The Perfect Son by Freida McFadden(60)

My anger only seems to amuse him though, just as my threats did. “Just tell me. How does it feel to be starving to death?”

“Go to hell.”

He reaches into a paper bag next to him. I hear crackling of paper, and then his hand emerges from the bag. At first I think he’s going to point a gun at me. But it’s not a gun. It’s a piece of bread.

He grins at me. “Tell me how you feel and I’ll give you this bread.”

I want that bread so badly. Like it’s a decadent piece of chocolate cake. I stare at it, wanting to tell him to go to hell again, but wanting that bread even more. After all, the bread means survival. If I die, nobody can tell the police what he’s done.

“I feel like something is clawing away at my insides,” I say. “And I feel dizzy. A little nauseous.”

Is that enough? Is that enough for you, you bastard?

I suppose it is, because he tosses the bread into the hole. I make a halfhearted attempt to catch it, but it falls past my fingers into the dirt. I don’t care. I’m close to literally eating dirt. He also tosses in another plastic water bottle, but this one is only half of the size of the others. And there’s only one.

“If you cooperate, you’ll live longer,” he says. He nods at the bones in the corner. Under the light of his flashlight, I can see them clearly for the first time. The outline of ribs and a pelvis. What used to be arms and legs. “She didn’t cooperate.”

I wonder what’s happening on the outside. I’ve been gone for days—people must be starting to assume I’m dead. How long will he let me live down here? It feels like eternity, but I know it can’t go on forever. If he keeps feeding me so little, I’ll die in a month or two. But I have a feeling he won’t drag it out that long. As he said, people can only survive three to five days without water.

And if he does somehow get arrested, but he doesn’t tell the police where I am, that will be it. I’ll die of dehydration in days.

“I’ll try to come back in a few days,” he says.

“A few days?” My panic escalates at the realization that all I have is one piece of bread and barely a pint of water. “But…”

“And don’t waste your energy trying to escape,” he says. “The wood is sturdy and so is the lock. You won’t get out of here.”

With those words, he shuts the trap door again, plunging me back into blackness. I wrap my arms around my knees and let out a sob, but the tears don’t come. I’m too dehydrated to even cry.

He’s killing me.





Chapter 53


Erika



After everything that happened yesterday, I couldn’t summon up the energy to go visit my father. I spent half the night of tossing and turning, but then around two in the morning when I kicked him awake, Jason sleepily suggested I take another Xanax. I have rules about how much I can take in one day, and I’m over my limit, but I didn’t want to spend the entire night awake. So I took one, and it did the trick.

I don’t even attempt to make breakfast for the family. When I get into the kitchen, Liam is sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal. But he’s not eating. He’s just sifting it around with a spoon.

“Do you want frozen waffles?” I ask him.

“No.”

“You’ve hardly eaten anything in the last few days.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You’ve got to eat. You’ll be sick if you don’t.”

Liam lifts his brown eyes with those long eyelashes that make his sister jealous. “What do you care? You think I’m a murderer.”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. What am I supposed to say to that? He’s right. Ever since I found Olivia’s address in our car GPS, there hasn’t been one moment when I didn’t think Liam was guilty.

“I still love you,” is all I can say.

Liam snorts. “Why?”

“Because you’re my son.”

He just shakes his head. But I don’t expect him to understand. That was one thing Dr. Hebert told me repeatedly. Liam is not capable of love. He tells me he loves me, but he’s only saying it because he knows it’s expected of him. And he knows it makes me happy. And it’s in his best interest to make me happy.

I wonder if my father ever loved me.

I’ve got to see him. Somehow I feel like reconnecting with him will be the answer to everything.

I leave Liam in the kitchen, and I head upstairs to shower. Jason is coming out of the bathroom, his hair damp from the shower, a towel wrapped around his waist. After all the running he’s done, he looks so fit. Still very sexy, maybe even more than he was when he was younger. Under different circumstances, I might have been tempted to initiate some morning fun. But under these circumstances, it seems inconceivable.

“Hey,” I say.

He rubs his eyes. He looks tired, and I feel bad for having kept him awake half the night with my restless sleep. “Hey.”

“I was wondering if you could stick around the house with Liam. I… I need to go out.”

“Where?”

“I need to take care of some things at the newspaper.” The lie rolls off my tongue easily. I never told Jason that Brian fired me. “It shouldn’t take too long.”