“You plan to kill Kenny?” I turn to glare at Desmond. “You bastard.”
Desmond flicks the barrel toward the front door. “Stop stalling. I stole the bird to keep Jim occupied so that I could go after what I really wanted. Now get inside and give me the show I’ve been waiting for. I’ve even got a fun little setup for you in there so that your new friends can watch me rape you until you beg for death.”
“You’re fucking gross, you know that?”
“You have no idea, princess. Now move those feet while you still can.”
As I grip the handle and open the metal door, the metallic stink of blood rushes toward me. I cover my nose and take an instinctive step backward, but Desmond blocks my exit. Then my eyes adjust to the darkness, and I see the reason for the smell.
In the corner, Desmond’s lanky friend lies in a crumpled pile. A discolored tongue lolls from his swollen, purple face. The skin on his neck nearly obscures the rope cinched around it. Blood pools beneath a few shallow defensive wounds in his arms.
“What the fuck did you do to him?” I ask as I move toward the opposite corner.
Desmond closes the door behind him and locks it. “He started asking too many questions, and when he followed me here, I had to take care of him.”
“And why me?”
Desmond steps toward me. When he reaches out to run his fingers through my hair, I pull away. He lowers his hand with a scowl, then slaps me. My head rocks to the side, but I don’t give him the pleasure of a yelp. I straighten my spine and brush my hair out of my face, staring at him and daring him to do it again.
“Why you?” he says as he appraises me. “You’d love for it to be because you’re so beautiful, wouldn’t you? It should be some enigmatic quality that I see within, but it’s not. It has nothing to do with you and everything to do with my very specific needs.”
He places the gun on a side table near Kenny, who perches on a branch jutting through a broken board. A tiny chain around his scaly ankle keeps him fastened there. He keeps picking at the clip connecting the chain’s tail to itself, and I can only hope he figures it out and pulls a Lassie for me.
What is it, Kenny? Quinn’s stuck in the old treehouse?
A plastic zipper bag is shoved into my hands, pulling me out of the rescue fantasy. “Put this on,” Desmond says. “I’ll even give you a bit of privacy.” He motions toward a wooden door in the back wall.
“No thanks,” I say with a smirk, and I begin stripping off my shirt. I refuse to give him an ounce of power over me.
I pull the clothing from the bag. The shorts drop to the floor as I hold up the shirt and try to make out the design in the dim light. It looks like a vintage band tee from the eighties, but I don’t recognize the name of the band. Still, the shirt is somehow...familiar.
“Put it on,” Desmond says with a widening smile. “I can’t wait to see you in it.”
I roll my eyes and swallow the unease when I spy a dark stain near a slash in the shirt’s side. I’ve watched enough episodes ofCriminal Mindsto know what’s going on. He’s dressing me like one of his past victims so that he can relive some fantasy. Gross.
My gaze darts around the room, trying to focus on anything other than the asshole in front of me. A monitor and webcam sit on the floor on one side. An ax hangs above the side table beside Kenny. Aside from all that and the single dangling light bulb, the room is empty.
Seeing no way out, I ease the shirt over my body and pull the shorts from the floor with a cock of my head. “Have you seen the size of my ass, Lord Fuckwad? I can’t fit my right thigh in these things, let alone my waist.”
He nods and appraises me again. “Yes, you look just like her in the face. Same golden hair and bright green eyes. It’s a shame you didn’t learn how to push yourself away from the table.”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t get indignant. Your mother might have been a fatty had she not loved meth more than she lovedyou.”
Rage coils low in my gut, and I breathe through the urge to hurl myself at him and claw out his stupid eyes. “You didn’t know my mother.”
“Oh, have I struck a nerve?” He chuckles and steps closer. “I did know your mother, Quinn. I knew her before you did. My da sent me to America at a young age to learn all about his business, and your mother was one of our best clients. A beautiful, strung-out junkie who was willing to get dicked down for her next fix.”
“Shut up!”
“I wasn’t a killer when I met her. At the time, I didn’t even know what I was capable of. That didn’t come until your little boyfriend chose to murder my father.”
My chin begins to quiver, and I take a step back, then another. Before I know it, my back is against the door in the most literal sense, and I have nowhere left to run. I look down at the shirt, and a memory flashes in my mind. I see my mother, smiling as she points at the starry sky. Colors explode, and her hand slips from mine.
“This is the shirt my mother wore the night she disappeared.”
“That’s right, Quinn, but she didn’t disappear. She’s been here the entire time.” He tosses his head back and laughs as I try not to puke on my feet. “It was entirely too simple. I made an offer she couldn’t refuse, and she fell right into my lap. While you were bleating like a little lost lamb, your mother was bleeding out. I’ve been chasing that moment since that night, and I’ve never experienced it again, but when I heard that Jim planned to buy Laughter Park?—”
