Cut Too Deep

by Marissa Farrar

  Yet, still, her stupid, hopeful heart clung to the possibility that he’d come after her.

  He might already be at the garage. He might be waiting for me there.

  She clutched the last strands of her hope as she trudged the final half mile to the garage.

  The square, concrete building came into sight up ahead. Jenna sighed with relief, but at the same time her stomach twisted with nerves. There was no sign of Ryker’s truck parked outside, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. He might have parked his vehicle inside the building.

  She reached the open front of the garage and dumped her bags to one side of the metal door which was rolled up and suspended in brackets overhead. Ryker’s truck wasn’t parked inside, and her heart sank. She’d been wrong about him. He hadn’t bothered to come after her after all. The only assumption she could make was that he decided he didn’t love her as much as he’d declared he had.

  Her car sat on the forecourt, and she gave a small, sad smile at the sight. She walked over and gave the hood a pat like a pet. “Hey, old fella,” she said softly, despite knowing vehicles were supposed to be female. “Did you miss me?”

  She turned her attention from her car to try and find Sam. She needed to settle up for the work he’d done and get the keys back.

  “Hello?”

  She didn’t get any sense of movement from the back of the garage. Perhaps Sam was out back making coffee?

  “Hello?” she called again, her neck craning to one side to try to see through the door leading into the rear of the garage. She didn’t want to interrupt him if he was doing something private. “It’s Jenna Armstrong. I’m here to collect my car.” Her voice sounded echoey and hollow in the shell of the garage.

  Still no answer came. Jenna frowned. Strange, she was sure he’d said he was working up here this morning. Maybe he got called out on a job? But then she didn’t think he’d leave the whole place unlocked. Anyone could walk in and help themselves to the till, or to the numerous tools lying around.

  Yeah, but Ryker said the town had a low crime rate. Maybe people were simply more trusting around here than she was.

  Damn it. Now what was she supposed to do? She couldn’t go back to Ryker with her tail between her legs and ask him to bring her back here.

  Jenna made a decision. The keys for her car must be here somewhere. She’d leave him a note with her email address asking him to invoice her for what she owed, and she’d find the keys and get the hell away from Arlington.

  With her mind made up, she approached the counter which held the till, where she’d sat nursing her coffee, watching Ryker work, only a few days earlier. The memory made her heart clench with pain. It was hard to believe that had only been a matter of days ago. She felt as if she’d known Ryker for months, not days. He’d settled into her heart as if he’d been there all along.

  A board with hooks embedded into the wood and keys hung from them was positioned on the wall behind the counter. She scanned the sets of keys and quickly recognized her own.

  Jenna rounded the counter and froze. Her heart clambered into her throat, her eyes widening, all the blood draining from her face.

  Sam lay on his back on the floor behind the counter. His eyes were open, but unseeing, staring sightlessly at the roof of the garage. His skin was white and almost waxy-looking. Even in death—and she had no doubt that he was dead—an expression of surprise remained on his face. But it wasn’t his expression that was the worst thing. Behind his head, a dark pool of blood spread down to his shoulders and beyond. A heavy wrench lay abandoned in the pool, clumps of hair and flesh still clinging to the silver metal. Jenna’s eyes flicked back to Sam, and she saw the cause of his death. Above his ear, a large part of his skull had been crushed in, creating a strange crater in his head, as if the inside of his skull had become a vacuum and had sucked in on itself.

  Sudden bile rose up from Jenna’s stomach, burning its way up her throat. The sensation shocked her into movement, and she staggered back, her hand clutched to her mouth, though she couldn’t take her eyes off Sam’s body. Her cell phone! Where was her cell phone? She needed to call the police. It was in her bag, and she left her bags by the entrance.

  From out of nowhere, a metal clang and rumble sounded, and she realized the metal shutters were being pulled down over the entrance.

  The garage grew dark, the sunlight blocked out, and she blinked, her eyes slowly becoming accustomed to the dimmer lights from the fluorescent strips overhead. Who was working the shutters? The same person responsible for Sam’s death, or someone who could help? She didn’t have time to ponder it any further. All she knew was that she needed to reach her phone before whoever had done this to Sam got there first.

  With her eyes still unaccustomed to the gloom, she ran forward, toward where she’d left her bags.

  She stopped abruptly and inhaled a gasp of shock, her eyes widening.

  “Hello, Jenna.”

  Garrett stood in front of her, blocking the way. He smiled, but the expression was sly and knowing, not reaching his eyes which were as hard and gray as a piece of flint.

  “Oh!”

  It was all she could manage, feeling as if the very sight of him had winded her. She wanted to turn and run, but all her muscles seemed to have turned to stone, pinning her to the ground. Garrett standing in front of her made her feel as if the last year hadn’t even happened. She’d been placed in a time machine and whisked back to the same night Garrett forced her into the car and almost killed her.

  His sharp, cool gaze traveled down her body and then back up to her face. He lifted his upper lip in a snarl of disdain. “I see you’ve put on a few more pounds.” He gave a cold laugh. “Hell, it’s more than a few, isn’t it? At least when I was around you watched what you ate. Looks like you’ve been eating everything in sight.”

  She found her voice. “You murdered Sam!”

  “He was in my way.”

  “He didn’t do anything to you! He didn’t deserve to die.”

  Garrett shrugged. “He was an aging nobody. He wasn’t exactly going to let me hang out here until you showed up now, was he?”

  “What do you want?”

  He took a step toward her and her whole body went rigid. “You seriously need to ask me that? After what you did to me?”

  Her fear suddenly morphed into disbelief and she choked on her own crazed laughter. “After what I did to you? Don’t you have that the wrong way around?”

  His eyes narrowed. “We were in an accident, that’s all. You’ve been able to keep on living your life while I’ve been locked up in that hell hole. Do you know what they do to good looking guys like me in jail?”

  A surge of bitter delight lifted inside her. “Good,” she spat. “I’m glad you suffered.”

  He took another step, and this time she was able to step back.

  “And now I’m going to make you suffer.”

  Garrett lunged for her. Moving more quickly than she knew her large frame was capable of, she spun on her heels and ran for the back of the garage. With all hopes of calling for help on her cell gone, her mind automatically went for a weapon, and the first one that came to mind was the wrench still lying in a pool of Sam’s blood.

  Jenna dived behind the counter, her hands and knees skidding in the still warm puddle. The scent of iron and something she could only think of as death filled her nostrils. She’d never been in such close proximity of blood—at least that didn’t belong to her—but she didn’t allow herself time to feel faint. Her hands scrabbled for the wrench, her fingers touching cold, shiny metal. She grasped the makeshift weapon, and tried to lift it, but hands grabbed her ankles and tried to yank her backward. With her other hand, she caught hold of the edge of the counter, preventing Garrett from pulling her, and with another lunge, she grabbed for the handle of the wrench again.

  This time her fingers closed more solidly around the handle, and when Garrett reached higher up her legs, around her calves, to pull her back once again,
this time she was ready for him. He yanked her back but she brought the wrench with her, twisted to sit up and swung wildly with the weapon. It almost slipped from her grip, but connected with his shoulder.

  Garrett gave a yelp of pain, dropping his hold on her legs to lift his hands to protect himself. But Sam’s blood had made the wrench slippery, and as she swung her arm back to hit him again, it flew out of her grasp and clanged to the floor.

  Garrett twisted to face her, an expression of absolute hatred and fury on his face. His features contorted, warped in anger. “You hit me, you fucking bitch.”

  She started to scrabble backward, only wanting to get away from him. She hadn’t given thought to Sam’s body until she put her hand on his inert leg. She snatched it back with a scream, and Garrett laughed. He got to his feet, towering above her. But she could see he held his shoulder awkwardly, and took the smallest amount of satisfaction from that. She’d hurt him. Not much, but she’d hurt him.

  “See that dead guy behind you?” he spat. “You’re going to end up wishing you were him. I’m going to make you pay for every moment I suffered in that prison. I’ll make you pay for every beating I took, for every time …” His face twisted again. “For every time someone touched me.”

  Her eyes widened in fear.

  Garrett reached down and grabbed her by the front of her t-shirt. He hauled her only part-way up, before drawing back his fist.

  Garrett’s fist connected with her cheekbone with an explosion of white light behind her eyeballs. As quickly as the light arrived, it vanished again and was replaced with a tunneling darkness.

  And Jenna fell down the tunnel.

  Chapter Twenty

  The first thing Jenna became aware of was the thumping pain in her cheekbone. It pulsed with her heartbeat, sending throbs of pain directly behind her eye and into her brain. The surface she lay upon was cold and hard beneath her body, and a strange chemical scent filled her nostrils.

  Where was she? She was used to waking up in strange places, but for some reason she couldn’t remember going to bed last night.

  Her eyelids fluttered, but her hair had fallen in her face, blocking her view. The cold surface beneath her face was nothing like a bed, but more like the tiled floor of a bathroom. Had she slipped getting out of the shower and hit her head? Was that why she couldn’t remember where she was?

  Jenna moved to lift a hand to brush away her hair, but her arms didn’t budge.

  Alarm spiked through her and her eyes flew open. What had happened came back to her in a rush. Garrett was here! He’d killed Sam and had hit her in the garage. She tried to sit up, trying to figure out if she was still in the garage or if Garrett had moved her. She yanked on her arms again, but her shoulders screamed as cramps seized her muscles, and she realized he had bound her hands behind her back with something—probably tape of some kind.

  She managed to shake her head enough to get her hair out of her face, though the action sent more shockwaves of pain rolling through her cheekbone, eye, and head. She hoped he hadn’t broken her cheekbone, but when she wiggled her jaw, it felt more badly bruised than broken. She figured she wouldn’t be able to move her face at all if he’d shattered the bone.

  From her horizontal position, Jenna quickly took in the sight of the bare, concrete floor, together with the tires of a couple of vehicles, and a pile of tools in the corner. With relief, she realized she was still in the garage. Then she saw Garrett, sitting, propped up against the wall, staring at her, a hateful little smirk on his face. The sight of him made her sick to her stomach and sent ice through her veins. His was a face she had hoped never to see again.

  How long had she been out?

  “Oh, good,” said Garrett, getting to his feet. “You’re awake. I was about to give you a kick or two, to try and wake you up. You’re not much fun when you’re asleep and snoring.”

  “More like unconscious,” she muttered, her voice rasping against her dry and sore throat.

  He shrugged. “Whatever.” He took a couple of strides toward her and reached down and grabbed her by the top of her arm, hauling her up to sitting. She yanked her arm away, not wanting his hands on her. Garrett let go and stepped away, his arms folded as he stared down at her.

  Her throat felt raw and she coughed, and rested with her back against the front of the counter. Her face throbbed and she couldn’t imagine what she must look like. She could tell by the way her vision was slightly narrowed in one eye that her face had swollen. Not that it mattered what she looked like. If she made it out of this alive, she’d worry about her appearance then.

  Someone would be here soon, wouldn’t they? If Ryker didn’t decide to come in and check up on his business, then a customer would surely drop by needing an oil check or a tire change? Garrett wouldn’t get away with this. She just needed to stay alive long enough to wait for help.

  She cleared her throat again. The best way to stay alive was by keeping Garrett distracted, and she knew he liked nothing better than talking about himself.

  “How did you find me?” she asked, trying to make her voice sound more confident than she felt.

  He snorted. “That was so easy it was almost pathetic. You registered your car to your real name, so all I had to do was keep entering the registration into a database and wait until the number popped up.”

  “How?” she interrupted. “Did the information come from the garage?”

  “Oh no. A traffic cop saw you broken down on the freeway. He’d taken a note of your license plate as a hazard, but was heading south. By the time he’d taken the ramp off to head back up your side of the road, you’d already been towed. Lucky for me, he logged the report anyway.”

  A sense of dread settled inside her. She felt as if all of this was somehow inevitable. As if every time she’d gotten on the road and taken a different turn, hoping he would never trace her, had always been meant to lead to this moment.

  Her voice was cold. “Yeah, lucky.”

  “So it didn’t take much for me to figure out which town you were most likely to end up at, and which garage. What I struggled to figure out was where you were staying. By the time I caught up to you, the only motel in town said you’d already left, but your car was still here. Then I hit the jackpot because someone ordered a whole heap of gaming equipment to a certain Arlington address using your credit card.”

  Gaming!

  “Mikey,” she said under her breath. “Damn him.”

  So Ryker hadn’t been the one who’d gone through her things. It had been Mikey all along, even though he’d denied it. He must have used her credit card to buy what he’d wanted, figuring she’d be long gone by the time the items turned up at his house, then he’d just put the credit card back where he’d found it, not knowing that she would figure out someone had been through her things the moment she’d seen them. No wonder the boy had acted guilty, and that he’d wanted Jenna gone sooner rather than later. He hadn’t hated her, or been jealous of the time Ryker was spending with her. Instead, he’d just been nervous about his order turning up before Jenna had moved on and Ryker hadn’t known how to get hold of her again.

  “So that was you in the house that night?” she said, putting the pieces of the last few days together in her mind. “And did you kill all those poor birds?”

  He laughed. “That was fun, watching you freak out like that.” His face grew serious and he lifted a finger to wag in her face. “But don’t you think I didn’t put a lot of time and effort into catching all those damned sparrows, ’cause I did. I used glue traps meant for mice, and a whole heap of bird seed.”

  “Sick bastard,” she muttered. She hated to think of those poor little birds all stuck and struggling, only for Garrett to come along and crush them in his fists. A few birds seemed a stupid thing to be upset about when Sam lay dead right behind her, but she couldn’t help it. She remembered the first bird at the motel.

  “You didn’t find any more wrens, then?” she asked him.

  Genuine puzzle
ment crossed his face. “Huh?”

  She shrugged and gave her head a brief shake. “Never mind.” So the first one hadn’t been him after all. Just a coincidence, she guessed, probably like the bang against her door that night at the motel. She’d been right to sense he was near, but not everything that had happened had been down to him.

  Something occurred to her.

  “How did you kill Stephen Francis and be here, stalking me, at the same time?”

  “Now, now, Jenna, sweetheart.” He put an edge on the last word to make it sound like a curse. “I was never stalking you. I just wanted to catch up with an old girlfriend, that’s all.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Perhaps. But here’s the thing—I didn’t kill Stephen Francis.”

  “What? So you’re not responsible for his death?”

  “I never said that, did I? Being in jail has its advantages. The good thing about being in jail is the number of great contacts you make while you’re inside. Turns out, if you know the right people, you can get just about anything—fake IDs, stolen cars, illegal weapons. It opened up a whole new world to me. I discovered just how useful my set of skills is in a jail setting. You wouldn’t believe how many men in there are desperate to track down women who once claimed to love them, and then abandoned them as soon as they were put inside, just as you did, Jenna! So many wives and girlfriends, often with the man’s babies with them, taking them away as if they think they have any right,” he banged his fist down on the counter behind her, making her jump, “to deny a man to see his own child. That’s what the matter is with you fucking bitches. You think you have the right to take whatever you want and screw the man who gave it to you.”

  He seemed to remember himself, and gave a short, sharp sniff and a shake like someone had just walked over his grave. “Anyway, you’re getting me off course. My point is that people with certain talents are able to barter with those talents when they’re inside, for favors that can be completed once they’ve made it to the outside again. So I agreed to find some bitches for some people, and in return, they killed Stephen Francis for me.”