Cold Sight

by Parrish, Leslie

  Jed’s father’s abuse had been raw and brutal.

  Hers—his own mother’s—had somehow been worse. To sit there and laugh, drunkenly reading them bedtime stories, even while the beatings and the rapes were going on . . . God, how he’d hated her. But they’d never told anyone.

  “Never let outsiders know your business.”

  Jed had shared his deep need for privacy, which was one reason they had kept their past relationship secret once he’d come back here to Granville. Nobody else needed to know his mother had once been married to Jed’s father. Like two soldiers who’d come through the same bloody battle, they had kept their horrific history just between them.

  Horrific. Yes, that was the word. He sometimes wondered how his stepbrother had survived, stayed sane, once it had been just him and his father in this house.

  He didn’t want to think about that. Jed was long past being hurt now.

  Enough. Time to visit the little women.

  Young Miss Kirby—Taylor or Jenny—may have moved, but she wasn’t back to normal yet. He needed to get down there and restrain her before she got to that point. So he donned the mask he’d been holding.

  He thought about wearing a hood, instead, but decided against it. It probably wasn’t necessary, not on this visit, since his new visitor was as weak as a kitten. But next time, when she was more clearheaded, he might need to make other arrangements. He’d taken care to never turn his back on Vonnie, fearing even the color of his hair might give her a clue to his identity before he was ready for her to figure it out. Once the other one was fully conscious, he’d have to be especially cautious. For now, though, he should be all right with just the plastic mask.

  Making his way down the steep stairs, he stopped to unlock the first metal door. He stepped inside, turned, relocked it, then proceeded down the narrow hallway, lit only by one bare bulb above his head. He had another small light he used when reading to his visitors, but it wasn’t on. It sat right outside the next heavy door, beside the stool on which he usually sat during his story-time visits.

  Hmm. He wondered what kinds of stories Miss Kirby liked to hear.

  Perhaps Arabian Nights. Oh, how he had loved that book as a child, partly because she had never read it aloud to them. He’d read it on his own, pretending he and Jed could fly away on a magic carpet, far from Jed’s father and his own whore of a mother. Never to return to this awful town.

  He had returned, though. And poor Jed had never gotten to leave.

  Slipping the key into the large, old- fashioned lock, he entered the cell. “Good morning, ladies,” he said in his most cheery voice. “Sleep well?”

  “She’s in a bad way,” Vonnie said, not even attempting to be pleasant.

  “But she’s alive, right?” he asked. “She’s been moving, fidgeting all morning, so she can’t be too badly hurt.”

  “Please, you gotta let me help her.”

  He lowered Vonnie’s drink to a rickety old table that stood by the door. “Really? Do you think we should do something with her?”

  Vonnie watched him suspiciously from her cot. “I’ll do it. Just unchain me and I’ll take care of her.” Even from here he saw the way her throat worked as she swallowed. “I won’t try to run away, I swear. I just want to make sure she’s okay.”

  “Oh, how sweet! You helping a snotty bitch who would never even have spoken to you if you hadn’t transferred to her school. Nice little white girls from the suburbs don’t usually associate with your kind, you know.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  Oooh, kitten had her claws out. It was a good thing he’d spiked that drink, because Vonnie appeared to have regained some of her fighting spirit.

  “She’s my friend. She offered to drive me home last Monday night.”

  He tsked. “You probably should have taken her up on that offer, dear.” Then, thinking about it, he asked, “Do you happen to know which twin this is?”

  Her eyes grew rounder. “You don’t?”

  “No, I haven’t got a clue.”

  She appeared astonished by that, which disappointed him. Usually Vonnie wasn’t so lacking in vision. How could she not have immediately seen what he’d done to cover all the bases?

  “Well, then, how do you know you got the right one, the one who might have seen you following me last week?”

  He laughed wickedly. That’s for me to know and you to find out.

  But why not let her find out now? If Miss Kirby here was playing possum and was a little more conscious than she appeared, he couldn’t think of a better way to coax a reaction out of her.

  “I don’t,” he told Vonnie, though his eyes remained on his other young friend. “But you see, it doesn’t matter. Because before I took this one, I slit her sister open and left her stone-cold dead on the ground. She won’t ever be talking to anyone again.”

  There might have been a twitch, maybe a tiny sound, but the unconscious girl did not cry out or scream or well up in tears.

  Okay. She was really still unconscious. Little weakling.

  Tempted to say more, he thought how it would both upset Vonnie, and amuse him. He wanted to describe how he’d hacked at the other one’s throat, and why. It hadn’t been entirely necessary, it had just given him a kick to think that, just as he didn’t know which girl he’d killed—since it had been dark and he’d had to work fast—the police might not be able to figure it out, either.

  He could easily find out which girl was lying on the floor by lifting her head and looking at her throat, but something about not knowing made it all the more delicious. Because, like all the other girls, it really didn’t matter who they were once they arrived in his basement. They were toys for him to play with—anonymous, nameless, mere instruments of his amusement.

  Vonnie was the only one who’d ever been more than that. Which would make the eventual breaking of her psyche all the more wonderful when it finally happened.

  Almost as wonderful was thinking how the Kirbys must be feeling.

  He’d originally considered taking both twins, but kidnapping two girls would have doubled the risk. Besides, he loved the idea of the Kirbys having to grieve for one daughter they knew was dead while at the same time holding out vain hope that the other might escape her sister’s fate. All the while not knowing which was which.

  It would be agonizing.

  And that simply delighted him.

  There was one more benefit: Making the identification more difficult might keep people from wondering too much about a motive, trying to figure out if the dead girl had any connection to him.

  Which she did. All the girls did, of course. He never did anything without knowing exactly why he was doing it.

  He didn’t elaborate on any of that, though. Vonnie was a little too focused to waste any more time. He needed her drugged.

  “Now,” he said, picking up the drink and carrying it over to the restrained teenager. “Drink up. You must be hungry, so I went ahead and made you one of those instant meals. It’s very nutritious.”

  She said nothing, still visibly stunned by what he’d just said about the other girl’s sister. Funny, he wouldn’t have expected Vonnie to care so much. She was so smart, had been so determined all her life to get out of the awful nightmare in which she lived, he would never have imagined that looking-out-for-number-one gene hadn’t been clawed into her genetic code.

  “Lift your head,” he told her, guiding the flexible straw toward her mouth.

  She watched him closely, hesitating for an instant. “Come on, now, you have to drink or you’ll never be able to help your friend over there.”

  “Please don’t hurt her any more,” she whispered.

  “Do what you’re told and maybe I won’t.”

  That got her attention and she carefully sucked up a mouthful—a small one, like always, as if each time she knew he might have filled the glass with bug spray.

  “See? Nice and nutritious. Milk and vitamins,” he told her.

  She swallowed
a mouthful, then sucked again, slowly, smart enough to know if she slurped she’d throw everything back up.

  He watched her down every drop, then, once she was finished, straightened and backed toward the door. “I guess our friend can stay where she is there for a little longer while I put together something for her to lie down on. Can’t very well chain her to the floor.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t think ahead and have something made.”

  Sneering beneath the mask, he snapped, “Well, I’m surprised you were a stupid enough little bitch to let your mother trade you to a bunch of old men for drug money.”

  And with that, he left the room, slamming the metal door hard, the keys shaking in his hands. He hadn’t liked the reminder that he had forgotten to make up a place for his new guest.

  “Know-it-all slut,” he mumbled as he pulled off the mask and trudged toward the steps. “Damned teenagers today, nothing but lip.” Sometimes the girl was a little too smart for her own good.

  Maybe he wouldn’t bring Vonnie anything to drink again tomorrow. Or the next day. See if she was quite so sassy when her tongue was so swollen and dry it would choke her if she didn’t turn her head to the side.

  “See how you like that!” he yelled before exiting the second door.

  Vonnie heard the echo of his angry yell, knew she had enraged him, but she didn’t respond. She was too busy listening, waiting for the sound of his footsteps to die away, wanting to be sure he wasn’t going to pop back in and surprise her.

  Think fast, girl; move quick. She had only a few minutes before the drugs he’d given her hit her bloodstream. She wasn’t stupid enough to think he had forgotten this time. His insistence that she drink every drop, and the faintly bitter taste of the last couple of sips, had convinced her he’d packed a massive dose in this latest cup.

  “Not gonna work, psycho-prick. You’re not gonna drug me again,” she muttered, twisting her head around to face the rough cement wall. She wished her hands were free, would give anything to be able to stick her fingers down her throat, but she didn’t have that luxury. Nor did she have time to waste continuing to try to work her hands out of the bindings.

  She had to get the drugs out of her system now, before she digested them. Because once she had, she would be useless, both to herself and to the girl lying helpless on the floor.

  Thinking of the awful things he’d done was enough to make the milk in her stomach churn, but no more. There was, however, one way to get rid of it for sure. She leaned close to the wall, and began to lick at the crumbling cement, tasting dirt and mold, thinking she probably wasn’t the first desperate girl who’d puked on this very spot.

  That did it. She started to gag, dry heaves racking her body, trying to bring up the small amount of nourishment in her stomach. But before she leaned over the bed to be sick on the floor, she heard a voice rising from the other side of the room.

  “Turn your face to the wall and do it into your pillow.”

  Shocked, she froze. “What?”

  “Hurry! He’s watching us.”

  It was Jenny . . . Taylor? Sounding not at all woozy and unconscious, but alert and aware, though she hadn’t moved a single muscle, still just that lump of clothes and bones on the floor.

  “He’s got a camera on us, but I don’t think he has audio. If he did, he would have heard you talking earlier and would have known you aren’t sure who I am.”

  She opened her mouth to ask that very question—who was she?—but before she could, the other girl spoke again.

  “Now, unless you want him to know you puked up whatever he just made you drink, turn your head into the pillow and do it as carefully as you can.”

  Vonnie didn’t ask stupid questions, didn’t waste time telling the other girl how glad she was that she’d come to. She thought clearly, focusing only on the goal: getting out of there.

  Now, knowing she had a conscious ally—who wasn’t restrained in any way—hope bloomed in her heart and made her feel truly alive again for the first time in days.

  She might survive this. Might really make it out of here alive. Might live to see justice and gain vengeance and salvage the life she’d been so sure was already lost to her.

  With that goal in mind, Vonnie turned her head and forced herself to be sick right on her cot, hoping the violent convulsions of her body would be mistaken for shivers of cold.

  She also hoped she hadn’t waited too long.

  Sunday, 1:40 p.m.

  Olivia refused to allow anyone into the room with her when she went to see the body.

  Lexie, who understood the woman’s reluctance, based on the little she knew of her abilities, had offered, even though she wasn’t really ready to see that sweet girl in death. So, of course, had Aidan. Not to mention Walter and his wife, who seemed to have taken the woman’s abilities in stride. Maybe simply because they were so desperate for answers.

  But the pale redhead had insisted on going in by herself.

  God, how Lexie wished Aidan had been successful when he’d tried to find the answers they sought. He’d spent a long time sitting beside the body, trying as hard as he could, but had simply been unable to come up with anything. Not about who was lying dead in the next room, or anything about her twin sister, wherever she might be. So, as much as he’d hated to do it, he had contacted Olivia, then had gone out to the old plantation house to get her and bring her back here.

  Lexie had the feeling this effort Olivia Wainwright was about to make would cost her greatly. Whatever demons Aidan battled, he seemed much more able to bounce back after one of his psychic episodes. And while he obviously was affected by the plight of the people he looked for, he never seemed to be personally devastated when his strange connections took place.

  Olivia looked devastated even before she pushed into the room where the draped body still lay on a cold, metal gurney.

  “You’re sure?” Aidan asked. “I can go with you. I’ve already been in once.”

  The woman shook her head. “No. I need to be alone with her.”

  Walter and Ann-Marie exchanged a look.

  “I’ll try to find out as much as I can,” Olivia promised them. “But honestly, there’s only so much I can do. I won’t be able to experience more than the last 130 seconds of her life. If she was already unconscious . . .”

  “Thank you for trying,” Walter said, lifting a shaky hand to stop her from saying anything more. “Whatever you can do.”

  Then, with one more steady, reassuring stare from the parents, Olivia turned and walked into the other room.

  Nobody sat; they all gathered near the door, and Lexie would bet every one of them cast a look at the large wall clock, measuring the seconds as they ticked by.

  Fifteen seconds felt long.

  Thirty interminable.

  By the time they reached one minute, she realized she was holding her breath, listening for any sound, however minute, from the other room.

  Aidan reached for her hand, holding tight, equally as tense and anxious.

  The clock ticked on, seconds sweeping by. It was more than two minutes, well over four, in fact, before they finally heard Olivia’s shoes tapping on the linoleum floor as she walked toward them. The door swung open, and she emerged through it. Seeing her, Lexie instinctively reached out and grabbed her arm, sure the woman would fall.

  She looked like she had aged a decade.

  The pretty, delicate redhead was now gaunt, her mouth hanging open, lines of pain carved into her face as if she’d emitted a long, silent scream that had left its permanent mark on her. Her whole body quivered and shook, and her breath came in short, raspy bursts.

  “Come on, Liv, sit down,” Aidan said, taking one of her arms. Lexie still had the other, and together they guided her into the closest chair.

  “Is she all right?” Ann-Marie asked.

  Walter also appeared worried, but he was still enough of a frightened father to ask what they were all wondering. “Did it work? Were you able to . . .
discover anything?”

  Olivia’s head dropped back, and she flinched, jerking once, twice, as if she were being struck, or in the grips of deep, violent chills. Finally, though, the spasms stopped ravaging her body. Her breaths slowed, the color began to return to her ghostly white cheeks.

  “Olivia?” Aidan asked, his tone gentle.

  The other woman licked her lips and nodded weakly. “I’m all right.” Her teeth chattering a little, she added,

  “Just cold. So cold.”

  Then, with one final deep sigh, she straightened and looked at Walter and his wife. Her tear-filled eyes held such pain, such unimaginable anguish, Lexie wanted to beg her forgiveness for ever asking her to do this.

  Walter and Ann- Marie grabbed each other’s hands, obviously just as overcome by the momentous thing this stranger had done for them. Their remorse had to be tempered by hope, however, that Olivia might have learned something.

  Finally, the brave woman opened her mouth and told them. “I heard them talking. Their last conversation, the twins. Funny. Joking.” Her voice broke. “Then it happened. Came at them from behind.”

  Ann-Marie made the sign of the cross, but said nothing.

  “It was quick; she didn’t suffer long before she died,” Olivia said, her voice clipped, her lips still trembling with cold, and, Lexie suspected, pain.

  The shared death might not have taken too long, but, she suspected, the agony of it would endure Olivia’s entire life.

  “She didn’t know,” Olivia added. “Talking with her sister one minute, gone the next.”

  Tears streamed down Walter’s face, but she imagined they would have been much harder had he found out his little girl had suffered for a long time.

  Olivia cleared her throat. “Your daughter, the girl lying in that room?”

  Walter tensed, putting an arm across his wife’s shoulders, both of them readying themselves. “Yes?”