Alone (Bone Secrets, #4)(90)

“Shut up,” Abbadelli snapped. “What is wrong with you?” he gasped at Leo.

“You’ve shoved her in my face for the last time,” Leo said from behind Seth.

Seth stopped at the bottom of the steps, looking up at the old man, worrying he was about to have a heart attack.

“Shoved who?” Abbadelli spit out between breaths.

“The woman! Peres. You’ve bragged for years about her success in my face.”

Seth blinked. Years?

The shotgun jammed into his back, and Seth stumbled onto the first step. “Get up there. In that chair.”

Seth slowly moved up the step. Abbadelli had recovered enough to keep his shotgun aimed at his progress. The rain stopped beating on his head as he moved under the roof, but drops landing on the ground grew louder, their noise echoing off the wood siding of the cabin.

He sat in the chair.

“Get me some rope,” Leo ordered his father. Abbadelli disappeared into the house, as Leo stood on the top step, his gun trained on Seth’s head. The two men stared at each other.

“What will happen to Victoria and Trinity?” Seth asked.

Leo’s eyes lit up, making the skin on Seth’s neck crawl. Jesus Christ. So that is what crazy looks like.

“They’ll be tied up for a while.” Leo laughed at his private joke.

Sweat dripped from Seth’s armpits. The air was cold, but he was about to overheat. Everything around him was soaking wet, but his mouth rivaled a desert. Keep your head.

Abbadelli stepped out of the cabin, a length of rope in his hands. “Tie him to the chair,” Leo ordered. “Tie it tight.”

Seth’s hands were pulled behind him and through the rungs of the back of the chair. He winced as the rope burned his wrist as Abbadelli strictly followed Leo’s orders. The chair was no flimsy discount chair. It was a heavy-duty solid wood construction that looked like it’d been on the Abbadelli porch since the Second World War. Seth wouldn’t be busting any boards trying to escape. Abbadelli tied a second loop tight around his waist.

“Where’s Jason?” Abbadelli asked as he yanked on the ropes to test.

“He’s not back yet.”

“You trust him with those women?” Abbadelli asked.

“He’ll do as he’s told.”

Abbadelli snorted. “I used to say that about you.”

Seth heard a tone of pride in the old man’s voice. So now he’s impressed that his son is a criminal?

“I let you believe what I wanted you to believe,” Leo said smugly.

Abbadelli straightened from his knot-tying job. “I believed Jason had killed those girls last week. You didn’t do anything to correct me.”

Leo’s face lit up in crazy mode again, setting off alarms in Seth’s head. “I knew you’d figure it out eventually. I wanted to show you I had more steel than you believed.”

Leo had been seeking Daddy’s approval? That was why those girls were killed?

“You needed to see what I was capable of. You always said I had none of you in me, only Mama in me. I wanted you to know you were wrong.”

“So you killed children?” Seth challenged. “What kind of man kills children to prove a point?”

Leo shifted his hold on his shotgun to a batter’s stance and swung the gun at Seth’s head. The tip caught Seth’s cheekbone before he could whip his face out of the way. The crunch sickened his stomach and pain burned along his cheek. Blood dripped onto his shirt.

He ground his eyes shut, the pain reverberating through his skull.

Don’t taunt the killer.

Leo got close to his face. “My father created a work of art with the bodies of those women decades ago. It was damned beautiful. Like a white flower. I never got it out of my head.” He reached out with a finger and jabbed at Seth’s cheekbone. Fire shot though his face and his tears mixed with his blood.

“How?” asked Seth. “How were you able to get those girls to trust and follow you?”

The man kept his face close to Seth’s, grinning as he studied his handiwork below Seth’s eye. “That was easy. Every girl wants to know she’s beautiful. I found some through Jason’s Facebook account, and that led to others. Teen girls post pictures of themselves everywhere. It was easy to find the look I wanted. I’d set up a professional page through Facebook months before, showcasing some of the work I’d done. It was so easy to get their attention; they all wanted the chance to look beautiful on film. Whores. Sluts, all of them.”

They were children. People’s daughters.

“Now. Drink this.” Leo slid a flask out of his back pocket and shook it before unscrewing the cap. Seth didn’t think he was sharing a companionable shot of whiskey.

“What’s that?”

“Something to make you sleep.”

Phenobarbital. What he’d found in the girls’ stomachs.

He turned his face away.

“Hold his head! Plug his nose!” Leo ordered.

Seth’s head was grabbed and braced against Abbadelli’s stomach. Leo snagged Seth’s chin with one hand and pushed the metal against his lips, cutting the soft flesh and scraping his teeth. He thrashed his head back and forth. Someone’s finger dug into his ripped flesh over his cheekbone and he screamed. Leo sloshed the liquid in his mouth. Seth spit and thrashed some more, but some liquid slid down his throat. He tried to gag, envisioning every nasty stench that’d ever crossed his table. He was unsuccessful.