He let his arm drop. “Get in the truck.”
“No!”
Again her stomach turned over, but she fought the urge to dry heave and was able to finally straighten.
“Please,” he said softly as over the fading scream of sirens, a motorcycle whined in the distance. “Get into the pickup.”
“I. I. I just can’t.”
He grabbed her then and she fought him, wildly, violently hitting him, wanting to kick and scream and rail at the heavens in her guilt and frustration. Jase held her tight, refusing to let go, allowing her hands to beat his chest impotently, almost as if he welcomed the pain she inflicted as if it were somehow a kind of penance. A balm for all the guilt and torment he, too, had suffered.
Slowly her sobbing subsided and she let her balled fists fall to her sides as she realized what she was doing, how her anger was misdirected.
Still he held her, drawing her even closer, whispering to her. “Let it all out.”
What the hell was she doing fighting ghosts, charging at windmills, focusing her own pain in the wrong direction? For a second she listened to the rhythmic beat of his heart, slow and steady. Comforting. And she closed her eyes to drink in the smell of him as her thoughts swirled not only with images of Arianna, but of Zoe Denning, Selma, and Chloe, she finally stopped, her strength gone.
Chloe. That poor girl.
Brianna blinked suddenly. Opened her eyes to stare up at the man looking down so intently at her. His eyes were filled with pain and all his pride seemed to have dissolved in their struggle. “I said, ‘I’m sorry,’” he repeated so sincerely, her heart nearly broke.
“So am I,” she admitted, then pushed herself out of the arms that held her so intimately against him. What was she thinking, letting him comfort her? “Just drive,” she ordered, as the motorcycle roared by. “Just . . . get in and drive.”
She made her way to his damned truck and hoisted herself inside without his assistance. As he slid behind the wheel and engaged the gears, her heart bled one more time and in this instance she realized her pain was because of the torture he’d obviously been through ever since witnessing Arianna being attacked.
From the opposite direction, a huge truck piled high with bales of hay rolled by but she barely noticed as Jase eased the truck onto the pavement, then hit the gas.
Dashing the tears from her eyes, Brianna squared her shoulders and fixed her gaze through the bug spattered windshield, staring forward to the ever-lowering sun. Whatever fantasies she’d had about Jase Bridges had to be squashed. Forever. The teenage crush. The sexy dreams. The daytime thoughts. All had to be abolished.
Right now she’d concentrate on their destination: the Tillman farm where, she hoped beyond hope, they would find Chloe.
Alive.
From her underground jail cell, Chloe heard him arrive, the excited yips of the dog, the heavy tread on the floor above. So this was it. He was back to kill her. She wondered about Zoe and prayed that her sister was alive. Please, God, save her, she thought as she heard the latch on the lock click open, then the scrape of the ladder as he was readying it to be slid into this rotten-smelling prison.
God, she hated it here, and it pissed her off to think that she would die here, rot here, her body left for who knew how long. She thought of her family, not just Zoe, but her mom and dad. She’d been so mad at her dad for leaving them, for marrying her damned cousin, for having a new set of babies who were her brothers and her second cousins or something as ridiculous all rolled into one, but now, in this darkness, knowing she was about to die, she forgave her father and wished that just once more she could see all the members of her family again, including CJ and Jayden, who were innocents in her father’s drama.
The hatch opened fast. Trapdoor hitting the floor above.
Chloe startled, jumped, and her bonds pulled tighter, pain streaking down her shoulders, agony ripping through her back muscles. At least the torture would end with her death.
Quickly he descended. Faster than usual.
She closed her eyes, didn’t want him to see that she’d given up, that her fear had evaporated into acceptance. Just get it over with, she thought.
“Well, it’s not your birthday,” he said as both booted feet landed on the floor, “but it is your lucky day.”
Her heart pounded and for the briefest of seconds she thought he might let her go. No such luck. “Today, bitch, you die.” He said the sentence without inflection, without a lick of emotion. “So let’s get ready.”
She peered through the slit of a nearly closed eye and saw him cutting lengths of the red ribbon, for what purpose, she had no idea. She wanted to scream at him, ask him about Zoe, but she didn’t. What did it matter? Her curiosity would die with her in this subterranean hell.
He was whistling now, that same damned birthday song, as if reliving his intention of killing them on their birthdays though God only knew how many days had passed since she’d actually turned twenty-one. She had no idea of time but belatedly realized that her sister must be dead. He’d been adamant about Zoe dying first, so if he was back here, it meant that part of his mission had been accomplished.
Bastard!
Sadness welled deep within her, but no tears came. She’d cried them all and now . . .
He turned and reached down, intent on placing the ribbons around her in some precise manner. For his ritual. But he had to move her, it seemed, adjust her so that the rope binding her was perfect, the ribbons in place. As he leaned closer, she looked up beneath the veil of her lashes, to his bruised throat, evidence of her miserable attempt to kill him.
It hadn’t worked.
He was tough.
But the inside of his throat was vulnerable.
If she could somehow reach it—
He placed a hand on her and she saw his neck stretched over her.
She could bite him! If she had the guts, all she had to do was clamp her teeth down on his Adam’s apple. He’d never suspect . . . Oh dear God. Could she? Yes!
Quick as a snake striking, she lunged with her whole body, her mouth open wide.
“What?” he cried as she bit, sinking her teeth as far as she could into his throat.
“AAARrrrrrgh!”
He squealed as she clamped down hard. Blood—thick, salty, and warm—rushed into her mouth and ran down her own chin as he stumbled to his knees, then stood and tried to shake her off. Flesh ripped beneath her sharp incisors.
“You fucking bitch,” he hissed, his voice destroyed, red spit flinging from his mouth.
She held on, clenching her teeth together as he roared and threw his head, this way, then the other. Screaming and stumbling, he flailed, trying to pull her off him, but she suffered his blows, thinking all the time of Zoe and knowing she would never survive.
Well, damn it, if she was going to die, this fucker was going with her!
He threw himself against the wall, rattling her bones and snapping her head back. But she didn’t let go, her jaw locked as she slithered down the wall and in a horrible tearing of flesh, part of his throat ripped and she nearly choked on the thick piece in her mouth.
He fell to the side and gurgled, thrashing as blood spurted from the gaping hole in his neck. And over the noise of his death throes, she heard other sounds, sirens screaming in the distance, and on the floor above, the damned dog barking like crazy.
Please, she thought desperately, unable to move, bound as she was. Please, please save me.
He was moaning, a rippling sound, coughing on his own blood, gasping wetly and lying not ten feet from her, the red ribbon unraveled over his body and drenched in his blood. Overhead she heard shouts and footsteps, the dog’s barking quieted, men shouting.
I don’t want to die.
“Down here!” a deep voice cautioned.
“Careful!” Female voice.
“Police!” Deep voice again. “Bridges, come out!”
“Help me!” she yelled, though her voice was faint and she had to spit ag
ainst the remnants of the freak’s skin, muscle, and blood in her mouth and then as the thought gagged, causing her body to spasm and her bonds to tighten. She nearly passed out.
“Holy shit.” A man from the room above. “We’ve got a victim!”
“Police! Bridges, come out with your hands up! Throw down your weapons.”
“He’s dying,” she said, and hoped to hell she was right, because she was certain she, too, was leaving this earth. With shouting and footsteps overhead and the rasping final gasps of the man next to her, she closed her eyes and let the calming blackness roll over her.
Bracing himself, his sidearm drawn, Bentz yelled into the dark cavity beneath the Tillman farm’s cabin floor. “Bridges!” he ordered for the third time in as many minutes. “Lay down your weapons! Put your hands over your head and come out!”
No response. Just darkness and the dank smell from a basement that should never have been carved out of lowland soil wafted upward.
Damn it.
A low moan issued from the basement.
“Let’s go!” Montoya, as usual, was pulling at the bit.
This time Bentz agreed and as his flashlight beam washed over the small room below, he saw the dark stain of blood running to a drain in the dark cement. The bruiser of a man who appeared identical, at least facially, to Jason Bridges lay on his side. His throat had been slashed and a dark gaping hole existed where once had been his Adam’s apple. As if his neck had been ripped apart by a hungry wolf. “Jesus.”
Nearby, lying on her back, blood smeared over her lips, her body naked and bound was Chloe Denning. Unmoving. Her skin so white as to be nearly blue, her eyes open.
His heart sank.
They were too late.
“Get the paramedics! Now!” Bentz yelled to Montoya as he swung into the opening and dropped onto the blood-soaked cement floor.
He reached Chloe, checked her pulse and fought the nausea that always found him at a homicide scene.
“Come on, come on,” he whispered to the still girl, willing her heart to beat. But his pleas were for nothing.
If Chloe Denning was alive, she was hanging on by the thinnest of threads.
“Hey! Can’t you read?” a policeman shouted as Jase, ignoring the barricade of police cars and stretched yellow tape, strode through a swarm of cops and EMTs. He was headed toward the small cabin where he now knew his twin brother was holed up.
If Jacob was alive, he was going to meet him. If the son of a bitch was already dead, then he wanted confirmation that his twin had actually existed. Damn. How had he not known? Where the hell was all that twin karma and connection he’d heard about, that Brianna spouted, when he’d needed it. Anger fueled his strides and clenched his fists as he made his way along a patchy, weed-strewn lane. Determination drew him toward the shabby structure that was little more than a shack while lights bars on the parked vehicles flashed wildly against the surrounding fields and forest.
“Didn’t you hear me? Stop. There! Right now!” A cop, identified as Deputy Bill Morrison, was yelling and approaching fast.
From somewhere behind him Jase heard Brianna’s voice. “Jase! Don’t! Please.” As if she were actually frightened for him. The same woman who had tried to beat him to a pulp only minutes before, the same woman who had iced him out on the rest of their short journey to this God-forsaken scrap of land. Now she cared?
“It’s all right.” Another voice. Belonging to Rick Bentz. “Stand down,” he told the other cop as he walked from the direction of the cabin toward Jase.
“But—”
“I said, ‘It’s all right.’ Stand the fuck down!” Bentz glowered at the deputy and the younger cop, turning a bright red, holstered his weapon. To Jase, Bentz said, “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I need to meet my brother.”
“Too late.” Bentz was shaking his head.
“Then to see him.” Jase met the reservation in Bentz’s eyes. “I have to.”
“I don’t think—”
“I have to.”
A muscle worked in Bentz’s jaw and he glanced over at his partner. Montoya hitched his goateed chin toward one of the two ambulances on the grounds. The other was taking off, wheels spinning, lights flashing, siren wailing. The second was in no hurry.
“This way,” Bentz said and headed toward the ambulance where the back doors were still open, a body bag within. With a look to one of the attendants, Bentz said, “We need to open it up.”
The EMT hesitated, then unzipped the bag, the sound a hiss that curled through Jase’s soul as he found himself staring into a face so like his own that if it weren’t for the unshaven jaw, mussed hair, and sightless, fixed eyes he might have been looking into a mirror. Blood was everywhere across a hairy torso and his neck, hell, it looked like it had been ripped apart by a wild animal.
Jase’s knees weakened.
This was his twin? The brother who had been conceived with him, who had grown with him in a bitter womb? A hundred thoughts flashed through Jase’s brain, pictures of a mother he didn’t remember, memories devoid of this person, so like him, so damned opposite.
All the breath left his lungs in a rush and he felt as if he’d been hit, a hard jab to the solar plexus. “Son of a bitch,” he whispered, knowing the truth, feeling something stir deep inside him, a connection that was quickly severed with the reality of who this monster was.
His brother, the twin he’d never known, Jacob Bridges was, indeed, the 21 Killer, a psychopath who had killed at least three sets of twins and probably more, a soulless monster who bore his own face.
Bile rose up his throat and he took a step back. With a nod from Bentz, the attendant quickly zipped the bag and slid it into the back of the ambulance.
“No. Hell. No.” Jase shook his head, as if negating the truth could make it so. “Damn it!” His knees wobbled a bit but he somehow remained on his feet and a second later he felt slim fingers surround his.
“It . . . it’ll be all right,” Brianna said, squeezing his hand. He turned to look at her, felt a glaze of tears over his eyes and blinked it back to see that her gaze, too, was shimmering, a tiny drop rolling down her cheek. “It’ll be all right.”
His heart swelled for the briefest of instants and he saw her smile. Bravely, he thought and he couldn’t do the same.
Brianna was lying of course.
It would never be all right.
Never.
But at least it would be over.
EPILOGUE
October
Jase found a beer in the refrigerator and cracked it open, then took a deep swallow. As he stepped onto the back porch of the farmhouse, he stared across the rolling acres to the tree where for years he’d believed a body had been buried. He’d been wrong. As his father had pronounced all those months ago, and as Prescott had confirmed. The old man had taken off, cashed the check, and Jase hadn’t heard from him since, but Prescott had explained that the assailant who had raped Arianna had been an associate of Ed’s, someone to whom the old man owed money.
The guy hadn’t been dead, but had agreed to disappear; Ed’s debt was then forgiven, any rape charge unable to be pinned on a faceless man. Prescott didn’t know the rapist’s name, and Ed would take that bit of information with him to the grave.
Nonetheless, Jase had gone to the police and told his tale. Though the clock on the statute of limitations had run out on any charges that might have occurred during the fight, Jase had lost any chance he’d had of getting the job with the police department.
As well as any chance he’d had with Brianna. She hadn’t spoken to him since he’d stood over the dead body of his brother in the body bag, and he didn’t really blame her.
So he’d bought out Prescott and moved here, his only companion a red hound dog that had been found on the Tillman property, probably belonging to his brother. The dog warned him when visitors arrived and was content to curl up at his feet in the evening. Good company. As much as he wanted now.
At least Chloe Denning had survived. She’d been traumatized, of course, but she was going to live while his brother, Jacob, the 21 Killer had not. The police had finally closed the case on that one with the evidence collected at the cabin, including the red ribbon that matched ribbon found on previous victims in California. In searching the cabin, the police had also discovered the grave of a woman buried within the walls of the cell. DNA testing was back, the woman was the owner of the property, Milo’s sister, Myra, the woman Jacob had loved and murdered; though according to both Chloe and Zoe Denning, he’d acted as if Myra were alive and the brains behind his crimes. The police had located his cell phone, again in Myra’s name, but never charged or minutes purchased. The phone was little more than a prop.
His twin had been a bona-fide psychopath. Crazy and sadistic. Ritualistic. A killer who had taken the life of his lover, Myra, and maybe, just maybe their mother. Before he turned his attention to twins. The theory was that because he’d killed Myra when she was turning 21, he tried to replay the scenario with twins, all because he knew he, too, was a twin. Yeah, the Denning girls were right, Jacob Bridges was a freak. As well as his damned brother. Go figure.
Jase had finally come to terms with that sorry fact as well as resolved, in his mind, Arianna’s death. Had she committed suicide? No one would ever know, but his guilt was lessening. He doubted he could have saved her from herself or the accident. No one could have. Not even Brianna.
Now as he sat on the porch rail and drank his beer, Jase watched the dog chasing squirrels near the tree where he’d been certain his own victim had been buried.
He was still pissed at Prescott for that one. The old man? Well, he was who he was and Jase would never forgive him, but Prescott? Really? He wasn’t certain the fences between his only surviving brother and himself would ever be mended and it hurt a little when he considered his niece and nephews. Maybe someday . . . damn he hoped he could watch those two and the new baby, another boy, grow up. Somehow he’d have to find a way to forgive Prescott for his lies and secrets.