As a licensed physical therapist, she knew massaging the head of the pectoralis major muscle beneath her clavicle would offer some temporary relief, but no way would she let go of the knife.
Bryan would be back, and she would do what she had to.
He was going to kill her—eventually.
She planned to beat him to the punch.
Eve would die by her own hand. On her own terms. It was the only option available to her. She couldn’t fight him with one arm, and even if she had full range of motion with two, she had very little strength left. Once he saw she had his knife, he would simply take it from her. She would have to cut deep and fast to sever her femoral artery, but it would be the quickest, surest way to go.
A single tear escaped her closed eyelid, slid down her temple, and got lost in her hair.
Despite trying hard not to, she wondered how the others had died.
The letters etched into the white paint of the bed frame told her at least five had lain here before her.KA,DE,WM,JC,MH. None of the initials meant anything to her. She’d already racked her brain trying to connect them to women she might know. Thankfully, there were none. These women had been strangers to her and likely to each other. Their bond forged through scratches in a bedpost.
Eve had already decided she wouldn’t add her initials to the list. She didn’t want her last mark on this earth left in this room where the only person who would see it was Bryan’s next victim.
Up until she’d awoken, imprisoned, and handcuffed to the rail, Eve had no clue as to her stepbrother’s true nature. A predator in a cardigan, he looked about as threatening as a high school math geek. Development arrested somewhere in puberty, his body had all the physical attributes of a gangly sixteen-year-old boy.
He was strong though. Had to be to carry her.
She assumed he was keeping her somewhere near the manor. Getting her here had been simple. Although the judge had been away, Eve had met Bryan for their regular Thursday night family meal.
He’d insisted on buying dinner. Her favorite oil and garlic pasta delivered by Scarpetta in Beverly Hills, fresh rolls from the bakery nearby, a bottle of Santa Margherita pinot grigio perfectly chilled. At the time, she’d thought it was the carbs making her sleepy. She’d been wrong.
Her wine had been laced with a sedative. Her food too. Rohypnol according to Bryan. She’d had the impression of hanging upside down, a bony shoulder digging into her stomach, her arms swinging like a pendulum as he rounded corners and descended stairs. It was all a blur, until his pleas pulled her from the groggy depths of a drug-induced sleep.
Tell me you love me, Mommy.
Bryan’s mother was dead, a fall down the stairs resulting in a cracked skull and massive brain trauma. Beverly Matthew had been in a coma for two months before the judge gave up hope and agreed to have her removed from the machines keeping her alive.
She died on a Tuesday morning in July. Eve had been eighteen at the time, Bryan just five months younger. That September, she’d moved out of the Matthews’ house and into her college dorm. He’d never left.
Tell me you love me, Mommy.
Eve’s stomach clenched, and her grip on the knife he used to slice his palm tightened.
Why he pleaded for his mother’s love, she didn’t know. If there were any secrets in the family, the Matthews had hidden them well. For the eight years she lived in the manor, she never had any inkling of—
Boy Scout camp.
The hairs on the backs of her arms rose as the memories flooded her brain. The first bandaged hand at the age of thirteen, a whittling accident he’d said sheepishly when he returned from the weeklong camping trip. Another trip and another bandaged hand the same year, this time a fall onto a sharp branch. The pattern continued until Beverly’s death. After that, Eve had been away at school, and when she moved back to LA, she’d opted to live on her own.
She could recall only one otheraccidentsince then.
Oh God, no!Was it possible one of the other women had been here, trapped in this room, even as she sat down to eat Christmas dinner with Bryan and the judge last year? His hand had been bandaged then, and she’d teased him for being a klutz.
The judge had admonished her for giving Bryan a hard time.Don’t tease the boy, Eve. It’s not his fault he’s this way.
The truth caught her like a bullet to the chest, her shocked gasp forcing her eyes open. The darkness clawed at her skin, and she fought to regain her breath as a wave of terror constricted her lungs.
The judge knew.
And he protected his son.
The black nightslipped by Adam’s window; the intermittent shells of decrepit houses blurred by the rain beading off the bulletproof glass of the Escalade he rode in. No electricity powered this part of Detroit.
There was no need.
