How long had she been trapped already? One hour? Two? Five?
The door creaked open, and daylight rushed in, bringing air along with it. Bethany swallowed down long, deep breaths. Too deep, because she started coughing, hard enough to make her ribs ache.
When she finished, the bad man was staring down at her. The scary blank mask was gone, and the tiny smile was back. “That was five minutes.”
Bethany blinked at him in confusion, and the tiny smile grew.
“Five minutes. That’s how long you were inside. I timed it. I carried a load of laundry to my bedroom and brushed the breakfast from my teeth, and then came back. Can you imagine what would happen if I walked away for ten minutes? Fifteen? An hour? What if I locked the door, picked up my keys, and went out for a little drive? To the grocery store, or the mall, or perhaps a hike? What if I stayed away overnight?”
Huddled in a ball, shivering, Bethany stared up at him without speaking.
“You must remember that your life is mine to give or take as I please.”
She stayed very still, terrified that the wrong word or movement would lead him to shut the door again.
After a moment, he nodded, then set a bucket on the floor in front of her. “Fill it with soap and hot water and use it to clean out the fridge. It’s disgusting in there.”
Bethany crawled out and carried the bucket to the sink. When water from the faucet slapped the plastic bottom, she glanced down at her arms.
Chunks of the rotten food and her stomach bile splattered her bare skin and sleeves and the front of her shirt. Sour and rotten, and green with mold.
Her stomach somersaulted again, but Bethany swallowed hard and shoved her arms under the spray.
Rotten, she decided as the chunks washed away.
The bad man’s supervillain name was Doctor Rotten.
9
“I don’t know, Ellie. With that little girl missing now, I’m worried this case might be too much for you right this second. Are you sure you’re okay?”
Helen Kline’s doubt flowed from the Bluetooth speakers as Shane steered the Explorer into the precinct’s parking garage. Her bodyguard lifted an eyebrow at her, silently asking what she wanted him to do.
She mimicked parking in a space before turning her attention back to her mother. “I’m fine, Mom.”
“I’m sorry, but I find that hard to believe.”
Ellie gritted her teeth. Why bother asking the question, then? But she held her tongue. Getting drawn into an argument with her mother was about the last thing she wanted to do.
Shane guided the SUV past the disabled spots while Ellie waited for her mom to elaborate.
A long sigh filled her ears first. “You just got back from burying someone you cared about. How can you possibly be fine?”
The reference to Val’s death wrenched Ellie’s heart. She slammed her fist against the dashboard, startling Shane enough that he thrust his foot on the brake, causing the SUV’s tires to squeal.
Easy. Totaling the Explorer won’t bring Val back.
“What was that noise?”
“Nothing, Mom.” Ellie examined her knuckles, glad the skin hadn’t broken. “Thought I saw a squirrel.”
Crossing her fingers over her second white lie of the day, Ellie gave Shane a sorry smile and relaxed her muscles as the SUV edged on. None of this was her mother’s fault. Ellie had lied about being fine because her mom was an expert-level worrier, but maybe honesty was the better option.
If the chief understood her reasons for not taking a break from work, her mom could too. “And you’re right. I’m not really okay. The truth is, I don’t think I’ll ever be okay again until we catch Kingsley and put him behind bars.”
“Oh, honey.” A deep sigh. “I sometimes wonder…”
Shane pulled into an empty space near Fortis’s black sedan and shifted the Explorer into park. Then he pointed, silently communicating that he was going to give her some privacy. She smiled her thanks. “Come on, Mom, spill. You’ve never been shy about sharing your thoughts before. Why start now?”
Helen Kline holding back an opinion was such an anomaly that Ellie’s curiosity was piqued.
“I suppose you have a point, Eleanor, dear. I was going to say, I sometimes wonder if jail is even the right place for a man like that. Like…Kingsley.” Her mom whispered the name like she was afraid that saying it out loud might summon the sociopath from thin air.
Ellie frowned. “I’m not sure I’m following. If jail isn’t the right place for a man like Kingsley, then where is?”
A hesitation. “That’s just it, Eleanor. I wonder if nowhere on this earth is the right place for a vicious monster like that.”
This time the message registered. “Oh.”
Leave it to her mom to find a delicate way to suggest that instead of law enforcement arresting Kingsley and bringing him to stand trial, society might benefit more from an extrajudicial kill. A murder.
Not that the idea of putting a bullet in Kingsley’s brain hadn’t occurred to Ellie…it had. Multiple times. Especially on days when memories of her own kidnapping tormented her. Kingsley’s evil game would haunt Ellie forever. The worst emotional scars came from the role she’d been forced to play.
They’d been tied up opposite each other, and the other woman’s face was permanently etched into Ellie’s memory, her image carved into Ellie’s subconscious through fear and blood and pain.
Her battered face and the screams. The agonized noises ripped from the woman’s lungs were a soundtrack of terror. So traumatizing that even the thought of them now, over ten years later, fried Ellie’s nerves and made her desperate for escape.
Kingsley’s mocking voice was always the encore, as he urged Ellie to make an impossible choice.
If she said nothing, the woman’s torture and bloodcurdling screams would continue as Kingsley hacked away at her body, limb by limb.
If she uttered the right words, the other victim’s suffering would end for good. No more shrieks. No more pain. Just bittersweet silence.
Life or death, all on the basis of a
