Find Her (Detective D.D. Warren #8)(96)

“Tonic,” the girl whispers, as if recalling a name from another lifetime ago.

“Black walls, blue lights, killer bands,” I begin, then halt myself. Black walls. Unbidden, I cross to the right until I hit one of the walls in question. Floor, wall, ceiling, windows all covered in black paint. Could that be coincidence?

Devon Goulding surprised me Friday night. The bartender with the amazing pecs suddenly appearing and taking out my initial target. And yet, regaining consciousness in his garage . . . He felt arrogant and inexperienced to me. A predator, sure, but this kind of predator?

With a blacked-out room, penchant for silk nighties, and elaborate shackle system?

Not to mention, I took him down, and yet here I am.

And yet, and yet . . . A nightclub famous for its blacked-out bar. And a room now covered entirely in black paint. Could that really be a coincidence? Which makes me wonder what else I’d missed Friday night.

Several of Stacey’s friends had said they frequented Tonic as well as Birches. Not to mention the staff at both places were friendly with one another, getting off duty at one club to go grab drinks at the other, given the close proximity. In my mind, that made it worth checking out. After all, the staff at Birches had been cleared in Stacey’s disappearance, but what about the folks down the street at Tonic?

Long shot, maybe, but apparently closer than I’d thought.

“Birches,” I say out loud, just to see what kind of reaction I can get from my cell mate.

She inhales again, her official sound of recognition.

“Stacey Summers,” I state.

She doesn’t reply as much as she whimpers. Affirmation, denial? What I’d give for the tiniest beam of light.

“Last thing you remember?” I ask her.

She doesn’t answer. I search my brain for a better approach. What did I remember in the beginning? Or perhaps, more accurately, what did I allow myself to still know? Because it’s not like you magically forget your entire life, identity, the people who loved you. It’s more like you box them up, put the images away. Because thinking of such things, knowing such things, is simply too hard. Those memories make you human, which is inconsistent with your current role as an inanimate object.

And just because the police one day spring through the door, black armored beetles toting weapons and shouting orders, doesn’t magically open up the mental attic. If anything, I locked down harder, as disoriented by freedom as I’d once been by life in a coffin-shaped box.

I’ve found the girl. Stumbled upon her, quite literally, in my search for resources. She is curled up in the corner, my foot having tripped over her own. She flinches at the contact. I can feel her recoil, then, when there’s no place for her to retreat, make herself smaller.

It tugs at me. Another response I know too well. Tried so many times myself. Except it never worked. Jacob always got his way in the end.

Until that very last moment, his brains and blood in my hair . . .

I kneel down. I keep my voice soft.

“I dreamed of foxes,” I whisper to this girl in the dark. “I dreamed I ran with them through the woods. I dreamed I was wild and free. And though I always woke up again, it felt good to dream.”

She doesn’t answer.

“It’s okay, you know. Survivors do what survivors have to do. Samuel told me that. When we get out of here, I’ll introduce you to him. You’d like him.”

Then, when she still doesn’t respond:

“You’ll have bad nights after this. It’s funny. You escape, but you never really get away. You don’t realize what a comfort it is to go through life thinking, that will never happen to me, until, of course, that assurance is gone. And every story in the news, every article you read in the paper . . . all you can think is that could be you. I studied. That’s what I did. I learned self-defense so next time a fat, sweaty piece of shit couldn’t snatch me off the beach. I learned to pick locks so I would never be shackled again.” I rub my wrists, smile ruefully in the dark. “At least that part worked. What I’m trying to say is, the fear never really goes away, but there are options. You can build a life. You can be a person again. Look at Elizabeth Smart, Jaycee Dugard. There are success stories.”

I’m just not one of them. I don’t say that. I don’t want to demoralize her. And my failings don’t have to be her own.

My goal, my one mission in life, certainly isn’t the stuff of happily-ever-afters.

I only spoke it out loud once, five years ago. I leaned down and whispered my promise in Jacob’s ear. I told him exactly what I was going to do one day. Right before I placed the barrel of the gun against the top of his head and pulled the trigger.

His blood and brains in my hair.

Not all of my dreams are nightmares.

“Devon Goulding is dead.” I test the waters one last time. “I know. I personally killed him.”

The girl finally speaks. “You don’t understand.”

“I’m trying to.”

“You shouldn’t have hurt him.”

“Had to. It was Friday night.”

“Now, it will be worse.”

“What will be worse?”

“Whatever happens next,” she says quietly, “it will be much, much worse.”


*

I LEAVE HER IN THE CORNER. I’m tired of doom and gloom. What I want is escape. I return to the mattress, encountering the spring coil I bent into my makeshift lock pick. I’ve been picturing in my head a long, flat object to jimmy open the door. Now, I switch gears. Maybe a mattress coil would work. It’s stiffer than the pine. And if I curved the end into the shape of a spoon, or one of those things used to dip hard-boiled eggs into coffee mugs of colored Easter dye . . .