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7:44 A.M.
“I won't kill anyone,” Clara replied. “It doesn’t matter how many children you kidnap and bring here, it doesn’t matter how long you keep me here, it doesn’t matter how many times you burn me or hurt me, I'mnevergoing to kill anyone. Including you.”
At her declaration, Job looked disappointed; Ruth, on the other hand, looked furious.
“Why won't you help us?” Ruth raged, storming over and slamming her fist into Clara’s jaw.
The blow made her head snap back and pain pulse through her face. Clara ignored it. If she let herself think about it, her whole body throbbed. There were still remnants of the drugs used to knock her out in her system, and she hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink since being brought here. Concentrating required effort, but she knew if she didn’t put the effort in she’d never get out of here. That Jimmy and Katie had gotten safely away gave her the strength she needed to keep fighting.
“Ruth,” Job soothed, wheeling to her and taking her hand, kissing the reddening knuckles. “She will come around, just give her time. Remember how long it took Tommy to understand.”
“Tommy?”
Smirking smugly, Ruth said, “That’s right, your precious friend came to understand what we were doing. He kidnapped four children, helped us transform them into dolls.”
Knowing she wasn't going to get any real answers from Ruth—the woman was too angry—she turned her attention to Job. He seemed unbalanced but the least violent and volatile of the two. “Please, Tommy was my friend, and he’s dead now. I need to know why he helped you.”
Releasing his wife, he wheeled closer. “Because he realized that what we were doing was saving lives.”
“He came to you six months ago?”
“Yes, dear. He said he’d broken up with his girlfriend, that he wanted to see if we were still alive and that he wanted to turn us in to the police.”
She was more confused now than ever. If Tommy had intended to turn in the Doll Killers, then why had he ended up working with them? And if Tommy had known all along who the killers were, then why hadn’t he done something about it? Why hadn’t he told the cops? “Then, why didn’t he? Why didn’t he turn you in?”
“We were very persuasive,” Job replied.
“Very persuasive? What does that mean?” The need to understand her friend was going to wind up driving her crazy.
“It means, we kept him here, locked in a basement for three months until he was finally convinced that helping us was going to save lives,” Ruth snapped.
“You brainwashed him?” That possibility was distinctly comforting. It meant that Tommy hadn’t willingly decided to kidnap, rape, and murder small children.
“We didn’t need to brainwash him, dear. It was a sign when he turned up the day after I found out my cancer had returned. Over time he simply learned that what we were telling him was true. He listened to us. We showed him pictures of the past children whose lives we transformed. He saw photos of them before and then pictures of their dolls. He came to see their souls had moved—traveled to the dolls. He was intrigued. He wanted to learn how to do the same thing. He said there was a little girl whose life he wanted to save.”
Clara wondered if that had been Christina Ellis. No matter how much she wanted to believe that this couple had turned her sweet, kind, gentle, Tommy into a monster, she knew it wasn't entirely true. No one had forced him to sexually assault his girlfriend’s seven-year-old daughter. He’d done that all on his own. Just like he’d chosen to let the Doll Killers walk free all these years. “Why did Tommy rape the little girls? You and Ruth never did that before. You never laid a hand on me that way when I was here.”
Job flinched, and she realized he hadn’t liked what Tommy had done. “It was a necessity, I'm afraid. Ruth is older now. She is past the time of blood, and a child cannot pass over without blood.”
Because there’d been blood when his sister died. In his mind, the blood and the doll had related to Joy’s death. She assumed the time of blood he was referring to was a woman’s menstrual cycle. Why they'd jumped to that she had no idea, nor did she care, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was finding a way home. “Whose idea was it? To rape the girls? Yours or his?”
“It was his,” Job answered softly.
“No!” she cried. She’d been expecting the answer, but it still hurt like a physical blow. She really hadn’t ever known Tommy Karl.
“Yes,” Ruth snarled. “Tommy stared at the girls’ pictures for hours.Hours. That was pretty much all he did. He just sat in his room and thought about them. After three months, he was practically begging us to find another pair of children, that he was ready to help us turn them into dolls.”
“No!” she protested again. She didn’t want to hear this. If she could press her hands to her ears, she would have. She’d wanted answers, and now she had them, but she wasn't sure she wanted them anymore.
“Enough chitchat time.” Ruth stalked over, took the handles of the wheelchair she was bound to and began to push her through the house; then she stopped at the door in the kitchen.
Clara assumed it led to a basement, which must be where they intended to keep her locked away while they attempted to brainwash her. That they intended to keep her alive and imprisoned indefinitely was good news. That gave Jonathon more time to find her. And now that he had Jimmy and Katie, hopefully, he had enough to figure out her location.
Producing a knife, for a split-second Clara feared that Ruth had changed her mind and was about to kill her here and now, but then the old woman moved the knife to the tape that once again bound her to the chair. “You make one stupid move, and he shoots you,” Ruth warned.
She eyed Job, who held a gun trained on her with shaky hands. “Please don’t make me kill you, dear.”
