Repressed Page 21

  He smiled. And clamped the thing around her neck.

  One blade pierced her immediately, on the right side, just below her lymph node, not the fire of real injury, rather the sting of a paper cut. She adjusted a touch to the left, trying to avoid the blades on that side. She felt them, cold and sharp, but they didn’t cut her. Yet.

  His breath was faster, excited, every exhale amplified by the mask, like the hoarse rasp of a dying man. He moved aside, needle held up in front of his glass eyehole as Karen placed Evie in her arms.

  Her baby’s face was scrunched up. She was suffering—couldn’t even raise her limbs to reach for her mother.

  “Oh, baby,” Shannon whispered. “Sweet girl.”

  Evie opened her mouth and wailed, but the sound was far smaller than it should have been. Careful to avoid jostling her own neck, Shannon lifted her shirt and pressed Evie to her breast, trying to do everything by feel since she couldn’t look down.

  Then he was there, staring into Shannon’s eyes, running a finger over her lower lip, looking for her fear as he raised the needle. The thread was black like his fucking heart.

  She stared back, eyes narrowed. But oh god, the needle. And he’d said … he wanted to keep her quiet. And as she watched his gaze lock on the lower part of her face, realization dawned with a wave of electric horror: he was going to sew her mouth closed. She’d feel every stitch, the blinding pain as he stabbed the needle into her. But if it kept Evie alive … Come at me, fucker. Do it. Just like getting your ears pierced. Except she’d not be able to speak.

  To breathe.

  Evie stirred. She clasped her daughter to her chest. “I love you, Evie, Evie.”

  He grabbed her face with one hand and stabbed the needle into her lower lip.

  She wanted to cry out, but her air was gone as the needle rammed violently through her lower lip and pierced through to the top, the pain sharper and more vital than she’d imagined. Stay still, keep quiet— she had to keep her daughter from falling. She pressed her neck against the back of the collar and clutched Evie to her breast. The thread, bloody now, slid more easily than the needle, but it burned like a hot poker through her face. No, please, no! It stopped abruptly, a knot maybe and he was bringing it down to do another—Fuck! She wanted to scream, couldn't scream, she'd tear her lips apart and—she stared at his face, his mask, listened to his heavy breathing, tasted blood and salt on her tongue as the rage replaced the fear. He didn’t deserve to have her cries to jack off to later.

  God help me. She shifted Evie to one arm, testing her strength, and raised the other hand to the beam.

  He paused. “What are you doing?”

  “Staying … steady.” Talking from one corner of her mouth was painful and she sounded like she was numb from a dentist visit. But he’d apparently understood and approved for he didn’t respond, just stabbed the needle into her lip again, rougher this time, and tears welled in her eyes with the searing pain that radiated through her mouth into her cheeks, her ears, finding its way into every nerve ending in her body.

  Her milk let down, and Evie was making tiny, sweet noises of contentment and Shannon desperately wished she could see her face. I’m a good mother god-fucking-dammit. I will get you out of here.

  Karen’s eyes were alight with excitement—at Shannon’s distress or maybe at the way the masked man was panting, every muscle in his arms twitching with anticipation, excitement. Karen approached behind him, ran her palms over the flat surface of his shoulder blades. God, please let him stop, please let her take him away, please.

  Shannon snaked her hand toward the top of the beam. Karen didn’t respond to the movement, fixated as she was on the stitches, or maybe the misery in Shannon’s eyes or maybe on the man himself. His breath in the mask came faster, and she could smell it—hot and sour, though that could have been the smell of her own rank fear.

  Another stitch. Panic seized her, a fresh wave ripping through her from toe to brain, begging her to run. Run, Shannon! No. Not now, no! She whimpered involuntarily, and it seemed to excite him further, and then Karen was beside him, working his belt and his zipper—not her son, definitely not—and she knelt, out of Shannon’s view, and he moaned into Shannon’s face as he stabbed the needle into her lip again. And again through the top, slower now but violent, the thread tugging not only through her flesh, but pulling her toward him, as if she were a bull being led to slaughter by a ring in her mouth.

  Don’t move, Shannon. Almost finished. Don’t move. She breathed heavily through her nose, fought the wave of dizziness. If she fainted, she’d be dead in minutes, her jugular shredded by the blades.

  And Evie … Shannon tried to focus all her attention on Evie and the gentle pull of the baby at her breast. Evie will be okay. Tears stung her eyes.

  Karen was standing, wiping her mouth, and he was growling into Shannon’s face, the beak of the mask at her nose, and when it touched her it sliced her right nostril, though that pain was dull compared to the stinging needle piercing her lips.

  At the closet door, Karen pulled out the phone. Pushed buttons. Watched Shannon, practically panting. She put the phone to her ear. “Hello, Curt. The stakes have changed. Your partner’s over at the rehab center. He’s going to stay there.”

  Stay there? Why would they want Petrosky in rehab? But with the panic zinging through her body her brain could only focus on the pain, could only scream inside as she watched the needle approach again. Her chin was wet, spit and blood dribbling down her chin, onto the arm that held Evie. Blood dripped onto her baby’s head.

  “What’s to understand? Breckenridge Rehab has a reservation for one Edward Petrosky. I’d hurry.”

  The man had paused, needle in hand, Shannon’s blood on his fingertips, so much blood and was it hers or his or maybe both and maybe she’d catch some crazy disease, oh fuck. The dizziness pulled again until she feared she might not be able to hold herself up this time. He turned and stared at Karen, head cocked as if he were a student listening to a lecture.

  “Please nothing,” Karen snapped into the phone. “You’re good at hooking people. Dragging them down to your level. Just be the same asshole you’ve always been. And they need a positive test for a same-day admission, so make sure your partner’s good and dirty.”

  This bitch wanted Petrosky to—

  The man turned back to her, peered into her eyes through the glass lenses of the mask as if he could see directly into her soul. His breathing turned everything inside her to ice.

  “It’s in your glovebox,” Karen said. “Manila envelope. Get him to do it with you, or wait until he’s asleep, then shoot him up and take him in. Do you understand?”

  She couldn’t think, couldn’t focus. Something dripped onto her upper lip from the tip of her nose. More sweat. More blood.

  Her torturer pulled his face back from Shannon’s and the air felt cooler, crisper. Then he chuckled like she’d told him something funny through her punctured lips. She ground her teeth together to keep from screaming.

  “Roger taken care of?” Karen said into the receiver.

  The masked man turned back to Karen again and Shannon reached the corner of the sewing kit with her pinky finger. Ring finger. Then—

  A sliver of metal, cool against her fingertips as the hooked beak swung her way again but his eyes did not look at the beam or the kit, just at her as if trying to stare into her head. Sensing her pain. Enjoying it.

  He made a noise like a groan, and for a moment she feared he’d seen her hand in the sewing kit in his peripheral vision, but then his hand was flying toward her face and he stabbed the needle deeper, higher, harder into her top lip, and white-hot agony shot through her brain as he hit something, a nerve, a piece more crucial than before. He turned away. Done or waiting?

  Don’t move. Shit, don't move. Evie. Stay with Evie. Sweat rolled down her back and into the waistband of her pants.

  A frown deepened on Karen’s face. “Get the deposit box, his log book. That’s all you need. Or
just shoot him in the face. But you better hurry. Women like your wife weaken fast—either we’ll break her or she’ll break herself. Soon.”

  They would. They’d break her. Leave her in the dark, deprive her of her child, make her watch Evie weaken and succumb. Come on, Morrison, come on.

  “I want to watch you suffer," Karen spat into the cell. "Like you watched Danny. Then I want you to watch the people you love die like you watched Danny die. And I’m going to love every second of it.”

  The man turned slowly, almost reverently, and her insides roiled but oh god she couldn’t throw up, not anymore—she’d choke to death on her own vomit. And he was there at her mouth again, stabbing once more at the last remaining corner of her lips, and when he tugged the thread this time it was as if he were trying to force her face into a grotesque joker’s smile.

  “I don’t need rumors,” Karen said. “I saw you.”

  The masked man cut the thread with the tip of his beak, and Shannon shuddered. The point of a blade from the collar pressed to her neck and she felt the warm wet roll down to her collarbone. She’d cut herself. Hopefully not too deeply. She forced her spine against the back of the beam again.

  He snatched the sewing kit. Snatched Evie off her breast, the suction breaking and the sound slapping against the walls of the cell as Evie whimpered, then wailed.

  “No, please, she’s still hungry,” Shannon wanted to say, but she couldn’t say it, couldn't say anything. Give her back to me!

  He put Evie on the floor outside the closet, roughly, as if she were a suitcase and not a living, breathing person, close enough to Shannon that she could only make out her daughter’s kicking feet. He tossed the sewing kit beside Evie, his fingers still glistening red with Shannon’s blood. The needles … so close to her daughter. Oh god, not Evie, please don’t hurt—

  “You’ve got a limited amount of time, Curt. She falls asleep and she’s done for,” Karen told the cell. “And if she hasn’t already killed herself, tomorrow night I’ll help her say goodbye.”

  If I fall asleep … oh, god … they weren’t going to let her out of the collar. If she nodded off, she’d slit her own throat. No, shit no, she’d never make it through the—

  But she couldn’t tell them, not that they’d notice her trying to speak. Karen had dropped the phone and the man was tearing at Karen’s clothing, tossing her shirt and skirt aside as she grabbed his shoulders, wrapping her naked legs around his waist. He slammed Karen into the still open door of the closet and entered her, thrusting into her again and again, right above Evie’s head.

  “Told you about the phone,” he growled.

  “You’re good,” Karen said. “We were made for each other.”

  “My number one girl.” He shifted his weight, looked once more at Shannon and hammered Karen into the wall. Shannon tried again to see Evie, but could only make out her baby’s feet, no longer kicking so ferociously. Slowing down. Shutting down. Was it starvation? Trauma? Oh baby, please be okay. On the floor lay the phone, still on, the time ticking away, upwards and onwards. And she knew Morrison was there too, listening to Evie scream, listening to the man’s grunts and Karen’s moans, hearing the sounds of sex and his screeching daughter and dear god, what he must think.

  The man walked Karen to the bed and threw her off him, onto the black sheets. Then he returned to the closet, his erection at his belly, and there was … a tattoo. On his penis. A medieval sword, but terribly done, faded and pixelated, like he’d done it himself. He paused at the doorway, and for one breathtaking moment he studied the infant on the floor, his eyes behind the lenses wild with anticipation.

  Please no.

  He pulled his eyes from Evie, and then the door was closing, encasing Shannon in perfect darkness, Evie’s wails fading, and then gone completely though she could still feel her daughter’s frantic energy on the other side of the door. Shannon pressed her neck as far back as she could to avoid the blades. Blood trickled steadily down her chin. But in her palm she tested the sharp point of the needle she’d stolen, hoping it’d be enough.

  30

  Karen’s words echoed in his brain, mingling with Evie’s screams and the sick grunts of pleasure. Morrison threw the phone to the floorboards like it was a ticking bomb. His baby girl. Not his baby.

  Through the windshield, sunrise pinkened the bruised early morning clouds. One more day, two at most. And it was Saturday already: day four.

  He’d run to his car when the call came in, his arm half asleep from passing out at his desk, the remnants of a dream still thickening his mind.

  Me first.

  No, me.

  A hallucination, or maybe a sliver of memory—girls laughing in his head and Danny bleeding, and Shannon was bleeding too, covered in ants, just like—

  He pounded the steering wheel with his fists.

  Escalation.

  These other assholes Karen was with had begun smaller—a rape, a little pressure on the neck. But Karen had started with murder in mind. His fist clenched and he resisted the urge to punch the steering wheel. Think. What had driven Karen to embrace such savagery? If he knew her motive would he be able to find her? To find Shannon? Was Evie still okay? Were they alive?

  The cold. Keep the cold. But the fire and ice were fighting, sizzling, boiling, and he couldn't control it for much longer. He needed time. She wanted Roger punished, but he knew Roger wouldn’t admit to anything. Fabrication of evidence? Frame him? He could do that. He could always clear Roger once his family was safe.

  But Petrosky. Dragging him into the hell that was heroin …

  The drugs were probably tainted. They were going to make him kill his best friend. Make him choose—Petrosky, or Shannon and Evie.

  And with Petrosky gone … but why didn’t Karen want him to drop the case? To clear her or whoever she was with for their other crimes? Instead Karen had told him to keep going. Without Petrosky.

  She wanted Morrison to find them. Him. No one else.

  She wanted him there so he could watch Shannon die. So he could watch his child bleed.

  She wanted to punish him.

  Find the cold. Stay with the logic. Run from the heat.

  The heat would kill them all.

  He replayed the conversation. The voice wasn’t familiar, but she seemed to know him. Had known him back when he was using to escape, when the only thing that made him happy, made him whole, was the needle.

  I don’t need rumors. I saw you. And she’d used Danny’s name. Shannon didn’t know about Danny. Not even Petrosky did. But Karen—she’d seemed familiar the first time they’d met, though he hadn’t known her before, he could almost swear to it. Then again, the flashes of memory from the night Danny died told him next to nothing. Only that Danny was dead. That it was probably his fault.

  Murderer.

  He’d always suspected karma meant that mistakes simply repeated until you learned, and he hadn’t needed a second chance to avoid repetition of that event. But perhaps karma was vengeful. Like a god. Like a jilted lover.

  Think. What else did he know?

  He had tried to start over. He’d tried to move on, to be better. To forget. But someone hadn’t forgotten Danny, after all this time. Karen hadn’t forgotten.

  Maybe she’d been biding her time until he had something worth taking.

  Evie’s wails grew louder inside his head, and Morrison’s heart threatened to implode. There was too much pressure in his chest. The world tilted and spun. Shannon and Evie couldn’t pay for his mistakes—pay just for knowing him.

  Unless that was all bullshit. Pretending to know him. Just part of the game.

  You see me but you don’t. But you’ll figure it out—you’ll remember me. And once you do, you’ll know exactly how to find me.

  And she’d said Danny’s name.

  The phone on the floorboard buzzed. He shook as he collected it. Dropped it. Turned it over. Text: a picture.

  No. Shannon. Fuck. His wife stood with her neck locked in som
e kind of collar, hands gripping a wooden bar on either side of her head. Shirt, stiff-looking, half of it riding high over her bare breast, the other half slumped to her waist. Blood coated her chin, had dripped down her neck from under the black collar. And her mouth—oh god. Ragged black stitches secured her lips together, her beautiful, perfect mouth swollen and angry and mangled and—

  No Evie.

  The air had disappeared entirely. And below the image, one word.

  “Hurry.”

  Morrison hit his thigh on the wheel at the sudden thud against the driver’s side glass. Petrosky’s nose touched the window, hands cupped around his eyes as he peered inside. Morrison squinted at the sky, the bruised clouds solid now, the sun higher. How long had he been sitting there, staring into space?

  You need to go into rehab, Boss. You need to become … an addict. He needed time. Petrosky would be an easier sell than Roger, but for someone already struggling with addiction, the pull of heroin would be strong. Morrison rolled down the window. For someone whose demons never went away … it would be an invitation to death.

  Morrison shook his head, tried to refocus, tried to pull in the cold air that he couldn’t taste or smell. He needed to ice the fire in his heart.

  Tomorrow.

  One way or another, by tomorrow night this would all be over.

  But he couldn’t save them. Not like this.

  He finally looked at Petrosky’s face but couldn’t discern individual features, only grainy beige fuzz and a pulsating movement where the boss’s mouth should be.

  “… nothing else at the center—she was a recluse, according to the staff. Morrison!” Petrosky clapped his hands and Morrison blinked hard to clear his vision. The old man’s brows were knitted together like they’d never come unstuck. He knows.