“But,” he continued, “I’m glad you didn’t. This is much more fun.” He laughed. “I can’t believe you thought my father was the serial killer. That old man? He was a thoroughly despicable human being—yeah, I know, so am I—but he enjoyed his control of people in other ways. He would first break their spirit and then make them become indebted to him. It was his ultimate high.”
I had a feeling he was speaking from experience of being a victim to his father’s ways.
Another flick and another button fell to the floor. Sabrina’s bra was completely exposed now. I attempted once again to pull my leg out from under the beam, but the pain was too great and I had to stop.
“But your father’s travel records.” I had to try to stall him. I wasn’t sure what good it would do, though. “He was in the cities where those other women died.” And then it hit me. It was so clear now. “They weren’t his travel records, were they? They were yours. You were the sales manager. You were the one going to those cities.”
“You didn’t notice that there was no name attached to the records? You didn’t listen to me when I said I was the sales manager? Why would the owner of a business this size be going to sales conferences and trade shows? That’s the sales manager’s job. Besides, the last trip listed on the records was only two years ago. My father has been sick for a lot longer than that. If you’d thought about it, you would have realized that he couldn’t have made the recent trips. I left those in to play with you.”
The Taunting Man. He was enjoying telling me how smart he was. I just had to keep him talking. The problem was, he could talk until he died of old age, but it looked like that was going to be the only way we’d get out of this.
“Why did you kill your father?” I asked through clenched teeth. A sharp pain had just shot down my leg.
“Why would I have done that? He was insignificant. You want to know who killed him? My mother killed him. You see, my parents knew about my past. But they thought I had stopped thirty years ago. They knew nothing of my kills in other cities. My mother was the real force behind the business and was always protecting it. When my father revealed that he knew Wheeler, my mother knew it was time for my father to go. His dementia was becoming dangerous to our family secret. She was very practical in that way.”
“But you killed her.” I was looking at Sabrina. She wasn’t stirring. I was losing hope very quickly.
“My mother had outlived her usefulness. She deserved to die.” There was anger in his voice, and maybe just a little sadness? “I hated my mother. My beloved Daisy was dead. She was one of the most beautiful souls on the face of the earth, and she was dead. My father was dead. Who was left? My evil mother. I knew that somehow this was all coming to an end. She would have thrown me under the bus in a second. I couldn’t allow that. Her time had come.”
I was confused, but I wasn’t going to get any more out of him. He slowly put his knife behind the next button, touching Sabrina’s skin with the tip of the blade before cutting the thread that held the button. This time I actually heard the button hit the rock floor.
Think! Think! Stall him, even enough for Sabrina to wake up. She’d at least have a fighting chance.
“You blame your mother for everything, but you were the one who killed your sister, right?”
I wasn’t totally sure he did, but it was a good assumption.
He turned and looked at me. He had a lump in his pants, and when he spoke, his breathing was shallow. He was getting close to the rape and the murder. But somehow my question stopped him.
“She made me!” he yelled across the room. “I had people watching her. I knew she was researching Wheeler in the library. If she was researching Wheeler, she was getting ready to expose me. After all these years. She wanted me to give up years ago, but I wouldn’t. Why would I? I liked what I was doing. So I used the threat on her roommate’s life as a way to silence her. Later, I used her daughter’s life. That was no longer enough, so I had to kill her. I loved her and she was about to betray me. She had to die!”
He was crying. I think he had truly loved his sister. Killing her was most definitely a crime of passion.
“But…” I started.
“No. Enough! Just shut up!”
He turned back toward Sabrina. She was still unmoving and hung limply from the rope. He slapped her face hard, his anger about his sister still fierce, but Sabrina’s head just lolled to the side. She definitely was unconscious. There was a part of me that was glad. Maybe she would never see or feel the end coming, or what he was going to do to her before the end. The next button came off. Sabrina’s shirt was hanging completely open. He put the knife in her cleavage and sliced through the bra. He then slowly pushed the cups to the side, running his hands across the soft milky skin. I was seething.
“Stop,” I cried out, tears in my eyes. “I beg you to stop. You don’t have to do this.”
“No, I don’t,” he said, not even looking at me. He was staring at Sabrina’s breasts, the tip of his tongue touching his lips. “But I like that you are now begging. Before I kill you, you’ll get to watch me slowly kill your girlfriend after I—oh, how shall I put it?—have my way with her. The good news? I’ll kill you quickly. You don’t interest me.”
He put his knife under Sabrina’s belt. The sharp blade cut through it like butter. As he began to unbutton her pants, Sabrina’s leg flew out and caught him in the bulging hardness of his groin. He screamed out in agony. His gun dropped out of his pocket. Sabrina swept her other leg out and kicked the gun my way, but she didn’t get all of her weight behind it and it didn’t go as far as she wanted. Before Jackson could go down, she kicked him a second time in the groin, then quickly wrapped both legs around his neck.
She was never unconscious at all. It was all an act! She had fooled me as much as she had conned Jackson. How she could have maintained that through all the cutting of the buttons, the slap in the face, and his fondling of her breasts was beyond me. But I knew I’d never ask her. It must have been humiliating enough just to go through it.
I reached for the gun. My fingers could touch it, but just barely. In my attempts to grab hold of it, I didn’t want to push it away. I reached as far as I could. The pain in my pinned leg sent tears down my face. My fingers were touching the grip. Just a little further. With a final lunge and a scream from the pain, my fingers reached the top of the grip and I carefully nudged it in closer to me until I could grab it.
Just in time. A quick glance told me that Sabrina was beginning to lose the battle. Her legs were getting tired and he was still fighting her. He wasn’t going to lose consciousness. He pulled away just as I raised the gun. I shot and missed him by a mile. The bullet ricocheted about three times off the cave walls. I immediately fired again, and again I missed. Once more the bullet bounced around the cave, luckily missing Sabrina and me.
Holy shit, this was hard. My hand was shaking horribly.
Third time was a charm, sort of. The bullet caught him in the leg. It was nothing serious, but it slowed him down just long enough for me to take better aim with both hands on the gun and fire one last time. It hit him in the leg again, but this time it was bad. Blood was spurting everywhere and he dropped to the ground in a sitting position against the cave wall. I must have caught his femoral artery. Blood was pooling up under him and around him and he was already turning white. He wasn’t going to last. He was fumbling with his belt, presumably to use as a tourniquet, but then he gave up. He knew it was futile.
And then he smiled.
“You’re still dead,” he said hoarsely. “You’ll never get out of here alive.” The breathing was ragged. He started to say something else, then just closed his eyes, sinking into unconsciousness. Death was probably only moments away.
I looked over at Sabrina. She was doing something with her feet. The knife. She was trying to pick up the knife with her feet. It was hard to do with boots, but somehow she got it secured and raised her feet with the knife held between them. Oh, that was im
pressive. She was lifting her own dead weight up to eye level, something I had only seen in gymnastics competitions. Straining against the ropes around her wrists, she pulled her knees in to her chest. Shaking as her muscles strained against gravity, she slowly guided the knife with her feet over to her left hand. One slip and the knife would fall, and we would be stuck there forever. Carefully, she touched her feet to her hand and she grabbed hold of the knife. She did it! I promised God right then that I would take up Yoga.
“Oh my God,” I said. “I can’t believe you just did that.”
“You’re not the only one.” She was breathing heavily and still shaking as she set her feet back onto the cave floor.
She wasn’t done though. She had to try to cut through the rope around her left wrist. Because she was hanging with all of her weight pulling down on the wrist, she was going to have to be a contortionist to cut the bond. And, she had to hold onto the knife and not let it fall or we’d be dead. She turned her hand as best she could to get the knife near the rope. She was straining and grunting. I was afraid she’d cramp up and the knife would fall. Finally, she got the blade on the rope. From there it was easy. The blade was super sharp and sliced through it easily. In seconds she was free from that bond.
She cut the other strap and ran over to where I was sprawled on the ground. She tried to lift the beam, but it was wedged too tightly under the rocks. She looked around frantically. We weren’t sure why, but we both felt that time was of the essence. Maybe it was his comment about us still being dead. What did that mean? Was it just because he felt we weren’t going anywhere and would starve to death, or was it more than that? I had a fleeting thought that maybe he had booby-trapped the mine. I shook my head. It did no good to wonder about that.
Sabrina had crossed to the other side of the room and was now returning, lugging a long, thick piece of wood. She slid it under the beam near my legs and leaned it against a medium-sized rock. She had created a lever. Did she have the strength to move the beam?
She pushed down on it. Nothing budged. She tried lifting it. Nothing. She looked up and I could see the wheels turning in her head. In that spot, the roof of the cave dipped a bit. She climbed up onto the end of the lever. The cave ceiling was right above her head. She reached up and touched the ceiling with her arms bent. She looked down at me.
“Ready?”
“Go for it.”
She pushed against the ceiling with all her might. Her triceps bulged. They appeared bigger than mine. Okay, Yoga and the gym.
She grunted and then grunted again. Movement! The beam was moving ever so slightly and I could feel a little relief. Another half-inch and I would be able to slide my leg out.
“Almost there,” I yelled, trying to encourage her.
She cried out as she gave one last effort. It was just enough. I pulled my leg out.
“Got it!”
She stopped pushing and hopped off the beam. She moved over to me and we kissed. We were both crying.
“I really thought we were dead this time,” she said through her tears. Her shirt was wide open and she was hanging out of it, but she didn’t care. “How’s your leg?”
I was running my hand along it.
“Really sore, but I don’t think it’s broken. We need to get out of here. I’m not sure what Jackson was referring to when he said we were dead anyway, but I don’t want to find out.”
She helped me up. When I was standing, I took off my shirt and handed it to her.
“The shirt off my back.”
“Thank you.” She said it quietly, then took off her shirt and bra remnants and put on my shirt.
It was cold without a shirt down in the cave, but I wasn’t going to complain. I took a step and almost collapsed. Sabrina caught me. The leg might not have been broken, but I wasn’t going anywhere on my own.
“Let me help you.” Sabrina put her arm around me for support and together we started our way back to the passageway.
“Wait.” She helped me down onto a rock and then crossed the room to the bookcase. She looked warily down at the lifeless form of Jackson as she passed him. She grabbed Daisy’s package and ran back to me, tucking in her shirt.
She slipped the package under the shirt.
“We worked too hard to leave this,” she said.
She helped me up and we worked our way to the passage and then stopped. Water was flowing down and spilling over into the mine. The water was pouring down at a fast rate, but was only an inch or two deep.
“That’s why the passageway is so smooth,” I said. “This has probably happened every time it’s rained for the last ten thousand years.”
“Can you make it up?” asked Sabrina.
I looked up. While the passageway was steep, on a dry day it would be easy—especially if I had use of my leg—as it was only two hundred feet or so. Today, however, would be a challenge.
“I can do it,” I said, hopefully with more conviction than I was feeling.
Using the walls to help brace me, we started off. The water was cold, the floor of the passageway slick. It seemed that for every foot I traveled, I slid back two feet. Of course, that was impossible since we were actually making progress. We could hear thunder rumbling down the passageway. The rain wasn’t letting up. Even with the dim lights, turning our flashlights on helped us feel less claustrophobic.
It took us half an hour to reach the opening, never so happy to see rain. Anything had to be better than being stuck underground.
Sabrina started to stand up when I heard the boom of a rifle, and at the same moment a bullet hit the passage wall sending a shower of rock chips all over us.
Sabrina screamed and lost her footing, splashing down in the passage. Before she knew it, the shallow current had swept her down the passage.
“Sabrina!”
Chapter 34
Another blast from a rifle and I felt something burn my shoulder. I slipped in the water, landing hard on my leg and crying out in pain. I found myself sliding down the passageway like I was on a waterpark slide. I hit the bottom of the passage and flew over the edge into the mine tunnel. I landed in a pool of water and banged my elbow on something hard and metal. It was the tracks for the mine cars. It hurt like hell, but I didn’t care. I only had one thing on my mind.
“Sabrina,” I called.
“I’m here,” she answered from only a couple of feet away.
“Are you okay?”
“I guess. You?”
“In a lot of pain, but okay,” I answered. “I think one of the bullets grazed me.”
“Where?” She was instantly at my side.
“Don’t worry about it. It didn’t do any damage. I thought you might have been hit by the ricochet.”
“No, just some shards of rock. Who were they? Who shot at us?”
We were sitting up to our waists in a pool of water. The only faint light came from the room in which Jackson lay dead. We made no effort to move.
“The same people who tried to kill us a few times earlier?” I asked. “Were they hired by Jackson?”
“Maybe, but for what purpose?”
“As a second line of defense, in case we got away from him, like we did?”
“I don’t think so,” said Sabrina. “I don’t get the logic. Besides, that first shot came as soon as they saw my head. They didn’t even wait to see who it was. It could have been Jackson, in which case they might have taken out their boss.”
I was confused.
“Jackson made a point of saying that he had people following us to keep an eye on us. If he had wanted to kill us, he wouldn’t have had other people following us. So that means we still have an unknown group after us,” I said. “It also means that they didn’t care if it was Jackson they took out. So are they are totally unrelated to the Holt family?”
“A mystery for another time,” said Sabrina. “How are we going to get out of here?”
“I think I saw a couple more flashlights in the room. Let’s get them and then
figure it out.”
I started to climb out of the track area and back onto the rock landing when the rock surface six inches from my fingers exploded, with rock fragments flying everywhere. The sound of a rifle echoed through the chamber. I slipped back into the water and ducked under the ledge.
“You okay?” asked Sabrina. She grabbed my hand.
“Yeah. I think they will be pulling rock fragments out of me for a while, but I’m okay. The gun is in the killing room where I dropped it. I’ll get it and send a couple of shots up the passageway. They must be at the entrance now. Maybe it’ll give them a little pause.”
I moved through the water in the direction of the killing room until I was away from the passageway. I climbed back onto the ledge and slowly hopped into the room, putting almost no weight on my bad leg. I picked up the gun from the floor and went out the entrance and slowly approached the passageway. I could hear faint voices. Whoever it was hadn’t attempted to descend into the mine. They were probably discussing their options. Well, I’d give them some options.
I leaned around the corner, aimed the gun up the hill, and pulled the trigger twice. I heard someone yell, but it was probably more out of surprise. I figured that would slow them down.
A flashlight beam emerged from the killing room. Sabrina had followed me up and collected the flashlights.
“I tried making a call,” she said, “but there’s no service down here.”
“Not surprising,” I said. “My phone is probably ruined from the water.”
“You don’t think those guys will be coming down anytime soon, do you?” she asked. “I’d like to take a few minutes to search this room.”
Fatal Lies ( Lies Mystery Thriller Series Book 2) Page 18
