Chapter Twenty-Seven
Dylan
Pain throbs behind my eyes as consciousness returns in fragmented pieces.
My head feels like someone is driving a spike straight through my skull, and every shallow breath makes it worse.
My face aches, and my skin feels too tight.
Every heartbeat sends sharp flashes of light across the darkness pressing in on me.
I notice the cold next. It seeps into my flesh slowly, curling around my fingers, my face, the back of my neck. The air smells like damp wood and rot, thick and stale enough to taste.
I groan and try to move. Bad idea. The world tilts violently, nausea surging up hard enough that I have to clamp my teeth together to keep from throwing up.
“Easy.” The voice is rough, weak, shockingly familiar, but not Jim’s. Despite my churning insides, I force my eyes open.
Darkness, thick and heavy, broken only by a thin strip of pale light leaking through warped wooden boards, presses in from all sides. It takes a second for my vision to adjust, for shapes to start forming out of the shadows.
I’m on a floor. Dirt scrapes beneath me every time I move, splintered wood rough against the side of my face. And I’m not alone.
My gaze locks onto the figure slumped against the far wall. My breath catches.
“Matthew?” I rasp.
He shifts slightly at the sound of his name, a broken, painful movement. Metal rattles, the sound made louder by the unnatural quiet around us. Chained. Even in the low light, I can make out the metal links coiled beside him.
“Yeah,” he whispers.
“Jesus. You’re alive.” Relief slams into me, and I push myself up onto my elbows, fighting the dizziness. My head screams in protest, but I force it down, focusing on him.
Horror settles in fast. He looks... bad. Worse than anything I imagined.
His face is swollen, one eye nearly shut. Fresh bruises layered over older ones, a patchwork of violence that’s been building for days. His lip is split, dried blood crusted along his jaw.
He was always slender, but now he looks emaciated. The chain around his wrist is bolted into the wall, the metal biting into skin that looks raw and infected. He’s shivering. Not just from the cold. His skin has that flushed, uneven look that screams fever.
“Jesus,” I breathe.
He lets out a weak huff that might be a laugh, but turns into a cough, and the sound rattles in his chest. I push myself upright, swaying for a second before steadying. Every movement sends pain ricocheting through my skull, but I ignore it.
“Jim did this to you?” I ask.
He nods and frowns, his glassy gaze confused. “How... how are you here?”
“I was looking for you.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, through chattering teeth. Cold settles in my gut. I’d found Matthew alive, but he was clearly sick. If I didn’t get him out of here soon, he wouldn’t be alive for much longer.
“You have nothing to be sorry about.” I shrug off my coat and move toward him, crouching carefully. The cold bites at my skin instantly, seeping through my shirt as if I wore nothing at all, but there’s no time to care. I drape my coat over his shoulders.
He flinches at first, then relaxes slightly into the warmth.
“Thanks,” he murmurs.
“You’re burning up,” I tell him.
His eyes close, and he nods. “Been better.”
I need to get us out of here before Jim gets back and finishes what he started. I glance around the shed, looking for something to get us out of here.
It’s small, old. Probably one of the sagging sheds behind the inn I noticed the day we arrived in Coldwater. Matthew had been here, practically under our feet, all this time.
Tools hang from rusted hooks along one wall. A workbench sits near the door. No windows, just gaps between the boards that let in slivers of moonlight.
I shuffle across the small space to the door. Every step sends thin jolts of pain through my skull. I pull on the latch. The door rattles, but doesn’t open. I peer through the crack to see what’s keeping it closed. A padlock. Not great.
“Okay,” I say, more to myself than to Matthew. “We’re getting out of here.”
Matthew lets out a weak, humorless laugh before sinking into another round of wet, raspy coughs. “Good plan.”
He looks up and lifts his cuffed hand. The chain rattles ominously. “You got a key?”
“Working on it.” I start searching the workbench again, rooting through old tools and rusted nails for something I can use to free him, but there’s nothing useful.
I run my hands along the walls, checking for loose boards, weak spots, anything that might give us an advantage. There has to be something.
Behind me, Matthew coughs harshly, the sound tearing through the quiet. I know we’re running out of time.
My heart is pounding now, adrenaline cutting through the fog in my head.
Hunter would look for me. He had to. I just needed to stay alive long enough for him to find me.
A sound cuts through my thoughts, footsteps crunching through the snow, slow and deliberate.
I freeze, my breath lodging in my chest. Matthew goes still behind me. The footsteps stop right outside the door.
My pulse roars in my ears. The lock rattles, and I grab the first thing I find on the workbench, an old, rusted hammer.
The door creaks open. A flashlight beam fills the opening, and I squint and tighten my grip on the hammer.
My eyes adjust to the sudden brightness, and Nancy stands in the opening, framed by the dark night behind her. Not Jim.
Her face is pale, her expression tight and unreadable. Relief hits hard.
“Nancy,” I say quickly. “Thank God. You have to help us.”
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t rush forward. Doesn’t react the way someone should when they find two people trapped in a shed. One with his face beaten to a pulp, the other sick and shivering and chained to the wall. She doesn’t even look surprised.
“Nancy?” I try again, and her gaze meets mine.
“I was afraid of this,” she says, with a soft sigh, shaking her head as if disappointed.
“Nancy, you have to help us. Matthew needs a doctor. He’s sick.”
“You have to understand,” she says, but makes no move to release Matthew or step away from the opening.
“I had no idea what Jim was doing. I mean, I knew there was something, but I could never have guessed this.” Her eyes are glassy, distant, and something in her soft, monotone voice sends a chill down my spine.
“Of course not,” I agree, carefully. “No one could blame you, but you know now. Matthew needs a doctor, but he’s chained to the wall. Do you know where Jim keeps the key?”
Her gaze flicks to Matthew, then back to me, and she shakes her head.
“I should have realized something was wrong,” she says, stepping inside and closing the door behind her.
The light narrows again, with just the glow of the flashlight aimed at the floor, leaving us in dim shadow.
“Jim started acting strange almost from the moment Matthew checked in. But I didn’t know why and didn’t know about the others. ”
“Because of Matthew?” I ask carefully.
“He was anxious, nervous, while Matthew was in town,” she says.
“It made him angry and impatient. He was so short-tempered, snapping at me and the children. Not himself at all. I was sure Jim must have known Matthew somehow, but when I asked, he denied it and told me I was being paranoid and stupid.”
“Nancy,” I try to cut in, but she continues on as if I haven’t said anything.
“When Matthew left town, I thought Jim would settle down, and things would get better. But he was even more agitated.”
“Didn’t you wonder why he reacted that way to Matthew? Or why he spent so much time in this shed?” I ask her.
“I worried maybe they’d been lovers, and I was afraid to poke at that truth, afraid I’d lose everything. My children would lose everything.” She lets out a hollow laugh. “I had no idea just how terrible the truth really was.”
Her mouth presses into a flat line, and her hand trembles when she brushes imaginary fluff from her long, puffy gray coat.
“Eventually, Jim settled, and he was the man I’ve always known again.” Her eyes lock onto mine, mouth twisting in disdain. “Then you showed up.”
“Nancy—” I try, but she cuts me off again, taking a step inside, reaching back without looking to ease the door shut behind her.
“He never believed your story that you were boyfriends looking for your cousin.”
A cold, creeping dread prickles up my spine. “What do you mean?”
“He knew you were lying from the start,” she says. “You and your boyfriend. The private investigator. The ex-cop.”
My breath catches. Ice floods my veins. Had Jim done something to Hunter?
“He panicked,” Nancy continues. “Started withdrawing money from our savings. Large amounts.”
“He was planning to run,” I realize.
“He had to know that I would notice, but he didn’t care. I think he meant to kill me too.”
“Why would he do that?” I ask, even though I already know.
Her expression doesn’t change. “He was going to run, and I, and even our children, are loose ends. Then I found the videos, and I knew what I had to do.”
My stomach turns cold. “What did you do?” I ask.
“It was surprisingly easy,” she says. “He likes to pour himself a drink and watch the videos of what he does here in this shed. I saw them; I even saw what he’s done to you.
” Her gaze lifts to Matthew. He lets out a weak, broken sound before her gaze returns to me.
“A little monkshood in his whiskey, and that was that.”
Matthew goes completely still behind me.
“What did you do?” I ask. “Is Jim dead?”
Her eyes snap back to mine. “It was either him or me. What else could I do?”
“You did the right thing,” I say carefully. Her expression flickers, but she doesn’t respond. “You protected your family. That’s not a crime. That’s self-defense.”
Her shoulders sag slightly, as if the words hit somewhere deep.
“The police will understand,” I add quickly. “When they see what he did. What he’s been doing...”
Her face hardens. “They won’t.”
“They will.”
“No,” she snaps. “They’ll see a woman who poisoned her husband. They’ll see a monster.”
“They’ll see a mother who saved her family,” I insist.
“And what about him?” she demands, gesturing sharply toward Matthew. “What about everything Jim did?”
“That’s exactly why you need to tell the police,” I say. “If you let us go, if you help us, you’ll be a hero.”
Her eyes darken. “A hero whose children grow up with everyone knowing what their father was?”
I hesitate. She’s not wrong. The truth will destroy whatever normal life she and her children have left, but I need her to snap out of her trance-like state. I need her to call for help for Matthew.
I could rush her. Now, with the lock off the door, I could easily get past her, but I don’t trust her alone with Matthew while I try to get help.
Hell, I’m not even sure she’s telling the truth that Jim’s dead.
What if she’s wrong or lying and Jim comes back?
I need to get us both out of here together.
“Nancy,” I say, using my most reasonable tone. “You have to let us go. If you don’t, you’re the same as him.”
“No one can know what Jim did,” she says softly, slipping her hand into her coat pocket. Something shifts in her expression then. Something hard. “He was an evil man, but no one can know.”
A cold knot forms in my stomach. “You can’t cover this up,” I say quickly.
“Other people already know. Hunter knows, and Jim was right. Hunter is a private investigator, an ex-cop. He has partners who have been assisting with the investigation. There’s no way you can hide what Jim did, but if you let us go... ”
Her gaze sharpens. The flashlight trembles in her grip. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
Her hand comes out of her pocket holding a gun. My stomach drops. Time seems to slow.
“You don’t want to do this.” I force calm into my voice. “Think of your kids. You don’t want them to lose you and their father in one night.”
Tears shine in her eyes, but her grip on the gun doesn’t waver. “They’ll never lose me. No one knows you’re here, and no one ever will.”
“What about Jim?” I’m speaking too quickly, and I can hear the desperation in my tone. “Police will never know that you killed him to stop what he’d been doing, that it was practically self-defense. Matthew and I can tell them how you saved us.”
She huffs out a laugh. “Police will think he left. They’ll see how he took money from our savings, and they’ll think he ran off. No one will even know he’s dead. I am sorry it has to be this way.”
The barrel of the gun steadies on me, and my heart pounds so hard it feels like it might break through my chest. I don’t move. Don’t breathe.
Behind me, Matthew shifts weakly.
“Please, don’t—”
Nancy’s finger tightens on the trigger. The door explodes inward, the crack of ancient wood deafening. I stumble back at the same time Nancy jerks, startled. The gun wavers.
Hunter fills the doorway. Relief nearly knocks my legs out from under me.