When You See Me (Detective D.D. Warren #11)(65)

Except then there’d been talking. On the other side of the box. So much talking. Me whimpering, clawing my shredded fingertips against the closed lid like a wounded animal. Why wasn’t he undoing the lock? Why wasn’t he feeding me? Then, the creak of the stairs. Footsteps retreating. Voices drifting farther and farther away, until I was once again alone and starving in the dark.

“He was proud of what he’d accomplished,” Walt says now. “Rigging up the place, building the box, snatching himself a friend. Told me all about you, how everyone was looking for you with your picture being all over the news. And still, no one suspected him, knew what had happened, where to look. Like he’d stolen some treasure from right beneath everyone’s noses. Guess he thought I’d be proud of him, too. Cuz that’s what he remembered from being a little boy. That’s what his mom had told him. That I was that kind of man.”

Walt doesn’t look at me anymore. “I felt shame that night. The trees screamed and raged at me. Wouldn’t let me sleep. That’s when I knew what I had to do. But I was too late.”

“Maybe that’s why he brought you over,” Keith offers. “He already planned on taking off. He just wanted one last moment to brag.”

“Maybe,” Walt says. He turns toward the basement stairs.

“Wait.” I hold out a hand. “Did Jacob mention being in the area before, say, fifteen years ago?”

I glance at Keith. The time frame of the other graves, and Lilah Abenito’s murder.

That shrug again. “Forty years of past is too much to cover. We stuck to the present. That was hard enough.” He hits the stairs, rat-a-tat-tat, down to the cellar.

I follow much more slowly, testing each tread, my head pressed against the cool wall for support.

Walt is correct about the cellar. What I’d considered a basement was really little more than a single, dark moldy room. Walt finds a lantern, lights it, and the infamous shit brown carpet once more comes into view. I realize now it’s just a remnant tossed upon an earthen floor. The sofa I hated so much is shoved against a wall, stuffing coming out in giant chunks. I remember a coffee table, cheap, compressed wood, but it’s nowhere in sight. Maybe I imagined it. Maybe some lost hiker broke it down for firewood. I don’t know.

The bathroom in the corner is barely as big as a closet and every bit as disgusting as I remember. I can just make out a moldy bar of soap. Same as the one Jacob let me use to wash my hair? It looks like a separate life-form; I can’t even bring myself to touch it.

In my mind, this place is every bit as foul and smelly and awful as my memories. Yet, I recall it somehow being bigger, even nicer. Or maybe that’s just how it seemed after being released from a pine box. Hell, Jacob probably could’ve stuck me in an outhouse after that damn prison, and it would’ve seemed like a luxurious master bath.

I’m shaking. I don’t even realize it until Keith puts his arm around my shoulders. I’m covered in goose bumps and shivering uncontrollably.

Walt, shotgun still in hand, eyes me worriedly. Does he think I’ll scream hysterically, break down?

Am I going to scream hysterically and break down?

I can’t wrap my mind around it. I’m here at last. Ground zero. And it’s the same, but it’s different. It’s just as horrible and horrifying . . . and yet it also seems smaller, less significant, less scary.

I’m no longer the girl in the box.

I am Flora Dane.

I left this place.

I survived Jacob Ness.

And right now, if his father turns on me with that shotgun, I will have him facedown on this floor with his own shotgun pressed against the back of his head so fast, even Keith won’t see it coming. And if he twitches, I’ll pull the trigger without thinking twice.

Something must show in my face, because Walt takes a nervous step back.

Fuck this entire damn shack. And thank God Jacob Ness is already burning in hell.

“I’m done here,” I state. Then without waiting for either Walt or Keith to respond, I head straight up the rickety stairs, out of the collapsing cabin, and right to the middle of the clearing till I can feel the wind on my face.

I am free, I tell myself.

And for the first time in years, I almost believe it.





CHAPTER 27





BONITA, THE BLOND WOMAN HAS named me. I try it on in my head. I wait to hear my mother’s voice whisper it to me. I do not feel beautiful with my scarred head and sagging face and dragging foot. Can a Stupid Girl really be Bonita?

I am humbled the blond woman gave me such a gift. As well as scared.

I am Stupid Girl. I can’t work my lips or tongue to tell the detective what she needs to know. I’m too weak to stand up to Cook, who will make Hélène and me pay for talking to the police.

I am nothing. Bonita, Girl—they are both the same. Broken. Though in my differentness, I do know some things others don’t. That the house has memory, feels pain. That colors are not just crayons, but moods and powerful expressions of their own.

That my mother is standing beside me, right now. I feel her presence as strongly as the scent of biscuits wafting from the oven. My mother is here, a sliver of silver gliding in and out of the light. She appears when I need her the most. When the worst is about to happen.

I hold my breath, rolling out more biscuit dough, then cutting it into rounds for the waiting cookie sheet. Like Cook, I pretend I don’t hear the argument raging on the other side of the kitchen door.