Red Rover, Perdition Games

by L E Fraser

  “Yes.” He grasped her hand, brought it to his lips, and kissed her palm. “I’ll tell them anything you want.”

  She pulled her hand free from his grasp. “You play the game so poorly.” She wiped her hand against her jeans. “Don’t you see? The only way this will work is if you shoot Sam and I wrestle the gun away and shoot you in self-defence.”

  Confusion contorted his features. He took a step behind him, away from his sister. “What?”

  Jordanna gazed at her twin with affection. “Jenny’s right. You’re a liability.”

  She raised the gun and shot her brother in the head.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Reece

  SAM’S CAR WAS parked in front of the Harris farm. Reece raced into the old house, Alston calling after him to stop. A glass of milk and a plate were on the kitchen table. A chair was overturned. There was blood on the side of the table.

  He flew down the stairs to the cellar. Empty. He leaped back up the stairs two at a time and stopped dead when he heard a shot. His eyes scanned the backyard. The burned-out barn. The yellow shed. He sprinted toward the shed with Alston right at his heels.

  Flinging the door open, Reece charged inside and assessed the scene at lightning speed. Jordan dead on the ground, Sam lying on her side hog-tied, and Jordanna aiming a gun at Sam’s head.

  Reece felt detached as he rapidly ran through scenarios to predict responses and reactions. The first option was to tackle Jordanna, but she had the gun pointed at Sam. It could go off when he hit her. Sam would die. Yelling at Jordanna could distract her and she’d turn. He could charge her. Sam would live but Reece knew Jordanna would most likely shoot him before he covered the twenty feet between them.

  Alston’s breath was hot on Reece’s neck. The detective shoved him aside, aiming his gun at Jordanna’s back.

  “Police!” he yelled, and the girl stiffened her back but her hand didn’t flinch. The gun’s ominous black eye remained aimed at the side of Sam’s head.

  “Drop the weapon and get to your knees,” Alston ordered.

  Jordanna didn’t move, not even to glance over her shoulder.

  “Red rover, red rover, I call Sam on over,” she sang, and the hair rose on Reece’s arms.

  “Jordanna, it’s Reece Hash.” He kept his tone expressionless. “We know Jordan killed your dad and Caitlyn. We can help you.” He took a step toward her.

  “You’ll be the first to play, then Reece another day.” A trill of laughter. “I wish you’d worn that white blouse.”

  Reece took three long strides. Fifteen feet separated them. If she turned, she’d kill him.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” she said in a lazy voice. “If it wasn’t for Jordan, we wouldn’t be here.”

  “Reece, find Jennifer,” Sam shouted. “She killed Graham and Caitlyn. It wasn’t Jordan.”

  “You’re lying!” Jordanna screamed. “Jennifer didn’t do anything.”

  “You can’t protect her any longer,” Sam said. “We can help Jennifer.”

  Reece detected panic and fear under the persuasive tone of her voice.

  “Jordanna, you’re all Jennifer has left,” Sam continued. “The police are here. You know it’s over. If you kill me, the police will kill you. You don’t need to die. I understand why you’ve done this. Please, let me help you.”

  “You understand nothing!” she yelled, putting the palm of her left hand under the pistol grip. “It was all Jordan. My brother was going to kill you. I saved you. Tell them the truth!”

  “They can see the truth,” Sam said. “You’re holding a gun on me. Let me help you.”

  From over Reece’s shoulder, he heard Alston whispered, “Look.”

  When Reece turned, Alston nodded his head behind him, keeping his gun aimed at Jordanna’s back. A uniformed officer stood in the doorway with his hand clamped on Jennifer’s shoulder.

  Reece took another step toward Jordanna’s back. In the strong florescent light that flooded the shed, he could see trails of tears through the dirt on Sam’s face.

  “They’ve arrested Jennifer,” he said. “If she’s innocent, you have to help her. If Jordan killed your mother and father, police will believe your statement. Let Sam go,” he said with as much authority as he could muster.

  Jordanna swung around, levelling the gun at his chest. Her eyes flickered to her sister in the doorway.

  Reece used her moment of distraction to ram into her knees. The gun flew from her hand and clattered against the wall behind her. She tore at the back of his neck with her fingernails, kicking her feet to dislodge his body. He grabbed her wrists and pulled her toward him, forcing her body beneath his. Letting go of her wrists, he straddled her body and tried to climb over her to reach the gun. With a wail of fury, she wrapped her fingers in his hair and yanked him to the side, rolling out from underneath him and scuttling forward on her hands and knees.

  Reece tried to grab her ankle as she crawled on all fours. She kicked him hard in the face. Blood spewed from his nose. He latched onto her leg and pulled as hard as he could. She fell flat on her stomach and he managed to drag her away from the gun. She kicked at his body and reached down, grabbing his arm in a steely grip. Sharp teeth sank into his forearm and he howled when she ripped away a chunk of flesh. Reece kneeled with blood streaming from his arm. She rolled to her back, kicked him in the gut with both feet, and scrambled to her hands and knees to crawl for the weapon.

  Reece dropped flat against the ground, giving Alston a clear shot.

  A gun roared.

  Jordanna froze. Her mouth opened and the life faded from her eyes. Her body fell across Sam’s curled torso. Blood from the wound in Jordanna’s head ran across the side of Sam’s face and spattered the ground around her.

  Sam was screaming, straining helplessly against the ropes that tethered her arms and legs. She was frantically bucking her body, trying to dislodge Jordanna’s corpse so she could roll from beneath it.

  Reece crawled across the distance separating them. He shoved Jordanna’s body off. He wiped blood off Sam’s face and gathered her in his arms. She cried out in pain. He quickly released her, and she toppled over, landing on her side again beside Jordanna’s body. Against the wall, Reece spied a pocketknife. He sawed at the rope connecting Sam’s wrists to her ankles and then tugged the rope free.

  Alston crouched beside them. “The ambulance is on the way.”

  Sam rubbed her bruised wrists and tentatively stretched out her legs with a moan. Reece gently embraced her, kissing the side of her face and tasting Jordanna’s blood on his lips.

  “It took you long enough,” she whimpered, burrowing her face against his chest. “But I knew you’d come.”

  “Always,” he promised.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Sam

  One Month Later

  SOMETHING HEAVY PREVENTED Sam’s legs from moving. She couldn’t breathe. Apocalyptic dread suffocated her and she thrashed her arms. A subtle scent of citrus pulled her awake, and her eyes snapped opened. In the moment before full consciousness, primitive panic insisted she was still in the shed, hog-tied and helpless, held captive by a murderous eighteen-year-old. Jordanna’s face floated in front of her eyes. She blinked rapidly, expelling the vision. Her heart rate slowed and her breathing evened. She was home. She was safe. It was over.

  Sam sat up and the silky Egyptian cotton sheet slid against her bare arm. The fingers on her right hand twitched, and she focused on controlling the muscles. When the twitching stopped, she held her bedsheet to her nose and inhaled the aroma of clean linen. Familiar smells helped, a bit. In the back of her mind, a phantom stench of blood lingered. She worried it would never go away.

  Reaching across Reece, she plucked the lighter from his nightstand and lit the lemon candle beside her. The wick flickered and caught, and the aroma of citrus began filling the room.

  Reece rolled over and moaned. She didn’t want to wake him, not again. Against the shadowy backdrop of her
bedroom, hallucinatory images suddenly coalesced in a technicolour assault. She reached for the bottle of acetaminophen with codeine. Two tablets fell into her hand. They were the last of a bottle of one hundred Reece had picked up for her ten days ago. How had she consumed so much? It did nothing to alleviate the constant pain in her head or the spasms in her back.

  For a month, she’d had trouble sleeping, waking disoriented and terrified from nightmares. It felt like someone had punched her in the stomach while she slept, leaving her winded and breathless. Impending doom would engulf her, the same nasty feeling you experience when you reach for your wallet and discover it missing or turn to find the child that had stood beside you gone.

  During the day, she’d see Jordan. His face would appear in a streetcar window or she’d catch a glimpse of him from her peripheral vision. Understanding it was her imagination didn’t help. Attending the funerals hadn’t helped. Nothing stopped him from appearing to her at random times.

  Sometimes, blood covered his face and he looked as he had in death. Often, he simply stared at her from outside the library window or from the street below the loft, dressed in his football kit and holding his helmet. His sad eyes reminded her of all the things he’d never do. The scholarship to UBC he wouldn’t accept, the career he’d never have. Remembering that Jordan had raped at least two girls didn’t dispel the guilt. Away from his sisters’ influences, psychiatrists could have helped him. Maybe. She didn’t know. Everything was a jumbled mess in her head.

  Brandy snored at the bottom of the king-sized bed, and her hind legs jerked in her sleep. Above the six-foot partition wall that circled the bedroom loft, streetlights twinkled through the southern windows. She was home. She was safe. It was over. The three phrases had become a silent mantra.

  But it didn’t help. She didn’t feel safe.

  Not giving in to paranoia was important, but it was a struggle not to put on the light or wake Reece. The need to check the loft for invaders, to search every closet and corner, was overwhelming. Her jaw hurt from grinding her teeth in her sleep, and she was thirsty again. The water bottle beside her was empty.

  Get up, go into the bathroom, and fill it.

  The idea of crossing the dark loft to the bathroom caused her stomach to cramp.

  There’s no one hiding in the bathroom. Brandy would have barked.

  Reasonable, but rational thought was on holiday. Her emotions were a turbulent mass of insensible contradictions. On an intellectual level, she knew her subconscious mind was sorting out the trauma. The nightmares and panic attacks were normal. They’d disperse with time, if she didn’t allow post-traumatic stress to get a foothold. She understood the psychology, and it infuriated her she couldn’t employ the tools to overcome her problem. It should be easy for her. She was earning a PhD in psychology. Why couldn’t she help herself?

  Critical incident stress management hadn’t helped and neither had the York Regional Police debriefing. She’d tried talking unremittingly about the events in the shed to anyone who would listen. Half the time she spoke in non sequiturs that were incomprehensible while her audience’s face turned confused and their eyes filled with pity. She’d feel no emotion as she babbled on about Jordanna, Jordan, and the shed. If someone interrupted to ask how she had actually felt in the moment, she’d act flippant and return to reporting the facts. She couldn’t face her feelings of utter helplessness or the residual anger that chewed at her without mercy.

  But the worst feeling—the one she couldn’t understand and couldn’t talk herself out of—was shame. She berated herself over the amateurish stupidity of sitting in the kitchen with her back to the door. Her inability to use her psychology skills to manipulate Jordan into disarming his sister disgusted her. There was a constant simmering sense of self-hate that she couldn’t get past. For a day or two, she’d be okay before an intermittent backslide flipped her into more night terrors, panic attacks, and self-loathing.

  “Want me to get you water?”

  Reece spoke in a soft tone and didn’t touch her. She felt guilty that he’d learned the hard way that a sudden motion or a loud noise caused her to react violently. She couldn’t control her instinct to lash out at whatever startled her.

  “Thanks.”

  He climbed out of bed and shuffled to the washroom, scratching his back. Her heart pounded. She clutched the sheet tight, waiting for his grunt of pain when a home intruder attacked him.

  He returned with the water and got in bed. After she sucked on the bottle, he pulled her into his arms.

  His skin was pliable and soft yet protective. “Want the light on?” he asked. There wasn’t even a hint of exasperation to his voice. Only kindness and understanding.

  Against his chest, she shook her head.

  “I put Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on the e-reader. Do you want to read for a bit?”

  For some odd reason, the only thing that offered some relief from her memories of the shed was J.K. Rowling’s books. She didn’t usually enjoy the fantasy genre, and her love of the novels had taken her by surprise. Reece had bought her an e-reader so she could read whenever a nightmare woke her. He knew she felt guilty over interrupting his sleep by putting on the light.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “Since you’re awake, I want to get your opinion on something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “How would you feel if I went back to school?” he asked.

  She sat up. “What for?”

  “Law.”

  It was a great idea but she was wary. He’d said he’d never finish his law degree.

  “Why?”

  “It’s not because of my father,” he said, a little quickly. “I mean, it is, but it isn’t.”

  For the past six months, Reece had waffled over whether to join Toronto homicide until their screw-up with Caitlyn had forced Bryce to rescind the offer. She had known for some time Reece wasn’t keen on working as a private investigator either. He’d been a bit too involved with her school work and had assumed an unattractive parental role. He scolded her about deadlines and offered unwanted advice on her dissertation. Now it made sense. Meddling in her academic world came from a desire to experience university vicariously. Reece wanted to go back to school.

  “How long have you been considering it?” she asked.

  “Well,” he said, rolling over to face her, “I guess it was when I took my dad’s watch out for Lisa’s urban animal party.”

  The night they’d discovered Abigail’s suicide.

  “When I accompanied Lisa to OCAD,” he said, “I felt this tug, you know?”

  She nodded.

  “So, I thought if Lisa had the guts to go back to school maybe I should consider it. I spoke with Osgoode Hall Law School to see if it was possible to transfer my credits from Western Law School.”

  “And?”

  “It is.” He rolled to his back and smiled. “I can finish in a year. Now, I’d have to article or complete the LPP and write the bar exam. That would take another year or so.” Enthusiasm rang in his voice.

  She snuggled against his chest. “So what type of law do you want to practise?”

  “I’d like to be a prosecutor.”

  She laughed. “Oh boy, that puts you and Jim on opposite sides.”

  He squeezed her shoulder. “It does, but his win record as a defender is too high. I’d enjoy taking him down a notch. Healthy competition and all that.”

  Reece had once confided in her that he quit law school and joined the Ontario Provincial Police because he couldn’t fill his father’s shoes. The man was a brilliant prosecutor who had earned a position as a judge with the Ontario Court of Justice by the time he was in his mid-forties and advanced to Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada by fifty-two. His father’s success intimidated him. Confronting fears took guts, and Sam was proud of Reece for realizing he could be his own man, even if he chose a similar profession.

  “You’ll make a fantastic prosecutor. After all, you we
re a fantastic cop, and that experience is going to be priceless.” She kissed him and pulled away to add, “I know this has taken a lot of soul searching, but you’ve made the right decision. The Crown Attorney’s Office is going to be lucky to have you.”

  She recalled the words of Nelson Mandela—I learned that courage was not the absence of fear but the triumph over it. Her experience inside the shed was a part of her now, but it didn’t need to be the defining moment on which the rest of her life pivoted.

  If Reece could overcome his fear and move forward, maybe she could too. “I’m going to the hospital tomorrow.” Once the words left her mouth, she felt something loosen in her gut. “To see Jennifer Harris.”

  He sat up. “Are you certain?”

  A peace settled over her. She needed to face the monster that had instigated the horror.

  “Yeah.” She closed her eyes. “It’s what I need to do to be free.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Sam

  SAM STOOD IN the viewing room on the psychiatric floor at Toronto’s SickKids Hospital and stared through the one-way mirror at the teenager sitting cross-legged on the floor.

  Jennifer’s long blond hair framed her pretty, heart-shaped face. Her clear complexion had spots of colour high on her cheeks, and her blue eyes were wide and earnest. An English rose, precious and fragile.

  Her lips moved when she spoke to the female psychiatrist who sat on the carpet beside her. Roger didn’t have the audio turned on in the room they watched from, but the doctor laughed at something Jennifer said and patted her shoulder. The intimate gesture made bile rise in the back of Sam’s throat and she clenched her jaw. Jennifer blushed and smiled up at the doctor. The perfect image of a sweet adolescent doing her stoic best to overcome horrific tragedy. Sam didn’t buy any of it.