As Sick as Our Secrets

by A B Whelan

  To my right, next to the foot of a concrete pillar with colorful graffiti, I spot two headlights bathing numerous homeless settlements in bright light.

  “He knows,” Betty says, panicking. “Shit. Video’s gone…audio’s gone. We are deaf and blind. Shit, shit, shit!”

  “I’m going back,” I say, spinning the car around without thinking.

  “Wait! Maybe he won’t notice the GPS tracker.”

  I stop dead in the middle of the road. The sound of a car’s horn zips by us; the driver shakes his fist at us out his window.

  “Do you have a signal?”

  “Yep. Still there.”

  “What do you think?”

  Betty stares at me thoughtfully. “I’m sure she’s fine. Let’s stick to the plan. If we confront him now, all we’ve done will be undone.”

  I watch the flashing dot on the digital map, considering our options. “All right,” I agree. “But if that dot doesn’t move within the next five minutes, I’m pulling her out.”

  We wait. I can hear the wind hissing outside above the constant humdrum of the city around us. The various possible outcomes of the night play out in my mind, driving me mad.

  Before the time is up, the dot moves.

  Olivia is wearing a beautiful fashion bracelet encompassing a GPS tracker chip. Richard isn’t as smart as he thinks.

  We follow the dot onto the I-10 east freeway, then take exit CA-71 southbound, keeping a half mile between us and the Maserati. On the CA-91 eastbound, small raindrops start peppering my windshield. I ask Betty to fish out my glasses from my purse. My eyes are getting tired from driving in the dark, although my night vision has been unreliable since college.

  As we near the first exit in Temecula, Betty remarks that if she’d known Richard would be heading this way, she would have saved herself the long trip to Los Angeles.

  But the dot remains on the freeway as we pass through Betty’s hometown.

  What if Richard has killed Olivia? We could be following him to Lake Hodges, where he’s planning to dump her body like he did with his other victims.

  Fear builds up in my mind, but I block it out once again. I don’t want to freak Betty out any more than she is already.

  My worries diminish as the dot moves off the freeway and onto Centre City Parkway in Escondido. He continues east, slicing through the city, and then climbs up a secluded mountain road in the opposite direction of the lake.

  “They’ve stopped,” Betty warns, leaning forward in her seat.

  I stomp the break and come to a halt on the side of the narrow mountain road. Dust pours over the car and dims the brightness of the headlights right before I shut them off.

  “How close?”

  She rolls the window down and pokes her head out into the dark. “There is a private driveway up ahead.” She points ahead and to our right. “There is only one house on this hill. He must have taken her there.”

  Coughing from the dust Betty let inside the car, I manage to say, “We should continue on foot. I’m going to leave the car here.”

  I throw my backpack on and, armed with a taser and my handgun, start my way up the cracked asphalt driveway. Betty—equipped like me—creeps behind me. Palm trees squeak and sway, and insects are making all kinds of creepy sounds around us.

  By the time we reach the main gate, the storm has caught up with us. Within moments, the dust beneath our feet turns into sticky mud and fat raindrops play a drum solo on the fronds of the palm trees. A lightning strike casts a brilliant light around us, and I jump into a prickly shrub, dragging Betty with me for cover. Campbell’s Maserati is parked sideways in front of a Mediterranean-style house, doors open, headlights on. He’s dragging Olivia up the tiled patio entrance toward the front door. She is dead. He killed her. It’s my fault. I set her up. I failed her again. I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.

  As if a curtain has just fallen in front of my eyes, I launch to my feet and start running toward them, screaming like a warrior, holding out my gun and taser.

  Richard’s movements seem to be suspended in time as he watches me closing on him. He lets go of Olivia, and she falls onto the floor like a ragdoll.

  Two more strides and I’m beside them, pointing the barrel of the gun between Richard’s eyes and slamming the taser into his chest. His body rattles and shakes on the ground as if he’s having a seizure. Saliva trickles from his mouth. Rain washes down over his limp, convulsing body.

  I’m fuming with anger and shame. I’m blinded by hatred.

  I don’t let go of the taser button until Betty drags me away.

  “That’s enough! You’re going to kill him.”

  My hair’s dripping water, and I jerk my arm out of Betty’s hold and pounce near Richard again and tase him. “I want to kill him!” I shout.

  Betty grabs me again. “Enough!” she screams into my face.

  I look at the handcuffs in her hand that she took from Brad’s sock drawer and go down on my knees beside Richard. I roughly roll him onto his face, and Betty cuffs him.

  I roll his drenched body onto his back again, stand up, and kick him in the face as hard as I can with my hiking boot.

  He’s going to feel that when he wakes up.

  I bend forward, hands on my thighs, trying to catch my breath. My head starts swimming with dizziness. The next thing I’m aware of is Betty’s voice, coming from far, far away, as if from another universe.

  “She’s alive! But I think she’s drugged.”

  I feel a sudden cramp in my stomach, and I gag. Since I haven’t had any food today, the only thing that comes up is a splash of bitter bile. I spit it onto the mud.

  Olivia

  TUESDAY

  I’m smelling something flowery, a candle burning, perhaps. My cheeks feel warm and moist. There is a dull brightness all around me; I can sense the light through my closed eyelids. Morsels of a conversation pour over my ears, a soft murmuring. I’m in a bedroom, lying on a king-sized bed, wrapped in a dark silk linen and a thick, soft blanket. A flash of light brightens my surroundings for a heartbeat, and a gentle knocking raps against the windowsill outside the room. It must be the storm that’s been hanging over us these last few days.

  I sit up, holding onto the carved mahogany pole of the bed to steady my rise. The few shallow breaths I take are tinged with the stale, dusty smell of antique furniture. Some artificial light bleeds into the room through a cracked door, and the brightness hurts my eyes. I put my hand up to dim it. A throbbing pain in my temple brings me back to reality. Where has Richard taken me?

  I creep to the door and slyly peek out. Through my fingers shading my eyes, I see Ashley standing by a bookshelf, holding a copy of the novel Fifty Shades of Grey. Betty is sitting in an armchair near the bookshelf, spinning her cell phone with her fingers.

  “What’s going on?” I say. My voice comes out weak and hoarse. I clear my throat.

  “Thank God you’re up,” says Betty, rising from her chair.

  Ashley hands me a metal container. “Here, drink some water.”

  I take a sip, and saliva instantly floods my mouth. I feel weak and disoriented.

  “Here, sit down.” Betty leads me to a table and pulls out a chair.

  As I slowly lower myself into the chair, I suddenly have a perfect view of my husband across the room, his wrists and ankles tied with thick leather braces. The shocking image startles me, and I fall back in the chair as I try to stand and smash my back against the floor.

  Ashley crouches beside me and helps me back to my feet.

  “We got him, Livi. We did it,” she says, enveloping me in her arms.

  “Olivia, thank God you’re okay,” Richard yells, making a shiver run up my spine. “Come here and get me out of these buckles before your friends do something stupid.”

  I can’t look at him. I’m not ready.

  Ashley jumps to her feet and yells back, “Shut up, you disgusting pig!”

  “OLIVIA! COME HERE RIGHT NOW!” Richard shouts,
yanking on his restraints.

  I reach for Ashley to stop her, but she’s too fast. When the commotion stops, I look up and see Ashley standing next to my unconscious husband with an absurdly large metal dildo in her hand.

  *****

  I give Richard a swift kick to the stomach to wake his sorry ass up. He groans as one of his eyes peels open. The other one is swollen shut from Ashley’s earlier blow. He lies on his side, his head resting on the same carpet his innocent victims must have been dragged across, where Skyler may have lain. The smell of urine crawls into my nose, and my face distorts.

  “Hey,” I say. “There you are.” I smile as Richard’s bloodshot eyes frantically sweep the room. He must be trying to assess his situation. The duct tape over his mouth rises and caves in, synchronized with his panicky breathing. His hands are tied together tightly, so all his struggle achieves is the rattling of the chain.

  I kick him hard in the stomach again. It feels good, so I smile, and do it again for good measure.

  “Oh my gosh, you are so handsome and charming. Look at you!” I brush my fingers along the side of his face. He tries to pull away from my touch, but he is tied up good, and he can’t do anything more than a series of desperate wriggles.

  He groans again.

  “What’s that? Are you trying to tell me something?” I put my hand behind my ear, pretending that I can’t hear him. He squeaks some more, and this time he makes a feeble attempt to kick me. Once he realizes his ankles are bound together too, all he can do is jerk his body around like a fat baby seal on ice. After a few seconds, he realizes his efforts are futile, and he stops moving.

  “I’m not surprised women got in your car so easily with you. Look at you! You look so trustable, refined, a real catch.” My gentle, caressing fingers tense up and I slap him across the face, making sure to include his battered eye. “Not so tough now, are you?”

  The floorboard creaks on the stairs. I see a light of hope appear in Richard’s eyes as he looks behind me. If only he knew that help isn’t coming, at least not for him.

  “Holy hell! This place stinks,” Betty says, holding a bottle of vodka in one hand and pinching her nose with the other.

  “Did anybody see you?” asks Ashley.

  “Nope. There’s no one here. I parked the car on the side of the house, next to some olive tree.”

  Ashley nods and takes the bottle from Betty. She takes a healthy swig and holds it out to me. I shake my head no, but she insists. “Trust me, it’s going to be a long night. You’ll need a little liquid courage.”

  A ringtone of a cell phone echoes through the room, making us all jump. I snap my head at Betty, who’s desperately groping for her phone in her backpack.

  “Are you serious?” Ashley snaps at Betty as she answers her phone and puts a finger up, choking the words in us.

  “Yes, honey. Mommy’s going to be home soon, all right? Go back to sleep. It’s very late. No, there are no monsters in your closet. I checked. Okay. I love you too, sweetie. See you soon.”

  Once she slips the phone back into her pocket, she looks at us. “What?”

  I roll my eyes and stand up. We need to take this situation more seriously. We are about to commit a grave crime in the eyes of the law. Vigilante justice.

  “Let’s get started, girls. I don’t want to be here all night,” Betty says as she slips a hand under Richard’s armpit. “A little help?”

  The three of us lift Richard from the floor and tie his wrists with the leather bondage he used for his victims. He struggles and groans, but the duct tape over his mouth muffles his words.

  “Look at me, Richard,” I say as I lift his head. “Did killing those girls and raping me make you feel stronger? Well, you made me stronger.”

  I pick up the leather whip from the table where a wide variety of S&M toys are neatly laid out.

  Richard’s eyes roll in panic. He must be thinking of a way out of this situation. Only he doesn’t know that there is no way out. I am not who I was. Something inside of me has broken, but I still want justice, and if the law won’t help us, we must help ourselves.

  As I approach him, he groans. I rip off the duct tape.

  “I’ll admit to everything, Olivia. I swear. Please, just call the police,” he pleads.

  “No, I will not call the police, Richard. I’ve tried to tell them who you are, but they wouldn’t listen to a European immigrant gold-digger whore.”

  “You need to stop this foolishness, Olivia. You are not a killer.”

  “Opportunity makes the killer.”

  “Look, I’m sorry if I hurt you, but this isn’t the right way to handle things.”

  “Oh, sweet, little innocent Richard. I don’t even care about what you did to me anymore. We are here so that you can pay for what you did to those innocent girls, the ones you tortured.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt them. I was giving them what they wanted.” I step in front of him and start pushing my fingertip into his chest repeatedly, knowing that he hates being humiliated but that’s exactly what’s going to happen.

  “You are insane. You are not a man. You are a goddamn coward, Richard. You went after innocent, battered women who couldn’t defend themselves, women who trusted you.”

  I start whipping him mindlessly as though someone has taken possession of my body. I kick the metal chair next to him, and it skids across the floor and smashes into the wall. The clinging and banging make my nerves stand on edge. Richard’s body shudders, and the veins in his neck bulge.

  “COME ON, RICHARD, SEDUCE ME WITH YOUR WORDS,” I shout at him so loudly that my voice bounces back off the walls and echoes throughout the room. “COME ON! OVERPOWER ME. KILL ME!”

  I reach for the biggest rubber penis on the table and slam it hard against his face, hard enough to leave a mark. “How does it feel to be helpless, to be vulnerable?” I speak through clenched teeth, tapping his swollen eye.

  I can see the flames of hatred raging inside of him. This is the most passion I’ve ever seen in him.

  I move the rubber penis down his body and stop at his crotch. “You want to feel how you made those poor girls feel? I will show you.” I unbuckle his belt and pull his pants and underwear down as much as his tied legs allow me.

  He reacts with a series of whimpers. He tries to wriggle his way out of the bondage, but it was he who designed them, and he designed them well. There is no escape, and he knows that.

  He finally accepts that reality of his predicament and starts begging for mercy. But it’s too late, because there is no turning back from here. We have kidnapped him, and we would go to prison for it.

  “Please, call the police. I’ll tell them everything,” he whimpers.

  I want to shove the same sex toy he used on his victims inside of him, as deep as it will go, but I can’t.

  As broken as I am, I can’t bring myself to stoop to his level. It makes me feel sick.

  “You’re the worst kind of monster, Richard. I despise you,” I say, at peace with myself.

  Ashley puts her hand on my shoulder.

  “What are we going to do now?” I ask her.

  “I don’t know,” she sighs. “This whole plan looked much better in my head.”

  “We can’t call the police,” says Betty. “I can’t do that to Brad.”

  “You could go. As if you’ve never been here,” I offer. She has the most to lose.

  She points toward Richard. “But he saw me here.”

  “Well, he’s not going anywhere,” says Ashley, reaching for her bag. “We need to clear our heads and figure out how to end this. Let’s find a place in town to grab coffee or something to eat.”

  A shadow of relief washes over Richard’s face, and I feel my jaws tighten. There is no way I’m going to allow him to ruin my friends’ lives and get away with what he’s done—not again.

  I rip out a page from the Fifty Shades of Grey novel and stuff it in his mouth. Then I put a fresh piece of duct tape over his mouth before he can
spit it out.

  “Here, choke on your own filth, you monster.”

  Betty

  WEDNESDAY

  There is a surreal feeling to how the three of us are sitting in the car, sipping coffee at 4:52 a.m. in a Starbucks parking lot, a half-hour drive from my home. Brad has been very nervous about my night out and has already texted me a dozen times to let me know how things are going with the kids. He’s been surprisingly calm about the whole situation, although he has no idea what I’m doing here. As far as he’s concerned, I’m on a girls’ night out with Ashley in Los Angeles.

  It’s difficult to wrap my mind around the fact that my family is sound asleep less than forty miles away while I’m discussing the fate of a serial killer over hot coffee in Styrofoam cups. This is not who I am. I’m not a kidnapper. I’m not a murderer. I can’t even recognize myself.

  Recording Campbell’s confession was all I agreed to do, not torture him to death. I know I can’t be involved with this. I have children I am responsible for in this world. Brad says I always rush things, I’m overdramatic, and I’m too hyper and too quick to react. Now I’m forced to face the truth that he may have been right about me all along. I should have been smarter. I should have never been involved.

  “I think we should go back to the house and let your husband go, Olivia,” I whisper from the back seat.

  They both twist their heads to look back at me. “And then what?” asks Ashley.

  I avoid Olivia’s eyes because there is an unusual sadness in them that gives me the chills. “We have enough evidence to give to the police this time. We found his lair.”

  Olivia doesn’t respond. She barely even breathes. Her statue-like demeanor makes me feel uneasy.

  Ashley puts her coffee in the dashboard cup holder, looks at Olivia for a second, then looks back at me. “If we let him go, he’ll come after all of us.”

  A headache starts building up behind my eyes from dehydration and fatigue. I massage my temple to disperse it. “Then let’s call the police without releasing Richard. We can tell them that our lives were in danger, and we had no choice but to overpower him and tie him up.”