“How’re you going to explain this?” Sarah prompted. Keep her talking. Form a plan.
“I have a new plan,” Lynda explained in that condescending tone she had mastered. “Poor Jerri Lynn was so distraught over her father’s arrest. I tried to reason with her, but she wouldn’t listen. She blamed the entire situation on you. She ran from the house ranting madly. Of course, I called Ben and told him. He rushed to save you and, well, you both lost in the end. And Jerri Lynn just couldn’t live without her father, so she came home and took a whole bottle of my medication. When I discovered her and tried to wake her, she, of course, was dead, too.”
“There’s this thing,” Sarah decided to mention, “called divorce. You couldn’t take that route?”
“I loved him.” She sighed. “Iwaited so long for him to choose me over her, but he never did. I gave him opportunity after opportunity. Until I’d had enough.” Lynda laughed. “Then all I wanted was for him to suffer. He forced me to bring that selfish brat into the world, and I wanted him to know the pain of losing her. With them both out of the way, everything is mine.”
Damn, what kind of mother hated her child that much? “How did he force you to have a child?” Sarah had to get this spinning-room problem under control so she could make a run for it ... or defend herself somehow. The longer she could keep Lynda distracted, the more time she had to pull herself together.
Lynda sighed again. “He was gone all the time. I never saw him. So I found myself a distraction.” She gestured to the chief. “He wore a uniform, carried a gun, it was fun ... for a while. It didn’t mean anything. But Jerald got suspicious and started pressing the issue of a child. For a while I put him off, but then when those two girls were murdered and left at our regular meeting place, Ben and I decided we were better off as friends. I knew Jerald had figured it out. I knew it was a warning.”
“Took you long enough to figure out a plan,” Sarah muttered. “What were you afraid of?” Had Lynda known Jerald was a killer? If so, that made her one sick bitch.
Lynda reached down, grabbed a handful of Sarah’s hair, and gave her head a shake. “You know who my husband is! I had to wait for the perfect time. When our child was old enough ... when all the circumstances were perfect. Otherwise I’d be dead!”
Sarah gave her head a moment to stop exploding in agony. “Good point,” she agreed, biting back the groan of pain. So she was a sick bitch.
Lynda crouched down to Sarah’s eye level. “After the Enfinger development came to town, people started talking about the curse. I knew the time had come. I began my role. I made Jerald think I was afraid of our daughter. That she was somehow trying to hurt me or to frame me. It worked like a charm. He was so convinced, he took her SUV away the other day. She came home to find a tow truck waiting to haul it to storage. Imagine the poor child’s surprise. How could Daddy be so cruel?” She said the last in a high-pitched whine.
Sarah thought about that a moment. “Your husband is a very smart man. I can’t believe he would be fooled so easily.”
“No more talking.” Lynda shoved a small plastic container at Sarah. “Take these.”
Sarah reached out, took the container. Prescription bottle. She couldn’t read the label without more light. “What is this?”
“Don’t you know?”
The drug found in the Appleton girl’s tox screen. Panic flared in Sarah’s stomach.
“Now, take them,” Lynda ordered. “All of them.”
Sarah’s mind frantically searched for a way to keep her talking or to somehow get out of this ... but she couldn’t think.
“Do it!” Lynda positioned the tip of the knife against the side of Sarah’s neck.
It would take time for the pills to enter her bloodstream.
Maybe if she went along, the bitch would get overconfident and ...
Sarah was screwed.
“I still don’t understand how you got the chief to help you.” She was grasping at straws, but she was damned desperate.
Lynda made a derisive sound. “All I had to do was threaten to tell his wife and my husband, and he did whatever I asked. After all, he wasn’t killing anyone, I was. He whined and cried about it, but he did what he had to. I think he was more afraid of Jerald finding out than his wife.”
Sarah tried to summon another question, couldn’t get her brain to work.
“Take the pills!” Lynda jabbed her with the tip of the knife.
Sarah opened the bottle and looked at the dozen or so pills left inside. More irony. She’d considered doing this very thing, only with sleeping pills, several times as a teenager. But she’d backed out each time. Maybe this was the Big Guy’s way of letting her know He really did exist and she should have started respecting Him long ago.
“Pour all of them into your mouth.” The knife tip pierced Sarah’s skin.
She tipped her head back and let the pills fall into her mouth.
“Now drink.”
Sarah reached for the bottle of water Lynda offered, the nasty taste already leaching into her mouth. She untwisted the top and took a sip, trying her best to keep the dissolving pills from going down her throat.
