Absolution (Sacrificial Duet Book 2)

by Riley Ashby

  I couldn’t handle this. They were laughing about assaulting and abusing my mother, all while planning the same thing for me. Conrad let go of me and they both leaped back suddenly as I bent over and lost the battle with my stomach, half-digested oatmeal and hot bile burning my throat on the way up. I dropped to my knees again, voluntarily this time, and wiped my mouth with one hand. My opposite elbow shook, the only thing keeping me from falling face first into my own sick.

  Get up. Run. But without the barest hint of energy for my body to hold on to, I couldn’t do anything besides stare at the floor.

  “You’re lucky I don’t make you eat that,” Conrad snarled, and I closed my eyes. How could even a threat make me miss Meyer this much? My heart was already in two, but I could suture it together if only I could stop hearing and thinking his name.

  “Well,” Alexander said with distaste, “you’ve made your point.” His footsteps retreated to the far end of the room, distancing himself from my mess “How much do you want for her?”

  I clapped a hand over my mouth to prevent anything further from coming up. I backed toward the door on hands and knees, needing every inch of distance I could get. I couldn’t go with him. Meyer would never find me if left.

  He’s not coming anyway!

  “Oh, I’m not selling her to you.” I stared at Conrad’s shoes as he joined Alexander at the far end of the room. Their voices carried back across the open space.

  “Well, what are you going to do then? I don’t need my wife finding out about this. She was home alone with a one-month old that night, if you recall.”

  “Yeah, the baby photos were really killing the mood.” Conrad settled into a large chair, leaning back and crossing one ankle over his knee. “I think we can figure out a way to keep Emily from learning about this.”

  Alexander sighed and reached into his jacket, producing a checkbook and pen. “So it still comes down to money.”

  “No.”

  Alexander and I snapped our heads to look at Conrad at the same time. He looked at me briefly, sneering, before turning back to the other man.

  “What, then?”

  “I’m sure you’ve seen the news over the past couple of days.”

  Alexander nodded solemnly as he slid the checkbook and pen back into his pocket. “Kind of hard to miss. I’ve had some calls from the feds, wanting to look into my financials. My guess is they’re tracking down everyone who ever had their hands in your company to see if we’re hiding our involvement.” He settled into a chair across from Conrad, mirroring his relaxed pose, but his shoulders were still tense.

  I continued backing away from the puddle of my stomach contents, but my knees felt too unsteady for me to risk trying to stand. Looking over my shoulder, I watched a broad shadow pace back and forth beneath the door. Someone was waiting out there. Was there any chance it was Meyer? Or was it Joshua, doing his solemn duty as the turncoat exposed for what he truly was, guarding the man who’d been signing his paychecks this entire time?

  “I need someone to take the fall for this deal.”

  “Are you going to tell me who is actually responsible?”

  Anita. She’s truly my child. As ruthless as they come.

  Conrad smiled mirthlessly out of one side of his mouth. “Let’s leave that secret for another day.”

  Alexander tapped one finger against his pursed lips. “I might be able to do something to mitigate this. At the very least, I can keep you out of prison. But.” He leaned forward slightly and pointed one finger in my direction. “I want assurance that this doesn’t get out. Her existence would fuck up a lot that I have going for me, the least of which is my marriage. You know I’m launching my political campaign soon.”

  Conrad raised his hands as if in surrender. “Your secret will go to the grave with her.”

  Alexander nodded as he shot to his feet, no doubt eager to escape before Conrad could think of anything else he wanted from him. “I’m glad we could come to this arrangement.” They shook hands briefly before turning back to me. They both grimaced in distaste.

  “Joshua,” Conrad called, and the doors behind me opened with a click before the word was fully out of his mouth. “Please take my guest back to her room, and get this mess cleaned up.”

  “Right away,” Joshua deadpanned. I stared at the floor as he hooked hands underneath my armpits, yanking me to my feet but mercifully letting me walk rather than tossing me over his shoulder.

  “Now,” I whispered around my swollen throat. “We can go now.”

  “Be quiet,” he hissed. When we turned the corner away from the room, he hoisted me into his arms. Relieved to not have to support myself for a few moments, I gripped his neck and let my head fall against his shoulder. “I told you. I’ve done all I can.”

  “What is that key for?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  My eyes shut. I was so tired of this double speak, the patronizing denials when the truth was so obvious. “I’m so hungry.”

  “I’ll see what I can do about that.”

  The mattress had never felt so soft as he laid me down. I opened my eyes long enough to reach for the baby blanket and pull it against my chest. “Where’s Meyer?”

  He took far too long to answer me. My eyes began to burn, but I had no more tears to give.

  “I’m sure he’ll be by soon enough. Conrad likes to speak to him on a regular basis.”

  I curled tighter around my stomach and made myself as small as possible.

  “But he’s not going to come see me, is he?”

  He sighed, then patted my shoulder, but I jerked beneath his touch as if he’d burned me. He froze, hand half a centimeter above my skin, as if surprised or offended that I wouldn’t want him to touch me.

  “I’ll get you something to eat.”

  “Don’t bother,” I whispered, rubbing the soft blanket between my fingers as if it were a magic lamp that could take me out of here. “It won’t matter soon enough.”

  Meyer

  I drank for two days.

  Every bottle of alcohol in my house was drained and piled in a corner in my kitchen. When I woke on the third day, with the sun already making its descent in the sky, I found the empties gone, but no replacements. I dug through my cabinets and threw out all their contents before I was satisfied that there was not a drop left for me to consume.

  And then I had absolutely nothing.

  As I retched over the sink, unable to keep down even small amounts of water, I wondered where she was. How much of herself she still possessed. Would it even be worth my time to try and resolve things with Conrad again, particularly when I was the one who had broken her apart before abandoning her, leaving her ripe for the picking by a madman with revenge on his mind?

  She’s still alive. You can’t forget that.

  “Shut up,” I muttered to myself, but forced myself to stand up straight and wipe my face with a damp towel. I’d felt worse, but not by much.

  I was completely dismantled of everything that made my life worth living, except one. She was the only thing left that gave me any reason to keep breathing. She was still my Maddie.

  After I got over my stupor from seeing Shawn flayed open and left to die in a car outside my father’s house, I walked back to the house and rang the doorbell. It was a full minute before Joshua opened the door, though I never heard his footsteps approach. I supposed it could have been that the blood rushing through my ears was blocking out most every sound around me, but I thought it was more likely he was standing behind the door the entire time.

  “I need a car,” I said simply, staring at the knot of his tie. “The Navigator, preferably.”

  “Meet me at the garage.” He closed the door without waiting for my response.

  He handed over the keys and I drove back to the front of the house, then loaded my best friend’s body into the trunk of the car. There was still so much blood left in his body, even as it pooled in puddles on the seat and floor of the
car where he’d waited for me as instructed. I nearly dropped him twice, but my reflexes snapped to attention to ensure he didn’t hit the ground again. Joshua reached to help me, but I jerked away so quickly more blood trickled forth and soaked onto my hands.

  “Don’t fucking touch him,” I snapped.

  When I laid my jacket over Shawn’s torso and pulled down his eyelids, he almost looked like he was sleeping. Except for the pallor of his skin. Already it was white and waxy, with a complete lack of expression on his face. How long would it take before he started to fall apart? I couldn’t let that happen.

  “What are you going to do with this?”

  I turned to look at Joshua, finding him gesturing to Shawn’s car with his thumb.

  “That’s your responsibility,” I said vacantly. I wasn’t sure I had the capacity to decide what to do with Shawn, let alone the car soaked in blood. “It’s your mess.”

  “I didn’t do this.”

  “But you knew it was going to happen.”

  It was his turn to avoid my eyes.

  “You could have warned us.” I turned back to Shawn, hoping to find him smiling at me as if this was some sort of sick prank, but he was still dead, and growing colder every second.

  “How could I have done that?”

  “You’re the one playing both sides of this … whatever it is. You should have figured something out.”

  Joshua closed the driver’s door at the same time I shut the hatch on the SUV.

  “Do you need help—”

  “Not from you.” I climbed into the front and drove away.

  Back at my house, I pulled Shawn into the bathroom and undressed him, letting the rest of his blood run down the drain in the tub before washing him. He had bruising around his neck, and scratches where he’d pulled at whatever choked him. Maybe that meant he hadn’t felt much when his wrists were slit open. Or maybe he’d been startled awake by the pain, unable to find the strength to fight back any more, while his killer watched the light leave his eyes through the reflection in the rear view mirror.

  When most of his blood seemed to be gone from his skin and I was relatively convinced none of my own DNA was left somewhere on him, I wrapped him in a sheet and pulled him back outside to the car. Then I left the property and drove.

  He deserved far better than a ditch on the side of the highway, but leaving him on the property wasn’t an option either. I had no doubt that an anonymous tip to the police would lead back to me far sooner than it would my father or any of his staff. I could place a call when he was far from where he’d died and I was on my way back home, then torch the Navigator in the back woods of Conrad’s property where no search warrant could ever touch it.

  “I’m so sorry, buddy. Fuck.” I cursed as I wiped away a tear that had fallen on his face. I couldn’t afford to be sappy now. “I’ll figure something out. I never wanted you to get involved in any of this.”

  His skin was already too cold, even I could feel that. Nothing about him seemed real any more. The police would find him here, and there would be a perfunctory investigation before they determined there wasn’t enough evidence to track down whoever killed him. His homicide would be filed away as unsolved, but at least his family would have a proper burial. Whether I would be welcome to attend was another question.

  I left my best friend on the hard ground as frost began to form on the tips of the grass cradling his body, and then I went home to black out.

  Eight hours after I could keep down plain water without vomiting, I ate half a piece of stale bread. No one had been shopping here for days. Did I need to go get groceries myself? Should I hire someone new? I shook my head. One way or another, I was leaving this place. I’d hoped it would be with Maddie under my arm, but now I had to admit the very real possibility it would be alone, possibly with more than one broken bone, if I left alive at all.

  There were dozens of unreturned calls and voicemails on my phone, and upward of a thousand unanswered emails in my inbox. I ignored them all. I didn’t have the time to worry about what the company wanted me to do, not when my entire future hung in the balance. I turned on the news long enough to confirm Shawn’s body has been found and identified, then threw a half-empty water bottle against the screen.

  “Help me,” I whispered to the silence of my empty house, but there was no reply.

  This is pathetic. How many times was I going to allow Conrad to beat me down this way? Every part of me ached, my hand was in constant pain even with the brace on, and breathing through my nose was next to impossible. I’d had to leave my best friend’s body in a roadside ditch, the victim of his own good nature and desire to help an innocent woman avoid pain and abuse. Joshua was right; I had to kill him. But the concept couldn’t sit still in my mind; every time I tried to grasp it, it slipped away like a shadow in the corner of my eye. I stared at my bed, knowing what was hidden underneath—it somehow hadn’t been discovered during the search of my room. But I couldn’t bring myself to step that far off the cliff of my sanity.

  I had to find another way out.

  My phone buzzed, and I crawled across the carpet to where it sat atop my night stand. It had been dead for several hours while I was passed out, overloaded with incoming messages, but I plugged it in to make sure I didn’t miss any summons from my father. I couldn’t risk him hurting her if he asked me to come and I ignored him. I was just in time—the message was from him, unsurprisingly.

  Conrad: Business to discuss. Come by for dinner.

  To say that was an unusual command would be an understatement. We didn’t eat together as a family very often. I remembered eating dinner alone at the table as a middle schooler, doing my homework with one hand and quickly eating with the other, ready to retreat to my room at the first sound of footsteps approaching the dining room.

  He had something big to show me.

  My head reeled as I pulled myself to my feet, and I leaned one hand against the wall with the other over my mouth to keep from losing my stomach once more. I had to act normal for a few hours.

  I shuffled to my closet, the wrinkled clothes hung carefully by Shawn mocking me as a reminder of the final favor he did me.

  No clothes yet. I couldn’t face it. I’d shower and shave, then deal with the closet.

  Clean and shaved, looking relatively human, I snagged some of the makeup I’d purchased for Maddie and tapped it underneath my eyes to hide the bags. I blinked at myself, surprised at the dramatic change. No wonder girls wear this stuff all the time. Then I went to dress. Socks, boxers, pants, a shirt. I looked almost presentable. I ran my fingers over the silk ties piled in the middle of the room, sorting through them before finding the correct one. Studying myself in the mirror, my armor as impeccable as I could make it, I knew it wasn’t my clothes that would protect me tonight. I had to be mentally stronger than ever before.

  I’d already lost almost everything. There couldn’t be anything else.

  Maddie

  Even though I had resumed eating, my strength didn’t fully return. Three bowls of oatmeal a day didn’t provide nearly enough calories to sustain me for long periods of time, not to mention the lack of protein and fat. I pressed at my cheekbones as I stared at myself in the mirror, the weak light in the ceiling accentuating the shadows beneath my eyes and the hollows of my cheeks. How much longer could I live like this, without any hope of escape or rescue? I kept the key close, checked my room routinely for some secret space it could be used, but so far it had proved a meaningless gesture on Joshua’s part.

  My oatmeal was sweeter, as if Joshua had started sneaking in a teaspoon of sugar. It was marginally easier to choke down, but I avoided all his attempts at conversation. He needed to stop trying so hard to be nice to me. He could get me out of here, if he wanted. He chose not to. It made him worse than Meyer, in my opinion. Beneath my anger at the man I loved was the fear that he was lying in a shallow grave, perhaps behind his house next to the puppy he’d buried so many years ago.

  Whe
n Conrad came back, I barely had a chance to fight. I awoke as cold metal closed around my neck, heard the click of a latch snapping shut. I started thrashing before my eyes even opened, but a sudden pressure on my windpipe forced me to fall still.

  “I always thought bitches made the best pets.”

  My eyes cast down, I felt around my neck to find a tight metal collar, the cold metal quickly warming to my skin. The pressure on my windpipe returned as my hands reached around to the back and found a chain connected to the ring.

  “What the fuck is this,” I whispered, half to myself, and flew backward off the bed and onto the floor with another tug. I groaned and swallowed around the growing sting, not just on the surface of my skin but deep inside my throat as well.

  “We have another visitor today, and I want to make sure you behave yourself. Now stand.”

  He yanked again before I could react, and I struggled to my feet to avoid more pain. The chain swung around to my front as he pulled me toward him, and I had no choice but to fall against his chest.

  “That’s my girl,” he murmured, a smile on his face as he stroked my hair. I pulled back, but all it earned me was another jerk.

  “I’m not your girl,” I managed to grind out. The pressure on my throat was too much; I could barely speak around it. My wrists burned as I pushed against his chest with every ounce of my limited strength, but he held still.

  “Maybe not yet. But you will be.”

  I struggled to breathe as we stared at each other. I’m properly afraid now, Meyer, but you’re still not here.

  “Walk with me, and maybe you’ll still be able to breathe by the time we get downstairs.”

  My attempt to remain planted on in once place was met with more pulling, until I was at risk of being dragged across the floor by my throat. There was no real choice. I gave as much distance between us as I could, but though the chain was long he kept it pulled tight to his body. We nearly brushed as he led me down the stairs and into the same room as the day before. Everything in the same place. The air held the same musty smell of old books, cracked leather, and expensive alcohol. Unlike the other day, however, I immediately recognized the figure waiting for us at the other end of the room.