by Bella Jewel
Fuck.
The tricky bastard.
“Do you know who he is?” I ask her.
She shakes her head. “No, I can’t tell anything, he’s so covered up. I did figure something out, though, when he was mumbling to himself.”
I nod, encouraging her. “What?”
“He was saying something about how he would break you. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but he kept mumbling something about Raymond, and how it wasn’t working because of that stupid ‘cop’ and how he was going to use me to do the job.”
My heart feels like it’s come to a complete stop. He’s going to try and use Taylor to break me, to finish his sick little game. My skin prickles and vomit rises in my throat. It makes perfect sense. He wasn’t getting what he wanted out of using Raymond, because we figured it out, so now he’s going for the only other person who truly matters to me—my best friend. I have to think. I can’t break. Not now. But I can’t let him hurt my friend, either. Dammit. My mind spins as I try to figure out a way we can get out of this.
But I will find a way. I need to pull on my big girl panties, push my fear aside, and get through this. I will get through this. No matter what. Taylor was my rock when Raymond died, she was there for me during my weakest moments, now it’s my turn to give that back to her.
“Hartley,” she croaks. “Do you think he’s going to hurt me?”
“No,” I say, my voice stern. “No. I won’t allow that to happen. I’ll figure something out, Taylor. I will.”
“I don’t want to die,” she says as a tear slides down her cheek.
I shuffle closer to her, reaching out as best I can so one of my fingers skims hers. “I won’t let that happen. I will get us out of this. I don’t know how I’ll do that, but I will. Whoever this sicko is, he won’t win, Tay. I promise.”
“He’s clever. Everything he has done has been precise. He has gotten not just one, but two of us away from a police watch.”
I’m terrified, right down to my bones, because I know she’s right, but I don’t let that show. I’m in this situation now. I can either retreat into myself like I used to when the pain of Ray’s death was too much to bear, or I can face whatever is going to meet us at the other end and fight. Regardless, I know I’m not getting out of this unscathed, so I’d rather go down fighting.
“I know, believe me I know, but everyone has a weakness, Taylor. Even him. I’ll find it.”
“What if you don’t get the chance? What if he just takes us out there and kills us and—”
“Listen to me,” I say, my voice steady. “He isn’t going to do that. This entire thing, it’s a game to him. A massive game. He won’t just end it without achieving what he wants.”
She nods, biting her lower lip. I know how she feels inside right now. I’ve been feeling the same fear for the past month. It’s a deep-lodged fear that you can’t make rational sense of, no matter how hard you try. Taylor is terrified, but she’s feeling just the beginning of that terror. I’ve lived with it for long enough that I’m a lot more focused.
He thought he could break me and wear me down. He did the opposite.
Because I won’t go down without a fight.
* * *
The man, who I have decided to call Black, original I know, takes us to an old, run-down house in the middle of nowhere. Thick trees surround us, seeming to go on for miles and miles, with a house perched in the middle of a small clearing. In its day, I imagine it was grand. Three stories high, old white paint peeling from the thick wood rafters. A big wraparound deck that was once beautiful but now just looks unkempt and makes the entire house look creepy.
Taylor and I have been ordered out of the van, and are standing with our backs to it, the gun pointed towards us, as we watch Black, who has still not revealed himself. I want to see his face. I want to know what kind of person is so sick and twisted in the mind that they can do something like this.
I stand as close to Taylor as possible, not wanting to leave her side for a single second. I don’t know what’s awaiting us in there, but I know that I’m not going to let him hurt her. He’s going to try and use her, and I have to figure out a way to stop that from happening.
It’s become his mission to break me.
How can I stop him from doing that, while keeping Taylor safe at the same time?
If I act as if I don’t care, he’s going to go to extremes to prove I do. He’s not stupid and he’ll know it’s an act. If I give him the reaction he wants … will that be enough to stop him? Can I act? Can I make him truly believe I’m weak-willed and broken, just to get him to stay away from my best friend? And if I do, will he hurt her even when she’s no longer of use to him?
My heart pounds.
My mind spins.
I don’t know what I should do. All I know is I have to do something. Taking a deep breath, I make a choice. I’m not entirely sure it’s the right one, but at this point I can only hope that it’ll take the attention off Taylor and keep me safe. I stare at Black, and in my best shaky voice I say, “I don’t know who you are, but please don’t hurt my friend.”
I sound weak.
Pathetic even.
The masked head turns in my direction, and in that muffled voice he says, “Walk.”
I glance at Taylor, and she’s biting her lip so hard I can see blood pooling to the surface. She’s terrified, probably trying to talk herself out of doing something stupid. I know how she feels, but with our ankles and hands cuffed, we can’t even make a run for it. We can only shuffle, little bits at a time. There is no way we could escape him right now, even if we wanted to.
“Towards the house. Make one wrong move, I start shooting your friend in different places until you get to watch her bleed to death.”
“Please don’t,” I croak, and even I believe the weak tone to my voice. “She hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“Walk,” he growls again, pointing the gun in Taylor’s direction.
My heart hammers, but I do as he says, I walk. For a second, it feels like two big hands curl around my heart and squeeze, because what if we don’t get out alive? How many people actually get out of these situations? I haven’t read many stories where they escape from them. No.
We shuffle up the steps with great difficulty, falling more than once and having a gun shoved into the back of our heads to hurry us up. We get to the top and shuffle across the dusty, wooden porch until we reach the front door. With the gun pointed on us, Black opens it and hisses “Inside’ in our general direction. We both enter. The house is old and all of the furniture is covered in white sheets, as if nobody has lived here for a long time.
We’re shoved down a dusty hall, and I cough more than once as we stir up the dust that has settled on the floor. There is a faint track worn down the middle of the hallway, showing someone’s been here before, probably him. We reach a room and he kicks the door open. Once we’re both inside, I see that it’s fully secured—barred windows, no furniture to use for weapons, and a keypad locked door have my heart sinking.
This isn’t good.
“I’ll be back to start with you soon,” Black says to me, and even though I can’t see anything, I’m sure his eyes are zeroed in on me. I can feel them burning a hole into mine.
I hold back my shiver.
He steps out, slamming the door. The beep beep of it locking lets us know we are fully alone with no way out. I turn to Taylor and she finally lets the tears flow freely, rolling down her cheeks. She smothers a sob with her bound hands, and I want to hug her. I want to go over and tell her it’s going to be okay, to give her something, anything that’ll make her feel better.
But I don’t even know if I believe it myself.
Are we going to get out of this? Will Ace have even figured out I’m gone? What if he hasn’t? Even if he does, what if he can’t find us? He hasn’t managed to crack the Bowtie Killer case yet, how is he supposed to do it in a matter of days, or less?
My heart sinks and a fe
eling of dread washes over me.
What if we don’t get out of here?
TWENTY-THREE
Ace
“What do you mean you didn’t go and check Taylor’s apartment?” I roar at Bill, pacing the room.
“She was in the window, she waved. I walked Hartley into the building, I even took the elevator up with her, I just didn’t actually go into the apartment. I didn’t know anyone was there, Ace. If I did, I wouldn’t have let her in.”
“It was your job to check!” I bellow.
Bill glances down at the floor, and I know I’m being too hard on him. I know it. He was doing his job. The bastard who took Hartley and Taylor did a good job of making it look like everything was safe and well at Taylor’s house. When no one could get ahold of either of them, we went straight there and found them gone. There was nothing there but their phones, and Hartley’s purse.
Hartley was gone.
Both girls were gone.
That fucker has both of them.
“Ace,” my boss, Craig, says, putting a hand on my shoulder, “calm down. We’re going to find them.”
“We haven’t been able to find any of the others!” I growl, running a hand down my face.
“We also didn’t know back then what we know now. We’re going to find them. We have every detective working on all the information as we speak.”
“I’ve been over all of it. Fuck, I must have missed something. There has to be some clue, somewhere.”
“If there is, we’ll find it.”
My shoulders tense up as I try to go over everything that’s happened, racking my brain to figure out what I might have missed. There has to be something. Fuck. My mind goes to Hartley and Taylor. How long will he hold them before he kills them? Will he kill Taylor, because she is of no use to him? What would that do to Hartley? My chest tightens at the thought. She’d go to the ends of the earth for her best friend. If he hurts Taylor, it’ll destroy Hart.
Maybe that’s why he has the both of them. Maybe he’s going to use Taylor to get to Hartley, because his sick little plan hasn’t worked so far.
Fuck.
I think of the girl I’ve grown a soft spot for in the last few weeks. Her stubborn, yet gentle attitude has grown on me and she’s gotten closer to me than any other woman since my wife. There is something about her, something spectacular and strong, something kind and sweet. She’s a strange mix, and I can’t get her out of my head.
I like her.
A fucking lot.
And I told her I’d protect her.
“We need to think here, Ace,” Craig says. “Tell me if there is anything in those notes we haven’t looked into. Something Hartley has said, something you haven’t looked into.”
I think, going through all our conversations in my head. One stands out.
“Hartley said she went to a support group after she lost her husband. She had an idea once that maybe this killer was finding women there, knowing they are fragile. Shit, I was supposed to look into that but I forgot. Can we get all the numbers for the support groups in the area?”
“I’ll get someone on it right away. Is there anything else? Anything at all?”
I shake my head, because I can’t fucking think right now.
I can’t imagine losing her.
Hartley.
* * *
“Do you keep a record of the people who have come to your support sessions?” I say to Diana, the woman who runs a support group closest to Hartley’s place. There are only two in the area, and no one at the other one has ever seen Hartley or heard her name.
“Yes, we do.”
“I’ll need to know if you’ve ever had any of these people,” I say, sliding her a piece of paper with all the victims’ names.
She glances down at it, and her brows go up. “Yes, yes I recognize two of those names. I’d have to check through records for the rest—we have a lot of people come through here and I’m not familiar with all of them.”
Bingo.
Hartley was right.
Smart girl. Fuck, why didn’t I listen to her?
“Which names do you recognize?” I ask.
She points to Hartley’s name, and to Georgia’s. “Those two. I remember them quite well. I saw Georgia had … passed recently. It was devastating.”
“Yes, I can’t go into too much detail, but I believe Hartley is in danger. I’m going to need any information you can give me, any at all.”
“Of course, Detective. I have photos taken from the support group events, and I have transcripts, things like that.”
“Give me everything you have,” I say, my voice tight even though I’m not intending it to be. “Are you able to do that for me now?”
“Absolutely. Take a seat.”
I sit down on an old, plastic chair beside a magazine rack, and stare at the pale wooden floor. I can’t get the anxious feeling out of my chest. If I don’t make it in time, if I don’t find this fucker, I’m going to lose her. I’m going to lose her, and I can’t … I can’t lose someone else. Not again. A strange tightening in my chest tells me I’m far fonder of the girl than I’ve allowed myself to believe. That scares me. But what scares me more is not being able to explore that.
I told her I’d keep her safe. I promised. I should have been with her every fucking second. This man, I knew he was tricky, I knew he was good. I’ve been on this case long enough to know that, and I let her out of my sight. Why the fuck did I trust someone else to do a job I should have been doing? If I was doing it, she might still be here.
“Fuck,” I whisper to myself, running a hand through my hair.
“Here you are,” Diana says, coming back out with a few folders. She hands them to me and I go directly to the one labeled WATSON, HARTLEY.
“I also found files on the other two girls on your list—it turns out they’ve been here too. Do I need to be concerned, Detective?”
“I’ll let you know,” I murmur, too focused on the file.
I go through the transcripts, basically just Hartley describing how she’s been feeling, how the group has been helping her, things like that. Some groups keep them, others don’t. I flick past the pages and stop at a stack of photos. I start flicking through them, my eyes zoning in on Hartley in different scenarios, sometimes talking in a group, other times doing activities with them.
She looks empty.
Her eyes look so sad.
I remember staring at myself in the mirror and seeing that same pain.
I hand the photos to Diana as I continue to flick through them, studying all the people in them, seeing if any stand out. So far, nobody does. I can get Diana to give me the names of every person in these photos, but it’ll take a long fucking time to get through them all for questioning.
I’m on the second to last photo when I see it.
In the background there is half a face, glancing around a doorframe. It’s a man, that’s for certain, and he’s staring in at the group, holding a mop in his hand, wearing what seems to be a pair of coveralls. I squint and bring the photo closer. There is something familiar about him, but it’s hard to tell because he’s a little blurry.
“This man, who is he?” I ask Diana.
She glances at the photo.
And when she says the name, my blood runs cold.
No.
Fuck.
No.
TWENTY-FOUR
Hartley
Black doesn’t come back in for the entire night.
I don’t know what he’s doing. I don’t want to know. I’m simply grateful for the fact that every second he stays out there, we have a better chance of surviving. Taylor fell asleep within the first hour, after exhausting herself from crying. I sat on the ground, and let her rest her head on my lap, and only when she was asleep, did I let my fear break loose. I let the warm, salty tears run down my cheeks, but I don’t let them beat me.
I can feel the fear, but I don’t have to give in to it.
My legs are numb,
my body aches, and I’m already getting hungry. It’s well into the night, maybe early morning, I’m not sure. It’s dark. I can’t see. I can’t hear anything. The only thing that comes through in the darkness is my shallow breathing and the occasional shuffling sounds from above. I can’t hear Taylor, but she shifts around in my lap every now and then, so I know she’s still okay. For now.
My mind twists and I try to think of a way to get us out of this. It doesn’t matter which way I play it, my best option is to act like he’s broken me. At the very least, he’ll leave Taylor alone. If I act tough, he is guaranteed to torment her. I have to take the risk in putting on a show and hoping it’ll make him forget about using her. I only hope that doesn’t mean he feels her place is no longer needed. Either way, it’s a risk. This risk is the one I’m going with, because it makes more sense.
He wants to break me.
It’s what he’s doing this for.
I want to see his face. I want to see the man behind the mask. I want to know who decided my life was worth destroying with his sick game. I want to know if he’s random, or if I know him. I want answers. And the longer I sit here, the more frustrated and frightened I become. I think about Ace, and I wonder if he’s figured it out yet. And if he has, how does he feel? Is he scared?
Then I wonder if I’ll ever see him again, and that brings a tightening into my chest I haven’t felt since Raymond. A tightening I can feel right to my very core, a deep affection I didn’t realize I had developed. The thought of not seeing Ace again, the thought of him worrying where we are, and feeling like he’s failed, makes me want to scream. I know how he’ll take this. He’ll blame himself. Then he’ll blame me, because he’ll be angry, and scared, but after that, he’ll feel the fear.
And I don’t want him to feel that fear.
The door makes a clicking sound and my head jerks up. A moment later, it swings open and a light flicks on. I squint and Taylor jerks upright with a gasp. It takes me a solid few minutes to be able to see anything, but when my eyes adjust, I see Black reaching the bottom of the stairs, a machete in one hand, a chain in the other. He’s fully masked. Still covered all in black. That doesn’t matter. My eyes zone in on his hands, and the items he’s holding.
