Killman Creek (Stillhouse Lake #2)(102)

“Fuck you,” I tell him. I start working on the cuff. The pain is extraordinary, a supernova of red-and-yellow flares that burn like phosphorus as I twist my hand. Something gives with a wet, crisp snap, and the sensation is so overwhelming that I don’t feel anything for a blessed second. It’s like my body is trying to give me time to escape.

I break another bone, and my fingers burn like I’ve lit them on fire. I let out a cry, but it’s an angry one. A victorious one. Pain is life. Pain is victory.

I’m going to get free, and I’m going to kill him.

“Gina,” he says. “Look at me.” The tone’s almost gentle. “I’m sorry it has to be like this, in front of the cameras. I didn’t want that for you. I wanted it to be just you and me. But Absalom wanted to get paid back for what they’ve done for me. And what they’re going to do.”

“You’re apologizing?” I can’t help it. I let out a bitter, barking laugh. “God, what next. What’s Absalom going to do for you, do you think? Get you out of the country? Set you up somewhere with new victims? They’re using you, you idiot. When they get what they want, they’ll kill you, too.”

“Don’t call me an idiot,” he says, and the gentleness melts out of his voice and leaves it flat and cold. “Don’t ever do that. I played you, Gina. All the way down.” His chin lowers, and his eyes almost seem to shutter. There’s no humanity in them now. Just the monster. “Brady’s been calling me. Did you know that?”

It hits me under the shield I’m holding up, and all my wonderful, freeing anger gutters out in an instant. I stop trying to get free. I don’t want to give him an inch, but I can’t stop myself from asking, “What are you talking about?”

“Our son. Brady.” Melvin sits down on the edge of the bed. “I arranged for him to be given a phone when our friend Lancel had him—remember that? That phone was Brady’s lifeline, if he needed it. Turns out he did. First you abandoned him. Then he discovered you lied to him. Just enough doubt to exploit, to get him talking. It almost worked.” There’s a terrible, bitter disgust in the twist of his mouth now. “But you made him a weak, sad little rag doll, our son. You did that to him. He’s worthless to me the way he is. I’m going to have to toughen him up now.”

This is not the calm, polite Melvin that other people knew. It’s not even the Melvin I knew, back in Wichita; he never would have said these things, not about his own son. This is the toxic sludge at the bottom of a black lake spilling out of his mouth. Hearing him talk about my son this way makes me sick, and it also makes me terrified.

“You’re lying. You couldn’t have been talking to him,” I say, because that’s the only thing I can cling to. “He would have told me.”

“He didn’t use the phone right away—you kept him on a tight enough leash. But once he started, he just couldn’t stop.” Another cold smile. “Like father, like son, I suppose.”

I remember suddenly who found that awful video. Connor. It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t Absalom. Melvin did that to our son. He did it deliberately. “You son of a bitch.”

“It’s not my fault you left him with strangers,” Melvin says. “You made him vulnerable. Easy to break, and I broke him. I was planning to have him here with us. I think that would have been fitting, for him to see you break, and then I could take him with me and teach him how to be strong. But it didn’t work. Instead of Brady, we got Lily.”

It’s coming too fast, and it’s too much. I don’t have time to feel the shocks. I’m drowning in them. “You mean Lanny?” I’ve said her name, and I wish I hadn’t, because he can see the cracks now. The fear. He feeds on it. “You don’t have her.”

“You’re right. I don’t. She got in the way when Absalom’s transport man went to get our son. By now she’s up in the hills, at another of our . . . special places.” He shrugs. “I told them to make some use out of her, one way or another. She’s not as marketable as she would have been younger, but—”

“Shut up!” I scream, and the raw edge to it surprises me. I feel heavy and cold, like my body is already giving up. I want my rage back. The fear is too hard. Too heavy. Lanny, oh my sweet precious girl, where are you, what’s he done . . .

I remind myself, somehow, that Melvin Royal is a liar. A deceiver. A manipulator. And he knows where my undefended weaknesses lie. My children are how he hurts me. I have to believe they’re safe. I have to.

“You’re a very bad mother,” he says into the weighted silence. “I’m going to get my son and make him mine again. I’ve already got your daughter. You think about that until I’m ready for you.”

He knows when to strike and retreat. He stands up and goes to the door, and for the first time I realize that this bedroom has other furniture in it—an old, leaning dresser, some framed prints half-eaten by mold. A cracked mirror that shows the world in two badly reflected pieces.

In it, I’m torn in half, as if he’s already started destroying me.

I know I should get myself free. I know I should fight. I have to fight.

But all I can do, as Melvin leaves me, is lie there, shuddering. I claw the sheet over me, because the cold seems so intense, despite the thick, tepid air. I need my anger back.