“Where’re you going?” I yelled.
He kept moving, ignoring me.
“Don’t you touch my children! Aaron will rip you apart, you son of a bitch!” I tugged and yanked at the ropes, doing nothing more than causing more damage to my wrists. But I didn’t feel the pain, my concern was for my family.
Sam stopped short, turning to me. “Not if I get to him first,” he warned.
Pure terror moved through my body. The look in his eye could only be described as stark raving mad. After he slammed the door shut, my knees went so weak that my body fell limply back to the floor.
I had no idea what to do.
****
Aaron
“What the…” Carter breathed out, standing a few feet from me as we looked around the empty room. All around us, posted on the walls were pictures of Patience, going back years.
“He built a shrine to her,” Brutus stated out loud what was evident to our eyes.
We were standing in the middle of the former bookstore. The same one Patience used to frequent while she was in graduate school. The same one I’d taken her to that first night after dinner at Buona Sera. The same one where an obvious obsession was born.
Thanks to Emma’s visions, I was able to tell Brutus that Sam was responsible for Patience’s kidnapping. I gave him the details that I knew. His name was Sam, he’d worked as a clerk at the vintage bookstore six years earlier. Though the store was now closed, Brutus was able to use the information to get all of Sam’s information. His full name was Samuel Granger. Born and raised right here in Williamsport. His grandfather had opened the bookstore some thirty years prior and passed it down to Samuel on his eighteenth birthday.
I looked around at the empty space, the walls littered in images of my wife. There were pictures of her from years earlier. I was in some of them, though my face had been crossed or cut out. The son of a bitch had replaced my face with his in the pictures of she and I together. A cold chill passed through my chest when I turned to see more pictures, more recent images of Patience as she went into the work at the library. Pictures of her inside of the library working. But my entire heart damn near stopped beating when I discovered the pictures of Patience and the children playing in the Williamsport City Park.
“I’ll kill this motherfucker myself,” Carter growled beside me.
Following his gaze, I saw him staring at one of the photos that had Patience standing next to Michelle as they walked with the children into a store. It was the day they’d gone shopping for Halloween costumes. He’d been there. Watching my family. My entire body began to vibrate with an anger I’d never felt before.
“No,” I shook my head, fists clenched at my sides, “he’s all mine.”
Brutus emerged from behind Carter and I. “He’s not here,”
I wanted to rip his head off for stating the fucking obvious. I turned angry eyes on him and even at six-foot-six, outweighing me by eighty pounds, he took a step back. I was sure there was a crazed gleam in my gaze.
“We’ve got more information, however,” Brutus stated slowly, as if measuring his words to not set off a ticking time bomb.
Me. I was that time bomb.
“Health records. Samuel Granger was admitted to the Williamsport Behavioral Health Facility.”
“For what?” I questioned.
“He was a troubled kid. Apparently, he was adopted at the age of three. Before then he was born to a drug-addicted mother. His adoptive parents, Bobbie and Charlene Granger, did their best but he had a difficult time connecting. He was only calm when it came to reading. A loner throughout his school years. He was put on meds for depression but tried to kill himself his junior year by hanging. His mother came home early from work and found him just in time. There was a girl at school he’d become infatuated with and when she rejected him he tried suicide. He was admitted for three months to the psych ward. After that he withdrew from school, rarely leaving the house except to visit his grandfather’s bookstore.
“His grandfather gave him the job, hoping it would help stabilize him. His parents continued to seek help for him due to numerous violent outbursts he had with them. But they were given meds and told to work it out in therapy. Sam refused therapy after turning eighteen. His grandfather died, leaving him as the beneficiary of the store. From the looks of it, his parents mostly ran the business, leaving Sam to be the clerk and spend his days here helping customers and reading. This is obviously where he came across Patience. As you can see,” Brutus waved a hand around the room, “he grew obsessed. His parents eventually realized it when they found a shrine in his closet that he’d built to her. They tried for almost a year to have him committed. By then he’d moved to California.”
“He followed her,” I growled.
Brutus nodded. “A judge finally found him incompetent and he was again put into the facility for almost a year. Somehow he was able to convince the doctors that he was stable enough to be discharged. He moved back in with his parents.”
“Why the fuck didn’t they warn Patience?”
Brutus shrugged. “Maybe they thought they could handle it. They likely didn’t know he attacked her or even why he’d moved to California.”
“Where the fuck are they now?” I’d hold them accountable for this situation just as much as I would their crazy, fucked up son.
“Dead. Six months after he was discharged they died in a car accident. Father was driving and had a blood alcohol content well over the legal limit. But…”
