Chapter Twenty One
Todd
I am driving with Lance, Dean, and Mason.
Billy, Del, Jake, and Ben are in a car behind us.
We are breaking every street law to follow the GPS to where it says Sadie and Stacy are.
They should have been at the mall, but when they never came home, we knew something was wrong.
When we looked at the GPS and saw that they were at the cabin from Sadie’s childhood, where Paul took her to, and where he died, we knew. We all knew they were with Leo.
Their phones were showing they were in the parking garage, but Billy found their purses by Sadie’s car. That only further confirmed that Leo kidnapped them.
“Here?” I ask, approaching a dirt road.
“Yes,” Mason says simply as he pulls a pistol from the glove box. “I’m going to kill this bastard, and I don’t care what the consequences are.”
“We can take care of it together,” I reassure him. He nods, and I turn the car onto the dirt road.
As we approach the camp, we pull our seatbelts off. I see a white car in front of one of the back cabins, so I park beside it. It’s after midnight, and the cabin is pitch black.
We quietly get out of the car and push our doors closed before slowly walking toward the cabin door. It’s not been maintained, so it’s run down with weeds growing through the slats of the small porch. Mason goes first, since he has a weapon, and he freezes as soon as he opens the door.
“What?” I ask as I push him forward so we can walk in.
Right away, I see Leo’s dead body in front of the door. His face has been nearly destroyed. I can tell it’s him based on the tattoos on his arms and his hair.
“Oh, fuck,” Mason shouts when our flashlights land on two figures lying together on the floor.
We all rush to them, and I know right away that Stacy is dead.
She is lying on her back, and her skin is a gray marbled color, but there is a soft, natural smile on her lips.
Sadie is holding onto her with her head lying on her chest. I can see that she’s breathing, and her eyes are open, but she doesn’t notice us.
It’s like her body is alive, but the rest of her is gone.
I have a mix of emotions rushing through me, but I need to get Sadie away from Stacy’s body. No one says a word as I kneel beside Sadie and gently touch her shoulder.
“Sadie,” I say softly. She looks up at me without hesitation, and her words are like a knife to the heart.
“It’s my fault,” she says flatly.
“Sweetie, we need to go outside and wait for the cops, okay?” I say. When I try to pull her away from Stacy, she flips.
“No!” she screams and clings to her friend’s dead body. “I can’t leave her. I can’t leave her.”
“Sadie, she’s gone. You’ve got to let go of her,” I say softly. I have tears streaming down my face, just wanting to get her away from Stacy. The longer she holds onto her body, the more it will destroy her.
“No,” she sobs. “I don’t want her to be alone. I can’t leave her.”
“You’re going to have to pick her up,” Dean says.
“Fuck,” I sigh. I can see where this is headed.
I grab her waist and try to gently pull her away again, but she starts fighting against my hold.
I lean down and scoop her into my arms, instantly triggering her into screaming and thrashing, trying to get back to Stacy. Trying to get back to her friend.
By the time I get her out of the front door, I am sobbing.
I can’t make it stop, so I bring us down to sit against a tree.
I sit her between my legs so I can cross her arms over her chest and keep her legs pinned with mine.
She screams like she’s in pain, because she is.
She’s never lost someone so violently like this.
She likely just held Stacy as she died. Emotions are crashing down around us, but I’m forcing myself to be focused on Sadie instead of my dead girlfriend.
The woman I was days away from proposing to.
No one knew, but I did. I knew I wanted to spend my life with her.
I feel terrible for being happy that Sadie is alive and seemingly unharmed, while Stacy died such a horrible death. There is so much blood all over both of them, and now me. It was slow, but I hope she wasn’t in too much pain.
After a while, Sadie stops fighting me. I immediately pull her to my chest, where she continues to sob. She is curled into a ball in my lap, mumbling about how she killed Stacy. When she stops mumbling, I grab her face and make her look at me.
“Are you hurt?” I ask.
“No,” she whispers. The guys come over and join us, but sit quietly. Mason, Lance, and Dean are as close to us as they can get. When I look at them, so they can take her if they want, they shake their heads.
“She needs you right now,” Dean says.
“How did it happen?” I ask Sadie.
“Uhm,” she says as she sits up a bit and wipes her face.
“Leo, uh… after he raped me, he said he would let Stacy go if I agreed to stay with him. I said yes because I just wanted her out of there safely. Uh… he said I needed to think about it because I’d die if I didn’t choose him, basically.
She and I worked on getting each other untied.
We were on the same bed. As soon as we got free…
he came back in. Apparently, there is a camera in there, and we didn’t know he was listening to us…
We went back and forth, but I ultimately told him that I would never love him, and I didn’t want him.
He raised the gun and… it happened so fucking fast. She pulled me behind her, then just hit the ground.
I didn’t even fully comprehend that she was shot until I stopped hitting Leo.
“You did that to Leo?” Mason asks, and she nods.
“I remembered you guys telling me that if I wanted to knock someone down, I had to put my weight behind it because I’m small.
I just… ran at him. He tried to shoot me again, but the gun didn’t go off.
I was on top of him and was trying to get the gun away from him when I did, he grabbed me by the throat.
I couldn’t breathe, so I started hitting him.
I heard Stacy groan, so I stopped to go to her,” Sadie explains.
“He’s definitely dead,” I say.
“Cops are on their way,” Jake says softly.
“Am I… Am I going to get in trouble for killing Leo?” she asks.
“No,” Jake says. “They already know he kidnapped you two. I called it in immediately, and my supervisor got the surveillance footage from the parking garage. If there’s a camera in that cabin, they’ll find it.
They will ask you a lot of questions, but just tell them the truth.
Maybe leave out the part where you killed Paul. ”
“I tried to save her,” she says tearfully. “I got her killed.”
“No,” Mason says. “Leo got her killed.”
“I just want to go home,” she sighs. “I’m tired and sore.”
“They won’t bug you for too long with questions.
They’ll probably just have you come up to the station later for a full statement,” Jake says, and she nods.
I can tell she wants to lean into me, but she stops herself.
I know she’s blaming herself, but I don’t want to push her.
I feel so fucking numb thinking about Stacy’s body lying in that cabin with that monster.
When a horde of cops shows up, Jake tells Sadie to stay with me to limit where the blood is. She is responding well to bluntness, but I can tell she’s going to shut down again.
Jake’s supervisor, Greg McCrea, is the one to question Sadie.
She goes through everything detail by detail and ends with her getting to Stacy.
Greg goes in with a few others and locates the camera and Leo’s phone.
It has a cracked screen, but it is still open on the feed of the room.
He and a detective watch the footage from Leo’s phone to confirm Sadie’s story.
They are standing alone with her, so we can’t hear anything, but she has tears rolling down her cheeks as she listens to the video play.
Once they clear her, Greg asks how we found her. We explain that Leo had left the lamb and note that she and Stacy started wearing bracelets so they could be tracked. They take Sadie’s bracelet, then tell us we can take her.
“Am I in trouble?” Sadie asks Greg.
“No,” Greg says. “That video is pretty clear-cut as self-defense. You did what you had to do to get him to stop choking you. You did run at him, but he had the gun pointed at you. You are not in trouble. We may have to bring you in for more questions if something comes up with their autopsy, but that video is, again, very clear.”
“So, I can go?” she asks.
“Yes,” he says. “Sadie, I am sorry for your loss. She was lucky to have you in that moment.”
Sadie nods and turns to walk toward the cars. Mason gets a blanket from the trunk for her to wrap up in, then has her sit in his lap in the back seat.
“Can I go see her?” I ask when Sadie is shut in the car.
“Yeah,” Greg says. “Was she your girlfriend?”
“Uh, yeah,” I say. “I was about to ask her to marry me.”
“Just don’t touch her or anything else,” Greg says as we walk in. “But take your time.”
I walk over to Stacy’s body and squat down. “Thank you for saving Sadie,” I whisper. “I love you so fucking much, Stacy. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I promise, I’ll never forget just how amazing you were. You deserved better than this… You didn’t deserve to die…”
I stand and walk past Greg to get to the car. I wipe my tears before I open the driver’s side door and get in.
“All set?” Dean asks.
“Mhmm,” I say as I start the car.
“I’m sorry, Todd,” Sadie says. I say nothing, because I don’t know what to say. It’s not her fault, but it feels like it doesn’t matter what I say. She’s going to continue to blame herself. I know I should be comforting her right now, but everything is so crushing. I just want to be alone.