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Something sparks between these two – two people, aimless, low-rent as Peabody said. Without that meet, without that spark, maybe they just stay low-rent and aimless. But that spark lit up something vicious inside them.
They like the vicious, she concluded, it’s part of what binds them together.
Eve studied the board where she now had Darryl and Ella-Loo front and center.
She’s the smart one, Eve decided. As far as smarts went. He’s the romantic. Gets busted for trying to cop a traditional engagement ring.
“I bet you found that stupid but touching, right, Ella-Loo? He did that on his own, a surprise for you. But you got yourself another crap job and waited for him. Three and a half years, that’s love, of its kind. That’s devotion. Must’ve gotten knocked up on a conjugal. Another tie that binds? I bet you timed that one, too.”
She rose, paced.
How the hell were they traveling, abducting, torturing and killing with a baby to deal with? Ditch the kid? Couldn’t just dump it on a doorstep – why have one if you’re going to toss it to fate or strangers?
She circled around that, wondered if Ella-Loo subscribed to the Stella school of motherhood. You have a kid because it may be useful or profitable, and keeps your man locked to you.
Then she let it slide away as she couldn’t see how it applied, for now, to the investigation.
Wait for your man. Head east when he’s sprung. In the same truck he boosted from Hanks. A truck that’s showing its age now, and Darryl hasn’t been able to maintain it in those three and a half years.
Does what he can when he gets out, but it gives up on that quiet road over the Arkansas border.
And that’s where it really began, she thought. That’s when the spark went off like a rocket.
“I know you now,” she murmured. “We’ll get more, but I know you. And I’m going to find you.”
Soon, she thought, it had to be soon, or it would be too late to save Jayla Campbell.
17
&n
bsp; She’d lost track of time again. The pain, beyond imagining, woke her. But the ferocity of it radiating everywhere let her know she was still alive.
Jayla Campbell, she thought, fighting through the haze of pain. I’m Jayla Campbell, and I’m alive.
She turned her head, very slowly, as even that had agony raging. They hadn’t hurt him again – Mulligan, Reed Mulligan. When they’d found him unconscious on the floor, they’d hauled him back onto the makeshift table. They’d treated his broken wrist with some ice, even given him some sort of meds.
He had to be strong enough, she’d heard them say, to rape her again.
They’d discussed it, giggling over some of the details. They’d ease back on hurting him – for now, and maybe up the dose of Erotica so he’d last longer.
They’d given her something that made her nauseated and weak, but she’d heard them discussing her as if she were an animal.
She stank, in Ella-Loo’s opinion, and needed to be cleaned up if they were going to keep her for another day or two.
She tried to fight when Darryl hauled her up. The pain rose up in a hot flood, took her just under the surface, but she tried to fight. Tried not to weep when she heard them laughing at her.
They weren’t human. The drugs, dehydration, shock had her seeing them as monsters, demons with red eyes and flicking tongues. The gag choked her screams as they dropped her into a tub of water so hot it scalded.
Someone pushed her head under; someone pulled it up again by the hair. Again and again while she swallowed water, gagged, and finally prayed for it just to end.
She woke on the table again, naked, shivering with cold and drowning in the pain.
And listened to the quiet.
“I think they’re asleep.”
This time when she turned her head, Mulligan’s eyes were open and on her.
