AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Yes. “What was on them?” Sam asked, wanting to sound only interested, not desperate. He wasn’t sure he’d succeeded because she grew very serious.
“I have no idea, but he had a lot of them. I only saw inside the safe once, from across the room, but it was filled up. Had to have been twenty or thirty of those drives. Maybe more. The big ones, like a deck of cards. I once asked if they were movies and he laughed and said that they were better than movies. I still don’t know what he meant.”
Now all those hard drives were gone, confiscated by Colton’s killer, and—
Wait. Twenty or thirty? There were only ten in the safe when Colton had been forced to empty it. Assuming that Veronica was right, what had happened to the others?
“Did he have any other hiding places?” Sam asked.
Veronica paled. “Oh my God. What was on them? Please say it wasn’t kiddie porn. Please.”
“I don’t know,” Sam said honestly. “But why did you ask that?”
“Because he likes his ‘pretty young things.’ ” She pointed to herself. “I looked a lot younger than eighteen when he met me. I looked fifteen, tops. He really liked that.”
Sam had to swallow back the bile that burned his throat. “You think he was into child pornography?” Sam asked.
“Honestly? Yeah. I mean, I don’t think he was actively out there abusing kids. He was too scared of getting caught. But he had proxies and these VPNs so he could do untraceable searches. But I didn’t ask questions. By then I was afraid of him.”
“I don’t blame you,” Sam murmured.
She shook her head. “I look back at that year and wonder how I even survived. One time, he hit me with a shovel.”
Laura blanched, then drew a breath. “A shovel? I thought you said he didn’t do manual labor.”
Veronica looked a little startled. “I-I don’t know, he must have been doing manual labor that day. I blacked out after he hit me and I had horrible headaches after, so I didn’t give any more thought as to what he’d been doing with the shovel. I had a concussion for sure. He was a real bastard. I can’t say that I’m sorry he’s dead.”
“I don’t blame you for that, either.” Sam leaned on the picnic table, bracing himself on his forearms. “Did you notice anything different outside when you were able to think again?”
She paled even further. “Did he bury someone in the backyard? Oh my God.”
Sam thought that was entirely possible. “Tell me about the backyard.”
She closed her eyes, trembling. Sam hated that he was making her relive this, but Colton’s partner—whoever he was—would keep killing unless he was stopped. If there was any chance Colton had buried evidence, McKittrick needed to know about it.
“He changed the backyard,” Veronica said slowly. “Yeah, he did. Before the shovel, we had some lawn chairs and a crappy old table. But then later, it was nice. And he had a firepit, but not dug into the ground. It was movable, with a propane tank. Had these pretty rocks. He said he’d made the yard pretty because he was sorry that he’d accidentally hit me with the shovel. But it wasn’t an accident.”
“No, it wasn’t.” Sam’s heart was racing. Whatever—or whoever—Colton had buried, it had to be important. “I’m so sorry you’ve had to remember all this.”
She smiled sadly. “It’s okay. I never really forgot. I just blocked out the most painful stuff. He was... really rough, you know?”
“Sex?” Laura asked gently.
Veronica nodded. “Especially when he’d come back from wherever he went to blow off steam. Like I said, he’d be worse when he came back—and always horny.” She touched her throat. “He was into breath play. Strangling me, you know. Thought he’d kill me a few times.”
Sam remembered Colton’s hands twisting, strangling that bottle in his office. Maybe Colton had just come back from killing someone the night Veronica was remembering. Like Jaelyn or Cecilia or Naomi.
Sam was glad he hadn’t had dinner yet.
“Do you remember when this was?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. All the times just kind of blended together. The only time anyone ever saw the abuse was when Brian saw me at the grocery store and when he and Beth helped me get away. I can ask him when those times were, if that would be helpful.”
“It might be,” Sam said truthfully. He gave her his business card, writing his cell phone number on the back. “Give me a call if you remember anything.”
She took the card. “I will.”
“Can I ask why you didn’t tell the police any of this when they came by last week?” Laura asked.
