Ol’ Andy made a lot of mistakes that night, the first being he decided he needed pancakes after a long night of hard drinking. He and his pals rolled into the greasy spoon his Melissa was working at and ordered up breakfast. Then Andy made mistake number two.
He grabbed her ass.
After finishing breakfast, he and his friends left. He’d followed them for hours. From Yuma to some little bend in the road that was nothing more than a gas station and a roadside stand that sold Mexican insurance to border-crossers. They pulled into the gas station, and Andy disappeared around the back of the building. His third and final mistake was forgetting to lock the bathroom door.
He’d cornered him in the stall and asked him his name, the tip of his knife pressed into the vulnerable flesh beneath his eye. The kid’s eye rolled in its socket, skittered away like it was trying to make a run for it. Andy stammered his name outright before he stabbed him—one thrust at an upward angle. He drove the blade deep under the rib cage, puncturing his lung, making it impossible to call for help. He let him fall to the floor, blood pouring from the single
wound. His face was mashed against the dirty tile, lips puckered, moving like a fish out of water. He looked surprised, like he didn’t understand the why of what’d happened.
“Someone needed to teach you some manners, Andy. You can’t just go around touchin’ what don’t belong to you,” he said, but the kid still looked confused. His mouth was still moving, making a hissing sound. It took him a second to understand what he was trying to say. He reached out and gave the kid a hearty clap on the shoulder. “It’s alright—I accept your apology,” he said.
Stepping on Andy’s forearm, he pinned it to the floor. He wrapped his gloved hand around the kid’s wrist, jerked up, hard—snapping it in two. He used the saw-toothed edge of his knife to hack through the meat of his arm. He took it with him when he left.
He looked at Sanford’s whisky-bloated face, then down to the hand he kept wrapped around his glass of brown liquor. The knuckles were swollen, scraped from where they’d rammed into Melissa’s face over and over. Sanford was sporting a few bruises and his nose was nothing but a wad of angry red meat slapped on his face, but it wasn’t enough. He drained his beer and stood, walked over to where Sanford was slumped over.
It was time to teach him some manners.
41
“No. You’re not leaving. I won’t let you.” Val sat on the sofa— arms crossed over her chest, a mutinous glare pointed her way. Once the plan was formed—once she’d agreed out loud to leave with Michael—she knew Valerie would give her trouble, but this was ridiculous.
Sabrina sat in the chair opposite the sofa, elbows braced on her knees, head buried in her hands. She threw a look at Michael. He was leaning against the far wall, hands dug in his pockets, staring at the floor. He glanced up at her then bounced a look between her and Val. Finally his gaze settled on her. His eyes said nothing she didn’t already know. Putting distance between her and her family was crucial to their safety.
“I’m going,” she said for the hundredth time. “I have to go, you know that.”
“Then I’m going with you,” Val said stubbornly. “We’ll send the kids to my parents—”
She scoffed. “Are you kidding me? If he can’t get to me, the first thing he’ll do is come after Riley.” She didn’t know how she knew it, but she did. “Your parents can’t protect her. He didn’t just kill that girl in the park. You didn’t see what he did to her. He destroyed her.”
Val aimed a look of hurt disbelief straight at her. “I did see. I saw what he did to you—I was there when they …” Her voice hitched in her chest and she looked away.
Her shoulders sagged. “He’ll kill you. He killed Lucy to punish me—”
“You don’t know that for sure.” Val flicked a glare at Michael. “She’s missing, no one knows for sure. She might be okay.” It made sense that Val would refuse to accept the inevitable. She was the one who’d insisted that they keep contact with her. If Lucy was dead, she’d blame herself.
“Val. Please.”
“I can’t,” Val whispered. Her dark eyes flooded with tears. “I let you leave once. When you left, you disappeared and never came back.”
She met Val’s gaze, saw the sorrow she was usually so deft at hiding. “Is that what you think happened? That you did this?” she said. Val looked away.
She leaned forward to grab her hand. “You had no way of knowing what was going to happen. He would’ve come for me no matter where I was or who I was with. I’m glad I was alone because you wouldn’t have stopped him. He would’ve killed you, and if you were gone, I’d be totally lost. And what about Riley and Jason? Where would they be now if you had been with me that night?”
They were quiet for a moment. Michael stared at the floor. Val stared at her hands. Sabrina stared at Val. Finally Val looked up to meet her eyes.
“You have to let me go.”
Val took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Okay. But if you get yourself killed, I’m going to be pissed.”
42
Sabrina lay in the dark and stared at the ceiling. The red, ribbon-wrapped box sat on her nightstand unopened. A grenade, just waiting for her to pull the pin.
“You need to open it,” Michael said. She turned her head to look at him.
He’d stayed. Hadn’t asked, hadn’t insisted—just stayed. Like it was a given. He was sitting in the chair in the corner. The wash of moonlight that fell through the window illuminated his legs. Everything else was cast in shadow. She wanted to tell him to shut up and mind his own business.
She looked back toward the ceiling. “I know.”
“Scared?”
The word jerked her upright. She looked at him again. “Careful. The last time you tossed that word at me I kicked your ass.”
He laughed and leaned into the pale slice of light that streamed through the window. “Don’t remind me, I’m still pissing blood.”
She was quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry.”
Leaning back, he disappeared into the dark again. “Not the worst beating I ever took.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” She was sorry for Frankie. Sorry for the trail of dead girls that led back to her. Sorry for a lot of things.
He didn’t answer her. Didn’t say it was okay, didn’t say he forgave her, that it wasn’t her fault. Silence swallowed silence, growing bigger and heavier second by second, until the weight of it pushed her flat on the mattress. Finally, he spoke.
“I fought them. Sophia and Sean, I mean. They took me in, loved me, and all I did was throw shit at them. I couldn’t stop it. Every time I broke their hearts, I told myself that it was the last time, that I was going to change, be the kind of kid they deserved. Let them love me or whatever, but I couldn’t. I was too scared.
“Then Frankie was born. She looked just like Sophia, but with Sean’s eyes. She was everything I could never be. She was theirs, belonged to them. I hated her.” He said nothing for a moment, just slow, heavy breathing. “But then Sophia made me hold her. Practically dropped her in my arms. I wouldn’t even look at her. I told Sophia to take her back. I didn’t want her there—I was going to hurt her if she didn’t take her back. But she just said, no, you won’t. Then she said, she needs you, Michael. She’s your sister—she belongs to you too. I finally looked down and she was staring up at me with these … beautiful blue eyes.” More slow, heavy breathing. “She saved me.”
She didn’t know what to say. I’m sorry wasn’t enough. There was nothing she could say that would make it better. But there was something she could do to make it right.
“I’m going to kill him,” she said quietly.
He laughed—a small, watery sound—and then leaned into the light. He looked at her, and she could see something in his face had changed. “I appreciate the sentiment, but why don’t we start with opening the box.”
She sat up, turned on the light. “Okay … okay.” She pulled on the pair of latex gloves that we
re just waiting for her to find her courage, then she grabbed the evidence bag before she changed her mind. “Strickland and I dusted it for prints. He took a sample of the ribbon to run a comparison against what he used on the vic.” She was all cop now; she knew it was because she wanted to distance herself from the thing waiting for her inside the box, but she couldn’t help herself.
He seemed to understand. “And?”
“No prints. No particulates—nothing. The color and cut marks on the ribbon are a match to what was found in the park. The gift tags are identical.” She turned it over. This one had Sabrina Vaughn carefully printed across the back. She took a deep breath and tugged on the tail of ribbon, pulling the bow loose. Took the paper off, careful to preserve as much of it as possible. She put it back in the evidence bag, along with the ribbon and tag.
The box was white, unremarkable. Inside was a nest of blood-red tissue paper. She pulled the top layer aside, looked into the box. Her heart snapped in two. “Oh …” she breathed out and slowly reached into the box.
The blown glass angel was fragile—beautiful. She recognized it instantly.
No matter what she said to Val about Lucy being dead, she’d had hope. It’d clung to her like a burr, its stubborn thorns dug deep. She’d hoped they were wrong. That somehow, Lucy was still alive. She now knew for sure that her grandmother was dead. She looked up at Michael and showed him the figurine.
“Lucy gave it to me for my eleventh birthday,” she said.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and cupped his hands around hers, pulling them closer. He looked down and his face fell. “I’ve seen it before. She kept it up high on a bookshelf in her living room. Whoever took it had to have known what they were looking for.” He looked at her. “It means something to him.” He dropped his hands away and stood. Began to pace. “You were eleven?”
She watched him walk the length of the bed, back and forth— hands wrapped around the back of his neck. She nodded. “Yes. I remember because I started helping her with alterations that year.” She smiled. “I saw it in some gift shop and saved every dime I made to buy it. I wanted it so bad. It’s a hand-blown original—some artist out of New Orleans—expensive. I didn’t care about that. I just thought it was pretty, hoping I’d be able to save enough before someone bought it. One day I went in to see if was still there, and it was gone. I was crushed. A few weeks later it was my birthday and she handed me this little box wrapped in … red paper.” Her eyes snapped up to his face. “Lucy wrapped it in red paper. With a red ribbon—it used to be my favorite color.”
He’d stopped pacing and looked at her. “How would he know that?”
She remembered it like it was yesterday. “My birthday fell on a Sunday that year. She gave it to me after church. There was a picnic … half of Jessup must’ve been there. Anyone could’ve seen her give it to me.”
“Does anyone stand out? Did anyone say anything to you?”
She shook her head. “A lot of people said a lot of things. It was my birthday.”
He started to pace again—back and forth along the length of the bed. He stopped after a few turns and looked at her. “What about Jed Carson. Was he there?”
The sudden memory stalled her heart for just a moment before it doubled its pace. She stared up at him and nodded. “Yes.”
“Did he talk to you?”
“That was the year he started following me around. He was older and I didn’t really understand at first but—he told me a bunch of kids were playing hide-and-seek in the woods behind the church … I was just happy that the other kids wanted to play with me. None of them ever did before.” She laughed at the memory. “I was so stupid.”
He shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “You weren’t stupid. You were a little girl. What happened next?”
“He took me into the woods, but when we got there, it was just him and me. He tried to kiss me, but I wouldn’t let him. He got mad. Really mad. He pushed me down.” That’d been the beginning. After that, there was nowhere she could go in Jessup without looking over her shoulder and seeing Jed Carson, especially after she moved back there with Kelly. Still … she couldn’t believe it. “He was just a kid. No more than twelve or thirteen.”
He dropped his hands and looked at her. “Yeah, well, he’s grown now.” He scrubbed his hands over his face before shoving them into his front pockets. She noticed it was something he did when he was trying to keep himself under control. There was something he wasn’t telling her.
“What? Tell me what’s going on?”
More pacing. She let him go, let him figure out how to say whatever it was he wanted to tell her. She counted nine turns before he stopped and looked at her.
“Billy Bauer was killed in the line of duty about five years ago,” he said plainly. He watched her face closely, so she figured that he knew; he knew Billy Bauer was her father.
She was careful to keep her expression neutral, but the truth was the news hurt more than she thought it would. She looked down at her hands for a moment. “Oh.” She nodded and met his gaze. She could see he wasn’t finished.
“He was killed during a routine traffic stop—stabbed to death on Route 80,” he said. He took his hands out of his pockets and sat down in the chair. He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees, letting his head hang between his shoulders. He looked up at her. “He was killed on October first.”
“You think the man who killed Frankie and took those girls— took me—is responsible. You think he killed my—Bauer. You think he killed Bauer.” It wasn’t a question but he nodded anyway.
“I don’t think Bauer knew who he was pulling over that night. I do think that when he saw who was behind the wheel, he got suspicious. Something happened to force his hand,” he said before standing. More pacing, hands jammed into his pockets. He still wasn’t finished.
Michael was quiet for a moment, choosing his words carefully. “I don’t think it was his plan to kill Bauer that night, but I think he took the opportunity to gain control of the town.”
“What? You’re not making sense—”
“Five years ago, Jed Carson was just one of the two deputies. When Bauer was killed, the town council held a special session. Carson’s been police chief in Jessup ever since.”
As police chief, Carson would be able to steer an investigation in any direction he wanted. He’d be able to kill with impunity.
She thought of the young boy who’d tried to kiss her, the way he’d shoved her to the ground when she refused. She remembered him glaring down at her, eyes narrowed, fists clenched. Suddenly, she remembered what he said to her while he stood over where she lay, sprawled in the dirt.
“You’re gonna be my girl, Melissa. Mine.”
Her hand pressed against her stomach, felt the thin, raised scars scattered across it. Time and more surgeries than she wanted to remember erased the majority of them, but the original scars were still there. She could still feel them.
She traced them with her fingertip. Followed the smattering of bumps and ridges across her skin, read by touch what’d been stabbed into her. Fourteen straight-line wounds, grouped together to form a single word.
MINE
43
She woke to the sound of her shower running. Sabrina cracked a lid and peeked at the clock. It was six a.m. She’d actually slept through the night—again. She’d take an armed guard over Ambien any day. She rolled over and stared at the ceiling. After opening the box and deciding that Jed Carson was their number one suspect, she and Michael had made plans.
They were leaving for Jessup first thing tomorrow. That gave her one day to gather any information she could and ask Strickland for help. She was meeting him at the coroner’s office in a few hours for the autopsy. She’d keep her promise, explain everything to him. He’d want to go with her, be pissed when he found out she wasn’t going to let him. Sabrina hoped he understood that staying behind and looking out for her family was the most important thing he could do for her.
The shower shut off, and Michael walked out a few minutes later, wearing the same jeans he had on the day before, hair sticking up from being rubbed dry. He crossed the room to sit in the chair he’d spent the night in. He picked up one of his boots but didn’t put it on. He looked tired.
“Rough night?” she said.
He shook his head, gave her a half-smile. “This past year has made me soft. A couple nights in a chair, I’m ready to call my massage therapist.” He laughed. “The fact that I have a massage therapist to call is even worse.”
She wanted to ask what he meant, wanted to know more about him, but she kept her questions to herself. She understood the need for secrets. Instead, she propped herself up on her elbow and smiled back. “You could’ve slept here.” She gestured to the bed. He looked down and began pulling on his boots.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
It took her a second to get his meaning. When she did, she flopped onto her back and laughed out loud. “Don’t worry, O’Shea—your virtue is safe with me,” she said, even though she wasn’t entirely sure that was true. Before he could answer, she rolled over and looked at him again. His boots were on and laced up, but he still hadn’t put on his shirt. “Where’re you going?”
He looked at her. “With you.”
She shook her head. “You can’t. Strickland is wound so tight his head’s about to pop off. If he sees you there, he’ll probably shoot us both. Just wait here—”
“I’ll stay in the car.”
“What about Val and the kids?”
“He won’t go after them unless he can’t get to you. They’ll be fine as long as we keep dangling the carrot.”
He was right. She nodded and looked away. She understood that in order to catch him, they’d have to take risks. She hated to admit it, but the thought of him being only a few seconds away was comforting. “Okay.”
The Sabrina Vaughn series Set 1 Page 18
