Find Her (Detective D.D. Warren #8)(87)

D.D. nodded.

“Then let’s search Devon Goulding’s house for signs of glitter. Kristy Kilker’s body as well. If we find traces matching Flora’s fire escape on either of these other sources, then there’s your proof. These cases are related.” Alex nodded solemnly. “The glitter tells us so.”





Chapter 33


THE GIRL IS INSANE. Molly, Stacey, whoever she is, has definitely been shut up too long, suffered too much trauma. I don’t know. But she’s crazy to think I’m the one who has something to do with this. I save people. Which sometimes does involve hurting others.

Devon Goulding, his skin smoking, then catching on fire.

But I only attack bad people.

And this girl here.

That doesn’t count.

I make the girl move. Actually, I advance closer and she drags herself off the mattress, away from me in the dark. Whatever. It allows me to retrieve the last shard of pine coffin from inside the mattress lining. It’s thinner than I’d like. Decent length, though.

I bring it to the door and get to work. My first challenge, trying to figure out in the dark the approximate location of the latch in the switch plate. I have to think back to other doors. It works best to stand and simply reach automatically for a doorknob.

Once I have that height, I attempt to slide in the wooden shard, only to discover that, as flimsy as it is, it’s still too thick. I sit in the dark and shred it down. Not hard really. The wood pulls away in long strips.

There’s something rhythmic to the work. Therapeutic.

Why would the girl think I had something to do with this?

A shadow looming in my doorway, voice thick with menace. An intruder who got through all my locks without ever waking me. An attacker who removed me from my apartment before I struck a single counterblow and delivered me here.

Sitting in the dark, shredding a piece of pine coffin, I feel the memory become thinner and thinner. Less a memory and more a bad dream. The man’s face . . . I can’t picture it. What did he do next? Lunge forward, I would guess, but I can’t recall. And I . . . I lay in my bed and waited for him to ambush me?

My head hurts again. I instinctively raise a hand to rub my temples, and hit myself with the tethering chain.

Which presents my next challenge. Even if I get the door open, how do I get out of the room? I doubt my tether is long enough. My handcuffs will have to go. Mine and hers, I decide. So we can work together.

Or she’ll run away. From me.

I feel bad. I don’t know why. I’m not sure how I ended up here. I don’t know what’s going on. A girl brainwashed into calling herself Molly. The delivery of pine coffins, a regular blast from the past.

Someone coming in and out of this room, and again, I never wake up, never respond to the disturbance. Because I’m drugged. Or because I’m expecting them?

I shake my head. Hard. No.

I have nothing to do with this. I don’t hurt people.

Only Devon Goulding, screaming as he clutched at his burning skull.

Only a beautiful girl who threatened to take Jacob from me.

That memory comes from nowhere. Hastily I push it away.

“Survivors do what survivors have to do,” I mutter in the dark. “Don’t second-guess your choices.”

I wish Samuel were here. I could use his calming presence in the dark.

Stacey Summers, I think in the next instance. The video of her abduction. Big guy leading her away. Proof positive someone else is involved.

Second rational thought: I’ve spent the past few weeks going all around town, various bars, restaurants, college hangouts, asking questions about Stacey Summers. Maybe I came closer than I realized to discovering the perpetrator involved. And maybe that person became suspicious, looked me up.

My story is hardly private. Please, four hundred and seventy-two days locked in a coffin? The press loved it. No aspect of my degradation, no salacious detail of my captivity, was spared front-page glory.

Not a single person understands what I went through. And yet everyone knows my story.

The nightgown, my stupid flimsy nightgown . . . I try thinking about that. Had Jacob bought me a lacy, satiny nightgown? He bought me some clothes, a summer dress. What do I recall, what did I ever mention out loud . . .

I start to shiver. Goose bumps up and down my arms. I’m going to vomit. I’m going to be ill . . .

I drop the pine shard, my breathing ragged, my hands shaking uncontrollably.

I find myself on my knees, head hanging low, trembling even more violently now and fighting the urge to be sick.

I know something I don’t want to know.

The past does matter. The past has everything to do with this.

Except I can’t afford to stop and think about it. Because the past is the past, and the only way out of this room is to move forward. Deep breath. Forget coffins, and nightgowns, and Jacob Ness. Forget everything.

I’m Flora 2.0. I have training, I have skills, and I’m going to get the fuck out of here. Save myself. Save Stacey Summers.

So, wooden sliver in the door frame. Proceed.

I want to go home.

I want to see my mother with her ugly flannel shirts, the silver fox charm nestled at the base of her throat. I want to throw my arms around her, and even if it won’t be a hug the way we used to hug, or feel the way it used to feel, I want it to be good enough. I want her to know I miss her. And I love her. And I’m sorry.