Every Breath You Take (31 page)

“Perfect. I knew I could trust you to get it right. And the other thing?”

He darted into the living room and came back carrying a purple velvet shawl. He pulled back the fringed edges to reveal a shiny silver dagger, which he handed to her. “For you, sweetheart.”

She took it from him, being careful to let her fingers close around the handle so that it wouldn’t slip from her trembling hands. He rubbed her shoulders.

“You okay? You’re shaking.”

“Just excited, that’s all.” She nodded toward him. “Okay. Go ahead.”

Natalie held her breath as she watched him lift the rim of the tumbler to his lips, blanching as he did so before he took a shaky sip. His face scrunched up and he looked away, coughing.

“Whew, that is nasty,” he grunted. “That’ll damn near put hair on your chest.”

“Don’t think about that,” Natalie said, her hand still clamped across her mouth, the blood rushing in her ears. “Just . . . if you drink it fast, it’ll be over before you know it . . . which means we’ll be that much closer to paradise.”

Joey gave her a reassuring nod before he took a deep breath and another stuttering swallow. He winced as he gulped the mixture down. In an instant, he started choking and his eyes bulged. He grunted again and clutched at his chest, trying to loosen his tie and shirt. Sweat dotted his upper lip and the skin around his mouth started to bubble and burn where the ammonia and bleach trickled out of his lips. He looked up at Natalie, offering her a weak smile. “It’s coming faster than I thought.” He nodded toward the dagger. “You ready?”

Natalie fingered the curled edges of the dagger’s handle and picked it up, weighing it carefully in her hand. She smiled and looked up at Joey.

“Do you remember when we were watching
West Side Story
?”

“Yeah,” he panted, barely managing a feeble, confused nod.

Natalie moved back a few steps, watching as he started to convulse. He clutched the table and doubled over. “That’s what gave me the idea.”

“Nat, why are you taking so long?” he managed between the violent coughing fits that continued to shake him.

She continued to move away from him. “Joey, you know that in
West Side Story
. . . Maria lived.”

He dropped to the floor, seizing now, his eyes starting to glaze with the effects of the sleeping pills ground to a fine dust thanks to the powerful jaws of his beloved blender. “What?”

“Maria didn’t die,” she said, smiling. “Tony did.”

He realized what she’d done. He moaned and lunged for her, but she ducked back.

“You fucking—” The poison was swimming through his veins and rising from his skin like vapor. Tearing at his insides. Disintegrating his organs.

Natalie gripped the dagger, turning its sharp point in his direction. “Did you honestly think that I would kill my
baby
—
myself
—for you? For the man who murdered my husband, my child’s father?”

She could see the confusion in his eyes, the desperation to hurl insults at her, curse her. He could only shake his head, frustration, torment and anger squeezing his face, the toxins pinching his vocal cords shut.

“Yeah, that’s right, Joey. This isn’t your baby, you son of a bitch. I was pregnant when I got here.”

“Lying . . . you’re lying.”

“Oh, no, Joey. I got you. You fell for every lie I told you. Just like you lied to get out of the hospital, just like you ‘told them what they wanted to hear.’ Oh yeah, Joey. I did the exact same thing to you.”

He was writhing and moaning, wanting to keep his eyes on her, but death yanking them closed. “Loved . . . you.”

“I was never carrying your baby. We were never going to live ‘happily ever after’ as ‘one big family.’ I was
never
going to let you get anywhere near my baby.”

“You’ll never get away from me,” he managed to squeeze out.

“No, Joey, that’s where you’re wrong, because I’m walking out of this house today and then I never have to see your disgusting,
repulsive
face ever again. Always one step ahead. Know every move you make before you make it. Isn’t that right, Joey?”

“How could you . . . after everything . . . I did for you?”

“The only thing you ever did for me was ruin my life,” she said. “And now . . . I’ve ruined yours.”

“You . . . burn in hell,” he said as he keeled over.

“No, I won’t,” she whispered. “But you will.”

N
atalie waited.

She slid into a dining room chair, watching as vomit poured out of him, as his eyes glazed over, as sweat streaked down his body, soaking his cheap suit with dark, smelly splotches. She watched as he tried crawling toward her, his hands stretched out in front of him, clawing at that God-awful pink carpet to try and inch closer to her. For every inch he tried to get closer to her, she inched the chair away from him, never taking her eyes off his curdling limbs.

Finally, he collapsed in a pool of feces, blood, and vomit, his labored breathing rasping into silence.

She kept waiting.

All Natalie could picture was creeping over to him to check that he was dead and a bloody hand shooting up to grab her arm and pull her down into the mire with him.

Natalie kept her vigil over him, alert to any movement, any sound rising from his body.

Finally, when there had been no twitches, no involuntary spasms, no wheezing breaths, she edged toward him, her heart pounding against her chest. She groaned as she lowered herself to the ground, panting as heavily as he had moments ago. She snaked a shaky hand out to his neck, placing two fingers against the slimy skin to check that the rigid veins were no longer pulsating.

They were still.

Natalie gulped back her tears and ran her hands across his pockets in search of that elusive phone, the ticket to her freedom. She found it clipped to his belt and struggled to extract it. She grunted as it came loose, and she fell back against the leg of the table, delirious joy settling over her shoulders as she kissed the hard square of plastic. Her hands closed around car keys in his other pocket, and for the first time in a long time, pure euphoria washed over her.

She ran her fingers over the keypad, waiting for the screen to light up, only to see it was locked. Except she could see the date.

December twenty-second.

She pounded the phone in frustration and closed her eyes. “Stay calm, Natalie. Stay calm. You’ve come too far to give up. Keep going.”

Clutching the phone, Natalie pushed herself to her feet and back into a chair, staring at the phone and wondering what on earth the password could be. She looked over at Joey.

“The one time I actually need you for something,” she mumbled, shaking her head. “All right, Natalie, come on, think. Think like Joey. What would he use as the password?”

She started punching in any combination of numbers she could think of: her birthday, his birthday, their first date, their ages. Nothing. She was locked out. She threw the phone down on the table, frustrated. Then she smacked herself on the forehead.

“I can still call 911,” she whispered as she punched in the numbers, her heart leaping as she was connected. “Even with a locked phone, you can still call 911,” she mumbled to herself.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“My name is Natalie Scott, and I was kidnapped.”

“A
ll right, ma’am, where are you?”

Such a simple question. Yet it unleashed a flood of tears. Long. Loud. Uncontrollable. “I don’t know. I have no idea. He killed my husband and then kidnapped me, and I’ve been locked in this house for months and everything is electronic, and I can’t get out and please, please you have to help me.”

“Ma’am are you on a cell phone?”

“Yes, yes, I am.”

“Ma’am, we’re going to track your location, so I will need you to stay on the line while we do that, okay?”

Natalie nodded. “Okay,” she said, still sobbing. “Please hurry.”

“Ma’am, are you by yourself?”

“Yes. I mean, no, the . . . the man who kidnapped me is dead. But I’m pregnant and—”

On cue, pain ripped through her, knocking the breath out of her. She gasped and clutched her stomach while trying to keep her grip on the phone. “Oh, God, please hurry. I think I’m going into labor.”

Another swift internal punch caused her to scream. Sweat dripped from her pores and she was shaking with pain.

“Okay, ma’am, we’ve found you, and we’ve dispatched officers and EMTs to the scene. They should be there soon, so I want you to stay on the line with me until they get there, okay?”

“How soon? How soon will they be here?” Another contraction.

“Any minute, ma’am. Just hold on.”

W
here were they?

The phone kept beeping, indicating the battery was dying. The dispatcher kept peppering her with questions she couldn’t answer, and Natalie was cranky and crying. The contractions had stopped, but there was no way of knowing when they would come surging back.

“Ma’am, we’re showing that the officers should be there now. Can you see them?”

“I told you, all the windows are blacked out, and I can’t see anything.”

“Okay, the officers are definitely outside the building.”

Building?

The phone beeped again.

“No, it’s a house, and all the doors are on some kind of grid or something, I don’t know, but there’s no keys, there’s no—”

Natalie stopped and looked at the phone. A building. That meant. . .

“Where are they? I mean what’s the address?”

“They’re at 11025 South Winchester. It’s a three-flat building.”

Natalie let out a sob. One last twist of the knife.

“Oh, my God, he did something to scramble the location.” The phone slid from Natalie’s hand. “You’ll never find me, you’ll never find me. Oh, God, he was right, he was right. I’m never getting away from him.”

“Ma’am? Ma’am, I need you to stay on the line.”

Natalie doubled over in tears. It was no use. The police would never find her. That bastard would win after all.

“Okay, ma’am, we have to unscramble the signal—”

The phone went dead.

Natalie moaned, the pain walloping her again. She’d have to find the charger, which could be anywhere, and start all over again. She whimpered, plastering her palm against the wet grime of her forehead. She closed her eyes, steeling herself for the search. She gasped.

The iPad.

He probably had the controls for the house on his iPad as a backup.

“Oh, God, please let that be it,” she murmured to herself as she struggled to her feet, clutching the table, barely making it across the room before dropping to her knees again. The pain was so intense, she no longer even felt it. She took several deep breaths and dragged herself across the carpet, grasping the arm of the couch to try and hoist herself up. The iPad was next to the TV. She grunted as she stumbled toward it, her fingers grubby now, tears blocking her vision as she swiped screens and buttons trying to locate the controls for the house.

The pain swooped through her again.

And then a gush of water dropped between her legs.

“Sonja, no, please, oh, God, please not yet, not yet,” Natalie whispered as she continued to fumble through the icons to find the right one.

Finally, she spotted a tiny icon labeled “house” and “disarm.” She started to punch in random numbers, hoping she would hit on something.

Another labor pain tore through her, and she dropped the iPad. It bounced across the floor, just out of her grasp. She was sobbing uncontrollably now, ready to give up.

Come on, Scotty, you can do this
.

“Jason?” Natalie looked up, so certain she’d heard his voice. “Oh, God, baby, I’m trying, I’m trying.”

She shook her head, took a deep breath, and started to crawl toward the iPad, her brain calculating a new set of possible combinations. She reached out, able to push it back toward her, and grasped it. She wiped her nose as she started punching in the numbers, trying to keep the tears out of her eyes before she realized. . .

Of course.

There was only one combination it could be.

She let her finger hover over the screen for a few seconds as she sent out a silent prayer.

“Zero . . . four . . . one . . . two.”

April twelfth. The day he’d killed Dennis. The day he’d kidnapped her. The day he made all of his dreams come true.

All at once, she heard the melodic sound of doors unlocking and electronic shades rising. The front door swung open, and unseasonably warm, bright, beautiful sunlight rushed in to throw its arms around her. She looked into its eyes and struggled toward its embrace, reveling in the hot, clean kisses it peppered across her face. . .

And then she passed out.

“L
a Vie en Rose.”

Édith Piaf’s plaintive wail trailed off like a wisp of smoke, carried away down Ocean Drive by a vintage pink Cadillac convertible. It was a funny thing to hear on the beaches of Florida. Then again, most things about Florida were funny.

She dug her toes into the heavy, sodden sand, the bubbles of the Atlantic tickling the tops of her feet as she held her face skyward to let the sun drench her skin. She took huge, gaping inhales, eager to scoop the salty air into her lungs. She rubbed her legs, after all this time, still not used to her hands gliding over a soft, smooth surface. No matter how many times she shaved her legs (she was holding steady at twice a day now, a comedown from four times a day), she could always feel long bristles stinging her fingertips.

“Mama?”

She looked down to see her little girl holding a clump of muddy sand out to her. She laughed and took it from Sonja’s tiny, chubby palm.

“Oh, is that for me? Thank you,” she said, depositing the mound of wet grains on top of the pile next to her, which was composed of all her daughter’s sand gifts. Natalie wrapped her arms around her knees, mesmerized as always by her healthy, bubbly little girl. No trace at all of the trauma of being drugged, beaten, and starved for days in a row, of no prenatal care, of her delivery in the doorway of that house of horrors by an ob-gyn who just happened to be out walking her dog when the doors swung open.