Brainwashed, sure, but she’d taken part. And if things had gone according to plan, if Chase hadn’t intervened, she had no doubt that the new girls would have been brought up as her own.
And the cycle would have repeated itself.
“No,” Chase whispered. “Don’t go to them, Georgina. Please.”
Stitts started waving the gun back and forth, clearly confused as to who was who.
Chase started sobbing now, so violently that she could barely get her next words out.
Georgina couldn’t stay here, she couldn’t be dragged through a trial or whatever was going to happen to Brian and his harem of ladies once the cavalry showed up. And neither could her niece; neither could the girl that her sister had named Georgina.
In her mind, Chase pictured her sister as she’d been that day, beads of sweat on her nose filling in the gaps between the freckles.
“Run,” Chase whispered.
Stitts slowly lowered the gun.
“Run,” Chase repeated. When Georgina still didn’t move, Chase reached out and yanked the gun from Stitts’s grasp before he could react.
“Hey!” Stitts shouted.
But when he reached for the gun, Chase aimed at his chest and he took a step backward, raising his hands in the air.
Satisfied that he wouldn’t try anything stupid, Chase then turned back to her sister.
Her baby sister.
“Run!” She shouted the word this time.
When Georgina still did nothing, Chase swore and aimed the barrel of Stitts’s revolver at her chest.
“Run, Georgina. Take your daughter and run as fast as you can away from this place.”
The woman’s blue eyes went wide, and she shook her head. Her face had turned nearly as pale as her dress.
“I won’t leave him,” she said, indicating Brian with her chin.
Chase screamed in frustration.
This wasn’t going to work. She wouldn’t leave Brian, because he was her family.
“Mommy?” the little girl asked then, and Chase realized that Brian wasn’t her sister’s only family here.
“Don’t make me do this, please,” Chase whimpered, even as she started to lower the gun. “Please.”
“I won’t leave him,” Georgina repeated.
Through watery eyes, Chase aimed the gun directly at her niece’s tiny chest.
“Run, or I’ll shoot her. Run, or I swear to god I’ll shoot your daughter.”
And then something happened. Something in her sister’s face broke and the woman reached down and scooped up her child.
Shouts came from behind them then, shouts that Chase recognized as belonging to Jordan and Terrence and maybe someone else.
There’s not enough time, she thought.
Chase turned the gun skyward and fired off a single round. The report echoed off the trees, making it sound like automatic gunfire rather than a single bullet.
And that did it; Georgie turned and started to run.
She ran the way Chase had run from the van, only to be caught minutes later. She ran the way that Chase had run after Louisa had given her the plate and she’d dug out the bottom of her cell.
She ran the way that Chase had run even as her sister reached through the bars, her four-year-old fingers pudgy and dirty, begging for her not to leave, begging for Chase to not leave her behind in the cell.
Chapter 68
After Chase fired the shot, she dropped the gun and Stitts quickly bent and grabbed it.
He was still confused as to what had happened, but he made no move to chase after the woman and her child. When Terrence arrived, he barked at the Nashville PD to hurry after her, but Stitts shook his head.
“Let her go,” he said. There must have been something in his face, or maybe in his voice because Terrence immediately told his men to stand down and instead focus on the three other women in the white dresses, and the man that they were trying to protect.
Stitts still wasn’t sure who the woman who’d bolted was. Chase had called her Georgina, but she’d claimed her name was Riley.
It could have been Georgina, but he never really was any good at guessing how people looked when they aged, in photos or in person.
Terrence must have just noticed the blood on Chase’s dress and he bent down and wrapped his arms around her.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered, “Are you okay? Chase, are you alright?”
Chase said nothing; her eyes were still locked on the location where the woman in the white dress and her daughter had disappeared into the forest.
“Paramedic!” Terrence shouted, leaning away form Chase. “We need a paramedical over here!”
Stitts walked over to the women and looked down at their scared faces.
“Please, don’t hurt him. He’s all we’ve got,” one of them pleaded.
Stitts turned to one the police officers that had arrived and signaled for him to come over. Then he bent down and picked up the woman who’d spoken by wrapping his arms around her midsection. She kicked and screamed and scratched, but he succeeded in pulling her free. Two other officers did the same with the other women, leaving only Brian Jalston or Bobby Jenson or whatever the fuck his name was lying on the grass. He looked pathetic at that moment, dressed only in his boxers, using women as a human shield to protect him.
It was all Stitts could do not to shoot the man right then and there.
Instead, he leaned back and punched the man in the jaw so hard that Brian’s eyes rolled back, and he was unconscious even before his head struck the grass.
“You are going to rot in hell for this you piece of filth.”
***
Stitts rubbed his eyes and sipped what felt like his seven thousandth cup of coffee. Then he raised his gaze to look through the one-way glass. On the other side, three women sat on a metal bench talking to each other. Their faces were calm and even, and at one point one of them even broke out laughing.
They didn’t seem to understand the gravity of their situation.
“What’s going to happen now?” Stitts asked.
Terrence sipped his own coffee before answering.
“If they refuse to testify against him, there’s not much we can do. Brian’s pretty much fucked, though. He’ll go down for the kidnapping of the four girls, but not for these ones. We thought we might get him on two counts of murder as well, but that looks unlikely now. The two corpses CSI uncovered buried on the property appear to be Brian and Tyler’s ‘parents’ — the ones who kidnapped them in the late sixties.”
Stitts nodded.
Oh, how the cycle of life confounds.
“What about them?” he asked, indicating the three women in the white dresses.
Terrence shrugged.
“I really don’t know. If we can prove that they are the missing girls from all those years ago, there is no way the DA will press charges. The worst thing they’ll do is probably just submit them to a psych eval, which they likely need, anyway. They were under Brian and Timothy’s control for so long, that they barely seem able to think for themselves. And they still believe, even after all that’s happened, that Brian saved them somehow, like he’s some sort of God.”
Stitts turned to look at Chase, who was sitting at the back of the room, staring off into nothingness.
“It’s amazing how things that happened so long ago can mold you in ways that completely alter your reality,” he said quietly.
Terrence nodded.
“Listen, I fudged the official report — Chase has been cleared of whatever happened to Timothy Jalston. The DAs fine with it, and there won’t even be an internal investigation. It was self-defense.”
Stitts nodded. He was grateful for Terrence’s discretion, but he didn’t know the how much this would actually help Chase.
“What about you? What’s next for you, Stitts?”
Now it was his turn to shrug.
“I’m to see if I can get her some help,” he said, indicating Chase. “I’m going to se
e if I can get her the help that she needed all those years ago and never got.”
When he turned back to look at Terrence, Stitts was surprised to see that the man was holding out his hand.
Stitts shook it.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “Thank you for everything.”
Terrence nodded.
“Good luck. And if you ever need help with anything, don’t hesitate to give me a call. You’re a good man Stitts, and always remember, you did the right thing here. Your partner deserved to learn the truth, no matter how painful.”
Stitts looked over at Chase and a tear spilled down his cheek. He that he was all done crying, but evidently, he had one or two more tears left at him.
Did she, though? he wondered. Did Chase deserve to know the truth?
Stitts shook his head and wiped his eyes.
Was it worth it? Was the truth worth was breaking her soul?
Epilogue
“It’s not going to be as bad as you think, Chase,” Stitts said as he helped her out of the car. “Think of it as a vacation, one that requires you to talk a lot.”
Chase nodded.
She hadn’t said much since returning to Quantico, and as the day grew nearer that she was to be admitted into Dr. Matteo’s care, she spoke even less.
And now that they there were back at her apartment to collect some of her belongings before heading to Grassroots, Chase didn’t speak at all.
Stitts walked to the front door, his hand around her waist for support.
Once inside, he said, “I’ll just go ahead and fix myself a drink while I wait. Unless, of course, you wanted to protest?”
Stitts was only joking, but when Chase just shrugged and headed toward the stairs, he thought, Why the fuck not.
At the last second, she turned back and surprised him by finally speaking.
“How’s your brother?” she asked in a soft voice. “How’s Tim?”
Stitts’s brow furrowed.
“My brother? I’m an only child, Chase. Now go get your stuff so we can get out of here. I think you forgot to take out the garbage before we left for Nashville and it smells rank.”
Chase stared at him for a moment before nodding and continuing up the stairs.
Confused, Stitts walked over to the liquor cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Scotch. He looked around for a glass but didn’t immediately find one.
“Chase?” he hollered, “You have glasses in this house, or should I just drink from the bottle?”
He waited, but there was no reply.
“Chase?” he yelled again. When there was still no answer, he stepped around the corner. He was about to shout a third time when he noticed that the back door was hanging open.
“Shit!”
The bottle of Scotch slipped Stitts’s hand and smashed on the floor.
Once again, Chase Adams was gone.
***
Chase was shaking. It wasn’t even that cold in Virginia, but no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t stop shaking. She wrapped her arms around herself in an embrace, but it didn’t seem to help.
She’d been walking for an hour now, maybe more.
The entire time, she kept thinking about her sister, the way that Georgina had looked at her with her big blue eyes when Chase pointed the gun at her.
That expression had been bad.
But it paled in comparison to the face that Georgina had made when she’d aimed the gun at her daughter.
Chase wiped the tears away and picked up the pace.
The houses around her started to deteriorate as she walked, the once neatly pointed bricks turning into siding and then into graffiti-covered concrete.
And yet she kept on walking.
Chase kept on walking until she found herself outside 187 Ignatius Ln.
She stood on the sidewalk staring up at the derelict house for several minutes. The seven was still upside down and the door that she had kicked looked to have been repaired with masking tape spit.
Chase took one final deep breath and then started up the broken concrete steps.
One knock and the door opened a crack.
Then the door opened several inches and the man in the soiled muscle shirt smiled at her.
“I knew you’d be back…” he said.
Chase gently pushed the door open even further and stepped inside the trap house.
“A girl who knows what she wants. I like that,” the man said with a high-pitched laugh. “Which is what, exactly? What can I do you for? What’s your poison, police lady?”
Chase didn’t hesitate.
“Whatever will make me forget,” she said quietly. “Whatever you have that will make me forget everything.”
END
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents in this book are either entirely imaginary or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or of places, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © Patrick Logan 2018
Interior design: © Patrick Logan 2018
All rights reserved.
This book, or parts thereof, cannot be reproduced, scanned, or disseminated in any print or electronic form.
First Edition: July 2018
* * *
[CM1]To be changed
Amber Alert Page 22
