by Gregg Olsen
“Ready?” he asked.
Her lips glistened when she smiled at him. “Absolutely.”
He turned on the camera, and the red light glowed. Brenda waited a beat before talking. She was a fast learner. No doubt about that.
She stared with a sly smile. “Did you miss me?” she asked. “I see by your comments on my last post that you have and I am very grateful for your support. For those of you who wrote hateful things, I’ve captured your IP addresses, and I’ll be stopping by some day.”
She caught Sherman’s smile and quick, affirming nod. He’d told her that she needed to show her fun side.
“Kidding!” she said, letting out a little laugh. “I can’t be bothered by haters. The world is full of them. Millions probably. I don’t know what’s worse. An insipid little loser like Janie Thomas or people who make a point to keep everyone down. Down on the farm. Whatever.”
Sherman was unsure if Brenda’s little insider’s poke at being on a farm was smart, but he could edit it out before uploading. That is, if he didn’t mention to her that he had done so. She wanted final approval on everything he did.
Sexy and demanding control freak came to mind.
“Someone posted an obvious question and I want to do my best to answer. The question was, ‘Why did you kill Janie Thomas?’ I hate to sound impetuous because I’m really not that girl. I think about things. I calculate. I measure. I weigh the odds. I killed Janie because she was weak. She was pathetic. She was never going to be anything in life but one of those people who breathe in oxygen that should be left for others. I’m kind of an environmentalist when you get right down to it. I’ve recycled Janie. The world’s better off for it.”
She reached for her bottle of water.
“That brings me to purpose. I want to talk about my purpose. I’ll be very honest with you. I don’t know what is going to happen to me. I expect I’ll get away with this as I have very capable help. Whatever I do, I’m going to live a memorable life. You will talk about me for a long time to come.”
She held up three cell phones and a compact.
“I don’t need to name any names here. I expect that viewers will be able to put two and two together. The Hello Kitty phone cover is probably the easiest to identify. So yes, I have them. All of them. They’ve done nothing to me, so don’t think that I’m conducting some kind of personal vendetta. They stand in for elements of my life that I still can’t shake. Yeah, me. Brenda Nevins. I have a heart. Who would have guessed it?”
The camera lingered on her face.
“Tomorrow one of them will beg for her life,” she said. “You won’t want to miss that.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
When the light hit her, Blake Scott let out a raspy scream. No words, almost a scared cough. She didn’t have much in her. She’d clawed and cried and screamed until every bit of energy she held in reserve had been depleted.
She squinted in the direction of the man who came for her. The monster was so ordinary. He looked like a schoolteacher or accountant. Bland. In case she survived, she was going to make sure that she could identify him. Yet his appearance was so boring, she wondered how she would describe him.
He grabbed her by the shoulder and twisted her so she wouldn’t see him before dropping a jacket or shirt over her head.
“You’re hurting me!” she yelled.
“Shut up,” he said. “Save your breath! You’ll have a chance to say your piece.”
Blake didn’t fight. She let him lead her out of the stall. She could see her feet and her calves, all muddy and bloody. Tears fell.
“Where are the other girls?” she asked. “What did you do to them?”
The boring man, the man no one would notice in a crowd, was having his moment.
“Shut up! Talk later!”
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
It was after 2:00 A.M. when Summer nudged Birdy, who’d fallen asleep on the recliner. She hadn’t meant to drift off, but the TV had been little company, and the Home Shopping Network and QVC were not favorites. She knew her mom loved those channels.
“It’s time,” Summer said.
“Time,” Birdy repeated.
In Summer’s hand was a syringe full of a purple morphine solution that Natalie had joked was her favorite color.
“Especially if it gets me out of here,” she had said when the hospice lady came with a paper bag of catheters, cotton swaps, adult diapers, and the greatest gift of all, the morphine. Natalie had called it her bag of shame.
“You think your baby crapping all over you is the most humiliating thing that will ever happen to you,” she had said in one of her lucid moments. “Try being forced into a diaper.”
Birdy had sent Summer to bed, while she stood watch over their mom, but Summer couldn’t sleep. She got up a couple of times to check. Birdy told her to go back to bed.
“I’ll let you know,” Birdy said. “I don’t think it’s really going to be tonight.”
“It needs to be,” Summer said.
“Get some rest,” Birdy told her. “I’ll get you if there’s a change.”
Both sisters had cried with their mother over the realization that the end for her was so very near. Natalie Waterman was tough. She’d been through a lot. And while most of her worst troubles rested solely on her shoulders, she didn’t deserve to suffer the slow death of cancer as the disease robbed her of mobility, memories, and the chance to make things right.
“Maybe she’ll go on her own,” Birdy had said earlier that evening. Washington State had an assisted suicide law on the books, but she wasn’t her mother’s doctor. She couldn’t make the call. Death with dignity was only for those who planned ahead and made the decision to give up the fight before they’d started it.
“She wants this,” Summer insisted. “Look at her.”
In the dim light of the TV that illuminated her sunken features, Natalie’s mouth hung open in a perpetual gasp. Her breathing was labored. When her eyes were open, they seemed to stare at nothing at all.
“Mom,” Summer said, her eyes full of tears, “it’s time now. Birdy and I are here, Mom. We love you.”
Natalie crooked her finger, just barely. Birdy leaned her ear closer.
“Mom, what is it?” She too was crying.
“I am sorry,” she said, her voice so faint that a slight breeze could carry it away. “I really am.”
“We’re past that, Mom,” Birdy said. “We love you. We know you did the best you could.”
Summer looked at Birdy as she placed the syringe in the corner of Natalie’s mouth, careful to not go too deep inside. She pushed the plunger, and the purple liquid drained from the tube. Natalie moved her lips a little and stared up at her girls.
“You need to swallow it all, Mom,” Summer said.
Natalie’s eyes stayed fixed on her daughters as they hovered above, tears running down their cheeks and falling on the pink sheet.
“Go to Daddy,” Birdy said. “He never stopped loving you, Mom.”
Natalie shut her eyes. A smile of recognition came to her tortured face. Nearly as quickly as the syringe had been emptied, she stopped breathing. Some of the wrinkles that had contorted her appearance vanished. She looked younger. At peace. It seemed as though she was only sleeping.
Birdy placed her fingers on her mother’s jugular. “She’s gone.” She looked at the clock over the fireplace.
“Two thirty-four was the time of death,” she said.
“Should we tell Elan?” Summer asked.
Birdy brushed back some stray strands of her mother’s hair.
“Let him sleep,” she said.
Birdy was glad there would be no autopsy, even though Natalie died at home. It wasn’t mandated by law. With a terminal illness, Natalie had been under a doctor’s care. Later, when she’d call the county to let them know Natalie had passed, she’d give them her name as the physician who’d verified that their mother was indeed dead. She’d also call the organization that would handle her mo
ther’s body and cremation.
“What do we do now?” Summer asked.
“Let’s sit with her awhile. There’s no hurry to say good-bye. The Neptune Society will come when we call.”
Summer smoothed out the pink sheet that covered their mother’s cooling body and fussed a little with her hair. No more tears fell. Birdy and Summer had already given all they had. Their mother had been a complex woman. She’d lived a twisty, complicated life. They didn’t know all that she’d done. Only what she’d told them. Or what had been on the reservation gossip line.
Birdy made some chamomile tea, her mom’s favorite.
“Remember when we went and picked all of that chamomile from the Meakins’ place,” she said.
Summer allowed a smile to come to her face.
“You mean what we thought was chamomile,” she said.
Birdy smiled back. “We were so dumb back then, Summer. Weren’t we?”
“Speak for yourself.”
“I just went along with you. I was your shadow. Remember? You were older.”
“Right, Birdy. I was. And I still am.”
They talked until the sun came up. Summer went outside to smoke on the back patio. Birdy followed.
“We’re going to get through this, aren’t we?” Birdy asked as she shut the slider.
Summer exhaled and crushed out her cigarette. The orange light from the sun burnished her skin and made her features all the more striking.
“I don’t know.”
“But you’ll try, won’t you?”
Summer kicked her snuffed-out cigarette butt off the patio. “Yeah, I will. You piss me off more than anyone, but you’re my sister.”
“Always.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
The image of Blake Scott filled the screen. No sound. Just her picture. Her hair was matted with straw on one side of her head; her eyes were puffy and red. She blinked but did not cry out. Bruises that looked to be the result of ligature marked her neck.
The camera panned down a little to take in her name, embroidered in cursive on her cheer uniform.
Sound crackled. “Talk now,” came the voice of Brenda Nevins, off camera.
Blake stayed mute.
“Talk, bitch!”
“I won’t say it,” she said.
“You will say it.”
Another voice, this time a man’s, asked if Brenda wanted to start over.
“No,” she said, “this makes it all more real.”
“We have your home address. We know your sister goes to Cedar Heights. We know your mom’s schedule. Do you not care about anyone but yourself?”
“I do care,” Blake said, her voice quiet. “Don’t judge me.”
“Stupid bitch,” the man said.
“Right,” Brenda added. “You know what I’m capable of.”
“Why should I trust you?” Blake asked, using what little she held in reserve to hold it together and not break down.
“You don’t have much of a choice, now do you?”
“I’m not going to beg for my life,” Blake said. “I’m not. I honestly don’t care what you do to me. I know that once you start doing whatever it is, I’ll be dead.”
And that was it. No more. The screen went black.
“Wait,” Kendall said, “the video is still running.”
It was.
The next image was of a gas can.
A quick cut to a field at night, lit up by the light on the camera.
A pan over the length of a car.
The image of gasoline being poured over the car, drenching it. The sound of a striking match.
And then, screams.
Blake’s screams.
They were the kind of screams that would send someone running away, not toward her to help. The kind of shrieks that do nothing but remind everyone who can hear them that there isn’t always a way to save someone. Like a man drowning offshore with no good swimmers close enough to get to him. Or the screams heard on the voice data recorder in the crash of a 747 in the Philippines the previous year.
In the window of the car, Blake pounded frantically against the glass. She tried to pull up the lock, but it was jammed. She swiveled around and tried for the other door on the passenger’s side, but it too was stuck. In the next close-up, she was in the backseat. The look in Blake Scott’s eyes was the unmistakable look of horror. Helpless horror. She was no longer tough. No longer full of resolve to push back at her tormenters, as she had been in the beginning of the video.
Blake did indeed beg for her life. She called out for her mother, her father, her sister. Her last words were unintelligible. Just before the car exploded into a fireball, her hands were pressed against the glass just like those of people during a prison visit, separated by a partition.
The camera jostled a little, presumably from the explosion. And that was it. The video that chronicled Blake Scott’s death was finished. Underneath the video commenters posted:
Bitch was stuck up! Deserved what she got.
Sick! She tried really hard to get out. LOL.
She looks like she was rode hard and put away wet.
She nasty!
Kendall tried to ignore the comments, but as they came in she kept reading. Brenda Nevins was playing to her fans. It was hard to imagine that there were people out there who actually applauded her for what she was saying and doing. She was a maniac, and yet people didn’t seem to care. They sided with her. They’d been put down too. They’d had someone like Blake Scott keep them from achieving something that they’d felt entitled to. Brenda was one of them. She was paying back all the haters.
Kendall shut off the comments feature. She couldn’t take anymore. She played the video again, freezing it on every detail and trying to read what she could into whatever Brenda Nevins was doing.
The gas can was unremarkable. It looked to be the kind that could be purchased at the Port Orchard Wal-mart.
The car. While no auto enthusiast, Kendall knew it was a late-model Subaru—a Forester, she thought. She played particular attention to the front and back ends of the vehicle, hoping against hope that Brenda and her helper were careless enough to leave the plates in plain view.
Of course not.
On the windshield it appeared that there was some kind of a sticker. Kendall scrutinized that section of the video until her eyes hurt.
“Hey, Tony,” she called down to the lab, “do me a favor?”
“What do you need?” Tony Collins answered.
“A video that Brenda Nevins posted—”
“That one with the girl in the car?”
Kendall let out a sigh. “You’ve seen it already?” she asked, not waiting for a response. “Never mind. Everyone has by now probably. The woman’s gone viral and in some weird twist, the word really fits her.”
“Scary stuff,” Tony said. “You want me to enhance something, right?”
“Yes, please,” she answered. Tony never let her down. The lab was limited in what it could do, but Tony wasn’t. “There’s a sticker on the front window, driver’s side. Can you work with that?”
“Can do,” Tony said.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
A horseshoe.
Kelly Sullivan traced the shape of the metal object she’d found with her hands. She knew it was the symbol for good luck. She needed more than luck—a miracle maybe.
She’d found it in the dark as she felt her way around the space where she was being held prisoner. She thought of all the ways she could use it. She could poke out both eyes of her attacker if she could get to his face. She could use it like brass knuckles. Again, she’d have to get close to him to do so.
As she clutched it, she imagined a scenario in which she could use it. She’d have to be fast. She was. She’d have to be strong. She was. She worked harder than anyone with free weights. And she’d have to have the advantage of surprise. That would be easy.
Her captors had made a mistake. They thought they’d considered every possibility. She�
�d noticed the tiny eye of a camera trained on her from above. So they liked to watch.
Or, she thought, she could dig her way out of there. She could scoot herself to the edge of the stall, still in view, but not center stage as they’d wanted her. She could dig as she lay there, slowly, quietly.
“Don’t worry, Amber,” she said, not wanting to tip off her plans in case audio came with the video feed.
Amber didn’t answer.
Kelly started digging. Her small stature gave her the advantage and she knew it. I can do this! She thought of how her dad had comforted her when a kid called her a shrimp.
“Great things come in small packages,” he’d said.
She’d show those sick pieces of crap that she could beat them.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
The floor was a mix of manure and dirt, but with each swipe of the horseshoe Kelly Sullivan thought it smelled like the most beautiful perfume. French perfume. It was the smell of a chance to live. After a half hour of surreptitious digging, Kelly could feel the gap under the wall widen. She lay on the floor of the stall and ran her arm under it. A nail snagged her skin and cut open a long bloody gash, but she ignored the pain. It was only skin. The gap couldn’t accommodate her body right then, but it was getting there.
“Amber,” Kelly called over. “What’s happening?”
“I’m scared,” she said.
“We’re not going to die.”
“No one will find us,” Amber said. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
Kelly wanted to tell her friend that everything would be all right. She wanted to let her know that it didn’t matter if anyone came or not. They were about to take matters into their own hands. But she didn’t. She looked up at the video camera. If they were watching and listening, she’d play along.
“Have you prayed?” Kelly asked.
“Yes,” Amber said. “Over and over. I’m all prayed out.”
