Promises in the Dark (20 page)

Instead, she panicked. Breath came in short spurts and the darkness held a million secrets, none of them as pleasant as they’d been when Zane held her.

“I … can’t,” she managed to choke out, her voice sounding thin and reedy.

“You have to.” His tone wasn’t threatening and she believed him, knew shelter was the best option now.

She pushed back against his hands. But he held her firm. “Liv, stop—it’s dark, you can’t run away. You need to go inside the tent for shelter.”

But she couldn’t see, only the black, gaping maw of the unknown in front of her. “Not … yet.”

His grip eased a bit. He still held her but didn’t try to push her forward. The ragged gasps began and she sank to her knees completely. His hands remained on her, more a grounding than a guide. Sweat beaded her upper lip. She hated this so much.

“Liv, honey, it’s okay.” One hand moved to the back of her neck, cool and comforting, the other rubbed her back. “No one’s going to hurt you on my watch. Do you understand? No one.”

And then she heard a click as he turned on a small penlight, used it to illuminate the tent in front of her. She bent down and looked inside—small, apparently waterproof.

Safe.

And still, she stood in place, taking deep breaths. Safe, and so small. A few moments longer, the rain coming down harder. Although partially shielded by Zane’s body hovering over her, she knew she had to go inside.

“I’ll be with you,” he told her.

There was nothing inside the tent to harm her—she knew that, and still the logic fought with the panic that clawed at her insidiously from inside.

Zane’s hand rubbed the back of her neck. She wasn’t sure how long they remained like that, the sounds of the jungle echoing loudly in her ears.

“We can stay out here if you want,” he told her finally.

And with those words, the fear eased. She smiled a little, told him, “I’m okay now. It’s always like this for me at an entrance, and then I get over it.”

“Why?”

“Because I lived,” she said simply, knowing he couldn’t possibly understand until he heard her whole story. She took a deep breath and crawled inside, the slide of the nylon cool beneath her palms.

She moved over as he pushed against her, heard the zipper again, and then a low light filled the space. She rubbed her hands together, still felt clammy and not quite herself—but who would be in this place?

So many new places to enter in so few days—you’d think it would be enough to get her over some of her phobia.

She realized that the tent was under the protection of a deserted lean-to, not well built at all, but once Zane had slipped the tent over it, it was at least dry, a shelter from the rain.

“It’s elevated, so we’re in no danger from the mudslides,” he told her. “We can’t go farther now. We’ll wait it out and still be able to make it in time. We’re not getting picked up until closer to daylight.”

It was just after ten—seemed as though much more time had passed since they left the safety of the small house. Lightning accentuated the low light, and it was only then she noted the bruise over Zane’s left temple, the scratched cheek, the blood on his lip.

She reached out to touch his face gingerly as thunder boomed over them. “What happened out there?”

“Let’s just say that my head’s taken a beating since I met you.”

There was a bump under the bruise, a cut too. She reached for her bag, which he’d piled up behind him, and he moved to let her reach it.

“Did you lose consciousness?” she asked as she grabbed for the antiseptic.

“Yes, but not for long,” he admitted. “I’ve worked through much worse.”

She pressed the gauze to his forehead. “It must hurt.”

“I don’t have time to think about it.”

She didn’t say anything else as she put a butterfly bandage on the cut and cleaned the other wounds. Finally, she made herself ask, “Was it DMH?”

He shook his head. “It was about the baby. They were wearing the same gear as the men who came to the house for him.”

That could mean the baby was still safe. Most likely, she’d never know, and all she could do was be grateful for that. Could simply remember the happiness on Dahia’s face and the warm beat of the infant’s heart against her chest for that brief time.

She’d already all but admitted to the issues she had surrounding the first kidnapping. He was one of the few to see her pause at the entrances and he hadn’t asked, had such patience when it came to her.

She was so impatient with herself for not healing more quickly, couldn’t understand it. “I know you think I’m being unreasonable about all of this. But I can’t be kidnapped a third time, Zane. It would break me.”

“I won’t let that happen.”

He spoke so fiercely that she almost believed him. But he’d found the picture and the article, and he must have done his research after that. Read about what she’d endured. He had to know now that lightning could indeed strike twice.

“Do you want to hear about it?”

“You don’t have to tell me … unless you want to.”

“Besides the police, I’ve never really talked with anyone about it.”

“I can see it not being your favorite topic of conversation,” he offered.

She licked her bottom lip, thought about the psychiatrist’s office. She hadn’t talked much—instead, she’d drawn pictures of what happened, terrible pictures that went frame by frame, over a three-month period.

But she’d refused to speak on it.

She’ll talk when she’s ready
.

She’d never been. “It was classic, textbook serial killer stuff. I took a shortcut through the park at dusk—I was late coming home from my friend’s house and I didn’t want my mom to be mad.”

She’d done it before, cutting across the darkened park through the bike trails. She knew them like the back of her hand, loved running through them when there was no one else around, her feet pounding the pavement in her worn-in Keds, wind pushing her along
.

And then she tripped, fell so hard her knees burned. When she looked down, she realized she’d ripped the already worn patches at the knees, which her skinned knees now showed through. There was a lot of blood and her eyes had teared up, but she bit her lip. She had to keep going
.

The rag pressed across her face before she had a chance to haul herself to her feet. She smelled something—horribly sweet perfume—and the next time she woke, it was dark and she was getting sick all over herself
.

When she went to wipe her mouth, she realized her hands were tied behind her back
.

“I would’ve died if he’d gagged me,” she reflected now. “I guess he realized that.”

God, the fear could still cut through her, sharper than any knife.

When the trunk opened, she saw an outline of a man, but
it was so dark. She was happy to have some fresh air, but that was short-lived, because he grabbed her roughly and hauled her over his shoulder
.

She struggled—screamed even—and the only response was a soft chuckle. She scrambled off his shoulders a bit, tried to stiffen herself so she couldn’t fit through the open doorway, because all she saw was blackness
…
no way out
.

The doorway to hell
.

It hadn’t worked, and she whacked her head on the side of the door frame for her efforts. And she was carried into the darkness, her stomach roiling, her head hurting so much she didn’t think she could stand the scent of the man another second
.

“
Shhhhh, stop crying. He doesn’t like when you cry.
”

The words were hushed, urgent, coming from the corner of the room she’d been dumped in
.

“
Who are you?
”

“
I’m Erin.
”

Olivia moved like a snake, on her belly, to get close to her. The other girl was tied to a chair, and when Liv got close enough, she could smell Erin’s fear. Or maybe it was her own
.

“
We’ve got to get out of here,” Olivia told her
.

“
There’s no way out.” Erin sounded exhausted
.

“
How long have you been here?
”

“
I don’t know.
”

“She’d been there for a month.” Olivia wouldn’t learn that until later. A week of starvation, and things Olivia forced herself not to think about.

She brushed away the tears that threatened impatiently. She’d shed so many over that poor girl, and she wasn’t sure it would ever be enough.

“When he took me into that cabin, I knew … I knew I wasn’t getting out alive. And every day he let me live, I wondered,
Is it money? Are my parents not paying?
” She paused and pictured it, the dirty floor, heard the scamper of mice, felt insects crawling over her.

It had been filthy inside that cabin—the stench alone had told her so, but when the police showed her actual pictures, she’d realized just how bad it had been. “There was garbage piled everywhere, he was a hoarder … I guess people were part of his acquisitions. He was … spooky. Scary. Like, he was Halloween all the time,” she said, because the nine-year-old part of her brain still viewed the man who’d hurt her that way. It was easier to compartmentalize him, to think of him as crazy and disturbed, when really she knew that people like him lived all around her without incident.

He never touched her—it was always Erin he took, and Olivia would try to hunch her shoulders enough to cover her ears. When that didn’t work, she’d turn away from the sounds of pain and press one ear to the floor in a futile attempt to lower the volume of fear that accosted her.

“He would drag me out of the room a few times to read my tarot cards,” she said, pictured the long hair, the sharp, beaked nose, the row of brightly colored cards spread like a ribbon of death across the table. “He would read tarot cards all the time—to predict my future, and Erin’s too.”

And on that day, the day that would forever stand out more horribly than the others—the days that simply spun together like a sticky web she could never quite extricate herself from—she finally learned why Erin screamed whenever she was with him.

Looking back, she was grateful Erin had never answered any of her questions.

He placed the cards down, one by one, as usual, never looking at her. And after the last card went down, he looked up, stared at her, his eyes glowing from the light of the single dingy candle
.

Her senses were already on overload, and they’d shut down almost immediately. She was past hunger, past fear
…
past everything
.

“
This isn’t right, not right,” he muttered, scooped the cards up and placed them down again, then repeated that four times before saying. “No death here
…
no death for her. Not right.
”

No death for her
.

It hadn’t comforted her in the least
.

He looked up at her again, his lip curled into a snarl. “No death, just trouble.
”

She stopped for a second, didn’t tell Zane what happened next, didn’t want to hear herself tell that part out loud, when he’d grabbed her off the chair and hurt her. Because in her mind, she’d gotten off damned easy. “That’s when he hurt Erin—killed her—because he didn’t like my fortune. And then I knew, when he started hurting her, the other girl, who’d been there longer than me, I knew I’d be next.”

She’d spoken so fast she was out of breath, but that didn’t stop her, the crescendo of the confession cascading until there was no way for her not to continue.

“And he hurt her so badly. She couldn’t run. She could barely crawl. There was no way we’d make it far. And he would do the same to me and then there was no chance at all for us, and so I ran. And I didn’t look back until I got to the small gas station two miles away.” Her breathing was riotous, the way it must have been then, fear and adrenaline racing together—except this time, she was able to say what she wanted to, because she was looking at Zane, and there was no judgment there. “He killed her as soon as he found out I’d left. And so, especially when my claustrophobia rears its head, I have to think about the fact that I lived because another girl died.”

The look on Zane’s face after she finished speaking said it all.

“We save who we can. You didn’t escape unscathed.”

“No,” she said quietly. “I took some scars with me.”

She lifted her shirt and pointed, and he stared at the tattoo again, the dark swirls, the colors, and all he could see was a mix of colors and a pretty cool tattoo. “Come closer and I’ll show you.”

He did. She took his finger and traced it along one part, noting that he immediately felt the deep indent that wasn’t visible to the naked eye.

He looked up at her face as she traced it again, and she saw the realization bloom in his eyes. “It’s a letter.
T
.”

She nodded and moved his finger over a bit and traced a second letter with him.
R
.

The third,
O
.

“Jesus H. Christ.” His voice sounded hollow, his eyes dark with horror as he realized the word
trouble
had been carved into her. “He did this to you. That bastard. That’s what he did to you … what he was doing to Erin.”

She nodded. His free hand clenched into a fist, but she noted he didn’t move his other hand from her tattoo, simply placed his palm flat there as if he could magically make the scars beneath it disappear.

“There was no way to explain the scars,” she said. “Doctors kept saying,
They’ll fade as you grow
, but they didn’t. My mom wanted me to have a skin graft, like the plastic surgeon suggested, but I had to wait until I was older anyway. And I decided that I’d get this done instead to cover it. Not for me, because I know it’s there. I’d always know it’s there. It seemed to be so important to other people that I get rid of it. I thought this was a good compromise.”

“Your parents figured, out of sight, out of mind. And then you went and put it on display,” he said. But he saw why it was her mark of survival, what drove her.

“I never told my parents, the police or the psychiatrist what he said about me.”

“Why?”

“I told myself that it was because I didn’t want to believe what he said. But all along, I felt it … knew he was right. It wasn’t over. And if I close my eyes, I’m back in the cabin, tied to a chair, facing the table and watching his scarred hands work the tarot cards. Telling me that I wasn’t going to die now because I had more trouble coming for me in the future.”

“Liv—”

She didn’t stop, couldn’t, he guessed. “He told me other things too. Things that have come, true. I’ve lived my whole life trying to be about science and the logic behind it; I didn’t want to let his truth override that plan. And as much as I tried to tell myself he was wrong, that it was all hocus pocus bullshit, a way for him to justify his insane belief that he was killing because it was all in the cards, I could never shake the feeling that he was right. And so I armed myself. Prepared. And I was ready, did what I had to do. And now you want to drag me home and I’m not ready to go yet. I need to put this behind me, come to terms with it before I go back.”

Her tone was plaintive, her eyes glittered with various emotions, ranging from hate to fear, but most of all what came through clearly was that she wanted him to understand … and to leave her here.

Wasn’t that what he’d wanted all those years ago? No doubt. Still, he was grateful that no one left him behind.

“Come here.” He enveloped her in his arms, tightened them when the sobs came. “You need to let it go.”

“Are you able to do that, to let all the bad things go?” she asked, her face buried in his chest.

“I’m trying my damned best.”

“I fight and fight. And I’ll be damned if that’s not going to make a difference.” Her voice echoed fiercely in the night.

“Running isn’t the answer—you know that. You didn’t deserve what DMH did to you. This isn’t a punishment because you escaped, because you think you didn’t run fast enough. You have to know that.”

She wasn’t sure what she knew anymore. The edges of her life had blurred, until all she wanted to do was erase the memories and start over someplace new, where no one knew anything about her.

Make up for the pain she’d caused.

“You’ve made up for enough.” His voice was gentle, but it still startled her, because she hadn’t realized she’d spoken out loud. “My past fucked me up too. Maybe together we can let it all go.”

Could they? “You know everything. And now you expect me to say, ‘All right,’ I’ll follow you to Freetown. And I’ve come farther with you than I’d promised myself I would—so much farther than I thought. But just because you know—”

“Doesn’t mean you’ll make things easy on me, right?” he finished. He didn’t give any indication as to whether he agreed or disagreed with what she’d said. Simply kept his eyes on hers, his expression neutral, and she was beginning to feel like a prisoner of war. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

That I could fall in love with you. That a part of me already has, and damn you for that
.

But she didn’t have the courage to say any of it out loud, and so she said nothing, leaving their fragile peace somewhat intact for the time being.