Chapter 13
Her
I was so fucking cold. Covering me was a blanket that smelled of sweat and piss, but I was pulling it tight around myself. I was shivering so hard that the blanket kept shifting, and the only reason I was still awake was because I had to adjust the blanket every few minutes.
As my teeth chattered, my gaze lifted across the room, first to where my sheepskin coat was crumpled in the corner. They’d yanked it off me the night before they left, and I had no way to reach it now, with my ankle chained to the metal loop screwed into the cabin wall. I longed to feel its warmth.
And I didn’t even have my thick, red sweater to keep me from feeling the bite of the cold.
That was also across the room, where she lay, curled into a similar ball with my sweater wrapped around her bone-thin shoulders. I couldn’t tell if she was breathing, and I’d long since stopped calling out to her.
We’d been left behind two days ago, each chained to a loop on opposite walls.
The fire had died out once we’d used up all the wood, which was hours ago, and the place was unbearably cold.
I had no way of knowing if we’d been abandoned, and I also didn’t know if it was better that way or if they came back and began the torture all over again.
I knew I was dead either way. Was it better to just give up now? Or hang on and fight?
Shivering violently, I hugged my shins with my legs pulled up tight, making myself into the smallest ball I could manage.
Anything to conserve body heat. Beyond being cold to the core, I was so sore.
So beaten, battered, and bruised. My face throbbed from the sucker punch I’d gotten right before they left.
They were always sucker punching us. They made a game of it.
I tried to give them nothing in return. Just be a zombie, I told myself. Don’t feed them what they want, which was to see my fear, my pain, my humiliation again and again and again.
Mostly, though, I failed. The blows were too hard, the pain too intense, the violation too violent and degrading. Maybe it was better to simply sink into the frigid cold and let go.
Just as I was leaning toward that option, however, I heard the crunching of snow under tires. They were back. I wept. It was always worse when they’d been away for a while.
I wiped my cheeks with the back of my bruised hands just as they burst through the door. Drunk. Laughing. The cruel one lit a lantern and looked at me hungrily, licking his lips as he grabbed his crotch and started to approach me. “Miss me?” he asked.
I scuttled as far back against the wall as I could, but there was no escape. Not from him. Not from here. Not from any of it.
I watched as he raised his hand high above my head, his fingers curled into a claw, the tattoo of the tiger and the naked woman on his forearm plainly in view right before the claw descended. I felt his fingers dig into my scalp, wrapping his fist around my hair and pulling me up off the floor.
“Maddy,” he said, but it wasn’t his voice. He never called me that.
I screamed as his free hand dug into my shoulder, trying to fight him off. “Get off me! Get off me!”
I kicked out, my foot making a hard connection as I fought back. Then I rolled and tumbled over onto the floor, landing on all fours and looking around in the darkness, completely disoriented.
Warm air hit my face and shoulders, and a moan wafted up to my ear. “Christ, Maddy!” Levi groaned. “What the hell?”
I was panting hard, my skin damp and the fear of the last few moments coursing through me like water through floodgates.
“Levi?”
He moaned again.
I crawled on all fours over to a form, which was also sitting on the ground. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry!”
I realized he was moaning like that because I’d kicked him on my way out of the nightmare.
He coughed and sat up on his knees. “You clocked me good, woman.”
I touched his shoulder, trying to orient myself in the dark. “I was having a nightmare.”
“Yeah, I got that part.”
“I’m so, so sorry, Levi. I would never intentionally hurt you.”
He rolled forward, cradling his face in his hands. “You’d have to get in line for that,” he said bitterly.
If I felt bad before, I took that feeling and injected it with steroids. “Can I at least get you some ice?”
“Nah. I’m okay.”
He didn’t sound okay.
Getting to my feet, I moved over to where I thought the milk crate with the lamp I’d gotten from the church thrift shop was, and I found it right away. Clicking on the light, I saw Levi, squinting at me. He had a hand on the left side of his cheek, the skin red underneath his fingers.
“I should go downstairs and get you some ice.”
“I’m fine,” he said sharply.
I held in a sigh of frustration. Levi remained irritatingly difficult to help.
I’d found that if I asked or announced the way I wanted to help him, his immediate reaction was to reject the offer, so I was more frustrated with myself for not simply going downstairs to retrieve some ice for him instead of asking for his permission.
Moving over to one of the space heaters, I upped the temperature.
Wanda had been quite generous, allowing me to stay up here rent-free, so I was conscious of the utility costs and kept the space heaters mostly off or on low to conserve electricity.
But tonight, the temps had really dipped, and the large space was colder than usual, which is probably why I’d had that nightmare.
I stood in front of the heater as it blew warm air at my legs. More than anything, that helped to chase away the tremors of fear and hopelessness from the nightmare.
After a few minutes of silence, Levi came over to stand next to me, and I moved over a few inches so he could share the heat.
“Are they getting worse?” he asked.
I knew he meant the nightmares. “Yeah. I’m starting to remember more detail. Wherever I was before I landed in this town, Levi, it was someplace bad. Like, really bad.”
To my surprise, he leaned over to rub his shoulder against mine in a small show of support. I leaned back, and we continued to stare at the red glowing grid inside the metal framework of the space heater as the warm air soothed what ailed us.
“What time is it?” I asked after a bit.
He left my side for a moment and returned with his phone. “Three-thirty.”
“Dammit. Sorry, Levi. You’re not getting any sleep around me.”
He yawned. “It’s cool. At least I’m not out there on a night like this.”
I bumped his shoulder. He was such a nice guy. It was unfathomable to me that anyone couldn’t see what a good soul he was. “I’m working on a deal for you,” I told him.
“Whaddya mean?”
“I mean, the sheriff and I have a deal: If I solve his dad’s murder, then you get the reward money.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him turn a surprised gaze on me. “Solve his dad’s murder? You mean the famous Sheriff Cash Senior?”
I nodded.
“What’re you, some kind of detective?”
I grinned. “Kinda. Apparently, the same bump on the head that caused me to lose my memory has made me psychic.”
He snorted out a laugh. “Yeah, right.”
“It’s true.”
He turned to look at me again. “You believe in that stuff?”
I looked at him and offered a lopsided smile. “Yeah. I do. It’s how I know you’re trying to get to L.A.”
Levi’s eyes practically popped out of his head. “How’d you know that?” he barked, his tone accusing.
I tapped my head. “Like I said. Psychic.”
He glared at me. I was surprised I’d angered him.
“What’s the big deal if I know you’re headed to L.A.?”
“I don’t want anybody to know that.”
“Okay, I can respect that. I won’t tell a soul. But you and I both know that if you don’t get out of this town, you’ll die.”
He stared at me again, the shock of my having said the quiet part out loud written all over his face.
He didn’t confirm it, but I knew he’d been contemplating suicide.
I kept seeing a hangman’s noose in my mind’s eye when I looked at the area around his left shoulder.
It hung under a small dark cloud that seemed to follow him everywhere, and without knowing how, I knew that those two symbols meant depression and suicide.
He turned his attention back to the space heater. “L.A.’s expensive.”
“I know. Which is why I made the deal with the sheriff.”
He scowled. “How’re you gonna solve a murder that’s twenty-five years old?”
I tapped my head again.
“You already know who did it?”
“No. Not yet. But I feel like once I look at the case file, I’ll know what direction to head in. I am certain he was killed by someone he knew. Someone he trusted.”
Levi’s expression was unreadable, but then he asked, “You think the killer’s still alive?”
I nodded. “I do. Which is why you can’t tell anybody what me and the sheriff are up to.”
He puffed out an air between his lips. “Who would I tell?”
I knocked his shoulder playfully again. “Your many fans.”
He laughed. “Yeah. Right. Forgot about them. They’re a thirsty bunch.”
I chuckled. “It’s not always going to be like this, you know. You’re going to get to L.A. And you’re going to go to school there. You want to do something in film, right? It’s not acting…it has something to do with film, though. Like editing.”
I heard his breath catch. “You’re spookin’ the shit outta me, Maddy.”
I grinned, then got serious and focused on him for a long minute before I continued. “You’re going to have a good career ahead of you, Levi, but it’s not editing long films. It’s editing short clips. Ooh! Like trailers. You want to go into creating film trailers, right?”
It was his turn to grin, and he wiped a hand down his face before he said, “Okay, okay. I believe you. You’re psychic.”
I bounced my brows. “Told ya.”
“What else do you see?” he asked tentatively.
“Well, for starters, I see you moving to L.A. sooner rather than later. Before summer.”
He puffed another breath of disbelief between his lips.
“Maddy, I have like, two hundred bucks to my name. I’ll need to work here at least a year before I have enough to relocate, and that’s if we can keep my living up here with you a secret till then. If Wanda kicks me out, I could be out of a job and have to live on the streets again.”