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Charlotte
When he enters my room, he brings food. Eggs and bacon, which make me want to vomit. The sight of it makes my mouth fill with saliva. The smell twists my stomach into tight knots. I have zero inclination to eat.
My nerves are on edge. My rage at being in this position is taking on a life of its own. It is an angry, living thing, gnawing and roaring along the insides of my skin.
I think of the first time I laid eyes on him, and then the second, and best of all, the third.
That was in Fort Lauderdale. I had been watching Dan’s daughter. I don’t know why, but on occasion, whenever we were in the same city, if I had the time, I made a hobby of searching her out and following her.
Maybe I wanted to see if Sophie was like her, if being half-sisters, they shared any characteristics. Maybe it was guilt for having taken her father away. I had learned what that was like, after all.
Anyway, people put their every move on social media, and Janine Thomas-Moore is no different. I watched her at Estero. By that point he had been stalking her for about a week. I didn’t know why, but I knew enough to know that whatever the reason for his interest, it wasn’t for anything good.
I recognized that kind of behavior when I saw it. It was obvious, a skill built over years of stalking and killing predators, the understanding that JC Warren was precisely that.
When everything in my life began to turn upside down, first the shooting in the grocery store, the interviews, the situation with Dunsmore, I realized that if I wanted to make a clean break, the easiest way to go about it would be to let “fate” take its course. He would not stop at my daughter’s half-sister, and maybe after everything, I considered it to be paying a penance of sorts. Or maybe I was just bored and up for a challenge, off the clock. Maybe I wanted to see if I still had it in me to draw a man in. Snare him in my web. More than likely, I was thinking about how good it felt to kill a person on my own accord, pro bono, so to speak. But I won’t lie. Of course, there was something in it for me. If I wanted to kill JC Warren, first I’d let him help me disappear. What a beautiful thing it is to kill so many birds with one stone.
“Your husband has quite the resume,” he tells me as he undresses in front of me. I assume he is speaking of architecture. It makes me sad to think of Michael and the girls, to think of them wondering where I am and why I haven’t called. Have they reported me missing? I don’t know. All I know is the last conversation I had with my husband was about not knowing if I wanted to stay in the marriage. Maybe it is better this way, a clean break, but when I think of my own mother and the way she left, I’m not so sure.
“I want that,” he says, with a nod toward my pelvis, his expression making it clear that he has every intention of getting what he has come for. He removes the restraints from my legs. Meticulously, he massages each ankle, rubbing in careful circles. “But first…first I have something I want to discuss with you.”
My eyes scan the area of the room I can see. Not much has changed; he has brought nothing with him. No phone, no weapon, nothing that could be of any use. “Here,” he says, leaning in close, so that I can smell his lunch on his breath. Salmon. “Let me take this off. You’re going to want the use of your head for this.”
“I have to use the restroom.”
He glares at me disapprovingly. “That is what the diaper is for.”
“I have to use the restroom,” I say once more. I don’t want to seem argumentative, but I don’t want to use a diaper again, either.
With a curt nod, he presses a button, and then I am being hoisted up by my bound wrists. He lifts me by my waist and shuffles me off the bed, my arms suspended above my head in the air, attached to the ceiling. He pushes another button, and I am lifted higher until I am in a standing position, painfully teetering on my tiptoes.
Hanging there on display, my body stretched out tautly, the whole of me exposed, I feel equally terrified and enraged.
He removes the adult diaper, and I watch as it falls to the floor. “I’m afraid I have some very bad news.”
“What could be worse than this?” I say, unable to help myself.
“Do you really want to know?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“You always have a choice, Charlotte.”
Tears sting the back of my throat as I hear my father’s words in this man’s mouth. Even if I chose this, it doesn’t make it any easier. Sometimes we are only choosing the lesser of two evils, and I really wanted to live.
“Then I want to know.”
“First—there’s something I’m dying to know…why didn’t you mention your occupation? Your true occupation.”
I can see in his face that he is not calling my bluff. He knows who and what I am. “Would it have changed anything?”
“Probably not. But with your husband, yes. I would not have gotten close. I would have kept my distance.”
“Okay?”
“What is it like working with your spouse?”
He pushes his lever again and I am pulled higher. My toes no longer graze the floor. It takes every ounce of strength I have to give him an answer, which is what he wants. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
