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She gaped up at him with horror and stupefaction. Her teeth were chattering with terror. She couldn't speak.
"You look like you've seen a ghost. Thought I was dead, didn't you?"
Her head wobbled an affirmation.
"Well, clearly you were wrong." He yanked on the cuff. "Get out of the water."
"I ... I can't."
"Ber-ry," he said in a singsong voice, "I'm going to count to three. One. Two."
"All right." She gulped a breath. "I'll get out. But you'll have to let go of my hand or I can't climb the ladder."
He aimed the pistol at the bridge of her nose. "With those long, shapely thighs of yours, I'm sure you'll manage."
"I need both hands to pull myself up."
"Let me make myself clear. Either you'll make do with one hand or I'll blow your brains out, then go into the house and do likewise to your mother. But only after fucking her in every orifice. If you don't think I'll do it, remember Sally."
If he could rise from the dead, he was capable of anything. Seeing no option available to her, she placed her foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, but she was trembling so bad it slipped off. She fell forward and banged her chin on the metal rung.
"Hurry up!" Oren hissed.
Apparently he had had the same thought she had, that a boat might come near enough for her to scream for help. He alternated between charting her progress up the ladder and scanning the lake for an approaching craft. Unfortunately, this being a workday, there weren't many boaters out, and none on this inlet of the lake.
Berry hauled herself up onto the pier. She thought of lowering her head and plowing into him, surprising him with an aggressive action. But he could still shoot her, and then her mother would be helpless.
Besides, she wasn't sure she could muster the strength. She was shivering with fright and with cold now that the air was hitting her wet skin. Her teeth continued to chatter.
Oren grinned evilly and nudged her raised nipple with the barrel of the pistol. "I took a picture of you like this. Have you seen it? You were stretched out here on the pier. The wind must have kicked up." He stuck out his tongue and waggled it obscenely.
Berry ignored that, focusing instead on how this could possibly be happening. She'd seen his brain bulging out of his cranium, his body convulsing. The doctor had pronounced him dead. Yet now he looked completely healed and whole. Gone were the scrapes and scratches on his face and arms that he'd got during his chase through the Thicket. He didn't have a broken tibia.
The only difference between him now and his sudden appearance in her bathroom last Friday night was that his head had been shaved. It was as slick as a billiard ball.
He spun her around and pulled her arm behind her back, then linked her wrists together with the handcuffs. He pushed her forward, forcing her to stumble ahead of him along the pier toward the house.
"Who are you?"
"I'm Oren, silly, who do you think?"
"You're dead."
"Wrong. Dead men don't have boners like the one I've got from seeing your stiff nipples."
"You must be Oren," she said. "That's the kind of juvenile, off-color remark that's typical of you."
He hammered the butt of the pistol against her temple. She hadn't seen it coming, and the pain was intense. It caused her to drop to her knees. They landed hard. She crumpled forward. Her stomach heaved. She tasted bile in her mouth and had to spit it out in order to gasp in pain. He grabbed her hair and pulled her head back. Blood ran into her eye.
"Now see what you made me do?" he cooed. "It's that snotty attitude that got you into this situation in the first place, Berry. You've got only yourself to blame."
He hauled her to her feet. She swayed, half blinded with the pain in her head as well as the blood that trickled into her eye. All her loathing and hatred for him and the things he'd done boiled over. "Fuck you."
He laughed, unfazed. "Possibly. I haven't decided yet. You look like the very devil just now. No temptation at all. But I'll think about it. I promise I will. In the meantime, your mother will do nicely. You can watch," he said, as though he'd just thought up a fun, new game. "Then you can watch me kill her. Only then, Berry, will I begin to deal with you."
"He's a twin!"
"What?"
