Find Her (Detective D.D. Warren #8)(106)

I return to the hall and the shredded mattress. Holding my breath, I reach down with both hands, grab an edge of the worn cover, and tear off the piece of flapping material. Not a huge piece and nearly threadbare, but the best I can do.

Back to the window. I stick the scrap of fabric in the middle of the lower windowpane. Then, I twist around, and moving quickly, before the fabric falls to the floor, I hammer my elbow back.

Pain. Instant and sharp. I suck in a breath, will myself not to scream as the pain ricochets down my arm, turns my hand momentarily numb. I bounce on my feet, bob my head, flex my fingers, and the moment passes. I can breathe again. Better yet, I can turn and inspect the window, which I would swear, beneath the Teflon coating of paint, has started to crack.

It takes me three tries, three little dances of pain, and then I hear it. Sharp, definitive. The glass gives way. My elbow has won.

The paint proves the tougher opponent, resiliently holding the fractured window together. I use my fingers to pick at it, dislodging the first small piece, then, in rapid succession, several larger shards of glass to make a hole.

I’m so excited by this success, I don’t notice the obvious. The lack of fresh air. Or sounds from the outside. Or any hint of daylight, streetlights, something.

It’s not until I bend down and attempt to peer out my escape hatch that I realize the error in my ways.

I’ve broken out the glass . . .

Only to discover the window has been boarded up from the outside. Three elbow strikes later, I have exchanged a glass barrier for a piece of plywood.

I am as trapped now as I was before.


*

AM I HUNGRY? Yes. Am I tired? Very much. Am I thirsty, scared, cold, hot? Sure. I am everything. I am nothing. I’m a stupid girl who once lived in a coffin-size box and now is trapped in a boarded-up house.

I’m a daughter, I’m a sister, who destroyed her family once before, and now is ruining their sanity all over again.

I am a survivor who has yet to figure out how to live.

I’m an overwhelmed person who wants to sink to the floor and feel sorry for herself.

So I do. I let myself sit in front of the boarded-up window, surrounded by shards of glass. I wrap my hands around my knees. I study the scars on my wrists.

And I think of Jacob.

It’s crazy. He snatched me, drunk and stupid, off a beach. He stuck me in a box. He drove me all over the South. He raped me, he starved me, he beat me. He took me out dancing. He introduced me to his daughter. He gave me clothes, and on occasion, he called me pretty.

I hate him. I miss him. He is, and always will be, the most influential person in my life. Other people have first loves, dysfunctional families. I have Jacob. No matter where I go, what I do, I carry him with me. His voice in my head. His smell on my skin. His brains and blood in my hair. He told me it would be like that, and in his own crazy way, Jacob never lied. Even at the bitter end, he warned me I’d never be free of him.

He advised me to kill myself instead.

Now, I picture Jacob and I know he’s laughing at me, lips pulled back from his nicotine-stained teeth, hand rubbing his swollen belly. Stupid, stupid girl, he’s laughing. Gloating. He always told me I’d be nothing without him. The world is too big, too harsh, for a silly little thing like me. Stupid is as stupid does and stupid is me.

Thinking I would actually be the one to find poor lost Stacey Summers. Thinking I could actually be the hero this time around instead of the victim.

I pick up a shard of glass from the floor beside me. I finger it absently, studying the way the light reflects off the razor-sharp edge.

It’s not that I haven’t tried, I tell myself. When I first came home, I swore the air smelled sweeter, the sound of my mother’s laughter was brighter, my brother’s quick grin the warmest sight I’d ever seen. All those days of captivity. All those nights of horror. And now this. I’d survived. I’d done it. Jacob was dead, I was alive, and I’d never go back again. I’d forget everything. Even that last day. I’d forget it all, the things I’d said, the things I’d done, the promises I’d made.

People told me I was brave and strong and amazing.

Samuel told me I was resilient and to never doubt what I had done. Survivors survive. I am a survivor.

But the air can’t stay sweet forever. And eventually my mom stopped laughing and grew more concerned about my screams at night. And my brother stopped grinning and eyed me with open concern. All the things I thought I could forget. I didn’t. All the things I wanted to leave behind. I couldn’t.

It’s not that survivors aren’t entitled to happily-ever-afters. It’s just . . . After surviving comes living. And in real life, some days are gray. And some nights are hard. And sometimes you cry for no good reason, and you feel sorry for yourself, and you look in the mirror and you don’t recognize the girl looking back at you.

Who am I? A girl who once loved foxes? Or a girl scratching her fingers raw against the inside lid of a coffin-shaped box? A girl holding a gun, looking down at the man she despises, depends upon, fears?

Knowing this is her moment. This is it. Just move her finger on the trigger and it will be over.

Feeling herself hesitate. Why is she hesitating? Who hesitates at a moment like this?

“Do it,” Jacob ordered that day, his face a red blubbery mess. “Pull the fucking trigger. I ain’t ever going back, so come on now. End it. Put us both out of our misery.”