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“Tabitha,” Zeke warned.
“She deserves to know. Part of her already does. She’s smart; she’s good for you.” As her dialogue followed the twisted path of her insanity, Tabitha wagged her finger at him. “Your stepfather was a pedophilic murderer, preying on young girls to quiet his desire forthe one. Ashford’s calculations estimated that, at the rate you’ve been repaying the debt, your life expectancy was no more than six months. There were many variables.”
Her skin felt cold and clammy. Her stomach churned with nausea as memories assaulted her like a rolling timeline. How many times had she been in close proximity to the man, alone, with no idea that he was…
“Why?”
Tabitha’s candy-cane hair swung gently as she tilted her head. “Why you, or why did he wait so long? I have the answers to both questions.”
She wanted all the answers to every single question she hadn’t thought of yet. There were too many buried beneath the shock. Gripping Zeke’s hand as a lifeline, she blinked slowly. “Tell me everything.”
“I’m not sure that’s… all right,” her lover capitulated when she gave him a look that pleaded for him to understand. He squeezed her fingers, offering his support even though she knew he didn’t agree with her finding out all the sordid details.
He was extremely calm for a guy who’d woken up with a blade-toting lunatic perched at the end of the bed.
“I’ll skip the gory bits if it offends your sensibilities, Zeke.”
Olivia’s heart lurched as his voice turned to steel. “I’d rather sheskipthe nightmares.”
The little ninja leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. Eyes glimmering like glacier lakes, she tapped the flat of the blade against her lips. “See, this is why I like dominant men. Not for me, obviously. I’d kick any man who tried to make me do his bidding in the balls, then cut his throat, but I understand the allure of it.” Humming under her breath, she licked the broad flat of the metal absently. “Mercurial, the whole damn lot of you. Loved-up puppies one minute, rabid wolves salivating over a kill in the next heartbeat.”
Zeke’s answer was a growl.
“Just like that.” Delighted, Tabitha spun the blade around to point at him. “However, this is off-topic, and I have a flight to catch in a couple of hours. So, let’s get down to the nitty-gritties, shall we? Jared married your mom because a working wife meant he didn’t have to get his sorry ass off the couch. Ten-year-old Olivia was a bonus,butyour mom was a good maternal influence.Basicallytold him that she expected him to be a father, to protect you like you were his own flesh and blood.”
It shouldn’t have hurt so much, but Tabitha’s opinion seemed like a glowing recommendation. The fact that a relative stranger saw the kind of person Crystal had been, meant a lot. No, more than that. It meant everything.
“Being an asshole, Jared agreed. As long as the drugs and alcohol were plentiful, he was happy to ogle you from a distance. Thingschangedwhen you hit puberty. By that time, your mom was aware of his unnatural interest in you, but she couldn’t afford to leave him. All her paychecks went into the house, and there were no savings. Jared accumulated several drug debts, using you as collateral. She was in a difficult position.”
Difficult? Olivia almost scoffed at the understatement. Her mom hadn’t been able to do right for being wrong. If she stayed, there was a high risk of Jared acting on his urges; if she left, there was no question that bad men would have tracked them down and…
Olivia closed her eyes, hating her stepfather with every fiber of her being.
“When you grew some tits and started maturing, he had a problem. His obsession continued to fester, and your mom threatened to kill him if anything happened to you, accident or not. So, he went on the hunt and found his first victim.”
“How many? In total?”
Tabitha shrugged. “Nineteen. One a year from your thirteenth birthday, up until you went home. With you back in the house, under his roof, his frustration multiplied. So did his kills. Ashford peeked at the local PD reports on the missing girls; only one case listed Jared as a potential suspect, but they dismissed him because he was stoned out of his fucking mind.” Tabitha’s expression stated her opinion clearly. “The majority of the girls were taken from at least fifty miles away from his base. After Crystal died, twenty years of waiting came to an end. For the first time, you became actively available on his list.”
Olivia died inside. She thought of nineteen bright lights snuffed out by a monster, all as a pacifier to sate a need he felt forher. No wonder she’d been creeped out by him as a kid.
A shiver rocked her as she thought of the past couple of years, and all the opportunities he’d had to… shit. Leaning forward, she raised her knees and pressed her forehead to them.
This was fucked up in so many ways.
“Will… can…” She blew out a tremulous breath. “Will the police find them all?”
“Empathy isn’t usually my style,” Tabitha mused, “but I find myself drawn to your distress.” Her tone gentled. “Jared wasn’t an intelligent man. His killing floor was in an old military air raid bunker out in the desert, several miles away from civilization. Apparently, he and two former buddies used to go out there and get wasted; they grew up and became respectable citizens. He did not.”
What a surprise, Olivia thought dourly.
“Being a lazy prick, he didn’t dispose of the bodies adequately. The cops are more than capable of finding them. Of course, with the number of dead involved, the case will be turned over to the FBI, and they’ll probably bring in a forensic anthropologist to match all the remains to the correct victims. They’ll go home, Olivia.”
“I hope you made him suffer,” she said vehemently, lifting her head to stare at the woman who talked about death as though it was the weather.
“It was fitting.” The smile gracing her mouth was every bit as sinister as anything her half-brother could summon. It reflected in her eyes, coldly amused. “I made sure he was truly repentant for the sins he committed. And that,” she added with a fleeting glance at her wrist, “is all I have time for this morning. So, to recap: Jared’s dead, his victims will be returned back to their families, and all is good.”
“Thanks for dropping in,” Zeke told her dryly.
