Chapter 29
29
ELLIE
I t was either the loud one-sided argument that pulled me to consciousness or the sharp pain spiking between my pinched shoulder blades. A breath hissed through my clenched teeth when I attempted to lift my head. My brain rattled around in my skull at the small movement, making the mind-numbing throbbing worsen.
I’d felt this kind of pain before, at Jacob’s hand, when he’d disciplined me for sinning against him or The Church. The headache, rolling nausea, and insistent ringing in my ears all pointed toward a concussion. At least I wasn’t dead.
Wait.
Why do I have a concussion?
My lashes stuck together as I peeled my lids apart, blinking several times to clear the haze hindering my vision. Dated light brown kitchen cabinets were the first thing to come into focus. A sense of familiarity pulsed, stirring unease. The galley kitchen with appliances from the eighties and the brown-and-cream linoleum floor also struck me as familiar.
“Brett?” My voice was raspy from either screaming or disuse. I hoped the latter.
“Don’t say his fucking name to me.” Ryan’s voice crackled with the ferocity of his yell.
I followed the anger-filled voice to find him pacing the living room. Fingers interlocked behind his head, mumbling under his breath, Ryan marched from one end of the room to the other. His wild eyes flicked my way with every turn before he mumbled something under his breath again and his focus drifted back to the maroon carpet.
Right. Okay. I’m good. I can handle this. I’ve seen every episode of Criminal Minds , watched every serial killer documentary, true crime episode, and memorized every word out of Chandler’s mouth like it was profiling scripture since he arrived in Orin.
I know what’s happening.
He was self-destructing. No, that wasn’t the word. I searched my memories for the right one.
Spiraling. That was what Chandler used once.
Not that it mattered, because either word meant the same thing.
That I was fucked.
Based on what Chandler profiled, the killer was careful, planned the abductions when no one was around, and even chose victims who couldn’t be identified. He also kept the victims for months, which meant he planned his time with the women so others didn’t notice he was missing.
Which begged the question: How in Hades did Ryan get away with all that for almost two years without Brett noticing? Unless….
I watched Ryan with a small level of respect, as disgusting as that sounded. I assumed Brett’s drinking was self-induced, but what if Ryan either encouraged it or added to his nightly drinks to make him intoxicated?
One thing was for certain, I had to calm him down to give Chandler time to find and save me.
Right. I can do this. What do I know from the profile and evidence that might help?
Witch’s cold cunt.
Me. I’m the key to all this.
Worst. Life. Ever.
No, wait. That wasn’t fair. Chandler was right with the life being a book analogy. Jacob was a chapter, as were Brett and Chandler. And now this time with Ryan was a new chapter. A super shitty one. But the previous, the one where Chandler ignited a passion in me I’d never felt before and viewed me as a woman, not an object, that one was pretty great.
The best, really.
Fine.
This. Chapter. Sucked. A. Witch’s. Cold. Tit.
Now back to the dilemma.
He wanted me home. Well, I was “home,” and he was still freaking the fuck out. Now what?
Then it clicked. Sure, I was home, but I was taken , which meant he couldn’t keep me here for long until someone, i.e. Chandler or Alec, came along to take me away. Unless I convinced Ryan otherwise.
For this to work, I had to be persuasive. Good thing I had plenty of practice hiding my disgust and rage from men who controlled me.
I grazed the tip of my tongue along my dry lips and attempted to ease the pain that burned like a hot poker between my pinched shoulder blades.
“Thank you,” I rasped. Lost in his delusional world, Ryan didn’t hear the faint words. I cleared my throat, cringing at the pain it produced. “Ryan,” I said louder, catching his attention. “Thank you for saving me.”
His feet paused instantly. Those thick dark brows drew in tight.
“I’m scared of Brett.” The shake in my voice wasn’t added for dramatic effect, it was real adrenaline making my entire body quake. “And you saved me. I’m sorry I hurt you.” Dipping my chin, I faked remorse.
Ryan shook his head. “No,” he snapped. Closing his eyes, he inhaled deep. “There’s no way out now.”
“Sure there is,” I said, my voice soft and comforting. “We just have to figure out a way to be together, right?”
“I killed my brother for you.” He sat on the back of the couch and crossed his arms expectantly.
I swallowed down my revulsion and forced a grateful smile. “Because he hurt me.”
Ryan rolled his eyes. Wrong answer, apparently.
“Because he videoed what was mine. I overheard the Fed last night confronting my brother and what he admitted. Those moments were special between you, Brett, and me.”
“You?” I squeaked. Surely I heard him wrong. Please let me have heard him wrong.
“Come on, Ellie, don’t play na?ve with me. You knew I was watching.”
I didn’t. Holy Hades, I didn’t. But that was the wrong thing to admit in this moment. I had to build trust. Yeah, yeah, that was it. I had to make him see me as a human again, not a problem to be solved.
“You’re right.” I looked to the floor before peering up through my lashes. “I knew, and I liked it.”
I held down a gag at the proud, cocky-ass smile that contorted his face.
How did I not see this side of him before now? Four years, I’d known him. But not this him. No, this side was, evil… deviant… terrifying.
“It was then that I knew you were the one.” He stood and rubbed at the seam of his jeans. “Only with you could I simply watch, with no touching, no pain, and have this”—he cupped himself—“come to life. All the others, none of them could affect me like you.”
“I’m very impressed with how you kept this a secret for so long.” I gave him my best adoring expression, hoping to cover up my disgust.
“I was taught well.” He laughed. “You never knew my father. He was a kind man… to everyone but his family.” A dark look passed over his face. “Until one day the anger stopped. It was like a new person had moved into our home. He’d go walking every night, said it was his way to relieve the stress of the job. One night I followed him and, well….” He chuckled. “My father wasn’t just walking. I trailed him to the barn I still use today. Peeked through a gap in the boards and watched him with some unfamiliar woman. Every night he went back to her. She never left, always there waiting for him to beat her, then fuck her.”
I nodded along, acting riveted with the story instead of trying not to piss my pants with fear.
“One night I took my own walk, an hour before my father, to see what all the fuss was about. That was my first time having sex.” He smiled like he was cherishing the memory. “I mimicked what my father did before fucking her. She cried, asking me for help and to let her go. But after, when for the first time in my life my dick was hard enough to do anything with, there was no way I would. I was zipping up my pants when my father came in.
“I just knew he’d be furious with me. But he wasn’t. He simply smiled, slapped me on the back, and said, ‘Don’t tell your mother.’ After that, he dropped his pants and fucked her in front of me, beating her as he did until she bled out on the mattress.”
There was no holding back. I pitched forward as far as I could and vomited on the floor.
A snarl of disappointment had me snapping my head back up, making the room spin.
“Sorry, I think I have a concussion,” I said, adding a tremble to my lower lip. “I feel nauseous.”
A flash of concern wrinkled his brow, but it faded as quickly as it appeared.
“I didn’t hit you that hard,” he said defensively. “If you thought that was bad, just wait.”
That would be a hard no for me.
Stall. I had to stall him, get back on track for calming him down, not focusing on the torture he wanted to inflict.
“He sounds like a good man,” I said, nearly choking on the words, and it had nothing to do with the rest of my menial stomach contents still trying to escape. “Did he teach you how to find your…?” I looked at him expectantly. I didn’t want to say “victims”; that could signal to him that I believed what he did was wrong. Which it was, but pretty sure pointing out to the crazed killer holding me hostage that he was in the wrong was the last thing I needed to do.
“Pets,” he finished for me. “And yes, we had to replace that one. First we cleaned together, relishing our moments with the one and planning what we’d do with the next. Then we hunted.”
Apt term.
“We’d wait. It takes a lot of patience waiting for the right pet. But eventually the waiting paid off, and one would come walking down the road a little broken, a lot dazed at what they’d talked themselves into.”
“The Church,” I tested.
“Yes. People come and go from there often, but finding the right one, the one that wouldn’t be missed or looked for….” He smiled and shook his head. “I never knew my father was also doing that so the pets couldn’t be identified after we were done with them. Not that we ever allowed that. Digging a hole deep enough so the animals didn’t dig up the body was easier with two men.”
I nodded along, the dutiful submissive pet listening with rapt attention. All while my mind whirled with ideas of how to get the fuck out of the situation. I couldn’t just wait like a damn damsel in distress for Alec or Chandler. No, I had to help myself. And keeping him talking seemed to be my best plan of attack for now.
“And the beautiful hair you sent me, that was a gift, right?”
His smile fell, and the disappointed look that settled over his features had my stomach sinking.
“Yes, that day in my office, you said you didn’t really like the black, that you missed your old hair.” Fuck, I did say that. “I was at a bar in Waco, and I saw her. Her hair was just like yours used to be. Long, thick, beautiful blonde, and I knew you’d like it.”
“I loved it,” I said through clenched teeth.
“Then you left it to go with that Fed.” He took a menacing step toward me. I fought against the urge to shrink into myself. “You left my gift behind. And you let him touch you, touch what’s mine.”
And it was amazing.
Again, wasn’t saying that out loud.
“You watched us?” I said, smiling like I was happy with the thought.
“From the window. I wanted to see your face when you opened the gift. But you ruined it.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered and turned my face downward.
“Don’t you see you’re the only one who can save me, Ellie?”
“How can I save you?” I asked, truly curious. Maybe I was the one being selfish by not giving in and saving future victims’ lives. If I just gave in to him, no one else would get hurt. Wasn’t that what I was taught all my life? To give all of myself for others?
“Because this—” He grabbed my hand and held it to the front of his jeans, grinding his semi-hard cock into my palm. “—this only happens with you. I didn’t even know it worked without inflicting pain before you. You cured me those two years we were together.”
Also known as when he watched his brother and I participate in BDSM from the shadows. Not that Brett was much better, since he’d videoed our intimate moments and gave them to Jacob as payment.
“I hate him,” I said, the truth and vindication making my voice louder and hard.
“Who?”
“Your bother. He videoed me. I didn’t know. Why?” A single hot tear slipped down my cheek. “Why would he do that?”
“Do you want me to kill Jacob too?” He knelt before me, searching my face, waiting for my answer.
And I debated.
Truly debated.
But I couldn’t have that on my conscience. Even if Jacob deserved it. He’d get what was coming to him at some point in life, just not by Ryan’s hands because I asked him to kill my husband.
“No, but thank you. You really do love me,” I said. Ryan nodded. “Then we need to figure this out, don’t we?”
He popped up to stand, pacing around the oval dining table. “We could run,” he said to himself. Long, deep lacerations littered his hand, a few still bleeding enough to warrant stitches, but he acted like they weren’t there or didn’t feel the pain.
“But this is our home,” I reminded him. I used the word he’d used. This place was special to him. We couldn’t go on the run; I’d never be seen again. I’d never see Chandler again. Just the thought was like a rusted spoon stabbing into my heart.
“They’ll come after me,” he said. “They’ll take you. I won’t let that happen.” With his uninjured hand, he withdrew a handgun from the small of his back.
Devil’s saggy balls.
“They won’t,” I shouted. “They won’t. They still think it’s Brett who killed all those… pets. You set it up perfectly.” For added effect, I batted my lashes. “They think everything was Brett’s doing.”
“Not after what I did to the Fed and Ranger.”
My stomach rolled. “What did you do?” My words were more of a high-pitched squeak. “We can get out of it, right?”
“I took them outside of town.” I swallowed, lingering on his every word. “Led them to a barn I told them Brett might hide in.” If he says he killed them, if he killed Chandler and Alec, I’ll do whatever it takes to make him kill me too. “Faked getting a call, then went back to the cars and slashed their tires so they couldn’t follow me.”
I let out the breath I was holding with a whoosh. Ryan paused his pacing and stared me down from across the room.
“I’m relieved. That’s an easy excuse.”
“How?” he demanded.
“You did it because Brett made you.” I licked my lips, the words barely having a chance to form in my head before leaving my mouth. “All of this, Brett made you do it. And they’ll never find him, right?”
“Right,” he said, running a hand through his shaggy light brown hair. “He’s in the trunk.”
Gross.
“See, there’s our plan. When they come here, which I’m guessing they will to look for you and me, then you tell them Brett made you do it all.”
“And the dead cop? They have video surveillance in the station.”
“It’s been down for months,” I said quickly. That was a bald-faced lie, but due to the circumstances, I highly doubted all these lies I’d accumulated in the past half hour would be held against me at Judgment Day. “Brett did that too. And brought me here.”
“And—”
The rumble of an approaching diesel engine had his mouth snapping shut. Racing to the front window, he used the end of the gun to peer through the thin metal blinds. He cursed and gripped the back of his head, mumbling to himself.
A surge of panic overrode the forming details of my plan. “Who is it?”
“Two people. I think one’s that loner rancher who never comes to town but to drive through to the interstate.”
“And the other?” My heart thundered. Half of me wanted it to be Chandler, but the other half needed him as far away from this crazy party as possible.
“That Fed you’re fucking.” Ryan’s eyes had a crazed look in them. Pointing the barrel at my chest, he sneered. “I will not let him take you from me. If I die, you die.”
“No, please, Ryan,” I begged. “It was Brett, remember?” I sobbed. “It was Brett. It was Brett.” I whispered it over and over again, hoping it would convince him that he still had a chance to get away with all that he’d done.
“No.” He shook his head hard. “This is the end. This is where it all ends for us.”
“No,” I cried. The truck’s loud engine cut off, the rumble dying and leaving the stark silence of the country in its place. “Please, Ryan. Don’t do this.”
Storming forward, he wrenched me off the chair with a hard tug. I fell against him, unable to move due to something securing my feet to the chair legs. Sealing me to his side, he wrapped an arm around my waist, turning us both so we faced the front door.
I bit my lower lip until a sharp metallic tang hit my tongue to keep my sobs at bay.
A hot prickly cheek sealed against my left side as smooth, cold metal pushed to my right temple.
And we waited.
I watched the brass doorknob, waiting for it to twist.
Waiting for my early death.
I’d survived so much in my life, yet this was the end.
At least I had one good chapter.
I lived once.
Shutting my eyes, I said a silent goodbye to Chandler, to Alec, to Janice and Stan. To the town that took me in when it didn’t have to and gave a home to a broken woman who didn’t exist.
When I reopened them, the tears had dried.
I was ready.
Ready for this to be the end of my book.
The end of it all.