Sinnerman

by Cheryl Bradshaw

  My phone vibrated.

  “Who would call at this hour? It’s late, and you need your rest,” he said.

  I reached for it.

  “You’re not going to get that are you? Pass it back to me. And don’t be foolish or try to be brave or this needle goes all the way in.”

  I handed the phone back, and he pressed the flashing green light on my screen.

  “Sam Reids here, who am I speaking with?”

  Someone responded and Sam said, “Sloane can’t come to the phone right now. What’s that? Oh, it’s you—the soon-to-be ex-boyfriend. We were just talking about you. Tell me, were your ears ringing?”

  The noise coming from the other end of the phone grew louder.

  “Do not speak to me in that tone,” Sam said, and then a moment later, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to cut this call short. I’m sure you understand. Sloane’s with me now, so you can just go back to your life of petty crime and find someone else.”

  Another pause.

  “Anger won’t help you. Nothing will. You’ve lost her. Deal with it.”

  Inside my head I had a screw this moment. My mind flashed back to a class on self-defense that I’d taken. The instructor said if I was ever abducted the best thing I could do was not to let the abductor reach their final destination and instead to ram the car into another—this was supposedly the best option for survival. There were no cars on the street for me to plummet into so I went with what was available and headed straight for it.

  CHAPTER 54

  When I woke, one of my wrists was chained to a metal bar on a bed in a room. The other wrist was unrestrained, which confused me. Why would he allow me that small bit of freedom? My plan had failed and no one knew my location, I was sure of it. I looked around. The room was decorated in the same colors and style as my room at home. Even the furniture was the same. The desk had several pictures on it of me with friends, family, and one with Sam. He’d cut out a photo of himself and stuck it next to my head to make it look like we’d posed for the photo together. To say he was out of his mind no longer applied—he was far worse than that.

  I lay still on the bed and tried to figure out my next move. Did I even have one? I had no idea how long I’d been out for: an hour, several hours, days?

  I heard something. At first it sounded like a wounded dog, but the more I listened the clearer it became. It was a person—a woman, and she was crying.

  “Hello,” I whispered. “Can you hear me?”

  Silence. And then more whimpering.

  “Who’s out there?”

  After another pause the voice said, “Who are you?”

  “My name is Sloane. What’s yours?”

  “Angela.”

  “How long have you been here?” I said.

  “I—I don’t know. I just want to go home.”

  “I’m going to do everything I can to make that happen.”

  “You can’t. He’s going to kill both of us.”

  “Angela, listen to me. I need you to tell me what you can see.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Yes you can. Just try. Anything you can tell me will help.”

  “No I mean I really can’t. There’s a blindfold over my eyes.”

  A door opened and footsteps descended the stairs.

  “Be quiet,” Angela said. “Don’t speak to him or he’ll cut you—he doesn’t like it when we talk.”

  Finally that part of the puzzle came together and I knew why some of the women had cuts on their legs. Maybe one gash for each time they spoke as a way to silence them. I didn’t care—I wasn’t about to keep my trap shut.

  Sam walked into the room and sat at a desk across from me.

  “Sorry about the handcuffs,” he said. “Or should I say cuff. I didn’t want to restrain you like that, but we need to have some kind of understanding.”

  “Like what?”

  “No more running cars into trees and trying to hurt yourself. I need to be able to trust you.”

  I couldn’t believe he thought I was trying to hurt myself.

  “Why is the room decorated like this?”

  “It’s our room, Sloane. Don’t you like it?” he said.

  Every time he said my name I wanted to projectile vomit all over him.

  “I’ll admit, at first when I followed you I was just going to kill you. But over time I developed feelings. I wouldn’t say love—what is love, really? And what do people mean when they say they’re in love. Do they even know what that is? What we have is more real than any kind of simple love. We admire each other. Me from afar watching you, and you stopping at nothing to find me. I’m meant to have you. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  At some point his fantasies convinced him that we shared the same obsessions.

  “You’re insane if you think any type of love exists between us,” I said.

  His voice elevated.

  “You have a naughty mouth, and you need to get control of what comes out of it or I’ll have to cover it up, and then you won’t be able to talk at all. Don’t you treat me like you don’t want to be here after all I’ve done for you—for us.”

  I wanted to fight, to tell him how much he reviled me—but I knew I’d said too much already.

  “Tell me about my sister,” I said.

  “Now you want to talk about her?”

  “You were the last one to see her alive. When she spoke her last words, only you were there to hear them. You stripped me of the chance to have that experience for myself.”

  “Alright then,” he said. “I can do that.”

  There was one thing Sam didn’t know about me. I had small hands and even smaller wrists, and he hadn’t put the cuffs on tight. While he blabbed on, I twisted and turned my wrist. I didn’t care if I broke every bone in my body—one way or another, I would free myself.

  Sam continued, “Your sister as you know was the last of my first victims, and that’s why she had to be the most beautiful. And she was—spectacular, just like you. I met her at the gas station. She asked if she could bum a cigarette from me. And I told her I didn’t smoke, but I went in the store and bought her a pack, and she was so thrilled she didn’t think twice when I asked her to come over to my car so I could give her a light. You two may look alike, but she’s doesn’t have half the brain that you possess.” He shook his head. “No sir. She pleaded and begged, and even when I cut her, she wouldn’t stop the constant jabbering.”

  I felt my left eye go moist—I wanted to keep control of my emotions, but his callous words were too much.

  “Wow,” he said. “Fascinating. Most girls cry for themselves, for their own lives and they’d do anything to spare it. Not you though. You shed a single tear, and it’s from someone who’s not even alive.”

  “I don’t want to hear anymore.”

  “Even if she mentioned you?”

  “What?”

  “Just before I squeezed her life away she said she was sorry about how things ended when you last talked to each other.” He laughed. “Course she was talking to herself, but even so, I suppose that means something to you.”

  It meant everything. The last time I saw Gabby I was angry with her because she’d decided to marry a man she barely knew and didn’t know anything about. I’d thought about that conversation over and over in my mind—if only I could have taken it all back.

  “Why don’t you let the girl in the next room go?” I said. “She doesn’t deserve to be here.”

  “I’m offended by that, Sloane. I got her for you.”

  “I don’t understand?”

  “It took me months to find someone who looked like your best girlfriend…Madison, is it? But finally I did, and now you’ll have no reason to leave. You have me and you have your friend and you’ll stay with me. And we’ll be here together forever.”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” I said. “This isn’t some silly little game; you can’t keep me here.”

  “Of course I can.”

  “I’m n
ot your mother, Sam. You can’t create a world like this and think it’s perfect and expect me to live in it with you. You can’t keep me here against my will. Nothing you ever say to me will ever justify you killing innocent women, you son of a bitch.”

  Sam bolted out of the chair and grabbed the framed photographs and threw them into a trash can next to the door. He faced me and balled his hands into fists and whacked both sides of his head with them.

  “I hate you! Do you hear me? I wish you were dead! You were supposed to stay here and be with me and not leave. Why can’t you do that? You don’t care about anyone but yourself. You want to hurt me, and you want to leave me. Why? I did everything for you. I just wanted you to be happy, but you couldn’t be that way with me, and that’s why you went away. You left me.”

  He wasn’t talking to me now. He was talking through me. He’d tapped into all his suppressed emotions and channeled someone else.

  Sam crunched his fingers inward and reached for my neck. I broke free of the cuff that held me and swung at his head as hard as I could. He flew backward and crashed into the wall. I ran out of the room and into the next and slammed and locked the door behind me. Angela lay still on the bed. Tears stained her cheeks. At least fifteen rows of gashes lined her legs which made me wonder how long he’d kept her. I removed the blindfold, but I couldn’t free her from the cuffs on her wrists and ankles.

  When I looked into her eyes they reminded me of an animal who’d been severely beaten.

  “Hang on, Angela. I’m going to get us both out of here.”

  “How?” she said.

  Sam pounded on the outside of the door.

  “You have no place to go Sloane. Stay in there as long as you want. I’ll be here when you come out.”

  “I’m scared,” Angela said.

  I searched the room.

  “I need you to focus for me, okay? When he was in here with you, did you hear anything like where he might have got the knife he used or any other tools he kept in this room?”

  The only noise that came from her was the sound of her cries.

  “Angela! Do you want to get out of here or not?” I said.

  “There’s a drawer.”

  “That’s good,” I said.

  I looked around and didn’t see it.

  “Where is it?”

  “Under my bed.”

  I got down on all fours and looked but it was too dark. I took my hand and stretched it out as far as it would go and then I felt something. I pulled out two boxes. One contained several knifes in different shapes and sizes and in the other was one item: my gun. I checked it. Still loaded.

  I looked at Angela, “Be right back.”

  I turned the knob on the door and peered out with my gun aimed and ready. But I wasn’t the only one. Sam lunged at me, knife in hand and slashed my arm. Blood sprayed out, and my gun crashed to the floor. Sam went for it, but I was ahead of him. I kicked his legs out from under him, and he tumbled to the floor. I recovered my gun and pressed it against his chest.

  “Go ahead, do it,” he said. “It’s what you want to do. It’s what you’ve always wanted to do. I see that now.”

  I wanted to fire my gun into his heartless body until no bullets remained—the time had come, I had my one wish in life. Sinnerman on the ground with me at the helm. Part of me wanted to squeeze the trigger, but instead I took my free hand and yanked the cuffs from my pocket.

  “Put them on,” I said.

  He sat there and stared at me, speechless.

  “Do it!” I said.

  He cinched them around his wrists, and I made a fist and hit him with everything I had inside me, again and again. Three years of fury expelled from my body. I released all of my pent up emotions on him and let the tears run free.

  Blood oozed from Sam’s face and covered my hands until they were sheathed in red. A hand touched my shoulder and I swung around.

  “That’s enough, cara mia.”

  I looked up into familiar dark eyes.

  “How did you find—”

  “GPS sensor under your car.”

  I looked down at Sam and aimed my gun at his heart. His body was still and lifeless.

  “I need to do this, Giovanni. He has to pay.”

  He shook his head and in a gentle manner reached for my hands and wiped some of the blood off with his sleeve.

  “You found him just like you wanted. Killing him won’t make you feel any better. Trust me.”

  I nodded.

  “There’s another girl here.I need to help her.”

  “Go take care of her,” he said. “I’ll stay with him.”

  I walked toward Angela’s room. Sam raised his head off the ground and muttered, “Sloane, don’t leave me.”

  Giovanni replied, “Looks like I just got her back. Deal with it.”

  And then two shots fired, but I didn’t turn around. I didn’t have to; I knew it was all over.

  CHAPTER 55

  “Talk about your knight in shining armor,” Maddie said, with a wink.

  “I guess you could call him that. But it’s over now. He’s done his good deed for me and now he can go back to his life.”

  “That’s what you want?”

  “Have you ever thought that might be what he wants?”

  “Never crossed my mind. He’s smitten, there’s no denying that.”

  “It’s hard to say where we’ll go from here,” I said. I’m not even sure how to go about it.”

  We embraced and I stepped on the plane.

  “Take good care of Boo for me,” I said. “See you both tomorrow.”

  Maddie took Lord Berkeley’s paw and waved it up and down in the air. “Say goodbye to your mommy. Time for us two to have some fun.”

  ***

  The warm breeze of Baltimore, Maryland drifted across my face like a warm blanket just out of the dryer as I descended the stairs of Giovanni’s private jet. It felt good to be free of bodyguards, Nick, and the plague Sinnerman inflicted on me over the past few years of my life. It felt like I’d carried the weight of the moon on my shoulders, and now I was so light I needed to brace myself against something so I didn’t get swept away into the air.

  I rented a car and used my cell phone to map my location. Twenty-three miles later I arrived at my destination and parked in front of a powder blue single-wide trailer with what used to be white trim. Now it held a kind of brownish hue. The trailer looked like it had been moved more than its share of times in its lifetime.

  The door was the color of a fire engine, except duller, and on one of the single-pane windows in the front someone had taken their finger and scratched the word HI in the caked up layer of dust. Grass had been planted in the yard at one time but had long since gone, leaving small patches of yellow about the size of a plate in its wake. A single car was parked out front; a purple Saturn sedan circa 1993 or so.

  I ascended the two-by-four wood-planked stairs and knocked.

  A woman with a face that resembled the back of my elbows answered the door in a tattered peach robe and long, stringy hair that practically reached out and begged me for a V05 hot oil treatment. The distinct smell of gin floated by and was absorbed into the atmosphere.

  “Can’t you read?” she said and pointed to the sign that was hot glued to the door. “No solicitors. That means you missy.”

  I spread out my fingers.

  “Do you see me carrying anything?”

  “Well, no.”

  “What does that tell you then?” I said.

  “You’ve got a sharp tongue, anyone ever tell you that?”

  “Can we skip the small talk and get to why I’m here?” I said.

  “Patience isn’t your strong suit, I guess.”

  Not even one minute with the woman and I already wanted to wring her neck.

  “Do you have a son named Sam—I mean, Samuel Reids?”

  She looked like the ghost of her dearly departed grandmother had just appeared before her and said BOO.

&nbs
p; “Has something happened—is he dead? Did he leave money for me in his will? I just knew that boy would grow up and still find a way to care for his mamma.”

  She spread the door all the way open, smiled and said, “Won’t you please come in?”

  Under any other circumstances I would have protested based on the smell alone, but I’d come all that way, and I wasn’t about to turn around now.

  She reached down to the sofa and picked up a variety of plates, silverware and other items that were scattered around. “Sit, sit,” she said.

  “I’m not here about his will.”

  She scrunched up her face and frowned and said, “Oh, hmm. He hasn’t gone and gotten you pregnant has he, because if you all need a place to stay, it’s not here. There’s no room at the inn.”

  A man emerged from the hallway with a stained yellow shirt that had endured more than its share of beer. His legs were almost all the way exposed except for a pair of boxer shorts, and his hair looked like it hadn’t been brushed for days. He passed by Laurel who stood next to the bar in the kitchen and smacked her on the ass.

  “Why would he have wanted anything from you after what you put him through?” I said.

  She flashed me a dirty look and said, “You did not just say that to me.”

  “Who you talkin’ about?” the man said.

  “Leave it alone, Larry,” Laurel said.

  On a scale of one to leave it alone, I wasn’t about to let it go.

  “I flew here to talk to you about your son, and no I’m not pregnant with his child and he doesn’t need a place to live. He’s dead.”

  “My son’s what—”

  Larry looked at Laurel and said, “You had a kid?”

  Laurel turned to him.

  “Yes…I mean no, I mean—I used to.”

  “How in the hell did you used to have a kid?”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “I don’t think nuthin’. I’m outta here,” he said. He walked out the door, got into the Saturn, and left.

  “Guess he’s not going to get dressed first,” I said.

  Laurel turned toward me.