Twisted by Hannah Jayne(30)
“You should know that my parents will be home soon. And my boyfriend.”
“That’s good,” the man said. “You shouldn’t be alone.”
Bex felt herself start to tremble as he released his grip on her. She knew she should run or try to remember some of the training she’d learned at the one self-defense class she had ever taken, but her mind and her body couldn’t seem to connect.
“Who are you? What do you want from me?”
The man turned her around to face him, speaking slowly. “Don’t you remember me?”
Bex studied the man’s face. She thought back on her father, the way she remembered him, before he disappeared and every image she saw was his mug shot on the news. She knew what he looked like—shouldn’t every daughter know her father?—even if she had to search a distant memory. Shouldn’t there be some innate connection that linked one of them to the other—genes or blood or—she felt her throat constrict—behavior? This man’s face had just a vague familiarity.
He was still gripping her firmly, now by the shoulders, when Bex felt her knees buckle. She went deadweight, straight to the ground in a flash, crouching low before lunging for the stairs. She vaulted forward, her fingertips digging into the carpet, her socks slipping as she tried to gain traction. There was distance between her and her attacker. The air sliced as he reached out to her, his fingertips grazing her neck and sending a fresh wave of gooseflesh all the way down her spine, icy jabs to her very soul.
There was nowhere to go but up the stairs so Bex shot upward, taking them two at a time. She knew she should be formulating a plan: scream, find a phone, call 911, but all of that seemed impossible. She couldn’t make her mouth move, couldn’t remember seeing a landline phone in the house—and what was the number for 911 on a cell phone? She had tunnel vision, seeing nothing but an endless staircase in front of her.
“Go! Go away!” Bex didn’t recognize the sound of her own voice.
“Just listen to me!”
The stairs were a blur. She was crying, sweat and tears and snot running over her lips, her chin. She felt his grip on her ankle—a single tug—and she crashed facedown, her breath whacked out of her. The man pulled her down two carpeted steps, then stood over her, pinning her ribs with his calves, one hand between her shoulder blades, pushing down firmly.
“I’m a police officer.”
His admission did nothing to quell the tremors that went through her body, and her teeth clacked together. Somewhere behind her, she heard him fiddling with fabric and metal—maybe his belt buckle—and the tremors grew to quakes.
“Please,” she whispered, “please don’t.”
The man bent over and waved something in front of Bex, then pushed it into her hands.
Leather. A wallet. A badge.
“I’m not here to hurt you.” He spoke in a soothing voice as though she were a child.
“I’m Detective Lieutenant Daniel Schuster.”
He slowly removed his hand from Bex’s back, released the pressure on her ribs. She stayed facedown, still trembling, still terrified. Anyone could say they were a cop. Anyone could get a badge. But the name…it was vaguely familiar. A TV cop? Maybe he stole the name from a movie?
“Cops don’t barge into people’s houses,” Bex said slowly, her mouth so dry her lips stuck to her teeth.
“You wouldn’t answer my calls.”
“You—” Everything inside Bex stopped when Detective Schuster dropped the yellowed newspaper article on the carpet in front of her. It had been folded and refolded so many times that the paper looked like worn fabric. The text and the black-and-white picture had been softened by fingers smoothing it flat again and again. Bex didn’t need to read the article. Her stomach turned to liquid.
She was looking into the saucer-wide eyes of her seven-year-old self.
In the photograph, her mouth was covered by the belly of a stuffed animal, Princess Pig, she remembered, a bright-pink pig that her father had won her at the county fair when she was six. Beth Anne couldn’t sleep without Princess Pig’s soft belly pressed up against her lips. She couldn’t remember what had happened to the pig, but she’d never thought she’d forget the face of the mustached man in uniform standing beside her.
“Do you remember me now?”
Disgust roared through Bex. “Where did you get this?”
“It was in the Raleigh Tribune ten years ago.” He pointed at the date. “I kept it. That was the day we got him, the Wife Collector. That was the day we saved you, Beth Anne.”
Anger replaced disgust, sparking like a white-hot flame low in her belly.
“You saved me?”
That day, Bex remembered, was the day her life broke in two. That was when her life became before and after, when normalcy was eaten away by news vans and police officers and social workers who took her away from her home and her father who had never done anything but love her. That day her “saviors” had shuttled her out of her house and into a squat building with linoleum floors and hard plastic furniture. They had handed her a pair of itchy pajamas and tucked her into a cot that squeaked if she dared to move, and handed her a stiff teddy bear as if that would make up for the cinder-block walls and the destruction of her life. That teddy bear didn’t have a soft belly like Princess Pig did; Beth Anne knew because she had stayed awake all night staring at it.