An Everlasting Pursuit (PURSUIT, #3)

by Liv Bennett

  Both Valerie and Bree must have waited all this time to come up with a new plan. They’re the ones behind the robbery of my bank account. I have no doubt about it. Bree caused that first financial problem with the furniture purchase in order to get into my personal accounts. How foolish was I to trust my money to her? And now my sister is in their hands.

  I grab my handbag and rush out as fast as I can with my huge belly. Valerie won’t be having only Lindsay and me in her hands, but my baby, too. I don’t believe even the slightest bit that Valerie will let my sister go once I show up. That’s why I look for a paper and pen, scribble a note on the paper, and squeeze it into the doorman’s hand.

  “Call Adam Garnett and tell him Valerie has my sister, and I’m going to meet her at the crossing of Crenshaw and Slauson,” is written on the piece of paper.

  I stare at the doorman’s eyes with silent pleas, hoping he will act quickly, and then pace out to catch a cab, since I can’t drive in my feeble condition. I jot down a similar note for the taxi driver to get him to follow me—if Valerie gave this address just to pick me up and drive somewhere else— and add Adam’s phone number to my request. The driver stares at me curiously when he notices my note below the hundred-dollar bill. As soon as I leave the taxi, though, he drives off, leaving me cursing after him. Didn’t he understand my request?

  As I guessed, Valerie is waiting for me inside a black Ford at a gas station a few feet away and crooks a finger toward me. With my hands firmly clutching my handbag and phone, I take quick steps toward her car.

  Valerie motions toward my bag and phone. “You’re going to leave them on the sidewalk.”

  “The passwords?”

  “Take the passwords and the bank information, dump the rest.”

  I do as she says and grab the folder with my bank information, leaving my bag and phone under a tree on the sidewalk after switching off the phone.

  I pray silently for help for the innocent child I carry and for my sister, before climbing into the car. My hands tremble while I reach for the door. Never in this one and half years have I thought I’d come as close as a mile to Valerie again.

  As soon as I close the door, Valerie grabs the folder from my hand and hits the gas pedal. “I hear you’re carrying a freak,” she says with a stomach-revoltingly disgusting smile across her face, turning my fear into an all-consuming rage.

  “You killed your own father and your own brother, and you’re talking filth about an innocent child? You’re the only freak here,” I say.

  I don’t see her hand but hear and feel it when it punches my head, pushing me against the windshield with the power of it. My head throbs at the spot where it hit, and I turn to her, shocked.

  “If you don’t watch your mouth, you won’t leave this car alive, do you hear me, bitch?” She glares at me, probably waiting for me to nod, but I won’t give her that satisfaction. “I’m doing you a favor, in reality,” she says when I don’t respond. “I will release you from the curse of the money that doesn’t belong to you. It’s my money. Not yours, and as long as you keep it under your ownership, you’ll have nothing but miscarriages and freaks as children.”

  “Fuck you,” I hiss between my teeth. “If you were a normal person like you claim to be, and not a freak, you’d have gone to Jack directly and asked for your share from the inheritance like a civilized person. And he’d have given it to you. But, no! You had to plot attacks, kidnapping, and murders to get what you want.”

  “You’re just saying it now. Neither Jack nor you would have given me a dime if I’d asked you directly. Now you have a brainless child. Like the mother is the daughter.”

  “Shut up!”

  “You shut up!” She slaps my head again, but this time I’m quick enough to cover my head to protect it from a possible hit. It’s probably not a good idea to get on her nerves, but what am I supposed to do when my daughter is the one attacked?

  I keep my mouth firmly shut as she drives south. I try to breathe deeply and slowly to calm my infuriated heart. The alertness of my body won’t be good for my daughter. Valerie won’t be good for her, either. I don’t even want to think what she has in store for us. She might have had some sense before. But after staying in the psychiatric ward for so long and being exposed to the worst kind of mental illnesses, the little sense she had might have ended up being fucked up.

  She stops the car in front of a line of houses that actually look very welcoming. A couple walks past the car with a stroller and nods at me with a smile as I get out of the car. I’d scream for help if Lindsay wasn’t held hostage, so I do the only thing I can in this situation and follow Valerie into one of the houses. She unlocks the door and waits for me to walk in.

  My knees shake with fear, and I come close to collapsing on the stairs, but Valerie’s stern glare keeps my legs stable enough to move. She pushes me inside when I reach the doorway and closes the door behind me. Grabbing my wrists, she pulls me with her toward a door, which opens to the basement. I hold on to her tightly to keep from falling down, while we walk down the stairs in the pitch dark.

  My feet hit a mass in front of me, and I stop to look down at it, although it’s too dark to see anything. “Lindsay,” I shout and kneel down to feel the body that’s blocking my way.

  Lights flicker on, and I squint against the blaring brightness.

  “Say cheese to the camera. I’ll be recording every detail to send to your dear husband later on.” I see Valerie adjusting a video camera hanging on the wall. No, clearly she’s not planning to let any of us go alive. Unless Adam arrives here in time, which I doubt since the taxi driver was my only hope, I can’t see how I’ll get to free Lindsay and myself from Valerie’s bloody hands.

  A muffled yelp forces my attention back to what I have in front of me, and I see Bree’s face. Taped mouth, tied hands and feet, and covered with dry blood. And an instant feeling of guilt engulfs me. She’s trying to tell me something behind the large tape around her lips.

  My eyes roam toward the other body a few feet away from her. I can’t see her face because she’s facing down. My heart stops when I recognize the t-shirt and jeans.

  “Lindsay,” I shout and leap over Bree to get to my sister. Lindsay is lying without moving, her eyes closed, and she doesn’t react to me when I shake her with all my might. “Did you kill her? Did you fucking kill my sister?” I shout again and notice Valerie occupying herself with yet another victim. I recognize immediately who she is, despite the blood covering half of her face. Bree’s sister, Heidi. Valerie must have used Bree through her sister.

  Valerie produces a gun from the pocket of her jeans and points it toward the poor girl. Just when I’m thinking she’s bluffing to get the passwords of my bank account, she unloads the gun into the mouth of the girl.

  Without even blinking an eye.

  Bree throws herself forward and falls face down onto the cold granite. I stop in my place, shock and fear preventing the air from flowing into my lungs. I know I must say something or shout at Valerie to end the killing spree she must be planning, but my tongue remains frozen. Even when Valerie strides toward Bree and grasps her hair with force, I can’t bring myself to move.

  “Do you want to know why I killed your fucking sister? Huh, huh?”

  Bree cries frantically, and I drop to my knees, noticing the fresh, flowing blood on Bree’s nose. “Please, Valerie,” I beg. “Don’t hurt her. You don’t need to kill anyone. I’ll give you everything I have, until the last cent.”

  “Of course you will, bitch. Did you have a doubt about it? And don’t think for a second this fucking whore is innocent. She stole money from you without batting an eye. I mean, I go after the money that legally belongs to me, but she just embezzles whatever she can from everyone. Even from her own mother. Not just that, she tried to come between you and Adam. She hired Candice Sherylwood to scheme the pregnant-girlfriend trap. She knew you had jealousy issues, and she didn’t shy away from playing tricks with your mind,.” Valerie barks,
shaking Bree in her hand, then turns down to her. “Do you know why I killed your sister? Do you fucking have any idea? Huh? Huh?” She smacks Bree down, and I hear a thud as soon as Bree’s head hits the floor. Thief or not, no one deserves to be manhandled by a psycho.

  “Please, Valerie. Let her go,” I beg, but my barely audible plea goes unnoticed, because Valerie begins throwing kicks into Bree’s stomach, making her bend over with pain.

  “Because she betrayed me,” Valerie says in sync with her kicks. “You’re next because you’re guilty for the same reason. Haven’t I made it clear from the beginning that I wouldn’t stay in the ward for more than a week? Huh, fucking cunt, answer me? I trusted you two to get me out of that fucking rat hole but you sluts took your precious time, like you always do. Yeah, I’ll kill you now because of the four-hundred seventy-three extra days of mind fucking I had to endure because of your inabilities.”

  Valerie pushes the gun into Bree’s mouth, and I remember instantly the taste of the cold metal in my mouth when Valerie tried to kill me last year. The room starts floating as an excruciating pain knocks me down, and I lose the control over my body.

  The last thing my mind registers is my hands wrapping my belly and a deafening sound.

  16 – LINDSAY: Iron Slap

  It’s the same nightmare again. My mother is lying lifelessly on the floor, covered in blood from the waist down. My mind won’t be able to survive this torture anymore. The image is too vivid, too painful. I squeeze my eyelids closed so the image will disappear, and magically it... does. How come? I open my eyes again, and my mother is still there, beside me in a blood lake.

  It’s not a nightmare, is it? And the woman covered in blood isn’t my mother.

  It’s Taylor.

  She’s lying there as if life has escaped her body for good, leaving it soaked in warm blood. Exactly the way it is in my reoccurring nightmares. All those years when I thought I was seeing my mother’s death, it was actually Taylor’s.

  She’s dying, and I can’t do anything about it.

  The minutes before I ended up in this basement hits me with all its clarity. Bree invited me in, locked the door behind, and Valerie showed up, holding a gun in her hand. The last thing I remember is the sudden pain at the back of my head when Valerie hit me with the gun and Bree’s evil smile. Taylor is lying there because of my carelessness. If I hadn’t followed Bree in, none of this would have happened.

  If I hadn’t been born, my mother would still have been alive.

  I try to move my hand to reach for her, but my hand jerks back as a piercing scream reaches my ears. My neck hurts when I suddenly turn to see the source of it. It’s Bree, crying helplessly in Valerie’s hands.

  A fury, an uncontrollable rage hits me like a blow, resurfacing the very core of every emotional issue I’ve had to deal with —and mostly tried to suppress— since the day I found out the reason for my mother’s death, and saw the pain that everyone who had close contact with her had to live with.

  My mother’s short life ended because of me, although I was just a baby, an innocent newborn. But God help me if I let another person die directly or indirectly related to my mistakes.

  I don’t feel anything, I don’t even notice when I jump up to my feet and march toward Valerie. She doesn’t see me. I wouldn’t be able to see myself either, because I’m walking too fast, too silently. Like a wild beast circling its prey. And the next thing I know is my hand, gunned with all the anger that I’ve carried inside me for years, launching at Valerie’s head.

  She doesn’t just stumble with the force of my punch. She flies across the room and bangs into the wall head first. She doesn’t fall down either, for an iron hook, larger than my forearm, slides through her face and exits on the other side of her head, keeping her hanging on the wall like a mounted animal. I couldn’t have aimed it better if I’d planned on killing her with that hook. My warmest kudos to the one who chose the hook for a decoration.

  Valerie’s last breath comes out as a pathetic wiggle. Other than that, she dies pretty quickly, too easily for a murderer of her capacity.

  I ignore Bree, who’s crying hysterically and rolling on the floor, and run for my sister.

  “Taylor, open your eyes.” I check her head and chest for a bullet hole to rule out the possibility of her being shot, and when I make sure the source of the blood is between her legs, I roll up her skirt. A gush of blood combined with a large blood clot makes me gag.

  “Taylor, get up,” I yell and shake her body. When I take off my t-shirt to wash the large clot away, I notice what it actually is.

  The tiniest fingers I’ve ever seen jerk beneath a blood-filled sack. I swallow hard, waiting, because I don’t know what else to do. I can’t take my eyes away even to look at Bree, who’s sneaked her way beside me, her arms still tied behind her. She murmurs something I don’t understand behind the tape covering her mouth, and I yank her aside. She’s a nobody, a criminal, and clearly doesn’t deserve to witness an angel’s birth.

  I slip the t-shirt beneath the baby and wipe the blood away as much as I can. She’s so small, I can carry her in one palm alone, but I hold her carefully between both hands. Her large eyes start just where her head line ends. Her skin is a dark hue of purple, her body flaccid. Even so, she’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I dip my head down to listen to her heart, though I know it’s a hopeless case, since she has neither cried nor moved.

  At that moment, Taylor opens her eyes, as if she’s felt what’s going on. As soon as she realizes what I’m holding in my hands, tears begin surging down her cheeks.

  “She’s dead.” She’s not asking. She knows the answer. And I realize, once again someone has died because of me, although her days were numbered from the start.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, unable to control the powerful sobs. Taylor extends her hands toward me, and I hand her the tiny, lifeless girl. She stares, astonished at the little form now lying peacefully in her hands, before tugging her against her heart, where she’ll continue living for the rest of our lives.

  Bree rolls down to my feet again and starts banging her head into my calves. What a bitch! Won’t give me a moment to take in the last minutes with my niece.

  “What?” I shout and strike her head hard, causing her scream harder with the pain. “Leave us alone.”

  “Lindsay,” Taylor interferes. “She’s trying to say something.”

  Bree bobs her head up and down, and I reach down and rip the tape off of her mouth.

  She squalls from the impact of it, and the skin around her mouth glows red. “Bomb,” she says between short, loud breaths. “Valerie set up a bomb here, and it activated when she hit the wall.”

  “I’m not going to fall for another trick,” I say. “You’re lying to get out of here. But, I’ll make sure to hand you over to the police with my own hands.”

  “No, no, no. I swear I’m not lying,” Bree says, frightened. “Listen carefully, you’ll hear the beeps.”

  I do, at least to keep her mouth shut, and as she claimed, I hear a high-pitched sound from afar. Then again and again. “It’s true.” I turn to face Bree. “Do you know how much time we’ve left?”

  “I don’t know. She set it up after tying me up. I didn’t even know she had a bomb until I saw her attaching it to the wall.”

  “Where?” I yell, even so my voice can’t overpower the beeps of the bomb now. How didn’t I hear it before? We’ve lost a lot of time that we could have used to get away.

  She points with her chin toward the shelves above Valerie’s corpse. “Inside that blue bucket over there.”

  “Taylor, can you get up?” I ask.

  She presses the lifeless baby swaddled in my shirt against her chest and uses her other hand as leverage while trying to get on her feet... and fails. I jump up, hook my hands under her armpits, and pull her up. She feels heavy like a truck, but I manage to get her on her feet. Might be my imagination, but the beeps become faster. An indicati
on that the bomb will go off soon... too soon.

  Bree’s hands are tied behind her. Shit, her ankles too.

  “You help Bree, I can walk by myself,” Taylor says, and I launch forward to help Bree up.

  Bree fights my hands, rolling away from me. “No, don’t help me. I’ll stay here. You go. Save Taylor.”

  I move forward and wrap my arms around her waist. “You’re going to die.”

  “I don’t want to live. I don’t want to rot in prison. I’ll die as I deserve, here with my sister.”

  “Shut up,” I say and lift her up. Taylor is already climbing the stairs. The blood-covered sight of her rear revolts my stomach. There’ll be nothing but blood, if we can’t make it out of here in time. Sweat drops sneak down from my forehead despite the cold air in the basement, and to my utter shock, Bree is still fighting against my hold, making it so damn difficult to carry her.

  “I want to die. Let me go. I don’t want to let my sister be alone.”

  “Shut the fuck up. I’m not leaving without you.” I shake her to get some sense into her fucked-up brain, and she cooperates, jumping the stairs one by one inside my hold.

  Taylor fumbles with the heavy door but manages to open it, and once we’re out of the basement, I kick the door closed and run toward the front door as fast as I can, with Bree jumping beside me.

  A sudden burst of hot air shoves us all forward, and an excruciating pain spreads through my face when I land against the front door. Another explosion follows, and fire starts instantly. I scan around in panic for Taylor and find her a few feet away on my left side. Bree is lying on the floor beside me.

  My hand feels for the door handle, and relief rushes over me when I turn it and it unlatches. Taylor stands, gives me a hand to get Bree up to her feet. All three of us lurch forward with the impact of another explosion.

  Against all the odds, we make it. Taylor and I have just survived a bloodthirsty, sadistic psychopath and could get out of her deadly trap. Staring at the enormous fog and the wild burst of flames, I feel, if we could accomplish that, there’s nothing that can ever take us down.