Chapter 35

thirty-five

Wrenlee

I don’t feel well at all. But I’m having such a hard time moving my body, I’m afraid if I let myself vomit, I’d choke to death on it. Whatever she gave me has turned my body into a deadweight, my limbs as useless as wet noodles. Sweat prickles like needles over my skin, but I feel cold. My body doesn’t know which way is up or down, but as we drive into the dirt road of an abandoned factory, visions of horror movies and true crime documentaries bombard my mind.

The level of queasiness rises about ten notches, until I’m forcing myself to swallow bile.

“Wh-y are we—h-here?” It’s so hard to force my tongue to move.

“Payment,” she says simply. “He took everything from my sister, and so I’m taking everything from him. Tit for tat, sweetie, it’s only fair.”

“Sis-ter?”

She slams on the breaks hard, skidding on gravel, and my body pitches forward. The side of my head connects with the dash even though I’ve tried to lock my body into the seat. My body isn’t working. It’s numb. Immoveable. Uncontrollable.

Pain explodes inside my head and bright lights burst inside my eyes. For a moment, they remind me of the starburst auras I get before one of my rare migraines. Or the after-glitch in vision after looking too long at something too bright.

She huffs dramatically, her hand moving into my hair at the back of my head as she yanks, pulling me back into place.

In my mind, I cry out. In reality, nothing sounds in the space between us but Alice’s bitter, “My sister! The girlfriend he had before he had you. Alyssa.”

Why does that name sound familiar?Who names one daughter Alice and the other Alyssa?

Alice keeps talking. “She was going to have his baby, you know? Then he saw you and everything fell apart. He kicked her to the curb just like that.” She snaps her fingers. “She begged him. Pleaded. He wouldn’t listen.”

Inside my chest, my heart is rioting. I whisper, “Sh-ewas—pre-g-nant?”

“Not yet.” Alice rolls her eyes to the ceiling of the car. “But she was trying. We were going to finally have a family. We were going to be happy.”

She’s crazy. This woman is truly crazy. Certifiable.

Loony-freaking-toons.

I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone clinically insane in my life. I don’t know what to do, but as the realization that I might not be able to communicate effectively or even emotionally with her settles, so does the suffocating fear.

My lips part on a gasp for breath my lungs can’t pull in fast enough. I’m on the edge of panic.

Even if she would listen to me, I’m not sure that I could physically speak enough to get through to her.

“Whayoooug’do-w-me?” The words don’t come as I’d like, and neither do the tears. I’d prefer the tears struggle to flow as much as the words, but luck just isn’t on my side today. They leak from my eyes, my panic and fear boldly on display.

Alice sniffs as a sneer of disgust curls her painted lips. Then she’s out of the car and moving around to my side. The door flings open and terror unlike anything I’ve ever felt surges inside my body. She’s going to kill me. Alice truly means to kill me. The realization fuels me just enough to have my body pitching into the console—still not enough to escape her though.

But that’s when I see it. Pulled up from the depths of me is a bloodcurdling scream that sears my lungs and scorches my airways. Still, the sound that escapes me is nothing more than a squeak.

Tears leak faster, pouring now.

There is a body in the back seat. A middle-aged woman with blonde hair and cracked, dry maroon painted lips. The blanket that had been tossed over her body must have fallen away when Alice slammed the breaks, the body rolling forward just enough for me to see the blade imbedded in the woman’s belly, the bright red pooling around the creamy white of her sweater now dark, crusty, and dry. Her skin has a pale touch that makes me think she’s been dead for more than a couple hours.

Oh my God. God, please. Please save me.

I pray. I scream my prayer inside my mind, willing my body to fight.

Nothing.

“Oh, I see you’ve met Karen. I don’t know if that’s her name, but she scowled at me like a Karen would when I asked for help last night. All I asked was to borrow her car.”

“Oooki-lled h-er?” I push the words past the sick fear building inside me, coating my tongue, as Alice pulls me from the car roughly. Alice doesn’t answer me.

My legs aren’t working nearly well enough to stand, and I crumble to the pebbly, dust covered ground. Alice lets out a rough groan of annoyance, the toe of her boot connecting with the side of my ribs in frustration.

“Fucking stand up.”

My mind and body are connected by a thin, fraying thread. I can’t react the way I want to. I have no control of my limbs. In my mind, I’m shaking like the last leaf clinging to a barren tree in a cold, frosty wind. On the outside, my body is still and calm—the storm raging entirely unseen.

Alice gives me one more kick to the stomach and has little more than a soft ‘oomph’ tumbling from between my lips before she moves to the back of the car. She’s talking to herself, saying words I don’t understand as she pulls a large blue square from the trunk.

At my side again, she unwraps the blue square and I recognize it as a tarp. For a long moment, my mind rejects the sight of it. She can’t mean to roll me up in a tarp. I’m a human girl—a young woman with my whole life ahead of me.

My only sin—in her eyes—is that I fell for a man she considers another’s. I’ve never even met Alyssa. But people are allowed to fall in and out of love. People are allowed to move on with their life if a relationship isn’t working. How can she think this is okay? How can she think it’s right to end my life because her sister had her heart broken?

Because she’s certifiably insane, whispers the little voice in the back of my mind.

I want to scream, even try as Alice’s hands grip me hard, rolling my body into the tarp. She settles me on my back on the hard pebbly ground, crouching down over me. I want to hit her with everything I have inside me. I want to break her nose and her crazy ass spirit as she looks down at me with that hate in her eyes.

How had I thought this woman was my friend. How had I felt bad for her—so bad I invited her into my home?

I hate her now. Fiercely.

Everything about her looks ugly and hateful to me.

She’s going to kill me.

I want to cry.

Thoughts of Dad assault me more vicious than a blade slicing into my heart. I’m all he has in this whole big world. Me, work, and his cats. He’s going to be so hurt. The little flame he let burn inside him when my mom walked out—for me—will die when I die. I just know it.

Will he have to live the rest of his life wondering what happened to his baby? Will they find my body? Will my body give him closure—just enough closure to move on?

Or will I rest forever in an unmarked grave, the memory of me a ghost to haunt the few I had time to love and love me in return?

Alice’s lips part and hateful words spill out. “You should have gone home for Thanksgiving.” I want to claw her eyes from her very skull. Violence and hate fill me like I’ve never felt it—like I thought I could never feel it. I want to do her physical harm for the hurt she’s going to deliver to the people I love by killing me like this.

She continues, “I told you clearly that you never know how long you have. If you’d gone home,” she presses thumb and finger together. “You’d have had just a bit more time. You could have said goodbye to Daddy. Maybe even told him you love him. But you chose to stay here with Cash fucking Jagger.” She sneers with venom. “I can’t wait to see his face when he realizes his little piece is gone forever. More,” she laughs. It’s high and shrill like the cry of a hyena. The sound is like nails scraping over my bone, my entire skeleton quivering beneath my skin. “When he realizes he’s the reason your pretty, sweet little flame is snuffed—oh, that’s going to be good. Truly,” She kisses her fingertips exaggeratedly. “Chef’s kiss.”

Crazy. She’s crazy.

She moves to the head of the tarp, twisting the material loudly in her hands before she yanks, pulling me away from the car. “I’m still surprised I didn’t succeed with the arsenic.” She cackles. “Yep, that was me. It was soooo easy to get behind the counter. All I had to do was flirt with that boy just a little, and he let me stay with him while he closed the cafe. It wasn’t hard to sprinkle just a little bit into the stack of cups. Totally random and not enough to kill anyone, or so I thought.” She shrugs. “Must have just been that lady’s time, you know, the one that died? Because the only one that got a lethal dose was you. But you just kept on kicking.”

A large rock hits the base of my spine and my lips part, even as no sound escapes.

Alice keeps on talking. “I’d been sleeping with the café owner, you know? So, when Alyssa was fucked over by Cash, I knew just what it felt like to be scorned. When she attempted to end her life rather than be without him—I knew he had to pay. I also knew I couldn’t teach Cash a lesson without teaching the asshole who fucked me over one, too. But if I killed his wife, he’d have probably thanked me. He hated the bitch, but he wouldn’t leave her. The café, though? He loves that sack of shit place.” She laughs, sounding like the lunatic she is. “Turns out having people poisoned by a disgruntled employee at a coffee house is enough to really give sales a kick in the nuts. I doubt he’ll ever recover, cheating pig.”

My mind is spinning, reeling—because there is a young, innocent boy in prison for a murder he did not commit. Just another victim of Alice’s.

How many people has she killed. I already know of two—how many more can there be?

How many more will there be after me?

She drops the tarp and stands back to catch her breath, hands on her hips as she looks out over the abandoned land that will become my eternal resting place. Grief and panic war at the thought, but I’m helpless. I can’t even speak, my tongue so heavy in my mouth. The only thing I can do is think—my mind is sharp as a tac.

“You know, you’re my hardest yet,” she admits softly. “I actually kind of like you, and that’s saying something because I’m really not a people person. But you’re nice. Genuinely nice. A little stupid, but nice.” She shrugs. “So, I am sorry for this. But it must be done. Cash’s crimes can’t go without response. He needs to learn that he can’t mess around with hearts like that.”

With those words, she rounds to the side of my body and pushes me away from her. I fall into a hole. A legit hole in the ground.

A grave.

My grave.

I begin to sob. It’s quiet and pleading, but there’s no mistaking the desperation and fear. “P-pl-ease.”

“One sec. I’ll be right back.” I hear the crinkle of the tarp as Alice disappears, and take that time to study the hole I’m in. It’s not deep. Once covered there might be a foot of dirt over my body, maybe two at most.

Oh my God—over my body…

A foot of dirt over my body.

In a grave.

I’m going to be in a grave.

I am in a grave.

Maybe I’ll be able to dig my way out.

Alice turns and a tiny scream knifes from my lungs as the body of the woman thuds next to me—facing me. Her eyes are open wide and unseeing. I wish I knew her name. I can’t call her Karen, the disrespect for who this woman was—for the family she’s leaving behind—is too much to call her anything but her name.

I force my eyes away from the woman, struggling to keep the sick in the pit of my belly so I don’t choke to death on it. I’d rather choke to death on dirt.

The thought is sobering, because the reality is I probably will.

“Pl-ease.” I choke out again. I think my bottom lip wobbles. A quiver. A muscle twitch that makes me hopeful whatever she gave me is wearing off, if only a little.

I concentrate on my fingertips. There’s a twitch.

I don’t have enough awareness or control to really move my body. Everything still feels sluggish and muddy, like I’m swimming through seaweed that’s tugging my body under murky water.

My heart, though, is like a fish out of water. Gasping. Thrashing. Dying slowly.

I don’t want to die.

I’m not ready to stop living. I have dreams. Hopes. I want to make my dad a grandfather, because he loves kids—and fishing. He’d love to take his grandchild fishing…

I want a family, babies. I want them with Cash.

Cash.

My heart weeps. The echo of his deep voice rumbling, “Where’s my goodnight kiss, Kitten,” almost stops my heart right there. The pain is so sharp, so acute and focused, it’s as though I’ve been stabbed. For a moment, I think maybe I have been. Like the woman in the shallow grave beside me.

“Well, this is it.” Alice lets her hands fall with a sharp slap against her thighs. “I’m going to tell you how this is going to go down, okay?”

She doesn’t wait for me to answer before she powers on, talking as though she’s leaving me to study—not to die in the shallow grave she dug next to a woman she gutted.

Tears are still leaking from my eyes, trailing a river down my temples into my hair. My face is going to be all over the news. I’ll be a missing person—for how long?

I want to scream.

I can’t scream.

“I’m going to put this tarp over y’all now. It’s a mercy, really. It’s a shallow grave, by design. I want him to find you. I want him to find you and be too late.” She smiles, but it’s twisted with something that looks like regret and malice. She doesn’t want to do this to me, but she wants to do it to him more than she wants to let me go. “You’d suffer more with the dirt alone. There’d be pockets of air. It would prolong the inevitable. But with the tarp, it’ll be heavy on your face. You can’t move, so you can’t fight it. You’ll fall asleep. It’ll be painless, mostly.” She crouches down, and her fingertips are cold as she runs them almost tenderly over the side of my face. “I tried not to like you, but I did. I tried to make it fast and painless, but you held on. You kept holding onto him.” She pulls her hand back, and I do my best to plead with whatever shreds of humanity she has lurking inside her with my eyes. “It has to be this way. He must believe you suffered. That you were afraid. That he’s the reason you took your last breath like this. Agonized and alone. Like he made her.”

The tears roll faster now. I’m so close to the end, I can feel it.

She stands and reaches for the tarp again but stops. “I almost forgot.” She pulls my phone from the band of her leggings. “I’m just going to tuck this right here.” She sets the phone at the very tip of my fingertips, knowing I can’t shift, can’t force my body to move enough to grasp for it. To save myself.

This is torture. Agony.

She’s cruel.

To even have these thoughts. To manipulate this way, by such twisted design—she must be evil. There’s no other explanation. Nothing.

“There. A picture of devastation.” Her hand touches her chest as she takes in her work. “It’s poetic, really. He’s going to find you like this. A call away. God, he’s called so much. He’s overbearing, really, I don’t know how you stood for it.” She shakes her head in disgust. “Anyway, he’s going to find you like this, knowing you suffered. Knowing you knew you were surrounded by death, pulled under by death and there wasn’t a thing he could do to save you.”

“Whaa—”

She leans down, arched brows raised. “Hmm?”

“What a-re you g’do?”

“What am I going to do?” She touches her chest again. “How thoughtful of you to ask. See, you really are nice. Sucks you had the shit sense to get messed up with Cash Jagger.” She makes a disgusted sound. “I’m going to save my sister. We’re going to go somewhere better than here. Somewhere we can start over and build our own family. Maybe we’ll have our own child—of course not our own because that’s impossible—but there are so many kids with crappy parents. So many sad faces. I see them every day. Me and Alyssa could be better for one of those kids.” She gives a small lift of her shoulder. “She’s always wanted to be a mom, and kids go missing every day. The police hardly even look for them. They become just another file, ya know?” Her brow furrows in thought. “Really, it’s a sad world we live in.”

She’s going to kidnap a child. This murdering psycho is planning to kidnap a child—for her sister—so that she can be a mother.

She’s batshit crazy.

I suddenly want to fight her. My fingers twitch again.

“Anyway, that’s what I’m going to do, so don’t you worry your nice little mind about me. And we both know what you’re going to do.” She gives a small chuckle, wrinkling her nose. “Bad joke. Whoopsie.”

How could I have ever thought we were friends? She’s always been unhinged. There were so many signs I should have seen that I swept under the rug, excused away.

“It’s lights out now.” She sings as she folds the tarp over my body, my heart pounding a drum in my chest that echoes in my ears.

When the first shovel of dirt connects with my belly, I think I lose all the air in my lungs right there.

I’m being buried alive, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Nothing I can do to save myself.

Another shovel follows by another and another and another. I’m gasping for breath now, desperate. When the dirt connects with the tarp over my face, I feel as though I’m being waterboarded. Already, I can’t breathe.

Terror bubbles in my lungs as I open my mouth wide to drag in breath. My head is already angled slightly to the side—the side where the dead woman lays with her wide unseeing eyes on me. I have to turn my head to the side if I’m going to survive this. If I can just wait this out long enough to use my limbs—to claw myself free. It’s going to be made so much harder to do that, I realize, because the tarp acts like a tomb, encasing me in.

Panic blurs my vision, or maybe it’s lack of oxygen now. Or even the weight of the earth on my chest, pressing into every inch of my body.

My mind goes wild. Images of earthy claws bursting from the deep of the ground beneath me to slice into my flesh, hooking taloned earth covered bone around the bloody handles of my ribs, pulling me down, down, down.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I will away the fear—the delusions I know aren’t real but manifestations of my terror, and I concentrate. I put every effort into twisting my head just that much to the side, so that my face is sharing air with the dead woman. At least, for now, there is air.

But it’s only a matter of time. I know it like I know if I were cut, I’d bleed red.

The air will run out.

Stop panicking. Stop freaking out, Wrenlee,I encourage myself silently. It’s only going to make the air run out faster.

But who wants to prolong this?

I don’t want to die.

Please, God, don’t let me die. Not like this.

It’s quiet under here, but I can still hear the sound of tires crunching over gravel as Alice drives away, leaving me alone with the dead woman in the shallow grave she made for me.