Almost Dead (Lizzy Gardner #5)(74)

And then the door opened.

She jerked upright and swung her arms back behind her.

He stood there looking at her. His eyes fixated on her face and then her ankles, which were still bound.

Had he seen her move? Did he know?

He shut the door and went to the extra trouble of putting a two-by-four in the slots on in the wall on both sides of the door. He hadn’t done that last time. Was it to keep her from getting out or to keep other people from getting in?

When he went to the sink to sort through his cloth bag, she used her shoulder to wipe the tears from her face. She then eyed the tape around her ankles. There was no way she could untie herself quickly enough to get through that door and away from him before he caught her.

She gathered the courage to talk to him. “Did you mail the letter?”

He grunted. His grunts usually meant the affirmative.

Facing forward and trying not to move, she did her best to work the tape back around her wrists, hoping he wouldn’t figure out what she’d done. She needed to be prepared to run the next time he left on one of his long excursions.

He pulled out the same tin pan he’d been using to heat up soup and began to chop up carrots. When he turned toward her, he was cutting a potato, peel and all.

The dark look in his eyes as he walked her way was freaking her out. “Are you going to peel them first?” she asked.

“What does it look like?”

She could barely swallow. She was shivering again. “Are you making stew?” Her voice sounded all quivery and scared. She needed to get him talking like she’d done before. If she could just stop her voice from squeaking and make it appear as if she were confident, maybe she could get him to relax.

He put the knife up close to her face. “I think you’re far too pretty for your own good. You need a scar right here to give you character.”

The sharp tip of the knife cut into her skin.

She cried out as she grabbed his hand and tried to push him away. It was no use. He was too strong.

“I knew it,” he said. He stormed back to the kitchen and then came back to her side with the duct tape in his hand.

“No, please, don’t.”

“You said I could trust you.” He put down the tape so that he could wrap one of his big hands around her throat. He squeezed until she could hardly breathe. Then he forced her mouth open and inserted the potato, which was worse than being strangled. She tried to cough it up, but she couldn’t. He was wrapping tape around her hands again, so tightly she thought he would cut off her circulation. He shoved her head close to his chest while he worked. He smelled like a wet dog. She gagged.

“Too tight,” she tried to say, but the words came out muffled.

He pushed her head back against the paneling, then leaned down and brushed his jaw against her neck.

She tried to wriggle free.

He did it again.

She tried to scream out and kick her legs, but under the weight of him, she couldn’t move an inch.

His hand slid under her shirt, his callused fingers brushed over her skin. His breathing grew ragged right before he ripped the shirt from her body and simply stared.

She shivered, tried not to cry out again, knowing he would only grow angrier if she did.

She couldn’t breathe.

She closed her eyes tight and pretended she was somewhere else, somewhere safe.





CHAPTER 53

Jenny was running out of time. She’d left work thirty minutes early, told her boss she had a dentist appointment.

Jenny had seen the commotion on TV. The media’s darling was in jail for going after Dana Kohl. What a joke Lizzy Gardner was turning out to be.

Dana Kohl was harmless.

The private investigator will not give up. You need to listen to me. She’ll come after you next. You must slow down . . . think things through.

Although Jenny had personally never talked to Dana, she knew of her. She knew the Ambassador Club had gotten their claws into her, too. Jenny had always been relieved when they focused their attention on Dana instead of her. She knew that wasn’t right, but it was the truth. It was how she’d felt back then. There wasn’t anything she wouldn’t have done in high school to get them to stop. She would have handed over her china doll, both her parents, the entire farm, everything she had if they had told her they would leave her alone.

But that’s not what happened.

And now Jenny was forced to make them all pay.

Today was Aubrey’s day to die.

Aubrey Singleton had recently moved into a brand-new house. Lucky girl.

During high school, Aubrey Singleton always seemed to end up in Jenny’s PE class. Aubrey used to love to take Jenny’s clothes from her locker so that after Jenny showered, she’d have nothing to wear. Aubrey would take all the towels, too, and then invite the boys to come take a peek.

That was how Jenny had learned that even though the boys didn’t want to date her, they sure liked to look at her naked.

Aubrey used to pass Jenny notes, too, sinister notes saying how she fantasized about the two of them being together some day, but then the next note would talk about how she planned to kill her while she slept. Aubrey would draw pictures of a cross with Jenny nailed to it. Blood dripping from her arms and legs.

She was a strange one.

But somehow Aubrey went on to marry a doctor. They had two kids and they lived in one of the nicer areas on the outskirts of Sacramento. The house was brand-new, and, although there were security signs poked into the grass, front and back, the alarms had yet to be turned on. She knew this firsthand. Breaking into someone’s house sounded like a big deal, but if anyone tried it, they would see that it was easy. Most people left a window unlatched or a door unlocked. Walking into someone’s house unnoticed was like taking a stroll through the park. Jenny would talk to kids in the neighborhood, wave at the cars as they passed, make people think she belonged. If they ever did question who she was, she had wigs and glasses and enough makeup to disguise herself. But nobody ever questioned her or stopped her from making her rounds. It was the same everywhere she went.