Page 33 of Vision of Justice
His eyes had gone cold and flat. This wasn’t her Teddy. Had he always been like this? And why hadn’t she seen it? What little doubt remained that she’d walk out of here alive vanished. She prayed Gus didn’t come because Ted would kill him, too. Julie would be left alone. Still, she wasn’t going to make this easy for him. She just had to bide her time and keep him talking.
“Dorothy Bigelow, Melissa Fletcher, her grandfather.” She took a shallow breath to keep going. “The VP of finance, and all the others. You killed them, didn’t you? Tried to kill me and Gus.” Something cracked inside her. Her best friend was a monster.
“No,” he said, the tendons in his neck bulging. Relief made her sag. At least by some miracle, she was wrong about that. He stalked toward her until the toes of his boots were eye level. Kneeling down, he grabbed her ponytail and began to drag. Rocks and sticks abraded her body, and her scalp burned with tension. The more she fought, the more she was sure her hair would rip from the roots. In a rough movement, he pulled until she was in a sitting position against something hard. It was excruciating.
“I didn’t kill them. I did them a favor. They had blood on their hands. The blood of your family. I avenged the people you loved. They weren’t supposed to die. Wouldn’t have if it weren’t for the faulty alarms.”
Her breath was coming in rapid pants, horror clashing through her. “Weren’t supposed to?”
“You had just as much a hand in it as me,” he bit out. Her surroundings shifted, swayed.
“No.” Bile burned up her throat. “What are you saying?”
“Oh, come on, Sash. You called me bitching about how your parents wouldn’t let you go to that sleepover. How they said you were spending too much time with me. You practically asked me to set that fire. It was so easy. Did you know your parents didn’t even have the door locked? I lit a candle in the kitchen and tipped it over. It was only supposed to scare them. They’d still be alive if the alarm system wasn’t faulty.” The dense trees surrounding the clearing blurred.
She shut her eyes tightly, turning her face to the side, and sobbed. “You bastard.”
“I’ve risked everything for you, waited forever to have you. Maybe it’s cliché, but if I can’t, then no one can. Especially that asshole detective who should be in the morgue right now. If you weren’t such a whore, you wouldn’t have been near my bomb in the first place.” The clomp of boots got further away, and she squinted to see him walking toward a small cabin. Wood clapped open and shut, and she pushed everything Ted had just told her down. This was her chance. She couldn’t let him get away with killing her family. She’d been friends with him this entire time, after everything he’d done. How didn’t she suspect anything?
Craning her neck, she was able to catch a glimpse of the boulder she was propped against. With vigorous movements, she rubbed her wrists against the rock, trying to break the duct tape. She gritted her teeth against the pain. If her skin was being sloughed off, so was the tape. The small crack and a bit of give in her restraints had breath bottling up in her chest. This could actually work. A few more seconds, and the tape snapped. Her arms were flung forward by the sudden release of the binds. Her hands were a sickly purple, and she’d rubbed off the skin from her pinky fingers to her elbows.
The door to the cabin clattered open. Shit. She tucked her arms behind her. If Ted noticed the blood dripping down her arms, she was dead, but maybe she could still catch him off guard. His eyes were cold, so cold, as he walked down the path toward her. She gulped down a scream, adrenaline spiking at the long hunting knife clutched in his hand. An image of Gus finding her, stabbed and gutted, flashed through her mind. Ted lurched toward her, driving the knife in the direction of her heart. She shifted an inch, and pain sliced up her collarbone and shoulder.
“Why make this hard? No one’s coming for you. It’s you and me.” The hardness in his voice made her whimper. Blood was soaking through the front of her shirt. Frantically, she felt around for something, anything to use as a weapon. Her hand closed around a rock, and when he came at her again, knife poised for her throat, she leaped forward, slamming the hard object into his temple.
He stared at her wide-eyed, giving her time to smash the rock into his skull once more. He fell back, the knife limp in his hands. Falling forward, she dragged herself closer. Everything hurt, but she kept moving. Debris stuck to the open wounds on her arms. She slid the knife from Ted’s hands, rolled to her side, and began sawing at the tape around her ankles. The tape snapped and relief washed through her, as did the unbearable pain as feeling came back to her feet. Breathing through it, she took stock of her surroundings. Then, on unsteady legs, she began to hobble forward. She was moving slow, too slow. Tripping over roots as branches raked over her skin and hair. Ted could still be alive. She hadn’t been brave enough to check. Even after all he’d done, she couldn’t kill him while he was unconscious. She approached a stream. Walk through to hide her tracks, or cross? Then she paused. An eerie whistle rang through the forest. A chill iced through her.
“You can’t hide forever, Sash.” Her blood froze, and she plunged onward.
Chapter Twenty
“This is taking too long.” Gus slammed his palms against the table in the conference room of the State Police barracks. He was out of control, recognized it, but could do nothing to stop the rage from bubbling up, gripping him. Ted had Sasha, and every second they spent circled around records and financial statements was one more second the woman he loved was fighting for her life.
She was his. It was fast, but he knew she was meant to be his, and he was meant to be hers. He was almost forty and had never felt this way before. It wasn’t some passing whim. The way they met jumbled the lines, and he’d probably be demoted for developing a relationship with a witness if someone found out, but if it meant he could have her, he’d go back to patrolling. Hell, he’d work the desk. He just needed her to be okay. Needed to find her safe and never let her out of his sight again. Julie was in the break room, waiting for Easton to come pick her up. She’d be safe hanging out at his apartment tonight. Easton would also try to track Ted’s digital footprint from his home computer.
“You know as well as I do that we can’t start a search without more intel.” The lieutenant surprised him by putting a hand briefly on his shoulder. His mouth went dry at the show of support. Did he know how he felt about Sasha? Did it matter? “The traffic cameras are being checked. Both their cell phones are shut off, with the last ping two blocks from your home. We have detectives interviewing the staff and students at Harvard. What are we missing?”
“Where else would’ve he taken her?” They had the FBI involved, with agents checking Ted’s apartment. Sasha’s house was empty. It was like they’d vanished. “Check for any additional real estate holdings,” he barked at the officers sifting through Ted’s information at the table. Lifting both hands, he raked his fingers over his scalp. The knots in his stomach clenched painfully. He should be going through the information they had, but he couldn’t sit still. He paced the room, unable to stand in one spot. God, Sasha. He’d been so sure she would be safe at his house, but he’d failed her. What was the sick bastard doing to her? She could be hurt, bleeding, already dead. His shoulders hunched over his chest, hands on his knees. If he didn’t act, he was going to lose it. Imagining all the horrific things that could be happening to her gutted him, ripped his breath away.
“Here!” One of the officers stood, metal chair scraping against the tile floor. “He purchased a plot of land in 2010. I’m texting you the address.” He had already started to move toward the doors.
“Detective Lambert,” his lieutenant ordered. “Wait for backup.”
“I’ll be his backup. We need to get a head start.” Wright appeared at his side and gripped his arm above the elbow. He’d never been more grateful to someone in all his life. Together, they rushed for the doors, jumping into his unmarked vehicle. The engine hummed to life, and they swerved out of the parking lot on two wheels. “I’m putting the address into the GPS. We can’t make any wrong turns.” She leaned forward, tapping the address on the center screen.
“Thanks,” his voice cracked. “For back there.” He clutched the wheel like it was a lifeline. In a way, it might be Sasha’s. Please, please. Let her be alive. He could help her through anything else that happened. He’d stand by her, make sure she got the help she needed to overcome whatever trauma she faced. But she had to live.
“We’re going to get her back.” Wright’s voice was steel determination, and something else rode along the hard tone. “Turn right,” she yelled.
Shit. He needed to get his head out of his ass. Focus on the road. He swallowed hard, and pain resonated in the back of his throat.
“When I was not much older than Melissa Fletcher, I was abducted from a shopping center.” Wright’s clinical statement shocked him. He’d known her for years, and she’d never said a word about it. “I was held for two months.” She took a deep breath, then continued. “He did … terrible, evil things to me. It was easy to see that I wasn’t the first. The basement I was kept in had been used before, on other victims. Dried blood on the dirty mattress. A clump of hair in the corner. I was small, there was no way to fight him, so let him do what he wanted and bided my time. Learned his patterns. Survived, day by day. And then, one day when he left, I climbed through the small concrete hole that divided two parts of the basement, and climbed out the window. I was the only survivor. Fifteen bodies found, but they never found him.”
His stomach was rock hard. Anger swept through him. Why did these kinds of monsters exist? “My God, Kinley,” he said, using her first name.
“I didn’t tell you for pity. I rarely tell anyone. I don’t want to be looked at as a victim. What I’m saying is people survive the unthinkable. Sasha is strong, and she’s smart. She’ll hang on long enough for us to get to her.”
He nodded, throat too tight to respond. After a few minutes, the noose binding his vocal cords loosened. “How do you sleep at night? Knowing he’s out there?”