Ashley was nervous walking to Jenn’s car. There were so many creeps but she told herself it was okay. She knew Jenn. They’d had many deep conversations. They were best friends and Ashley was excited about meeting.
I need to talk to her!
As Ashley approached the SUV’s open door she was hopeful that Jenn would get out so she wouldn’t be forced to talk in front of her aunt. That would be weird. Ashley glanced around.
The SUV was parked between a van and pickup truck. She inched toward the open door and gasped when she looked inside.
An ugly old woman was behind the wheel. Her arm shot out with the speed of a cobra, seized Ashley’s jacket and yanked her into the vehicle.
A damp cloth covered Ashley’s face, smothering weak cries until her eyes rolled back and everything went dark.
CHAPTER 56
Hennepin County, Minnesota
The woman in the basement cell couldn’t stop trembling in her cold, wet prison, shaking at the horrors she’d witnessed and the horrors to come.
I watched Brittany die. I saw them all die. I saw what he did.
Tears rolled down her face.
He’s going to kill me next. He’s killed all the others. I’m the last one.
She’d welcome death, because for most of her waking moments she felt like she already was dead. Years of captivity had shredded her sanity—her life was a never-ending nightmare. She couldn’t go on. But each day a small voice rose from a buried corner of her heart urging her not to give up. It was a positive force reaching into her darkness to save her, imploring her to keep fighting. She had to keep fighting.
You’re the only one left. You have to live to tell the world what he did.
Brushing at her tears, she searched the floor until she found her rusted nail, stood and resumed scraping it against the stone wall. He had called her his prettiest one, his favorite, and promised that he’d keep her forever. But she’d learned never to believe anything he said.
He was a liar.
He had always called her Eve, but deep inside at the core of her being, she’d never accepted that name. She had other names.
She scraped and scratched.
I am Tara Dawn Mae. My name used to be—
She stopped to remember her other name before Tara Dawn.
Next, she scratched a V into the wall.
It’s Vanessa.
This is how she’d survived each day, by clinging to the faraway lives that she’d once lived. On the edges of her memory she remembered people calling her Vanessa. Those were the happiest times. She felt the purest, strongest kind of love. A bond she felt would never, ever, be broken. She remembered having a mom, a dad, a big sister, then came a sudden sadness and visits with relatives and strangers.
Those memories were like distant stars.
Those memories ended in violent, watery darkness.
Her next life began when she was rescued on a riverbank by her new mother and father. Her memories of that time were clouded. She recalled asking questions about her foster parents and her sister, then crying and crying, as the Maes told her that her life had changed, that God had wanted them to rescue her and be her new mother and father.
They’d taken her to live with them on their farm, where they called her Tara Dawn. She had a dog, kittens and she played with horses. She recalled the eternal flatland and the big sky, going to school and learning. Her new mother and father had given her a new life before Carl took her away.
Back then, he’d called himself Jerome before he changed his name to Carl. He made her tell him everything about her life. She was only eleven years old, but he’d forced her to tell him everything she could remember. Then he’d told her that he’d been sent by a secret government agency to save her from evil people who were planning to kill her, like they’d killed her parents and big sister in the car crash. He said that for her own safety he’d have to change her name and keep her hidden away because evil agents would be looking for them. Then one day he showed her some kind of papers that he claimed were official court documents and said, “You belong to me now.”
He’d always kept her locked up in a jail. He’d feed her, give her a bucket for a toilet, a tub to wash, toiletries and clean clothes. He’d bring her books and magazines. Sometimes he’d let her listen to a radio, or he’d give her a TV that didn’t get many channels. Over the years she’d lost track of time, forgot how old she was. She’d try to calculate her age by the dates of the magazines.
There was no hope of escape.
This was her life.
Sometimes Carl would sit outside her jail and watch her. Sometimes he’d come inside, chain her and do things to her. Sometimes, he talked to her about how beautiful she was and how she was his most treasured specimen. A few, rare times, he’d taken her outside the barn for short walks in the woods for fresh air, telling her he was going to be collecting new specimens. That’s what he called them.
Sometimes he’d make her watch what he did to the new ones.
Carl was a monster.
Because of the things he did to her and the other girls he’d captured.
Their screams haunted her.
Vanessa scraped at the wall with renewed fear. So much had happened recently. They’d left the barn. Why? For a new home, Carl said, a better one. She never trusted him. He’d put them in boxes that were like coffins. He drove and drove all over.
Now they were here.
Why did he bring me here? Is he going to kill me here?
As she scratched at the wall, shaping letters of her real name, fine particles of stone sprinkled from mortar between the cinder blocks.
Something bad was coming, she could feel it in her bones.
Time was running out.
I don’t want to
