Dying for Love (A Slaughter Creek Novel)

by Herron, Rita

  “The night she delivered,” Helen said. “But he caught you and took you away. Then he erased your memory.”

  A coldness swallowed John as a memory surfaced. He was with Amelia, she was crying, screaming, in labor . . .

  Then . . . everything went blank.

  “Did I work for Arthur Blackwood?”

  Her breathing grew erratic. “You helped him because that’s all you ever knew, but then you fell in love with Amelia and wanted to get her away from him.”

  So he had guarded her. Damn, no wonder she hated him now.

  “I begged him to let you go,” Helen said. “But he said he’d kill you if I interfered.”

  Her eyes fluttered, her voice growing weaker. He was losing her. Where was that damned ambulance?

  “How do you know all this? Did you work for Blackwood, too?”

  She shook her head, her eyes suddenly desolate, as if she thought she was going to die. “No.” Tears rolled down her face. “I didn’t know what he was doing,” she whispered. “I didn’t. I swear. But now he’s back. He was supposed to be dead . . . ”

  John went stone cold still. Supposed to be dead? “Helen, God, what are you saying? Blackwood is alive? He has Amelia?”

  She nodded, gasping for a breath.

  A siren wailed. The ambulance was finally coming. The color had faded from Helen’s face, and her eyelids looked heavy. She needed help, surgery, fast or she wasn’t going to make it.

  “Was I one of Blackwood’s subjects?” John asked.

  A sob escaped the woman. “No, John. You’re his son.”

  Amelia stirred from unconsciousness. Fear hammered at her as she realized she was strapped to a chair.

  Her head swam from whatever drug he’d injected her with. She blinked to focus and glanced around the dark basement, shivering from cold and fear.

  He walked toward her, a leer on his face. “Hello, Amelia.”

  Her mouth was so dry she felt as if it had cotton in it. “You bastard. You’re supposed to be dead.” She gulped back tears. “How did you survive?”

  His laughter echoed in the dark. Then he held his hand up in front of her, fingers splayed. His thumb was missing. “I was a soldier. I cut off my thumb and left it in that chopper. I knew those fools would find my DNA and assume all of me had blown up in the explosion.”

  Amelia shivered. “But Nick and Jake saw you get in the helicopter.”

  “I have followers,” he said in a voice filled with self-love. “They will do anything for me.”

  “One of them posed as you to throw off the police?”

  “Yes. He was honored to be a decoy.”

  “How could anyone follow you?” Amelia said in disgust. “You’re a monster.”

  “And you’re a sick, mentally ill girl,” the Commander said. “You always will be.”

  “No, I’m strong now,” Amelia said. “Your experiment failed.”

  His footstep clicked as he came closer. “I never fail.”

  Fear choked her. She wanted answers. “What did you do with my baby?”

  A wry chuckle rumbled from the bastard. “You weren’t fit to be a mother.”

  “Because you drugged me.” She struggled against the bindings. “Where’s my son?”

  He gave her an odd look as if he wanted to say something, then a sinister leer appeared on his face. “You said I failed, but I didn’t. You don’t remember everything.”

  “I remember giving birth.”

  “To one son.” He circled her, eyes boring into her. “Not two. You had two boys, Amelia. Twins.”

  His words roared in Amelia’s ears, sending her into shock. Twins? Just like her and Sadie . . .

  She wanted to scream in frustration. “What did you do with them?”

  “Don’t worry. My grandsons are safe.”

  Her stomach clenched. “What do you mean, your grandsons?”

  Another laugh. “You haven’t figured it out yet? I thought that was the reason you and John Strong were working together. That’s the reason you went and saw Sister Grace and got that Jayne woman to help you.”

  “You killed them, too,” Amelia gasped.

  “Just the Jayne woman. The nun . . . I let her go. But I don’t think she’ll be back.”

  Amelia’s mind spun as everything sank in. What did he mean? Then the truth dawned on her. John had been working with the Commander. She’d thought they had been in love.

  And they had had sex.

  John was the father of her babies.

  And he was the Commander’s son.

  Tears blurred her eyes.

  Her babies were related to Arthur Blackwood, the man she hated most in the world.

  “You called me, didn’t you? You tried to make me think I was losing my mind by talking about Viola?” Her head swirled as she pieced together the facts. “You put that bear in my house. You tore up my journals.”

  Blackwood laughed. “You’re such an easy one to manipulate, Amelia. Such a malleable mind.”

  “Why do you keep tormenting me?” Amelia cried. “Why can’t you just give me my children? Then die?”

  “Because I’m invincible,” he said with an eerie laugh. “And your children are Blackwoods. They need to be made into men.”

  Amelia steeled herself. “You may think you’re God, but you’re not. And one day someone will take you down.” She hoped when they did, he’d suffer, too.

  He untied her right hand and shoved a pen between her fingers, then laid a notepad in front of her.

  “Now write a good-bye note to John.”

  “Why? So you can kill me and make it look like a suicide?”

  “Of course. No one will be surprised. Poor Amelia, she suffered from delusions. Dissociative Identity Disorder. Depression because she was delusional. Even your shrink will testify you were unstable. That you came to her claiming you had a baby who I took away.”

  How did he know her doctor would testify?

  The truth hit her like a fist to her chest. “My doctor—Dr. Clover works for you?”

  Another evil grin. “Of course. You didn’t think I’d forget to watch you, did you?”

  Nausea climbed Amelia’s throat. She had trusted Dr. Clover. Confided her secrets to the woman. Respected her opinion.

  Had poured out her heart about Bessie’s bear and the journals . . .

  And Dr. Clover had used them against her.

  Just like she’d trusted John.

  But he was Arthur Blackwood’s son.

  Helen said he’d tried to save her though. That he’d loved her. That the Commander had destroyed his memory.

  Where was John now?

  “Write,” the Commander ordered.

  The paramedics rushed in and began working on Helen, taking her vitals, applying blood stoppers, and easing her onto the stretcher.

  John squeezed her hand. “Helen, can I call someone? Do you have family?”

  She had lost consciousness though and didn’t respond.

  He jogged beside them as they loaded her into the ambulance. She stirred and reached for his hand.

  “John, save Amelia.”

  “How? Where is she?”

  “I don’t know,” she said in a broken voice.

  “Do you have any idea where Blackwood would take her?”

  She tried to speak, but her voice came out a guttural sound, then she passed out again.

  “Get her to the hospital,” John told the medic. “I’ll check in later.”

  John climbed in his SUV, then punched Sheriff Blackwood’s number as he squealed from the parking lot. “Jake, this is Agent Strong. You aren’t going to believe this, but your father is alive.”

  Moments passed as Jake absorbed the news. “What? That’s not possible.”

  “But it is,” Joh
n said, hating it as much as Jake did. “And the bastard has Amelia. I need your help.”

  “Christ . . . How the hell did he survive?”

  “I don’t know, but he must have faked his death. We have to find Amelia before he kills her.”

  Another tense heartbeat passed.

  “Listen, Jake, I know this is a lot to take in. But we have to hurry.”

  Jake cleared his throat. “Right. I’ll call Nick and alert all the authorities to be on the lookout for him,” Jake said. “We’ll look into that website for the Commander’s followers. Maybe one of them knows where he’d go.”

  “Thanks. I’m going to question Axelrod.”

  Fear seized John, nearly immobilizing him. Arthur Blackwood was a monster, a man who’d nearly destroyed Amelia.

  What was he going to do to her now?

  John faced Axelrod in the interrogation room, rage eating at him, at the evil oozing from the man’s pores.

  “Have you been in contact with Commander Blackwood?” John asked.

  Axelrod’s bushy eyebrows rose. “You’ve seen him? He’s alive?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  Axelrod shook his head, then leaned back in the chair, looking oddly satisfied. “No, but I’m not surprised, I suppose.”

  “He kidnapped a friend of mine.” The woman I’m in love with. “You worked with him?”

  “I protected him before CHIMES. And as I saw what he did, I decided to form my own group of followers. I’m going to be as famous as he was when the reporters start covering my story.”

  Sick, twisted fuck.

  John leaned forward, hands on the table. “You want the reporter who covered the CHIMES project to write about you?”

  Axelrod’s eyes lit up with excitement. “Yes, Brenda Banks. She’ll make me famous.”

  “I can arrange for her to talk to you,” John said. “That is, if you tell me where Blackwood took my friend.”

  Axelrod’s expression taunted him. “Where do you think he would take her?”

  “I never said my friend was a woman.”

  Axelrod laughed, a throaty chuckle that grated on John’s last nerve.

  “We both know you’re working with Amelia Nettleton, looking for her baby. And she was the Commander’s pet project.”

  Hatred surged through John. “Do you know where she is?”

  Fear flashed in the man’s eyes for the first time since he’d been arrested. “No. But I did hear he had a special child some of his followers were watching. That he didn’t want anyone to get the kid.”

  “Where did he hide him?”

  “They moved him to my compound for a while.” Axelrod rubbed at his leg. “But the Commander had someone take him to a safe place.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know the location.”

  John wanted to choke the man. “Where would he take Amelia?”

  “Use your head,” Axelrod said. “Where was the one place he inflicted the most damage on Amelia?”

  John’s heart hammered as it hit him. The sanitarium.

  Body pulsing with frustration and fear, he turned and strode toward the door.

  “You’re going to send Brenda to see me, aren’t you?” Axelrod asked.

  John shot him the same kind of evil look Axelrod had sent him. Their gazes locked, filled with animosity.

  He walked out the door, leaving the bastard stewing over whether John would keep his word.

  To hell with the man. He refused to do anything to glorify a killer.

  Ice crunched beneath this boots as he climbed in his car. He pressed the accelerator and sped down the drive, tires screeching on the slick asphalt as he turned onto the road leading into the mountain.

  A bleakness fell over him. What if he didn’t find Amelia in time? What if the Commander had Amelia’s son and he never found them?

  Then the child might end up tortured and abused like his subjects . . .

  And Amelia . . . how could he go on if he let her die?

  No, he couldn’t lose her.

  She was the only thing that mattered in the world to him. The one person who made him want to be a better man.

  He maneuvered the winding road, climbing higher into the mountains. The sanitarium looked like an ancient haunted castle set on the hill in the midst of the sharp ridges and thick trees. They should have shut down the place after the experiment was revealed, but they’d tried to clean house, reorganize, make it a viable psychiatric hospital again.

  A sarcastic laugh bellowed from him. There were patients being treated there now.

  But the basement where the Commander had conducted his experiments had been locked and closed off.

  John met security and got a passkey to get through secure areas, then instructed the team to comb the building.

  An eerie silence mingled with the echoes of terrorized patients’ cries in the halls.

  And triggered a litany of flashes behind John’s eyes. Memories of being there. Watching the Commander issue orders.

  He headed to the basement where the Commander had performed his experiments. And where he had almost killed Sadie.

  He eased open the door, his pulse jumping. Was Blackwood holding Amelia there in the dark?

  Slowly he crept down the steps, his gun drawn.

  But the sound of a gun clicking made him freeze.

  Dim light from a bulb far across the basement room offered just enough light for him to see a shadow.

  “I’ve been expecting you, son.”

  John’s lungs tightened. Of course Blackwood was waiting. It was too easy, a setup.

  And he’d taken the bait.

  Blackwood had lured him there so he could kill him and Amelia together.

  Chapter Thirty

  John stared into Commander Blackwood’s steely, hard eyes.

  Suddenly memories assaulted him. Six years ago, he’d confronted Blackwood just like this.

  To save Amelia and the baby.

  Per his father’s orders, he’d helped guard Amelia for months. But during that time, he’d fallen madly in love with her.

  And he’d realized that his father was a sick monster.

  The day she’d gone into labor, he’d rushed to her room. “Come on, Amelia, I’m taking you someplace safe.”

  She rubbed her belly, but gave him a beautiful smile. Minus the narcotics they’d pumped into her for years, her eyes were clear, her face full of color and life.

  He took her hand and helped her step from the room where they’d been keeping her. At the door, he motioned for her to wait, and he peered into the hallway.

  She suddenly clutched her abdomen, and heaved a deep breath. “John . . . I think the baby’s coming.”

  Dammit, she wasn’t due for two more weeks. He should have broken her out sooner. If she delivered there, his father would take the child.

  His baby.

  He had to save the baby and Amelia.

  He took her hand and coaxed her down the hall, his gun at the ready. If they could make it to the end, he could help her into a wheelchair. Then he could roll her out of there.

  But just as they neared the corner of the corridor, his father stepped from the shadows, his gun drawn.

  “You’re not taking her anywhere, John.”

  “Let her go, Commander,” John said through gritted teeth. “She deserves to be free now.”

  Footsteps pounded. More of the Commander’s minions.

  Amelia screamed and doubled over, breathing through a contraction.

  “Get her to the delivery room,” the Commander ordered.

  The guards surrounded them with guns, and they rushed Amelia onto a bed and wheeled her to the delivery room. John latched onto her hand.

  “It’ll be all right, Amelia. I promise.”

/>   By the time they got in the sterile room she screamed again. “The baby’s coming!”

  The guards grabbed his arms to hold him back from being with her. He heard Amelia in agony, pushing. A baby’s cry rent the air.

  His baby . . . A boy . . .

  John had to save him from his father.

  He tried to reach him, but the guards jerked him back. Then the Commander took the baby. Amelia was crying, screaming, begging to hold her son.

  “Let me have him,” John snapped.

  But something hit him hard in the back of the head, then a needle jabbed his arm.

  The memory faded, the dank basement echoing with another scream.

  Amelia’s.

  Amelia’s scream brought him from his memory to the present. And then he knew that Amelia’s son . . . was his son.

  For a moment he couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. The room swirled out of control.

  Slowly Amelia’s cry broke through the haze clouding his mind.

  Dammit, he had to stop the madness.

  “Let her go, Father,” John said between clenched teeth. “It’s over.”

  The Commander’s bitter laugh filled the room. “I see you’re still thinking with the wrong side of your brain.”

  “No, with my heart,” John hissed. “But you wouldn’t understand since you don’t have one.”

  “Emotions make a man weak.”

  “No, they make a man human.”

  Another bitter laugh, then the Commander laid a hand on Amelia’s shoulder. John’s gut clenched at the sight of her tied to that chair.

  “No one will be surprised to find that Amelia killed herself. Not with her history.”

  His father wrapped his arm around Amelia’s throat, the gun pressed to her temple. Her panicked look wrenched him from the inside out.

  Once she’d looked at him with love and trust. Yet, somehow in spite of everything his father had done to tear them apart, they’d found each other again.

  This time he wouldn’t let her down.

  “Release her,” John said, a warning to his tone.

  “You can still come and work with me, John. You made a good soldier once.”

  “I said, let her go.”