Chapter Seventy-One. Betty, Present Day
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
BETTY, PRESENT DAY
Betty’s eyes rove over Sandra’s springy curls, her creamy, pale skin, the dimples indenting her cheeks. Sandra is achingly familiar on the outside—she is what Ivy would have gradually become. But Sandra possesses none of Ivy’s internal goodness. She is a hollow vessel.
“I don’t believe you were conducting these experiments for the reasons you said.” Betty frowns. “You enjoy the power it gives you over helpless people. You like causing pain. Did your stepmother and stepbrother really torment you, or was it the other way around?”
Sandra shrugs and Betty hears the clink of her handcuffs from behind the chair. “Does it matter?”
“Yes, it does,” Betty replies, feeling her stomach turn. It is difficult to even be in the same room as Sandra. “Why torture Alex like this? You’re not going to get any scientific data. It isn’t a controlled experiment. Why did you even abduct her in the first place?”
Sandra shifts in her chair. “Alex showed up here the other day for an emergency therapy session. She was a mess—even more so than usual, and that girl can turn on the waterworks. When she went to use the bathroom I decided to slip her ID into her backpack. Just to toy with her; to make her question whether she’d ever lost it at all.
Plus I didn’t need it any longer. But she came back from the bathroom too quickly. ”
“She saw you?” Betty prompts.
“I thought she might have.”
“So you intercepted her on the road later. What did you do, pretend to just be coincidentally driving by? Or did you act like she’d forgotten something at your house?” Betty watches Sandra’s expression carefully.
“Something like that.” Sandra shifts again and winces. “These handcuffs really are uncomfortable.”
“Tell me where you’re keeping Alex,” Betty pleads. “Do it for your mother. It would have broken her heart to see you like this.”
Sandra gives a little laugh. “I owe that woman nothing.”
It takes Betty a moment before she’s able to speak. Then she says the worst thing she can think of to Sandra: “You may share her blood, but you are not Ivy’s daughter.”
For the first time, Betty feels grateful Ivy is no longer alive. It would break her heart to see what her baby has become.
“This isn’t the only extended Ganzfeld test I’ve performed, you know,” Sandra says.
She fidgets in her seat again, leaning slightly forward, and looks hard at Betty.
“Volunteering with the houseless gave me a nice selection of prospects. There are plenty of runaways on drugs. Who would notice if one of them went missing or started acting crazy?”
Betty sucks in a breath as Sandra twists her body again, rolling her shoulders back.
Betty is still holding the gun in her right hand. With her free hand, she suddenly yanks on her chair’s left wheel, jerking it sharply backward at an angle, just as Sandra lunges forward.
Sandra’s feet are still tied together—Betty mentally thanks Riley for that—so Sandra trips over them and lands on the floor, her hands still outstretched, right where Betty was a split second before.
Betty wheels backward another few yards before she speaks.
“You had a second handcuff key, didn’t you? You tried to distract me by talking, but I realized what was going on when you kept fidgeting. You might think you’re good at the long game, Sandra. But I’m better.”