you. See, you took someone from me, and now you’re going to pay for it.”
I racked my brain, trying to figure out where our paths had crossed before she came to volunteer.
“Who? Who did I take?”
“My brother.” Keeping the pistol in her hand, Sarah paced the small room, not paying any attention to the pieces of skull and brain matter she trampled on. “The one person who ever loved me, who stood up for me, and you took him from me.” I gasped at the gun barrel pointed between my eyes. “Do you know what it was like to get out of that crazy house, expecting to be greeted by the only person who ever loved you, and have them never show? Two days I waited for him. Nothing. It took me five months to track him to Texas, only to find out he was dead. Dead!” she shrieked.
Sarah gripped her head as her eyes slammed shut. “You killed him. And now I kill you. You fuck with me, I fuck with you back. I’m a damn lady like that.”
“He didn’t have a sister,” I said softly. Maybe she had it all wrong.
“When you grow up together, you’re brother and sister.” Her smile turned sinister. “Even if some of the stuff we did was a little more than sibling affection. Damn, that guy could fuck. Maybe because I trained him early on.”
“How early?” Keep her talking. Keep her talking. It was a stalling tactic, but at the same time, I was curious as to how all this came about.
Sarah used the gun barrel to scratch her temple, looking to the ceiling. “Let’s see here… I was seven and he was ten.” In a flash, her demeanor shifted. Teeth over her lips, she nibbled as her eyes flicked around the room. “I knew we’d make a great team the first time he saved me. He made it stop. Every time.”
“Someone hurt you.”
A cold, harsh demeanor slammed over her face. “They all did. And big brother Lance was there to save the day, every single time. Now how to save me always needed some… encouragement from me. The man was dull when it came to being creative with our punishments. That’s where I came in. See, we were a good team. Everyone ran from us. Hell, the system even protected us. No one wanted to announce the sexual abuse I was subjected to, which in turn led Lance to do the things he did. Me the mastermind and Lance the executor of my plans. It was perfect. We were perfect. Then you screwed everything up. What happened? What did you do to him?”
“Me?” I screeched. “He stalked me. He kidnapped me. He raped me.” Again I struggled against my binds, only making the pain worse. “He got what he deserved. Look at me. I’m a paranoid freak because of him.”
The wall groaned as Sarah leaned against it, crossing one ankle over the other. “Yeah, but here you are.” Her arms fanned out. “All that paranoia and still here you are, with me, like I planned it from the minute I found out who you were. Two years I tracked you. Two long years to plan this out.”
All of this was because of me. All those innocent women died because of me.
I shook my head, trying to rearrange my thoughts. No, not because of me. Because of her and the pervert with his head blown off. I was innocent. I’d always been innocent. Lance, Sarah—nothing was my fault. Even though I was yet again a captive of some twisted loon, a burden I’d carried these last ten years lifted.
It wasn’t my fault.
I pushed the pain out and focused on the information Sarah spewed. Some parts made sense, but others, not at all. “The orange juice. Sadie? Is Sadie in on all this too?” Things were falling into place, but the million unanswered questions burned in my mind. Being curious about the cause of all this kept my mind from focusing on the slicing pain in my wrists and deep throb of my cheekbones.
Sarah laughed with a broad smile. “That girl is crazy. You need to watch out for her. I mean, I’m legit crazy—have a certification and everything—but that girl is stupid crazy. Do you know how easy it was to talk her into doing my dirty work? Not once did she think a thing about it. Every bad thing I fed her about you, every tidbit I dropped to make her jealous of you, absorbed into that small brain of hers without another thought. This morning, she didn’t even think twice about me urging her to take those coffees and orange juice for you. I outright told her she had to make you drink it because you were too stressed lately to eat.” She shook her head in disbelief. “I used to enjoy the game with people like her, but then I grew bored, and well, boredom doesn’t sit well with me.”
“Ten years. Why now?”
Shoving off the wall, Sarah shrugged and went back to walking the room. “Well see, there was this one… let's call it a misunderstanding.”
“How so?”
“It's the watching I love. Seeing others live their lives, not knowing I’m observing their every move. Watching their intimate moments, the lies and deception families keep from each other. There was this one man, he was so cute—tall, dark, handsome, and filthy rich. I loved watching him. He had this power walk that made his ass bounce as he went to work in the morning.” She let out a deep, longing sigh. “And the way he fucked his wife with such vigor, that was my favorite to watch. Especially when they forgot to close the blinds all the way or thought no one could see through the glass back door.” Sarah’s eyes glazed over, lost in thought.
“So you kidnapped him too?”
“No, I took out the competition. Well, tried at least. I thought if she were ugly, he’d see me, want me.”
“I thought you loved Lance?”
She laughed. “I did love that bastard, but only when he was needed. We often went our separate ways to have our fun, but we always made it back to each other after.”
“I wasn’t the first for him, was I?” I gritted my teeth at the sharp wave of pain as my stomach rolled and cramped violently. Something was very, very wrong.
“Nope, but you were the first he touched. See, that had always been our rule. The only one he could touch was me. It was always my one fucking rule,” she yelled. “What did you do to him to push him over the edge? He knew, he knew what I’d do if I found out he forced you.”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Yes you did. You broke him, and then you killed him. Admit it!”
A sob broke from my lips, preventing me from responding. Even if I could say anything, what could I say to calm down an enraged psychopath?
“I know the truth,” she said through her hate-labored pants. “And that’s what matters. You broke him, and now I’ll break you. Come on, Birdie, get your ass up. It’s time.”