WITSEC

Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

Later that night, we were all sitting in the living room. I was lounging on the couch getting my feet rubbed by Colt while Creed, Knox, and Keelan were sitting on the floor around the coffee table playing cards. We had a fire going and I found myself in a trance watching the flames as I ran my finger over the long scar that went up my inner arm.

“What are you thinking about, babe?” Colt asked.

I blinked a few times to break free. “I was thinking about how I got this scar.”

Knox, Keelan, and Creed went silent.

Colt’s hands stilled on my feet. “What made you think of that?”

“My hair,” I answered. It had been over a week and I still wasn’t used to it. I still saw her when I looked in the mirror. “I had built these walls inside my head to help keep that night buried in the furthest corner of my mind. I’ve been working to tear those walls down to face what happened that night. That day Logan showed you the pictures of all of Mr. X’s victims, I only told you what I could about the night my family was murdered because that was as far as I could get before I hit a wall.”

Creed, Knox, and Keelan had frozen in the middle of their game. None of them were looking at the hand of cards they each held. Instead, their focus was on me.

“It was the last wall and I thought it was going to be the hardest one I’d have to tear down. I don’t know exactly when it happened, but I discovered the wall wasn’t there anymore when I was getting stitched up at Micah’s shop.”

“I was surprised when Alaric asked you about your scars and you were so forthcoming on how you got them,” Colt said.

“I think that wall went down because I needed it to,” I said, and then let out a humorless huff of a laugh. “Which really shows how hard I’ve been making this whole facing-my-past crap for myself.”

“Why did you need the wall to go down?” Knox asked.

I met his eyes. “Because I needed to be able to look back at that night and learn anything I could from it, so I won’t make the same mistakes again.” I took my feet off of Colt’s lap and put them on the floor. Resting my elbows on my knees, I ran my finger over my scar again. “Keeping us safe is more important than my fear of the past.”

Knox put his cards on the table and got up to sit on the loveseat across the room on the other side of the coffee table. He locked his eyes with mine. “How did you get that scar?”

My finger stilled over the middle of it. Taking a second, I emotionally prepared myself for what I was about to do. I knew it was time and the best part was that I was finally ready to tell them. “If I’m going to tell you that, I should probably start from where I left off.”

“You were hiding in your father’s office with Shayla,” Colt said.

I nodded.

THAT NIGHT: PART TWO

When Shayla opened the door, light from the TV in the living room poured into the dark office. Very slowly, she peeked out.

“It’s clear,” she whispered and took my hand.

I followed her out. She squeezed my hand as we passed our dad on the couch. Tears silently rolled down my cheeks and off my chin when we had to step over our mom’s body.

We were headed for the front door. As soon as it was in sight, I noticed that the foyer light was on. If Shayla noticed, she didn’t seem to care. She began to walk faster.

As soon as we stepped into the bright foyer, Mr. X stepped out of our mom’s darkened office directly across the room from us. Seeing him, Shayla stopped in her tracks so suddenly that I ran into her.

A terrifying smile stretched across his face as his eyes landed on me. “There you are.”

With where he was standing, there was no way we’d get to the door without him catching us.

Coming to a decision before I could, Shayla yanked me toward the stairs, which were just to our left. We climbed up as fast as we could and just as we reached the top, I glanced back to see Mr. X taking his time coming up the stairs behind us.

The upstairs hall light was on. It had been off when I’d gotten home.

Shayla didn’t let go of my hand as she ran ahead of me down the hall. We passed her room. Then mine. The lights in our rooms were off. She led us into our parents’ room and let go of my hand just as we got inside. One of the lamps on our parents’ nightstands was on. Why did I feel like we’d been led here with light?

Shayla slammed the door closed, but it bounced open. “Oh my God,” she gasped when she reached for the doorknob and there wasn’t one. Just an open hole where it should have been.

I looked around for any idea of what to do and ran to our parents’ dresser. “Help me.”

Using all the strength I had, I started pushing the heavy wooden dresser toward the door. Shayla quickly joined me, and we both got the dresser up against the door.

Shayla pointed across the room. “The window.”

We both rushed to it. Shayla got there before me and pushed it open. We eyed the far, straight drop to the ground. “We can make it,” she said and started to put her legs out the window.

I grabbed her arm. “No, we won’t. That drop guarantees broken bones and we won’t get far if we can’t walk.”

“We’ll try to lower ourselves down as far as we can before we drop,” Shayla said frantically.

“Oooh, Shiii…loooh,” Mr. X sang from just outside the bedroom door.

“There’s no time,” I whispered.

Shayla stared out the window, torn, before nodding. “Hide,” she mouthed. She brought her leg back in and pulled me to the bed. “Get under here.”

I dropped to the floor and quickly crawled under the bed. When I was halfway under, Mr. X started shoving against the door. Shayla rushed to our parents’ closet. Just as I was fully hiding under the bed, Mr. X got the door open enough to squeeze sideways into the room.

All I could see were his boots. I held my breath as I watched those boots stand near the door for a moment and then slowly make their way over to the window we’d left open.

I did my best not to make a sound while silently hoping that he’d think we’d taken the risk of escaping through the window. He paused by the window for a few seconds before walking back toward the door. For a painful, pounding heartbeat, I thought he was going to leave the room, and then he rounded the bed and headed for the closet.

Shayla!

Moving as quietly as I could, I started scooting out from the opposite side of the bed, still watching Mr. X stand facing the closet. I was almost completely out from under the bed when he turned on the light in the walk-in closet and moved farther inside. I heard the rustling of hanging clothes being shoved to the side as I slowly sat up and peeked over the top of the bed at the closet.

Shayla let out a scream full of terror, making me jump into action. I leapt onto the bed and crawled across it quickly. Before I reached the other side, I spotted the unlit lamp on my dad’s nightstand. I grabbed it and yanked the cord from the wall as I came up behind Mr. X, who was dragging Shayla out from the corner of the closet where she’d been hiding.

Using all my strength, I swung the vase-shaped lamp at his head. The ceramic body of the lamp shattered against his skull and Mr. X let out a grunt before dropping to his knees. He loosened his grip on Shayla’s pink hair enough for her to get herself free and leap off the ground.

We both rushed out of the closet and toward the door. Mr. X had only scooted the dresser far enough to squeeze past it. Opening the door until it met the dresser, I slipped out of the room first. I only glanced back to make sure Shayla was right behind me. She was in the process of coming out of our parents’ room. I didn’t see Mr. X behind her. A little bit of relief flickered inside me, and I ran down the hall with my hand held out behind me for Shayla to take.

She never took it.

I passed my room and was almost about to pass hers when I heard her yelp. Stopping, I spun around, and my heart tried to lodge itself in my throat. Mr. X had her in his grasp. Her back was to his chest. He held her to him with an arm around her middle and his knife pressed so firmly to her throat, she was tilting her head back as if to get away from it.

“Please,” I begged with my hands out in front of me.

“Please what, my Shiloh?” he asked. There was such disgusting delight in his voice. It was as if this was all a game to him.

I took a tiny step forward. “Please don’t hurt her.”

Mr. X threw his head back laughing. “Oh, my darling, are you sure you want that? After all, she’s why I came for you.”

What?

“Shi,” Shayla whimpered, and tears started falling from her eyes.

Mr. X pressed his knife into her delicate skin a little more and a line of blood slid down her neck and over her collarbone.

“How do you think I knew they were going to take you from me?” he asked and stared down at Shayla. “Your sister here is the one who told me.”

“No,” Shayla forced out.

He leaned his mouth close to Shayla’s ear. “Don’t remember? You were in that cafe you love to go to with your friends. All you did was whine and complain to them about your pathetic spoiled life.” A smile stretched slowly across his face. “I was sitting at the table behind you listening. I was hoping to hear about how your father reacted to the video I sent him the day before, but you revealed so much more.”

All the blood in Shayla’s face seemed to drain and her wide eyes flicked to me.

Mr. X’s eyes rolled to me, too. “I don’t know why she is so precious to you. She is nothing more than a toxic tether holding you back from me, and I will cut you free from her.”

My sister’s brows scrunched together and something flickered in her eyes. Acceptance, maybe? Because in that moment, we both knew what was going to happen. She had accepted it—accepted that she was about to die, and she had done it so quickly while I stood there frozen, terrified, and unwilling to accept it.

“Shi, run!” she cried out just before Mr. X slid his knife across her throat, silencing her forever.

Blood poured like a crimson waterfall from her neck. Her gray eyes were wide, filled with terror as they held mine.

I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t look away.

I didn’t want to believe what I was seeing was real. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. I was certain that if I could close my eyes, what I was seeing would be undone.

With each passing second, I watched the spark of life within her eyes dim. My shared soul, the person who’d come into this world with me, was being ripped away. Disbelief was quickly yielding to the sharp power of truth and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it.

Mr. X unhooked his strong arm from around Shayla’s middle and shoved her forward. Without resistance she fell, crumpling to the floor in the hallway right in front of my bedroom. Blood pooled around her, seeping into the beige carpet, staining the ends of her cotton candy pink hair a bright red.

My heart raced at a painful rate, booming in my ears with a rapid thump! thump! thump!

I should have run like Shayla had told me, but I wasn’t in my body. My soul had left me, and it was standing next to her, begging for any sign that she was still alive.

Please move!

Her fingers twitched on the blood-soaked carpet and hope bloomed in my chest. My gaze tore away from her to Mr. X. His booted foot took an ominous, slow step over her body while his monstrous coal eyes held mine. There was blood splattered across his face, clashing against his alabaster skin. An evil smile pulled at the corners of his mouth as he took another step, then another, closing the distance between us.

I knew I needed to run, but I couldn’t feel my legs.

“ Shiloh ,” he sang my name. His voice was light yet haunting and made my entire body tremble.

Move!

Move!

If you don’t, you won’t be able to get help for Shayla!

The need to save my sister overshadowed my terror by a hair, but it was just enough to give me back my ability to move.

When I was almost within Mr. X’s reach, I spun on my heels and ran for the stairs. He didn’t take his time coming after me like he had when Shayla and I had run up the stairs. I could hear his boots pounding behind me, shaking the pictures on the hall wall.

My own feet raced down the stairs as I’d done so many times before when running late for school. I made it halfway down when Mr. X caught me by my shoulder and shoved me against the wall.

I tried to fight him by pushing and smacking him. He easily caught both of my wrists and pinned them high above my head with one hand. In the process, we knocked one of my family’s portraits off the wall and the glass broke as it tumbled down the stairs.

He pressed his body into mine. “Why do you love to run from me?” He leaned his head forward as if to kiss me and I quickly turned my face to the side. His mouth touched my cheek, and he ran his tongue along it until he reached my ear. “We are free to be together now.”

“I don’t want to be together!” I snarled.

He leaned back with an unhappy frown. “Yes, you do. We love each other.”

I shook my head. “No!”

“Yes,” he growled, clearly getting angry. “You are mine.”

“No! I’m not yours!” I cried.

He roared angrily in my face before he brought up his knife and placed the tip to my inner wrist. “Yes, you are.” He began carving something into my skin.

The pain made me scream and I thrashed. I got the bottom of my foot pressed against the wall to help propel me forward at the same time I flung my head toward his face. My forehead smacked his chin hard. It made him grunt and shocked him enough for me to push off the wall with my foot and shove him back.

What I hadn’t planned on was his knife slicing down my arm from my wrist to my elbow as he fell backward. The pain made me scream. It was quickly cut off when Mr. X’s back hit the banister and he jerked in pain, which caused him to push me away from him. I felt myself falling and, in an attempt to save myself, I grabbed his shirt. Because he wasn’t aware I had done that, he wasn’t able to brace for it. I took him down the stairs with me.

The wind was knocked from my lungs as I landed on my butt and ribs. My feet flung in the air as I flipped and I braced for what would surely break my neck, but as I came down again, I landed on top of Mr. X. He let out a loud exhale, as if all the air was forced out of his body. The both of us slid the rest of the way down and rolled along the floor. Mr. X didn’t stop rolling until he slammed into the front door. His body stopped me.

It took longer than it should have to remember how to breathe. When I was able to snap out of the shock, I gasped loudly, taking in the air that I desperately needed, and rolled over onto my stomach.

I need to get up .

My body hurt so badly that I struggled to do more than lie there and breathe.

Get up!

Mr. X groaned next to me. The fear that noise conjured sent a new surge of adrenaline through me. I made myself get on my hands and knees. Just to put distance between me and him, I crawled until I felt strong enough to push up to my feet.

I stumbled, falling against the hall wall as I passed the stairs, heading toward the back of the house. Blood from my arm smeared against the wall, reminding me that Mr. X had cut me.

I picked up my pace as I headed past the entrance to the kitchen and entered the mudroom that led to the door to the garage. I didn’t dare turn on any lights. Mr. X would come looking for me soon. Lighting up where I was in the house would only get me found faster.

Going right to the door that led to the garage, I turned the handle and went to pull it open. It wouldn’t. I could see that it was unlocked; the handle wouldn’t have been able to turn otherwise. I pulled on the door a few more times as I looked up and saw why it wouldn’t budge. At least ten nails were hammered along the top of it.

Not wanting to waste a moment, I went into the laundry room just off of the mudroom. There was a window in there that faced the side yard. I rushed to it. After unlocking it, I tried to push it open. It didn’t budge. I searched the sill and found that it was also nailed shut.

The doorknob in our parents’ room was gone and now I was finding a window and door nailed shut. Mr. X had turned my house into a trap.

Not wanting to give up, I moved on. My inner arm was bleeding a lot. Blood dripped from my fingers as my arm dangled at my side limply, leaving a bloody trail in my wake as I quietly snuck through the house.

“Shiiiii…looooohh! Come out, come out, wherever you are!” Mr. X shouted from another room.

Dashing into the kitchen, I scooped up one of the kitchen towels hanging in front of the oven. Biting my lip to keep myself from crying out, I wrapped the towel around my arm. I made quick work of my makeshift bandage and kept moving. I couldn’t linger or he’d find me.

Walking as silently as possible, I headed for the back door just off the dining room. Reaching out for the gold doorknob, I turned it. The door wouldn’t budge. “No!” I whispered as I vainly tried to slam my body against it.

The feeling of being trapped made it hard to think of what to do.

“Shiloh,” a voice whispered from behind me.

My heart accelerated to a speed so fast, I was afraid it’d give out. Panting, I turned to find Mr. X right behind me. I screamed as loud as my lungs would allow, hoping the neighbors would hear, and fell backward to the floor.

Mr. X dove with me, landing on top of me. I tried to fight him. I tried to get away. I was able to smack him across the face, which angered him. He let out a snarl, covered my face with his hand, and slammed the back of my head to the tile floor.

My vision went in and out. I didn’t feel myself being lifted off the floor or carried through the house. I started to really come to as Mr. X was carrying me up the stairs. We were almost back on the second floor. I started to wiggle and buck in his arms as he reached the top of the stairs, so much so that he ended up dropping me with a frustrated growl.

I hit the carpet with a grunt. Before I could attempt to get away, Mr. X grabbed my ankles and began dragging me down the hall. I grabbed ahold of the corner of the wall trying to stop him. Mr. X yanked with what seemed like all his strength to force me to let go. My nails tore into the wallpaper as he continued dragging me. The towel I had wrapped around my arm fell off. I let out another pain-riddled scream, despite knowing that no one could hear me. That knowledge had been proven when our neighbors hadn’t come running to my earlier screams. Our houses were just too far apart.

I tried to kick my legs free, but Mr. X’s grip was too strong, and his steps didn’t slow. I was so focused on trying to grab ahold of anything that came into reach that I didn’t realize we were passing Shayla’s body until I felt something wet seep into the back of my clothes. At the sight of her pink hair, my throat closed, and I began choking on my sobs. I grabbed her hand as it came into reach, desperately hoping to find some flicker of life still left in her. When our eyes were level with each other, I saw hers were open and vacant.

“No!” ripped out of me. “Shayla!” I wailed, squeezing her hand as Mr. X continued to pull me away from her and into my bedroom.

As soon as we were in my room, Mr. X pulled me off the floor by my hair. My throat was so sore from screaming, all I could do was grit my teeth through the pain. He was trying to get me on my bed. I couldn’t let him do that. He’d rape me. I just knew he would.

The moment my feet were flat on the ground, I hit him, kicked him, and scratched him. He grunted a curse when I clawed his cheek.

His hand wrapped around my throat and squeezed. Digging my nails into his hand and wrist that held me, I tried to suck in what little air I could. His other hand appeared out of nowhere. I only got a glimpse of it before pain flared like lightning on the left side of my face and everything went black.

When I came to, I was alone and lying in the center of my bed. I went to rub my sore cheek and found that my wrist was caught on something. That was when I realized my wrists were tied with rope to my bed posts. As I tried to sit up, I realized my ankles were tied up as well.

Panic made my chest cave in, and I cried. Everything that had happened came crashing down on me. My parents were dead. Shayla…my lip trembled as I remembered her lifeless eyes.

I was alone.

I was all alone.