by Jane Blythe
“Is that the dog tags?” Will asked, coming up beside him. “Fletcher said that’s how he tracked her.”
“He used something that was so special to her against her,” he said, holding on to the tags and praying it wasn’t all he ended up with. A few special moments and some dog tags didn’t seem like enough when he had imagined them having so much more.
Having everything.
Before Meadow, he hadn’t thought he’d ever want the whole marriage, wife, family thing, but now he knew he did.
“These were the only thing she had from her father. He was killed in action, after that her mother gave her up, all she wanted was someone to love her, she wanted to find her place in the world.”
“And she found it with you,” his cousin reminded him.
That might be true, but he wished he had given her so much more. If he could have, he would give her everything in the world, he would give her enough to make up for everything that she had missed out on as a child growing up in foster care, and everything that John Smith had put her through which was about as far away from what marriage was about as it was possible to be.
“It was the fact that she was vulnerable that no doubt attracted John to Meadow in the first place,” Will said thoughtfully.
Turning to look at his deputy, he asked, “So?”
“So I bet that if we went through all the other victims we would find that they were all vulnerable as well. They came from broken homes, grew up in foster care, lost a parent at a young age, went through something traumatic. It’s what turns him on, it’s what he looks for in a woman because he knows he’ll be able to lure them in without any trouble.”
“And?” he prompted. Why was his cousin just repeating everything they already knew? They knew John had targeted Meadow because of her past and its effect on her, and it stood to reason he had chosen his other victims the same way. Abe just didn’t see how that helped them right now.
“He’s off-script right now, he doesn’t have the time to spend working on his next victim, but some things are ingrained in him, I think if you’re right and he is looking to find a house where he can hole up for a few days, then he’s going to try to find someone he could sweet talk into letting him in. We should be looking for any houses where a single woman lives alone, and one who is a little vulnerable.”
That actually made sense.
All John would have to do is go up to the door with a semi-believable story and feel the woman out. Someone who had spent as much time weeding through thousands of young women to find the ones who would be susceptible to his ploys should easily be able to find it in a potential victim the second he saw them.
If Will was right, they should have just dramatically cut the number of houses they had to search, and dramatically increased the chances of them finding Meadow before that man had a chance to hurt her again.
* * * * *
12:12 P.M.
Everything was falling back into place.
His wife and his child were back with him, John had new identities for them all lined up and ready to go, they’d stay here for a few days while he regained his control by teaching Meadow a lesson, and then he’d use the car of the woman whose house he was in right now to drive them out of this town. He’d dump the car after a day or so, once he was far enough away from River’s End, then he’d buy a new car, and they would drive on till they got to the house he had prepared for them.
It was all going to work out.
Sure, it was an inconvenience to have to leave his life behind and start from scratch, and it would take time to build up the kind of life he was accustomed to living, but he was confident that he could do it.
All that really mattered was that he had Meadow back.
She was waiting for him upstairs, tied to the bed. He’d hit her several times, he probably shouldn’t have been quite so vicious about it, but he was angry, and he wanted her to know it. No one bested him and got away with it. Not in the courtroom—which was why he had a one hundred percent success rate at getting his clients off—and not in his personal life either.
He would have to show more restraint when it came to Meadow, he didn’t want to do anything to cause her to go into premature labor and lose the baby, so hitting her again wasn’t a good idea. Not that that mattered, he had something else in mind for his beautiful wife.
With a smile on his face, he threw the body of the woman who owned the house into the shallow grave he had just finished digging then dropped a few shovelfuls of dirt on top of it. Satisfied that the body was well enough hidden that should anyone come around they wouldn’t notice it, he threw the shovel into the garage and headed back upstairs.
“Honey, I’m home,” he called out as he walked into the bedroom. He knew Meadow hated it when he announced himself like that when he would arrive home from work. He supposed it was because calling her honey implied a level of intimacy and care that they didn’t have; terms of endearment didn’t usually come from the person who made your life a living hell.
As his wife’s terrified blue eyes darted to the door, he realized just how much he enjoyed tormenting her.
He really was an evil monster.
“John, please,” she rasped. Her face was shadowed with pain, and she flinched with each breath she took. “Please don’t hurt me again. The baby, I’m scared, I don’t want anything to happen to it.”
This was new.
Meadow never usually begged him to leave her alone, she usually just stood there and let him do whatever he wanted to her.
This was definitely more fun.
“Do you think I would do anything to hurt my baby?” he asked, walking over to the bed and standing beside her.
She shrunk away from him, and her eyes couldn’t quite meet his, but she said, “Abe told me about your mom. He said that your mom is in a psychiatric hospital because she became catatonic after she was charged with sexually abusing you, but …” she trailed off but chanced a quick look at him. “But he thought that maybe you lied about that. Did you?”
Why all of a sudden was she so interested in his past?
They had been married for five years, but they had never really talked much about him. There had been no need to, his past and who he was had nothing to do with their relationship.
“So full of questions, my sweet Meadow,” he said, running his fingers through her blonde locks. She trembled beneath his touch, and he relished the knowledge that he was so much bigger than her, he could crush her if he wanted to. Her diminutive size and fragility were what had attracted him to her in the first place, he liked to prey on women who were much smaller than him. Pick on someone your own size was not a principle he had ever taken too seriously.
“You did lie, didn’t you?” she asked, her expression pained like she kept learning more and more horrible things about him.
“What does it matter?” he asked as he sat beside her on the bed. “Do you really care whether or not I lied about my mother abusing me?”
“I do,” she whispered. “You’re the father of my baby, I want to know everything about you. You owe me that.” She eyed him defiantly. “You tricked me into marriage and now I’m pregnant, tell me everything about you. Please.” Her voice wobbled on that last word, but her gaze didn’t waver.
“My little Meadow is growing up.” He grinned down at her, tracing his fingertips up and down her bare stomach. She sucked in a breath at his touch and winced at the movement. A mass of goose pimples broke out on her flesh, John knew they were from fear, not arousal. “Okay, you want to know everything, fine. My mother never laid a hand on me. After my father left she was so pathetic, whining and crying, she was such a sniveling little mess, and I got tired of her, I wanted her out of the house, I wanted to be free to live my own life. With her out of the way I went into foster care, and well, you know what that’s like.” He paused to smile at her, trailing his finger up to touch one of her breasts. “No one cares about you, no one loves you, you’re nothing, a no one, and that m
eant I could be anyone I wanted.”
“A murderer,” she murmured.
“Not at first,” he mused. “At first I just enjoyed the freedom of being alone, I relished it. I loved my job, I loved getting criminals off, and I loved what I learned from each and every one of them. Then I wanted more, and well, I think you know the rest.”
Meadow was breathing hard, tears snaked down her pale cheeks and the sight of them turned him on like nothing else could. His wife wanted some sort of answers as to why he was the way he was, like that would somehow make everything make sense, and that would make it better.
But there was no answer to why he was the way he was.
He hadn’t been abused, his father may have left, but the man had simply moved on, he hadn’t been a bad man. His mother, while a pathetic mess wasn’t a bad woman, she had just annoyed him, and he’d wanted an easy out. There was no trauma, no drug or alcohol abuse in his past, there was no head injury, there was no disease, his brain was simply wired to enjoy another’s pain.
“Stop looking for answers, Meadow, there aren’t any. This is me, and I’m the man you chose to marry, although I see you haven’t been taking those vows too seriously. Letting that man touch you.”
His light grip on her breast tightened. John watched the expression on her face, it morphed from discomfort, to pain, to agony, as he crushed it with a bruising strength.
It wasn’t enough.
He needed more.
He wanted her to suffer, make her feel what he had felt watching another man touch his wife.
Meadow’s naked form was secured to the bed, her wrists and ankles tied to the bedposts, and he liked her this way. Spread open and completely vulnerable to him.
John stood and let his hands wander his wife’s body. It was almost like seeing it for the first time. His Meadow wasn’t quite the woman he thought she was. She was stronger than he had given her credit for, and cracking and splintering her into a million pieces which he would then reassemble in the model of his choosing was going to be fun.
His hand settled between her legs and he touched her, relishing the resigned fear on her face.
“Hmm,” he drawled as he stroked her, “when your boyfriend was touching you, you seemed to enjoy his mouth on you. Maybe we should start there.” John winked at her as he moved to the end of the bed and settled between her legs.
Her strangled sob when his mouth touched her soothed his soul.
He didn’t feel guilt.
He didn’t feel remorse.
He didn’t mind torturing his own wife.
He didn’t mind molding his own child into his image.
He didn’t mind killing and maiming innocent young women.
He was the perfect killing machine, he was smarter and more cunning than any criminal he had ever defended, and he enjoyed this, his wife’s squirms and little moans of torment at the ministrations of his tongue turned him on like nothing else could, and he was glad he had the entire rest of his life to make her suffer for thinking that she could leave him.
* * * * *
4:31 P.M.
Too much time had passed.
It had been over six hours since John had kidnapped Meadow. That was more than enough time for him to have done whatever he wanted to her.
The thought of her in pain sliced at his heart.
For so long Abe had thought he’d stamped out any lingering desire to fall in love and have a family of his own one day. Loving someone meant leaving yourself open for crushing pain.
He had loved Talia.
Deeply and truly.
He had believed that she’d felt the same way, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. It wasn’t that she hadn’t loved him that had hurt, it wasn’t even that she had cheated on him while he was off overseas fighting to keep their country safe. It was that she had kept the fact that she was pregnant a secret and then used the miscarriage as a weapon against him, a way to justify her cheating.
That was what had cut so deeply at his heart that he had decided he would rather be alone than give another person the ability to hurt him like that again.
What was the point of falling in love when all you got was a broken heart?
He would have loved to be a dad, and he would have done everything within his power to make sure that his son or daughter had the happiest life possible. He would have emailed or video chatted every day that he could while he was on tour, and when he was home, his child would have gotten his full attention. They would have gone camping, played trains or dolls or whatever his child was interested in, he’d coach their sports team, and go to parent-teacher conferences, and he’d make sure that his child knew that they could come to him with any problem, no matter how old they got.
The loss of that baby still hurt, and he hadn’t even known it existed until years after it was gone.
But everything had changed since he met Meadow.
She was the opposite of Talia. His ex-fiancée had been spoiled, used to getting her own way and throwing a temper tantrum when she didn’t get it. She was popular and was the girl who all the girls wanted to be, and all the boys wanted to sleep with. Back then, it had stoked his ego that the sexiest girl in the school wanted him, and he had taken every opportunity to throw that in his friends’ faces.
Now he knew that looks and heart were two different things.
Talia hadn’t loved him, he wasn’t even sure that she had been capable of loving another person back then, she had been too self-centered, conceited, and self-involved. Their relationship had been doomed from the beginning, but sometimes it took time and perspective to realize that. Things with Talia hadn’t ended because allowing someone to own your heart meant that they would hurt you, but because he and Talia just weren’t suited. He wanted more from a wife than someone who was good in bed, gorgeous, and who wouldn’t step out of the house without their hair, makeup, and outfit perfect. He wanted someone who cared about him and his needs, who wanted to stand beside him when things were tough as well as when everything was going smoothly. He wanted a partner, he wanted someone with a good heart, he wanted someone who knew that the exterior of a person wasn’t as important as what was underneath.
He wanted someone like Meadow.
And he’d had her.
Her declaration that when she had cooked that meal for him back at his cabin she had been trying to convince him to like her because she felt like she needed someone to look after her was what had convinced him that this was different. She had been honest with him, and she’d admitted that she had done something wrong, and then her sweet pronouncement that now her feelings were real had made that wall around his heart start to crumble.
Honesty could be hard sometimes, but Meadow hadn’t shied away from it. She had told him everything about herself, even the things that worried her like her concerns that her desire to chase after happiness rather than hide in a corner meant there was something wrong with her.
Abe didn’t see things that way.
He saw Meadow as an inspiration.
If she could grow up knowing she was unwanted, without a family and support system, then spend years in an abusive marriage and still want to run after an opportunity at happiness then why should he sulk away, licking his wounds over a broken heart?
There was still a lot about each other that he and Meadow needed to learn, and they still had to see if they were compatible in terms of a relationship, but as far as he was concerned all of those things were just a formality. He already knew that they were compatible, and he was excited to learn more about the real Meadow and not just the one she had been forced to become to survive her husband’s abuse.
He looked up as the door to his office swung open. He had retreated in there because he needed to be alone, he couldn’t keep his fears under control and function as the sheriff at the same time. So he was hiding out in there, alone, barely holding on to his emotions, and only doing so because Meadow needed him.
“Do you have something?” he demand
ed, more harshly than he should have. It wasn’t his deputy’s fault that John had gotten to Meadow.
It was his.
He should have known that it was the dog tags. Looking back, what else could it be? It had to be something that John would know Meadow could never live without, and he was sure Meadow didn’t own a single other thing that she cared about besides those tags. It was all so obvious, and if he had just figured it out earlier then he would have taken the dog tags from her, locked her away someplace safe, and used her father’s dog tags as a trap to catch her husband.
Instead, he had left Meadow alone, and John had gotten her back.
Meadow was paying the price for that mistake, and that made him want to rip out his own heart because it was hurting too badly.
“Maybe,” Will said, hedging his bets both ways as he came into the office and took a seat on the other side of the desk.
“Well, spit it out,” he growled. This was hell, and he needed to get Meadow back before he lost his mind.
“Since we don’t have enough of us to go out to every house surrounding River’s End, we’re having to call residents to account for them.”
“I know that already,” he snapped.
Will nodded patiently before continuing, “If we thought that the resident fitted our profile of a single woman living alone who might have a vulnerability that John Smith could exploit and they weren’t answering our calls, then we’d head out to their house and check it out, and we think we’ve found someone.”
“Who?”
“Taralynn Roberts. She’s recently widowed, her husband had fought a long battle with cancer, finally succumbing to it about six months ago. At the funeral, she found out that her husband had been cheating on her for most of their marriage and that the woman he’d been having an affair with had had a child with him. She hadn’t been able to have children, and the blow of losing the man she loved and then learning just what kind of man he was after he was already gone and she couldn’t confront him about it kind of had her withdrawing from family and friends. She hardly ever leaves her house these days, she doesn’t really talk to anyone, so if John had killed her so he can hide out at her house, then it would likely be days before anyone noticed. She lives on ten acres of forest about twenty miles west of town, it’s secluded, her nearest neighbor is over a mile away, it’s just the kind of place that John would be looking for. I’ve tried calling and texting in case she doesn’t like talking to people and ignores phone calls, and she hasn’t answered.”
