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TWENTY
Horrified, Poppy pressed her hands to her ears to block out the begging and screaming of her jailor’s current victim. The conversation she’d had with him ran through her mind in a constant loop of agonizing terror. Using every ounce of courage she possessed, she’d done what she needed to survive and offered to assist him with his next victim. Their conversation had been limited and she hadn’t been able to gather much information on why he was killing the women. Terrified, she’d watched him change visibly in between the times he spoke to her and when he murdered. Could he be demonstrating a split personality or was she seeing both sides of a psychopath? Having no professional experience in dealing with someone in a heightened state of aggravation, she’d kept her voice low and never looked away from him when he was speaking to her. From what she’d witnessed, showing fear made things worse. When his terrified victims fought to escape, he changed in a split second. The more they screamed and wriggled to get away, the more he enjoyed it. The intense look in his eyes frightened her and his cruel twisted smile reminded her of a deranged clown. It was as if he’d turned into a different person.
Fear gripped her by the throat as the sound of the baseball bat hitting the floor and rolling away signaled the end of the first phase of the woman’s punishment, but the moans of the beaten woman continued as he completed his final degradation. She fought for breath trying to keep calm because the next time he opened the door, she would need to be ready to pass his test. Poppy stiffened her spine, swallowing her fear. To fool him into believing she was just like him she’d need to be ready to deal with whatever gruesome job he intended to give her. She’d seen dead bodies before and attended autopsies. If she could look at what he had done in a clinical way, she might not lose it. Scrubbing both hands down her face, she paced up and down the small cell. Come on, Poppy, you can do this. Just concentrate.
Locked away with no chance of escape, she couldn’t help anyone, but if she gained his trust, there would be at least a slim chance of getting away and alerting the authorities. She had to face the next few minutes without cringing away. He would be finished soon, and it would be time for her to prove her worth to him. Trembling, she ground her teeth together so hard her jaw ached as the sound of him dragging his victim down the passageway seeped into her brain. She would hear the tortured screams of the women he’d murdered in her dreams forever.
Footsteps, slow and deliberate, came down the passageway toward her cell. Heart thumping, Poppy sucked in deep breaths and stared at the door. It opened slowly and her jailer stood before her splattered with blood. She lifted her chin and looked him square in the eyes. “I’m ready. What do you want me to do?”
“Come with me. I want you to remove your clothes because we don’t want any DNA evidence on the body, do we?” He stood to one side to allow her to pass. “Then you’ll take a shower and I’ll give you something to cover your hair.” He tapped her on the arm, leaving long streaks of blood. “Don’t make the mistake of trying to escape, Twenty-Five. You mean nothing to me and I would be stupid to trust you. I haven’t forgotten that you’re a cop. You could be next. Just keep remembering that and we’ll get along fine.”
