She said nothing, still visibly stunned by what he’d just said about the other girl’s sister. Funny, he wouldn’t have expected Vonnie to care so much. She was so smart, had been so determined all her life to get out of the awful nightmare in which she lived, he would never have imagined that looking-out-for-number-one gene hadn’t been clawed into her genetic code.
“Lift your head,” he told her, guiding the flexible straw toward her mouth.
She watched him closely, hesitating for an instant. “Come on, now, you have to drink or you’ll never be able to help your friend over there.”
“Please don’t hurt her any more,” she whispered.
“Do what you’re told and maybe I won’t.”
That got her attention and she carefully sucked up a mouthful—a small one, like always, as if each time she knew he might have filled the glass with bug spray.
“See? Nice and nutritious. Milk and vitamins,” he told her.
She swallowed a mouthful, then sucked again, slowly, smart enough to know if she slurped she’d throw everything back up.
He watched her down every drop, then, once she was finished, straightened and backed toward the door. “I guess our friend can stay where she is there for a little longer while I put together something for her to lie down on. Can’t very well chain her to the floor.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t think ahead and have something made.”
Sneering beneath the mask, he snapped, “Well, I’m surprised you were a stupid enough little bitch to let your mother trade you to a bunch of old men for drug money.”
And with that, he left the room, slamming the metal door hard, the keys shaking in his hands. He hadn’t liked the reminder that he had forgotten to make up a place for his new guest.
“Know-it-all slut,” he mumbled as he pulled off the mask and trudged toward the steps. “Damned teenagers today, nothing but lip.” Sometimes the girl was a little too smart for her own good.
Maybe he wouldn’t bring Vonnie anything to drink again tomorrow. Or the next day. See if she was quite so sassy when her tongue was so swollen and dry it would choke her if she didn’t turn her head to the side.
“See how you like that!” he yelled before exiting the second door.
Vonnie heard the echo of his angry yell, knew she had enraged him, but she didn’t respond. She was too busy listening, waiting for the sound of his footsteps to die away, wanting to be sure he wasn’t going to pop back in and surprise her.
Think fast, girl; move quick
. She had only a few minutes before the drugs he’d given her hit her bloodstream. She wasn’t stupid enough to think he had forgotten this time. His insistence that she drink every drop, and the faintly bitter taste of the last couple of sips, had convinced her he’d packed a massive dose in this latest cup.
“Not gonna work, psycho-prick. You’re not gonna drug me again,” she muttered, twisting her head around to face the rough cement wall. She wished her hands were free, would give anything to be able to stick her fingers down her throat, but she didn’t have that luxury. Nor did she have time to waste continuing to try to work her hands out of the bindings.
She had to get the drugs out of her system now, before she digested them. Because once she had, she would be useless, both to herself and to the girl lying helpless on the floor.
Thinking of the awful things he’d done was enough to make the milk in her stomach churn, but no more. There was, however, one way to get rid of it for sure. She leaned close to the wall, and began to lick at the crumbling cement, tasting dirt and mold, thinking she probably wasn’t the first desperate girl who’d puked on this very spot.
That did it. She started to gag, dry heaves racking her body, trying to bring up the small amount of nourishment in her stomach. But before she leaned over the bed to be sick on the floor, she heard a voice rising from the other side of the room.
“Turn your face to the wall and do it into your pillow.”
Shocked, she froze. “What?”
“Hurry! He’s watching us.”
It was Jenny . . . Taylor? Sounding not at all woozy and unconscious, but alert and aware, though she hadn’t moved a single muscle, still just that lump of clothes and bones on the floor.
“He’s got a camera on us, but I don’t think he has audio. If he did, he would have heard you talking earlier and would have known you aren’t sure who I am.”
She opened her mouth to ask that very question—who was she?—but before she could, the other girl spoke again.
“Now, unless you want him to know you puked up whatever he just made you drink, turn your head into the pillow and do it as carefully as you can.”
Vonnie didn’t ask stupid questions, didn’t waste time telling the other girl how glad she was that she’d come to. She thought clearly, focusing only on the goal: getting out of there.
Now, knowing she had a conscious ally—who wasn’t restrained in any way—hope bloomed in her heart and made her feel truly alive again for the first time in days.
She might survive this. Might really make it out of here alive. Might live to see justice and gain vengeance and salvage the life she’d been so sure was already lost to her.
With that goal in mind, Vonnie turned her head and forced herself to be sick right on her cot, hoping the violent convulsions of her body would be mistaken for shivers of cold.
She also hoped she hadn’t waited too long.
Sunday, 1:40 p.m.
Olivia refused to allow anyone into the room with her when she went to see the body.
Lexie, who understood the woman’s reluctance, based on the little she knew of her abilities, had offered, even though she wasn’t really ready to see that sweet girl in death. So, of course, had Aidan. Not to mention Walter and his wife, who seemed to have taken the woman’s abilities in stride. Maybe simply because they were so desperate for answers.
But the pale redhead had insisted on going in by herself.
God, how Lexie wished Aidan had been successful when he’d tried to find the answers they sought. He’d spent a long time sitting beside the body, trying as hard as he could, but had simply been unable to come up with anything. Not about who was lying dead in the next room, or anything about her twin sister, wherever she might be. So, as much as he’d hated to do it, he had contacted Olivia, then had gone out to the old plantation house to get her and bring her back here.
Lexie had the feeling this effort Olivia Wainwright was about to make would cost her greatly. Whatever demons Aidan battled, he seemed much more able to bounce back after one of his psychic episodes. And while he obviously was affected by the plight of the people he looked for, he never seemed to be personally devastated when his strange connections took place.
Olivia looked devastated even before she pushed into the room where the draped body still lay on a cold, metal gurney.
“You’re sure?” Aidan asked. “I can go with you. I’ve already been in once.”
The woman shook her head. “No. I need to be alone with her.”
Walter and Ann-Marie exchanged a look.
“I’ll try to find out as much as I can,” Olivia promised them. “But honestly, there’s only so much I can do. I won’t be able to experience more than the last 130 seconds of her life. If she was already unconscious . . .”
“Thank you for trying,” Walter said, lifting a shaky hand to stop her from saying anything more. “Whatever you can do.”
Then, with one more steady, reassuring stare from the parents, Olivia turned and walked into the other room.
Nobody sat; they all gathered near the door, and Lexie would bet every one of them cast a look at the large wall clock, measuring the seconds as they ticked by.
Fifteen seconds felt long.
Thirty interminable.
By the time they reached one minute, she realized she was holding her breath, listening for any sound, however minute, from the other room.
Aidan reached for her hand, holding tight, equally as tense and anxious.
The clock ticked on, seconds sweeping by. It was more than two minutes, well over four, in fact, before they finally heard Olivia’s shoes tapping on the linoleum floor as she walked toward them. The door swung open, and she emerged through it. Seeing her, Lexie instinctively reached out and grabbed her arm, sure the woman would fall.
She looked like she had aged a decade.
The pretty, delicate redhead was now gaunt, her mouth hanging open, lines of pain carved into her face as if she’d emitted a long, silent scream that had left its permanent mark on her. Her whole body quivered and shook, and her breath came in short, raspy bursts.
“Come on, Liv, sit down,” Aidan said, taking one of her arms. Lexie still had the other, and together they guided her into the closest chair.
“Is she all right?” Ann-Marie asked.
Walter also appeared worried, but he was still enough of a frightened father to ask what they were all wondering. “Did it work? Were you able to . . . discover anything?”
Olivia’s head dropped back, and she flinched, jerking once, twice, as if she were being struck, or in the grips of deep, violent chills. Finally, though, the spasms stopped ravaging her body. Her breaths slowed, the color began to return to her ghostly white cheeks.
“Olivia?” Aidan asked, his tone gentle.
The other woman licked her lips and nodded weakly. “I’m all right.” Her teeth chattering a little, she added,
“Just cold. So cold.”
Then, with one final deep sigh, she straightened and looked at Walter and his wife. Her tear-filled eyes held such pain, such unimaginable anguish, Lexie wanted to beg her forgiveness for ever asking her to do this.
Walter and Ann- Marie grabbed each other’s hands, obviously just as overcome by the momentous thing this stranger had done for them. Their remorse had to be tempered by hope, however, that Olivia might have learned something.
Finally, the brave woman opened her mouth and told them. “I heard them talking. Their last conversation, the twins. Funny. Joking.” Her voice broke. “Then it happened. Came at them from behind.”
Ann-Marie made the sign of the cross, but said nothing.
“It was quick; she didn’t suffer long before she died,” Olivia said, her voice clipped, her lips still trembling with cold, and, Lexie suspected, pain.
The shared death might not have taken too long, but, she suspected, the agony of it would endure Olivia’s entire life.
“She didn’t know,” Olivia added. “Talking with her sister one minute, gone the next.”
Tears streamed down Walter’s face, but she imagined they would have been much harder had he found out his little girl had suffered for a long time.
Olivia cleared her throat. “Your daughter, the girl lying in that room?”
Walter tensed, putting an arm across his wife’s shoulders, both of them readying themselves. “Yes?”
“Her name was Jenny.”
Chapter 15
Sunday, 3:20 p.m.
Though Olivia swore she was all right, and wanted to get back out to the plantation, where Aidan had picked her up earlier, he and Lexie instead took the woman back to his house and ordered her to lie down. If they’d had the time to spare, he would have insisted on driving her all the way back to Savannah. Liv promised she would rest and wait for the others to return so she could head back home with them.
He’d seen her work before, but he didn’t know that he’d ever seen her so affected by what she did. But he suspected, given the gratitude of Walter Kirby and his wife, Olivia didn’t have any regrets about it, despite how long the memories might live in her mind.
Having talked to Julia about what was going on there, he considered going out to the plantation house himself. Two things stopped him, though. First, he still hadn’t talked to Chief Dunston. He’d been sidetracked by the request the Kirbys had made and had never made it out to the crime scene.
Second, he didn’t want to leave Lexie alone.
Walter and his wife had finally agreed to go home. They not only had decisions to make, they also had two other daughters in the care of relatives, waiting to find out what had happened to their older sisters. He didn’t envy them that conversation.
Knowing there was nothing she could do to help them now, beyond fighting to bring Taylor home, Lexie had insisted on getting back to work. With that obviously foremost in her mind, as soon as they left his place again, she said, “Can you take me downtown? I want to go to the county office building, start searching the records on that property. I don’t have the actual address, so I’m going to have to check some survey maps.”
“It’s Sunday; won’t they be closed?”
With a grim smile, she said, “One of the few benefits of living in small-town hell. The town clerk is another one of Walter’s poker buddies. I called him while you were talking to Julia, and he agreed to meet me over there.”
“All right. While you do that, I’ll track down Dunston.”
“Chief Dunce,” she murmured, slowly shaking her head. “I still can’t quite accept that he might not be the douche bag I’ve always thought he was. I never would have believed the way he talked to the mayor if I hadn’t heard it for myself.”
“I don’t think he’s bad. Just lazy. He started believing his own stories about how quaint and peaceful this place is and turned a blind eye to anything that didn’t fit that picture.”
She sneered, staring out the window. “It’s as quaint and peaceful as a slaughterhouse. I am so outta here when this is over.”
He understood the sentiment. A year ago, when he’d come here to escape everything about his past life, he hadn’t imagined ever wanting to go back. Now that he’d been so forcibly reminded that ugliness and evil were in no way exclusive to any one place, he had to admit, he wouldn’t mind getting out of here, too. The sooner the better.
Especially now that the only thing he liked about Granville had just told him she intended to leave it.
“Where will you go?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Savannah. Atlanta. Maybe Jacksonville.”
Though he knew he probably didn’t have to remind her, he still said, “You do know there’s no place you can go that won’t have its own brand of tragedy and ugliness.”