Baby Doll(58)

“Bree Whitaker is sixteen and Shaina Meyers is fourteen. They’re at an old abandoned farmhouse off Highway 12.”

He continued talking, but Lily kept replaying their names over and over again in her mind. Bree Whitaker. Shaina Meyers. Bree and Shaina. Sixteen and fourteen. Two more girls whose lives were ruined. Two more families destroyed.

“How did you take them?”

Agent Stevens wasn’t expecting Lily’s question. She reached out to stop her, but Rick appeared eager to share his brilliance with the world.

“Bree was a waitress at a diner in Philly. I’d been there a few times. She was pretty, one of those chatty types who doesn’t know when to stop talking. She was seriously lacking in knowledge of literary greats, so I’d bring her books. Hemingway and Fitzgerald to start. Dostoevsky as a main course. Told her she was a smart kid and I’d be happy to counsel her if she was considering college. I gave her my number. Said if she ever needed anything, to call me. As luck would have it, she was having trouble with her boyfriend, and she asked if I’d meet her for coffee.”

“And the fourteen-year-old?”

“Tsk, tsk, Baby Doll, so judgmental. She’s quite mature for her age. She was a runaway I picked up hitchhiking. It was almost too easy. Though, I will say neither one of them had your spirit.”

Agent Stevens curled her lip, obviously disgusted. “Come on, Lily. This *’s told us enough to lock him up for two lifetimes.”

Lily started to stand up, but her legs shook and she swayed. Rick reached out to steady her. She jerked back, and Agent Stevens smacked Rick hard across the face. He didn’t even wince. He gazed at Lily with wounded eyes.

“Baby Doll, it was good seeing you. Give my regards to your family, especially Abby.”

Agent Stevens lifted her arm to strike Rick again, but Lily grabbed the agent’s wrist. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m okay.” She turned to Rick, keeping her voice low and measured. “I lied about the baby, Rick. I am going to kill it. I will murder it without thinking twice. Whatever it takes to make sure that nothing else you’ve created survives, I’ll do. I’m going to get rid of this thing you put inside me, and I won’t shed a tear.”

For the briefest of moments, his impassive mask slipped, and his true nature was on display. His face contorted as his gaze landed on the piece of paper in Agent Stevens’s hands, the names he’d freely given up. He’d trusted Lily implicitly, and she’d duped him again. Rick lunged forward to grab her, but Agent Stevens was already rushing Lily out of the room as the guards moved to restrain him.

“You lying bitch. You cunt!” His screams followed her down the hall.

Lily knew it was irrational, that he couldn’t get her, but she ran toward the end of the corridor, her breath coming out in short bursts. Rick had taught her well. He’d taught her how to lie and deceive, how to be a master manipulator. Each day, he’d taught her how to be a little less human. And now, everything she’d learned from him would be his undoing. After all these years, she’d beaten him. Lily broke down, her body racked with painful sobs.

I win, Rick, she thought. I win.





CHAPTER THIRTY


ABBY


Waiting… Abby always despised waiting. Waiting for Lily to come home. Waiting for answers. Waiting to see if Mr. Hanson was full of shit. It didn’t help that the alien invader was violently kicking her insides, as if it were absorbing her emotions and responding accordingly. Observing Lily’s face in that room, trapped with that monster, had been hellish. The police had disappeared in a mass exodus to search for the girls who were both in fact reported missing. Sheriff Rogers thanked Lily before he headed out.

“You were very brave. Could be a while before we have any news, but I’ll let you know when we do.”

Abby wanted nothing more than to leave this place, but Lily wasn’t going anywhere.

“I’m not leaving until I know that they’re safe,” Lily said.

And so they waited, hunkered down in the cold, sterile lobby. The remaining cops eyed them curiously. Abby and Lily called it the “twin look”—the double take people made when they passed them by. Abby was pleased that people still noticed they were twins.

But it was seeing Mr. Hanson, seeing who he really was, that Abby couldn’t shake. She’d observed Lily from the safety of the two-way mirror, her sister shrinking in his presence. She’d heard Lily talking to Mr. Hanson, talking about anniversaries. Abby wondered how her sister could have survived living with him. Abby would have given up. He would have broken her. She’d been swept up in Lily’s story, trying to understand what her sister was doing. But when Lily told Rick that she wasn’t keeping the baby, Abby had been shocked. Part of her wanted to cheer Lily for her brilliant deception. The other part of Abby was unsettled by her sister’s manipulations.

“Did you see his face when he realized I’d tricked him?” Lily had asked proudly.

“He was floored. He couldn’t believe that you’d lie to him,” Abby said, trying to keep her concern at bay.

“He used to say he could tell exactly what I was thinking at any given moment. For so long, I believed him. It was as if he could read my every thought. He knew when I was thinking about Daddy, or about running, or about… about you. But not tonight. Not tonight.”