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Connor took the glass from her when she nearly dropped it, pressed his lips to her nape. “This might be a good place to stop, baby. Give yourself time to recharge.”
Jenna rubbed her eyes. “Can I ask a question?”
Hadley nodded. “Ask as many as you like. I’ll answer what I can.”
“How many has there been, do you know? I’m Twenty-Two, and Twenty-Three was trained. But the ones he brought in who didn’t make his grade, the ones he killed because they disappointed him, they weren’t given a number. They died without a name.”
Hadley ran a hand through his hair, eyes shadowed. “You would have been the fifty-fourth, over an eighteen-year timespan.”
It left her reeling. She stared at him blindly, imagining how many women had suffered the way she had. So many lives disrupted, ruined. So many fragile throats in Sire’s hands.
“I didn’t know.”
“No one could expect you to, Jenna.”
She couldn’t process it. Couldn’t fathom it. She’d seen evidence of his sickness, experienced it first-hand, but this? This went beyond sickness into insanity. To steal fifty-four women, abduct them andteachthem, only to snuff out their lives when he got bored of them...he was a bored child ruled by the essence of the devil.
“Can you remember how far you walked, Jenna? What direction you approached the bar from? Any landmarks you could identify your route with?” Hadley had already clicked the recorder back on, looking a little green.
Moving onto safer topics, giving himself—and her—time to level out again.
“It was night when I ran. Not fast, I couldn’t go fast, I was too weak, and it was so cold...” Images of the darkened wood came to mind, the shadows where she imagined Sire lurked, waiting to pounce. Remembered how fear had driven her faster than she’d thought capable, boosted by her imagination. “I think I dozed for an hour maybe, near dawn? Couldn’t do anything but stumble along, nearly crawling at one point. Then it grew dark again.”
Hadley pinned Connor with a look. “Can you recall what time Jenna came into the bar?”
“Eleven-thirty or thereabouts. I wasn’t far off leaving. I’d had a beer, nursed it a couple hours while I talked with Cain as he handled the bar. I go in once a week to catch up with him if we haven’t seen each other. I’d have been on my way home ten minutes later.”
Ten minutes. Jenna clutched his jeans in her fingers as it dawned on her things could’ve been a lot worse if he hadn’t been there. If she’d tripped and fallen, lain on the frosty ground for ten minutes summoning the will to get up...he wouldn’t have been there.
“Cain would’ve had your back,” Connor whispered in her ear as Hadley typed his notes. “He would’ve saved you from Joe and his idiots and brought you to me. You were coming to me, one way or another, baby.”
“I’m not going to keep you much longer,” Hadley interrupted. “Jenna, I have a lot more questions for you, but for now, I just need you to answer one.”
The child skipped back to Jenna, slipped her hand into the woman’s and tried to tug her away from the turmoil brewing inside her. Jenna sensed the change, the subtle switch of personalities, and battled against it.
“Sire.” God, she hated how weak his name was on her lips. Surely if a name could make someone, it could destroy someone just the same.
“I need a description, sweetheart.”
“How do you describe evil in human form?” she asked almost petulantly, the child’s dislike of the subject shimmering through. “He’s a bad man.”
The agent’s blue gaze narrowed on her face. “He is, which is why he has to be stopped. You’re the only one who’s seen his face, Jenna. The only person who knows who he is.”
“He’s the monster,” she whispered and angled her head away from Hadley. The child was stronger than she’d thought, yanking at her hand now and replacing the woman bit by bit. “The monster in the dark.”
“Please, Jenna,” Hadley said desperately. “Anything, anything at all.”
“Blue eyes,” she bit out, squeezing her own tightly shut. “Sky blue eyes turning black when murder gives him release. Tanned skin making him look younger than he is.” How old, she thought frantically. How old was the devil inside him? “Middle forties, early fifties. Older than he seems. Brown hair, short and long.” Her hands lifted, fluttered around her head. “Tall, strong, but not as tall as you. Wide shoulders, muscled. More power to hit with.”
“Glasses? Facial hair?”
“No, didn’t see. Beards, body hair, are dirty.” In the next breath, the child took her over fully and she embraced the simplicity of how she saw things. She rolled onto her side, buried her face into Connor’s neck. “Daddy, don’t want to do this anymore.”
The silence in the room made her squirm uncomfortably. Silence was bad, it was usually the calm before Sire stormed into the shed and snatched her up by the first thing he could grab, dragging her outside while her fingernails dug into the rotten floorboards, the earth, to slow her descent into torture.
The one time she’d managed to latch onto the doorframe and jerked her ankle free of his hold, Sire had stomped on her fingers until they turned black and purple, then tied them all together, interlinked, so her hands were completely bound and useless.
Her attempt at rebellion, at self-preservation, had cost her more than just the original punishment would have. Her silent objection earned her a whipping that left oozing wounds open for days, swollen hands so badly bruised she couldn’t clean with them for weeks—a fact Sire complained about relentlessly, berating her for her stupidity.
