by Jane Blythe
“He’s angry, whether about this supposed sexual abuse by his mother or something else, or it’s just who he is, he has anger that he needs to find a way to satiate so it doesn’t consume him. That’s why he needed Meadow. He needed to have someone there whenever he felt the urge to take out his aggression on someone. The others are more for fun. It’s like his hobby, the game of luring them in, convincing them to come to him willingly, that stokes his ego, then he enjoys torturing them until he loses interest and murders them.”
“I was thinking about what Meadow told us earlier, about how much he loves flowers and how he would get angry if she let one of the bushes die. We know that he takes a souvenir from each of his victims and I was wondering whether he buries it beneath the bushes. We should ask Meadow, see if she remembers dates of when the bushes were planted, and we can ask CSU to check out the yard, see if we’re right and he does bury his souvenirs there.”
The souvenirs they were talking about were actually his victims’ breasts which he cut off once he had cut them virtually in half. It was an interesting theory, and one he was sure could be easily confirmed, but right now what was worrying him more was how John Smith knew that Meadow was in River’s End. “How did he find her here?”
“She said she paid cash for the ticket so no way he could have traced it, and River’s End isn’t the kind of place you’d think you’d stop and look for the wife you abuse,” Julian agreed. “You think he used a tracking device?”
That was exactly what he had been thinking. John had known exactly where to come looking for his wife down to the car she had been driving and the house she had been staying in. “She didn’t bring much with her when she left, no cell phone or anything, just the clothes on her back.”
Julian’s eyes grew wide. “You think the tracker is in her?”
“I think that we should take a trip to visit Levi and have him check her out,” he said grimly. The idea of John putting a tracker in Meadow, no doubt without her consent, made his blood boil. To John, Meadow was just like a pet that you didn’t want to lose, she wasn’t a person, she was his toy who he liked to play with.
Before he could say more, the door opened, and a bleak-looking Fletcher walked in. “We may have a situation.”
“A situation?” he repeated, not liking the sound of that. Since he knew that Meadow was safe here it had to mean that John Smith had followed through on his threats.
“Darlene Frindlebrook is missing. She went out jogging this morning then was supposed to go straight to her classes, but she never showed up, her car is still parked at the park, no sign of her anywhere,” Fletcher explained.
He knew where Darlene was, she was with John, she was his next victim, and unless they found her, he knew exactly what was going to happen to her. Fighting his instincts, which were to stay here with Meadow and keep her safe since she was what John really wanted, he sighed and stood up. He was the sheriff, and he had to go to the scene, speak with any witnesses, inform the family, who he had known since he was a kid, and do whatever he could to find Darlene.
“Julian, stay here with Meadow, don’t let her out of your sight for any reason. Call Levi and tell him that he needs to check Meadow for any tracking devices. Fletcher, you’re with me,” he barked out as he stalked from the room, ready to rip John Smith to shreds with his bare hands when he finally tracked the man down.
* * * * *
6:36 P.M.
It had been a really long day.
Meadow wanted Abe to come back, but she knew he was busy, working hard trying to find her husband before he had a chance to come for her again.
While she appreciated that—in words she could never fully express—she knew how dangerous it was, and she was terrified that John would hurt Abe. Well, not just hurt him, more like torture and kill him. John wouldn’t let anyone get in the way of him getting her back, and Abe had planted himself directly in the line of fire. It meant John would do whatever it took to eliminate him.
According to what Abe and his cousin Julian had told her, John had been killing women for five years now. The whole time she had been married to him, living with him, sleeping beside him, cooking and cleaning for him, doing his laundry, he had been seducing teenage girls and slaughtering them. They hadn’t had to tell her that he’d tortured them for her to know that he had. He’d tortured her so it stood to reason that he would have done the same things to them he had done to her for five long years.
None of it had sunk in yet.
She felt like she was living someone else’s life.
Any second now, she would wake up and find out she hadn’t been tricked into marrying a serial killer.
A serial killer.
She hadn’t even known that serial killers got married, but what had she known? She was a nineteen-year-old kid, starved for love and attention, desperate for anyone to give her a scrap of love.
Now shame filled her. She felt responsible for John’s actions, she had probably washed the clothes—stained with his victims’ blood—that he had worn while he killed them. The thought made her sick. Had he raped them and then come home and raped her?
A hand touched her shoulder, and she shrieked.
“It’s only me.”
She spun around and saw Abe standing behind her. She blushed, embarrassed by freaking out in front of him again. As if it wasn’t enough that she had sobbed all over him when she learned the truth about John, and then been a hysterical mess for hours while he wasted time calming her down that could have been better spent trying to find John.
“I wasn’t sure I was going to see you again today,” she said, trying to calm herself down. While she had paced back and forth across Abe’s office all day, too stressed to settle at anything, she’d decided that she wasn’t going to be the poor, beaten down, abused wife anymore. She was going to be strong, she was going to be tough, she was going to be independent, she was going to take care of herself, after all, she had made it through eighteen years of foster care on her own.
“Of course you were going to see me again today,” he told her.
She wasn’t sure what to do. Meadow still wasn’t one hundred percent certain of where things stood between them. Yes, he had told her that he had feelings for her and that he would be there for her, they’d made out, and he’d held her while she cried. But did that make them a couple?
Tentatively, she lifted her eyes to meet his, he was watching her, an inscrutable expression on his face. Then he curled an arm around her waist, drew her close, and touched his lips to hers in a soft, sweet kiss.
“Dinner?” he asked.
Her eyes widened. “Like a date?”
“Yes, a date. I thought we could go out to dinner, and then we’re spending the night at my brother Theo’s house. He’s on shift at the fire station so we have the place to ourselves.”
Those words hung over her, making her tingle in all the right places. She’d thought after everything John had done to her she would never be able to think of sex as a pleasurable thing, but Abe made her want to strip naked and let his hands and his mouth touch her all over, then bury himself inside her and make her come, screaming his name.
“Shall we go?”
A delightful shiver rocked through her, and she nodded, taking the hand that he held out. The idea of going out on a date was exciting, and she wondered what he had planned. “So where are we going?” she asked as he led her through the station, pausing at the door to help her put on her coat.
“There’s an amazing pizzeria on Main Street, I thought we’d go there, then to the ice cream parlor, and Theo’s house is in town so we can walk there after we’re done.”
“That sounds wonderful,” she said with a smile, actually she couldn’t stop smiling. When she had run from John she hadn’t been expecting to meet someone that she would even think about having a future with. She’d run for her the sake of her baby because she couldn’t condemn a child to the life she had been living, but she hadn’t really expected to build
a new life.
“Do you want to drive to the pizzeria or walk? It’s only about a ten-minute walk, but it’s meant to snow later.”
“Let’s walk, it’s so beautiful out here.” It was dark out, but the lights of the town were winking on, and she knew that Main Street was lined with streetlights and fairy lights. It made the town look so pretty.
It was fate that had brought her here.
It had to be.
How else could you explain it?
She had been scrounging money ever since she learned she was pregnant and the amount she had managed to save was just enough to get her a bus ticket here. Here to this adorable little town where the man who was quickly becoming very important to her lived.
“What are you thinking about?” Abe asked, breaking the companionable silence.
“About how lucky I am.”
“Lucky?”
“I’m alive, aren’t I? All of John’s other victims aren’t, and now I’m here, with you, and we’re going on a date, and later we’re going to do a little kissing.”
“Oh, we’re going to do a lot more than a little kissing,” he whispered in her ear, making her shiver.
A delightful shiver.
Her dark world was finally starting to fill with light.
Something that Meadow had been so sure was never going to happen.
Now she was excited about what her future held. Once the threat of John was no longer hanging over her head, she would finally be able to live.
Really live, and it was such an exhilarating prospect.
It made her want to sing and dance and laugh and throw caution to the wind. She wanted to feel part of the real world after being a prisoner for so long, she wanted to just enjoy herself for once.
“Can we have ice cream first?” she asked as they walked past the ice cream parlor.
Abe shot her an amused smile. “Sure, if you want. Do you want to go in and have sundaes, or do you want to grab cones and we can sit out here?”
“Out here,” she replied immediately. She wanted to enjoy the chilly evening.
“What flavor do you want?”
“Surprise me.”
“Okeydokey.”
“Okeydokey?” she snickered at the word that totally didn’t seem like something Abe would say.
He shrugged and smiled. “Just wanted to make you smile, when you do it lights up your eyes, and your whole face is transformed.”
His sweet words did indeed make her smile, and she watched him walk into the ice cream parlor. For all his attempts and pretending he was this strong macho guy, he was like a big squishable teddy bear inside.
Snow began to flutter around her, and she squealed in excitement. Besides tending the garden and the occasional trip out to functions with John, Meadow couldn’t remember the last time she had been outside just to have fun. With a giggle, she stepped out into the quiet street and began to spin in circles as snowflakes fell around her. She didn’t care that people were looking at her, she didn’t care that the gossip mill in the small town would have word spread to everyone about the crazy new pregnant lady playing in the snow like a child.
“What are you doing?” Abe asked, two ice cream cones in his hand, watching her with a bemused expression.
“It’s snowing,” she squealed.
“I can see that. Again though, what are you doing?”
“Playing in the snow. Oh,” she stopped spinning to clap her hands delightedly, “if we get enough snow we can make snow angels. Ooh, and a snowman. I always wanted to build a really big snowman, as big as me. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“Not as fun as this.” Balancing the two cones in one hand, Abe wrapped an arm around her waist, lifted her feet off the ground, and kissed her like he thought she was every bit as beautiful as the magical world around them.
“This is pretty fun,” she agreed.
“Can we eat our ice cream now?” he asked with a small pout that made her giggle.
“I guess. What flavor did you get?” she asked as he set her back on her feet, but kept a warm arm around her.
“Mint chocolate chip,” he replied, handing her a cone.
“Oh, that’s my favorite,” she beamed.
“It’s mine too,” Abe agreed. “Well it used to be, I think I have a new favorite now,” he whispered in her ear, and that shiver was back.
This really was the most perfect first date ever, and yet she couldn’t wait for it to be over so they could go back to Abe’s brother’s house and fool around.
* * * * *
8:18 P.M.
Given everything she had been through, Meadow was surprisingly resilient. She’d chattered away, laughing and making jokes, her body responded every time he touched her, and Abe knew that she was every bit as anxious as he was to get back to his brother’s house so they could do more than kiss and hold hands. He couldn’t be more proud of her. What she had lived through was horrific, add to that what her childhood had been like and knowing her mother hadn’t wanted her after her father’s death, and he thought she was perhaps the bravest woman he had ever met.
Strike that, quite possibly the bravest person he had ever met.
Maybe it was precisely the difficult childhood and situation with her parents that had helped her survive her marriage.
Meadow had been used to being on her own, she had been used to being unwanted, and she was used to pain, albeit emotional and psychological pain. The sweet, funny, lively, bubbly, carefree woman that she would have been had life not handed her a series of blows had not been trampled down, she was still in there, and now that she had been set free that woman was soaring.
She’d fallen quiet now though, they’d had their ice cream, they’d had dinner, they’d gathered up the small amount of snow that had built up on the ground and made the world’s tiniest snowman. Now they were heading back to his brother’s house, and he was wondering if now the reality of being with another man—whatever they ended up doing and the ball was firmly in her court—was catching up with her.
“Everything okay,” he asked, his thumb brushing across her knuckles.
“Yes,” she replied, but her voice was troubled.
“Doesn’t sound like it.”
Meadow sighed and stopped walking, looking up at him with anxious eyes. “Do you think there’s something wrong with me?”
“Wrong with you?” He might not date a lot, but he knew a loaded question when he heard one. There was no good answer he could give to that because it was clear she thought there was something wrong with herself. “What do you mean?”
“I feel happy.”
“What’s the problem with that?” Abe asked, thoroughly confused, he’d forgotten how much women baffled him.
“I’ve spent the last five years married to a man who beat and raped me nearly every day, he’s still out there, and he’s made it clear he intends to get me back.” Her free hand strayed to her neck as she said those words, and the hand-shaped bruises there reminded him just how close John Smith had gotten to getting his wish. “It seems like I should be cowering in a corner in terror, a complete and utter mess, and yet here I am, out on a date, holding your hand and picturing all the things those fingers are going to do when we get to your brother’s house. It seems … wrong?”
“You finally feel safe to be you. The real you.” Meadow apparently saw her strength as a weakness which had to be the mother of all ironies.
“I do feel safe with you,” she said, but her voice sounded odd. Like that was somehow a bad thing. “I have a confession to make. When I cooked you that dinner last night, it was to try to get you to like me, you know like like me.”
“I know,” he said, brushing his fingers across her cheek.
“But my motives were wrong. I didn’t want you to like me because I liked you, I wanted you to like me because I thought I needed you.”
He froze.
His hand dropped to his side.
Was she trying to tell him that she wasn’t interested
in him after all?
That would have to be the father of all ironies because he had spent the last decade of his life using women to fulfill his needs, knowing he had nothing of substance to offer them. Now he’d found a woman who made him want to dig down deep inside himself and find more to offer, and she didn’t want him.
“I’m not explaining it right,” Meadow said anxiously. “Last night I thought that I needed someone like you to take care of me. You’re strong, and tough, and big, and you made me feel safe, and I didn’t think I could survive on my own. For the last five years, John has told me every opportunity that he got that I’m weak, and pathetic, that I couldn’t survive on my own, that I needed a man to look after me and that’s why I would never leave him. You hear that often enough and you believe it. But when you told me the kiss was a mistake it hurt and I realized that I was starting to care for you. Really care for you. When I was upstairs waiting for you to fall asleep so I could sneak away, I realized that deep down inside you’re scared too. You’re scared of getting hurt, that the next woman you fall in love with will turn out to be like your ex, so you push everyone away, you don’t let them get close. But you didn’t let those fears stop you from being there for me. You held me while I cried, you made me feel for the first time in my life that I mattered. Then you touched me, and my body felt alive, I’ve never felt desirable or attractive before, but you make me feel that way.” Tugging her hand free from his, she pressed both to his chest and stood on her tiptoes to whisper her lips across his. “Take me home and make my heart come alive by making love to me.”
