Bear My Heart: A Small Town Paranormal Romance (10 page)

“Just how long do you
intend to keep hiding?” he asked in a deceptively calm voice
but the rage and pain flashed in his eyes. “For the rest of
your life? What kind of a life is that!”

Dot didn't flinch and she
didn't back away. They stood inches apart but it seemed like a chasm
separated them.

“What or who are you
running from?” Troy said tightly.

Silently, Dot pulled a
crumpled piece of paper from her pocket. She handed it shakily to
him and whispered, “This. This is what I'm running from.”

Troy stared at the tattered
piece of paper in his hand.

“I found it under my
door this morning,” she said in a dead voice. “I thought
I'd finally found a safe place, but...nowhere is safe,” she
whispered angrily.

Troy looked at the drawing
again in rage and revulsion. Whoever had drawn the picture was a
talented artist with a sick, sadistic, twisted mind. The artist had
sketched Dot's likeness perfectly. And he had also drawn her bedroom
with uncanny, eerie accuracy. He had captured the pattern on her
pillows and bedsheets, and had even drawn the view outside her
bedroom window with stark clarity.

Troy forced a difficult,
painful breath into his lungs.

The sick bastard had been in
Dot's bedroom.

And he had sketched Dot
kneeling naked on the bed, collared and chained to the wall.

Troy resisted the urge to
crush the piece of paper and hurl it against the wall. This was
evidence. The bastard's fingerprints might be on it.

“We should hand this
over to the Sheriff,” he said, lowering his hand. “We'll
catch this sick fuck.”

Dot turned and walked to the
kitchen. She gulped down a tall glass of cold water and gripped the
edges of the sink.

Then she straightened up and
pulled a can of beer from the fridge. She tossed it to him and said,
“You could use a drink.”

Troy sat down on the couch
and placed the sweating can of beer on the coffee table. He laced
his fingers loosely between his knees and waited.

Finally, Dot walked over and
sat down beside him.

“He calls himself The
Artist,” she said. “He's a rapist and a killer.”

CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT

The Artist zipped up his
pants and put on his shoes. He made a satisfied sound as he pinned a
new pencil drawing on the wall.

“My Daniella.”

She pretended to be asleep
when he left.

She listened to his
departing footsteps. In the distance, she heard the faint sound of a
motor vehicle. Her eyes were opened but she didn't push herself up
from the floor.

Holding her breath, she
lay in the dark and listened to the rustling of the leaves and the
assuring calls of birds and insects. She wasn't afraid of the wild
animals or venomous insects in the woods. No creature was more
dangerous and brutal than man.

She kept listening until
she was sure that none of the sounds were made by a human.

He had tested her once.

The Artist had pretended
to leave the cabin. He had even said goodbye to her and told her
that he would miss her.

When she heard him walk
away from the cabin, she'd sat up and tried to crawl towards the
table to reach the paring knife he had left on the dish.

That was when the door
banged open. As she shrank back in shock, she saw the Artist
silhouetted in the doorway.

His laughter was the most
horrible sound she had ever heard. The back of his hand landed across
her cheek, and he whipped her with his belt until she fell
unconscious. He starved her for three days after that, repeatedly
raping her and abusing her weakened body.

She learned her lesson.

She became obedient,
cooperative and submissive. She was pliant and eager to please. She
became the muse he wanted, his “perfect Daniella”.

He began to leave his keys
in the cabin. He hid the keys under the mattress when he thought
that she had fallen asleep. Then he would leave the cabin.

She waited.

She moved soundlessly in
the dark, inching her way to the bed. The chain was just long enough
for her to reach the edge of the mattress. But she had long limbs.
Good for her. She just had to stretch and strain a bit more…

Her finger closed around
jagged edges. Biting her lip to keep from crying out with relief,
she carefully pulled the keys out.

She was shaking so hard
she could hardly fit the key into the padlock behind her collar.
Finally, the key turned and the collar fell from her neck.

Swiping away her tears,
she crept to the door and pushed another key into the lock. The
click sounded like a gunshot in the silence and she had to bite back
a scream.

Slipping out of the cabin,
she looked around wildly. She was in the middle of a forest, and she
had no idea which way to go.

Hiking up that shapeless,
white dress he made her wear whenever he was done with her, she ran
desperately between the trees, hoping that she would be far, far away
by the time the Artist returned.

Please don't let him find
me.

She kept running until she
saw lights. She didn't stop running, even when she heard the horn
blaring at her. She raised her hands to shield herself from the
blinding headlights and tried to run some more.

But her legs wouldn't
move. They just collapsed beneath her.

The truck driver drove her
to the nearest police station. She told them everything.

But when she led them back
to the cabin, the cabin was no longer there. It had been razed to
the ground, destroying every shred of evidence.

Beside the blackened
remains was a female body. It had been burnt beyond recognition.

The Artist had kidnapped
another girl.

And he had written
something on the ground beside the body.

He had written her name in
the dead girl's blood.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE

“Dot is the name I
created out of my initials. D. O. T.” She looked at Troy
directly and said, “My name is Daniella Olga Taylor.”

“Daniella,” Troy
murmured. “It's a beautiful name.”

“No it's not!”
she snarled, her eyes shining with fury and hate. “It was a
beautiful name, but he made it ugly. That's what he called me.
Daniella! And...that's what he wrote on the ground—in her
blood. Daniella. I won't...ever use that name again.”

Troy held her trembling
hands. “I like Dot.”

She quirked a smile. “Me
too. This name kept me safe and allowed me to earn a decent living.
People heard of A. Dot but didn't know who she was.”

Troy brushed her cheek
gently. “Then I'm real lucky. I got to know the real Dot.”

“Olga,” she said
softly. “My mother used to call me by my middle name.”

“Olga,” Troy
whispered her name and nodded firmly. “You don't have to hide
from anything or anyone, Olga. You have a right to your life.”

She nodded and swallowed
repeatedly. Taking a deep breath, she said, “My mother died
when I was seven. I had so little time with her, but I had seven
happy years. I know there are kids who have much less. They never
even had a moment of happiness.”

As Troy placed his hand over
hers, she went on, “I bounced from foster home to foster home.
I wasn't ill-treated. Neither was I loved. I was just grateful I
wasn't sleeping on the streets. I was seventeen when I was
kidnapped.”

“I was walking to
school and someone called my name. He actually knew my name.”
She scowled when she heard the tremor in her voice. “I turned
around but I didn't see anyone. Then I felt a sharp blow to the back
of my head. The blow knocked me out, and when I regained
consciousness, I realized that my hands and feet were bound. I was
blindfolded so I couldn't see where I was, but I heard the sound of
birds and insects and the rustling of leaves. I guessed I was in the
middle of a forest or something.”

Troy tightened his grip on
her hand as she went on determinedly, “I was given food and
water but he refused to remove my blindfold. Every time I begged him
to let me go, he would hit me. Then he would rape me.”

Troy's knuckles gleamed bone
white and he jerked. Olga kept her voice impassive and continued,
“He told me to call him The Artist. Because that was what he
was, he said.”

“When he finally
removed my blindfold, I saw that I was in a wooden cabin. The
interior was clean and neat, and there was a table and bed at the
corner. The walls...” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “The
walls were covered with drawings, pencil sketches of me. He sketched
himself raping me as I was blindfolded. He...he'd drawn every
detail...every horrible, disgusting detail...”

Olga's face twisted but she
plowed on, afraid that she wouldn't be able to get the words out if
she slowed down. “He kept me for five months. I never saw his
face. He always wore a hood. I pretended to submit to him and he
stopped binding my hands and legs. But he still kept me collared and
chained to the wall.”

She sucked in a shuddering
breath and said, “I escaped. And he killed another young girl
to make her pay for my sins. She died because of me.”

“No,” Troy
growled. “She died because he killed her. You didn't cause
her death. Don't do this to yourself, Olga.”

She shook her head mutely.

The furrows between Troy's
brows deepened as he tried to recall something. “I remember
this case,” he said at last. “The guy was caught. I
remember reading about this case in the papers. The guy confessed.”

Olga made a strangled sound
at the back of her throat. “They got the wrong guy.”

CHAPTER
THIRTY

Troy surged to his feet and
paced the room agitatedly. He raked his fingers through his hair,
struggling to control his emotions. He would do everything he could
to protect Olga, but he had to think clearly.

“How could they have
gotten the wrong guy?” he hissed. “I remember reading
about this case in the papers. And I remember feeling sick to my
stomach when I read about what he did to those girls. He spared no
details in his confession.” Troy whirled round to face her.
“How could he have known all the details if he was innocent?”

“I never said he was
innocent,” Olga replied.

She sat on her hands to keep
them from shaking so much. “Steven Quinn gave a full
confession, and I believe he is guilty of all the other crimes he
confessed to. He did assault all those other girls. But the details
he gave regarding my kidnapping weren't accurate. I tried to tell
the police, but they pointed out that I had been knocked unconscious
and I never saw my kidnapper's face. I only saw his eyes, and Steven
Quinn's flinty, greenish-blue eyes matched my description. There was
a lot of fear and outrage, and the public was clamoring for a
conviction. They tried and convicted Steven Quinn in a hurry.”
She stopped and swallowed. “Steven Quinn isn't an innocent
man. But he is not the Artist.”

“How do you know that?”
Troy asked slowly.

“A few years after
Steven Quinn was put away, I received...a drawing.”

Troy jerked his head at the
piece of paper on the table. “Like that one.”

“Yes.” Olga
closed her eyes. “It was a pencil sketch. And...it showed
him...doing things to me in that cabin. I told the police he raped
and beat me, but I never described what he did to me in detail. Only
the Artist could have known...” Her voice faltered as she
began to shiver uncontrollably.

Troy put his arms around her
and drew her to him. Her skin was covered with a sheen of cold sweat
and her eyes burned with tears. Troy murmured soothingly to her and
stroked her arms and back, trying to warm her trembling body with his
body heat.

It happened twelve years ago,
but she hadn't truly escaped from the terror. The Artist was still
out there, watching her, taunting her, trapping her in his
nightmarish drawings.

“He's never going to
let me go,” she whispered.

“Let me talk to the
Sheriff,” Troy began.

“No!” Olga said
vehemently. “No.”

“Why?”

“That's what I did.”
She gulped. “Three years after Steven Quinn's conviction,
I...received a drawing. I was living in another rural town then, and
I took the drawing to the local sheriff straight away. The sheriff
stationed himself outside my house to try to catch the culprit. The
next night, the sheriff was dead. No one could prove it was murder.
He died in an accident, but...I knew. I knew who had killed him.”
Olga grasped Troy's hands and hiccuped a sob. “The sheriff
was a good man. And I caused his death.”