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Only it was all written in Brianna’s hand, and my wife had not been a therapist.
It started off sounding sane. Legitimate. As if she were truly trying to help this unknown person out of the wickedness that had taken her hostage.
Only the mindset spiraled and became so perfectly in sync with the delusions that Brianna had cast, her handwriting growing more frantic the more words that she’d written.
I told her to run. To get away from this place. It’s not safe. It’s not safe. I think he knows. She told me she loves him. I love him, too. I love the cuts he makes on my flesh. I love the way he kisses me. How could it feel so good when it hurts so bad? It’s time. It’s time. He wants me but he’ll never keep me.
I kept flipping through the mayhem of her mind, the words slipping into crude slashes and shapes.
Random numbers.
Time stamped over a river.
A drawing of a pond in the middle of a stick-tree forest.
On the last page was a road leading to a gated dead end, a big, square mansion on the other side.
It’s too late. It’s too late, was carved deep into the page by a pencil.
My heart dropped to the floor.
Because I knew exactly where they were.
FIFTY-FOUR
SAVANNAH
Blinking my eyes open felt impossible, like coming up from the darkest waters where everything was blurred in an abyss of nothingness, and as I floated to the surface, pain began to stab and slash and flay. I fought my way through the murky depths that would be so easy to drown in, accepting the agony because I refused to give up.
Not when I’d come here to fight.
Still, I felt like the life was being squeezed out of me when I finally pried them open to the blurry haze of the darkened room. My face was throbbing so badly that it felt like it might burst from the pressure, the pain in my head splitting.
It was a foreign place that murmured of foulness and greed. There were no windows or natural light, just the jaundiced glow of hazy lamps.
My eyes were nearly swollen shut, and I wanted to weep in agony as I forced one open so I could make out my surroundings. It was a massive, rambling room, though the ceiling was low. Decorated as if it hailed from another era. Thick tapestries and dark velvet couches. Luxurious in a way that could so easily leave you glamoured. Several round tables were situated about, and an ornate mahogany bar that was fronted by high-backed leather and wood stools sat on the wall on the opposite side of the room.
No question, it was a place for entertaining.
Even in it, I could sense the earth all around, almost smell the dirt that surrounded me on all sides.
A basement, I was sure.
I took stock of myself.
I was bound by the wrists and ankles, lying in the center of an enormous bed that was just as posh as the rest of the room. A deep purple duvet was below me and oversized pillows were piled against the elegant headboard.
I wondered idly if they cared that I was bleeding all over it or if that was part of the fun.
I suspected the last.
Honestly, I was sure of it as my mind played through the journal entries I’d read a thousand times, trying to decipher them. Trying to make them add up to evidence. They’d gone from insightful and caring and objective to so chaotic and disturbed that I’d questioned their validity as many times as I’d believed they had to mean something.
But I recognized it now, the fragments of facts mixed with the pieces that still didn’t fit.
It’d been enough to bring me here, and I was terrified it was all going to have been made in vain.
The hope I’d found now lost.
I tried to move, and an ulcerated moan rolled up my throat without my permission, pain splintering through every limb of my body. Everything ached and throbbed. I was pretty sure I had to have been dragged down here. Like I was garbage and something to be thrown away.
I tried to clamp off the sound and not to draw attention to myself, and I did my best to pay attention to the words of the two men who were across the room, off to the left of the bar.
Samson and the mayor.
Shock whirred through my pounding brain. The mayor? He was the one who’d had my sister? I locked down on the cry that wanted to erupt from my soul. One begging to know where she was. If she was okay. If she was here.
And Samson…
Bile burned in my throat as I watched the two that I’d so easily trusted. Jack Harris angled toward Samson, his words the sharpest blades that cut from his tongue. “Did you get her car hidden behind the walls?”
