HOSTAGE (To Love A Killer) (11 page)

              “Thanks,” she said, before taking a sip. “That was nice of you.”

              “It’s a road trip. It doesn’t have to be miserable,” said Linden.

              “She’s with a guy,” said Sarah, even though she would’ve rather kept that piece to herself.

              “Do we have a name?” asked Linden.

              “No,” said Sarah, “but the manager figured we just missed them. If only we knew where they were going.”

              “Don’t give me that crap, Sarah,” said Linden. “They’re headed for the farmhouse and so are we.”

              Sarah sighed into her coffee. “Good work, detective,” she said sarcastically.

              She could feel Linden’s eyes on her. There was something smug about the way he was looking at her. He clearly knew something she didn’t, and yet he wanted her to ask. It would seem Linden had evolved from being completely useless to acting like a child. If only that were good news.

              “Ask me,” said Linden with a huge smile on his face.

              “I’m not going to ask you, Linden. This isn’t twenty-questions.”

              “This is going to be a very long trip if you’re going to be so serious all the time,” he said. “Fine, I’ll tell you.”

              “Lucky me,” said Sarah.

              “The station called. They got another anonymous tip...” Linden let that hang in the air between them. He obviously wanted to savor the fun of dangling a lead in front of Sarah’s nose, but she wasn’t in the mood to play along. “Fine!” he said, stealing a quick sip of his coffee. “Apparently... and let me just preface this by saying that I’m not going to say ‘I told you so,’ but apparently our Hunter Mann used to have a little hobby up at the farmhouse.”

              Sarah’s brows furrowed. She immediately feared where he might be going with this.

              “Sarah, she used to kill little girls. Suffocate them in their sleep,” said Linden, beaming from ear to ear with a big toothy grin. “She started this little habit when she was a kid, like nine or some shit. If that’s not the M.O. of a serial killer then I don’t know what is.”

              Sarah pressed her hand against her chest, feeling the bullet pendant beneath her shirt, and willed herself not to break down, as the axis of her entire world skewed off course in the blink of an eye. They had a long drive ahead of them, and this case just got personal. 

              She hated to admit it, but the air here, the cool and fresh country air, its crisp, faintly humid texture, the way it thickly coated her lungs, alleviated Devon’s anxiety. She had promised herself she wouldn’t miss anything about the farmhouse, that nothing about it was good, likeable, worth missing, but she had forgotten about the air. It was so pure, so cleansing. Did the air have any idea what went on here? Or was it a blind angel, blissfully unaware?

              Devon tried lifting her head from the pillow, but a searing pain immediately tore through her right temple, and her head started swimming. The entire right side of her face felt sticky. She knew it was blood, cold drying blood. Instinctively, she reached her hand towards her temple, but was instantly met with the clang of resistance. Metal cut into her wrist. She tested it, jerking her hand up, challenging the handcuff. It rattled, but didn’t budge.

              She was completely shackled to the narrow steel bedframe, both wrists, both ankles.

              When she had been a little girl here, there had never been a need to use cuffs, though the men had threatened. The girls had all been so afraid they wouldn’t dare try anything. Devon guessed that since Hunter had escaped, followed by a great number of the girls including herself, the men had changed their game, stepped up their security and made good on their threats.

              Devon rolled her head to the left, sensing she wasn’t alone. The room was dim, but she could tell it was still daytime. On the neighboring bed a few feet away, Devon could make out a girl’s shape. For a split second, Devon panicked when she couldn’t see the girl’s chest rise and fall, breathing. Her face was turned away. Only the silhouette of a dark, messy, mop of hair could be seen. Devon didn’t recognize that mop of hair. Where was Margot, Andy, Jenna? Why had Devon been placed in some kind of common room, separated from the other girls? And why, for God’s sake, was that girl on the bed next to hers not moving?

              Devon again lifted her head, this time arching it this way and that, trying to get a sense of who else was here, which beds were occupied and which weren’t, and with any luck, find out where the windows were and if they were open.

              Without warning, she gasped, startled by the hollow pounding of boots against the wood floor. The sound was coming from just outside the doorway, echoing through the room.

              Her heart raced in terror, as memories flooded through Devon’s mind, carried by the loud footsteps. She had experienced this fear a hundred times, if not more. Suddenly she noticed her breathing was out of control. She was drawing in desperate heaves one after the next in such rapid succession that she worried she might pass out. But she couldn’t help it. There was nothing she could do or think to calm herself, as she stared, eyes wide and glued to the doorway.

              A figure filled the doorway, revealing the source of the footsteps. It was a tall man, his frame thick, broad, like a wall. He stood in shadows, in the darkness that he seemed to bring with him.

              Her vision blurred with tears. Devon knew he had come for her. But it was daytime, nothing bad usually happened during the day.

              As the man stomped slowly towards her bed, Devon watched his facial features come into view with the shifting light. She didn’t recognize him. She had never seen this man before in her life. Had Grizzly expanded his circle? Had he brought in more pedophiles to carry out his dark agenda?

              The man lifted Devon from the bed. When had he uncuffed her? It was a bone chilling realization. She remembered what it had been like here all those years, the terror induced loss of time, the holes in her memory, the way a child’s mind could block out the most heinous experiences. Had she already lost the memory of being released from the handcuffs? 

              Devon screamed, kicking and clawing at the man, as he dragged then carried her from the room. When he passed through the doorway, Devon grasped hold of its frame, refusing to be taken any further. The man yanked her, saying nothing. It was eerie how silent he was. It was as though he wouldn’t acknowledge her, as though she was nothing more than an object.

              Suddenly she saw the face of the girl who lay in the neighboring bed. Devon screamed, releasing her grip. The girl’s face was black, charred, as though she had been burned. Her mouth was frozen, wide open. She must have died mid-scream.

              Panic more gripping and horrific than anything Devon had ever experienced seized her, stealing her breath, and stopping her heart from beating.

              Whatever nightmares she had survived all those years on the farm was nothing compared to this. She could feel it. Things had changed here. Girls were chained to their beds. The dead bodies of some were left to rot before everyone’s eyes. It was exponentially worse than it had been.

              It was then that Devon realized wherever the man was taking her, she would not return.

              The barn lay just ahead. He was carrying her across the field.

              A powerful rage surged through Devon and she began pounding her fists against the man’s chest, screaming all the while. He grabbed her by the hair abruptly in response and shook her. It was jarring enough to disorient Devon into a subdued state.

              There was no use fighting.

              Devon allowed her fear to consume her. She had been fighting it, trying to use the panic to her advantage, but there was no use. Enveloped in fear, her body went limp, falling hard to the ground.

              The next thing she knew, he had her by the ankles and she was being dragged through the back door of the barn.

              Once inside, Devon became instantly reminded of the horrors that had taken place behind these walls.

              A crowd of men stood towards the back. The sound of their breathing, coughing, and sniffling conveyed a sickness Devon had hoped she’d never hear again. There were more men than usual. They approached, gathering around a table.

              Devon knew the table was meant for her.

              She pitted her heels into the wooden floor of the barn, desperate to prevent herself from being tied up, but her strength was no match for the man’s.

              She knew what would come next. The thought of it, the anticipation made her stomach lurch in a violent dry-heave. She bent her head forward, allowing a trickle of bile to come up, dripping from her tongue. She tried spitting it out. The acidity burned her throat. The mess only only trickled down her chin.

              The hooks. The hooks would come next. She tried not to think about it, but how could she not?

              Devon looked up. There they were. Five thick metal hooks ordinarily used to hang large hunks of cow meat, sometimes deer, sometimes bear. That’s what would happen to the girls who didn’t obey. They would be strung up like a piece of meat. They would be gutted and hang dead for days, rotting in the heat. And eventually, they would get stuffed into a barrel, taken to the lake, where they would be gone but not forgotten.

              But Devon knew obeying was somehow worse. What the men would do to the girls who were strapped down on that table was a fate worse than death. She couldn’t believe she was back here. If she could have stopped her heart from beating, if she could have suffocated herself here and now, ending it all, escaping what was about to take place, Devon would have.

              Suddenly, Grizzly stood between Devon and the table. His eyes were too black pools of evil. He seemed to be laughing at her, though she couldn’t hear a thing. Her gaze drifted to the men behind Grizzly. They seemed to be laughing as well, cheering in fact, but Devon couldn’t hear them. It was as though her overwhelming terror had deafened her. Her legs turned rubbery and again the man had to hold her up. She was completely limp, petrified with fear.

              That’s when the song began to play. It was so loud she jumped. It wouldn’t matter if she screamed. No one would be able to hear her over the song. 

              Just when she thought she would be carried to the table, the man dropped her to the ground instead. Were they going to make her crawl there as though she was choosing this?

              Grizzly turned, shifting his focus from Devon to the back of the barn. Devon strained to see what was there. The men turned as well, parting aside, revealing that there, standing against the back wall, was Blair.

              They weren’t going to torture Devon, at least not directly. They were going to do it to Blair. And they were going to make Devon watch.

              The men swarmed around Blair like vultures, causing Devon to lose sight of her temporarily, until they lifted her high above their heads, carrying her to the table.

              Devon noticed the hooks were lowering down, and the men each grabbed a hook while others held Blair down.

              Devon gasped. They were going to string her up alive. She couldn’t watch this. She pinched her eyes shut.

              Suddenly a blindingly bright ray of sunlight pierced through the cracks in the barn’s side, striking across Devon’s eyelids. She could feel the heat. She pinched her eyes, closing them even more tightly, but the sun seemed to burn through. She opened her eyes, but could see nothing. Nothing but the white blaring heat that filled her vision.

              Devon screamed, but no sound came out.

              There was nothing but the bright light of the sun.

*              *              *

              Hunter woke with a gasp to the sensation of her eyes stinging with stark white heat and realized it was the angle of the sun cutting through the passenger’s side window.

              She tried to steady her uncontrollable breathing and orient herself to her surroundings. Ash was behind the wheel, Twitch in the back. She must have fallen asleep.

              The hooks.

              Her sister.

              The terrible nightmare surfaced in her mind. She had dreamt she was Devon. Her sister was about to be murdered.

              How much time did they have? Two days, maybe three. Hunter had lost all sense of time ever since she had found that horrible song playing on her stereo.

              “We have to get serious about handling Grizzly,” said Hunter, as she draped her hand over Ash’s thigh. “We only have a few days.”

              “We go in at night and kill all of them,” said Ash. “That’s the plan.”

              Hunter exhaled, considering his lack of strategy.

              “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in prison, Ash,” she said. “Do we have any hope of wiping them out and getting away with it?”