WARNING: This chapter contains material with mature themes not suited for a younger audience. Reader discretion is advised.
"Marianne!" Jenny cried out and rushed to her friend's side.
Marianne had been beaten and there were bruises and dried blood covering her face, but there was no question in Jenny's mind it was her. Why had he taken her co-worker? Jenny thought he was after her because she could ID him as Chrissy's abductor, but why add to the list, then?
"What happened to you?" she asked, fruitlessly trying to get the chains off of Marianne's wrists.
Marianne stared wide-eyed at the man behind Jenny, not responding to her question. In a matter of seconds, a large hand was gripping Jenny's hair and pulling her up by the roots, away from Marianne. She struggled, grasping at his hand with both of hers, but he was relentless. She was shoved against a wall and pushed down to the floor where shackles like Marianne's were waiting for her.
"Put them on," he commanded, his gun trained on her again. "All of them."
There were four pieces that could lock around something small, like a wrist or ankle. Jenny hesitated. If she did as he told her, she was stuck with no hope of escape. He hadn't shot her yet, so maybe he didn't want to -not until the timing was right, at least. Could she attempt to run? Soft sobs drew her attention to the corner Marianne was huddled in. No, she couldn't run. She couldn't abandon her friend.
"I'm not going to tell you twice," he warned and cocked his gun for emphasis.
With her eyes back on the barrel, Jenny obeyed, clicking each piece in place.
"Stand up," he commanded and Jenny struggled to do so. The chains around her feet allowed for some movement, but the shackles around her wrists were too short to stand up fully.
"I can't," she said, her back bent with the chains pulled tight.
"I said, stand up," he repeated and Marianne whimpered from across the room.
Jenny pulled harder on her restraints and cried with the stretch of her arms and the metal breaking her skin. She couldn't stand up straight without tearing off her extremities. Surely he had to see that.
"Good enough," he muttered and walked away. Jenny slumped to the floor.
Their captor left the cottage a few minutes later and Jenny immediately addressed Marianne, still whimpering in the corner.
"How long have you been here?"
"Friday night. He... he said he was taking me away for the weekend." Marianne's voice was raw from crying, and Jenny strained her ears to hear.
"Did he kidnap you from the mall?" From the parking lot outside her bookstore as Jenny had always feared?
"No. He picked me up after work. Said it was a surprise."
"You know him?" Jenny's eyes widened. How could she have missed Chrissy's abductor being involved in her co-worker's life? Was she that self-absorbed? Jenny felt guilt wash over her.
"It's Jimmy," Marianne sniffled. "Jimmy Kane."
2003
"You know, this could have gone a completely different way," Jarrod tsked as Chrissy came to, finding herself tied to a chair in a dingy room with hunting trophies mounted on every wall. A hunting cabin. "I thought we could have some fun today, get a little buzzed, have a little sex... then you had to go and ruin it with your smart mouth. Now, we're back to Kane's plan. Personally, I prefer my plan, but whatcha gonna do, huh?"
"What's Kane's plan?" Chrissy swallowed, her mouth dry.
"Let's just say he's into torture movies," Jarrod stage-whispered in her ear. "Personally, I'm happy just to see the busty ladies getting naked, but everyone's got their fetishes, right?"
"Oh god," Chrissy whimpered.
"We should have gotten the other one, too," Kane muttered from a corner of the room. Chrissy looked over to see him sitting in an armchair, using a large knife - a hunting knife, maybe? - to sharpen a piece of wood.
"Well, it's too late to do anything about it now, isn't it?" Jarrod snapped. "You can't always get what you want, bro."
"She can tell us where the girl lives," Kane pointed with his knife at Chrissy.
"And then what? We'll just drop by and ask her to come along to see her friend? You're losing it, man. The sooner we get rid of this one, the sooner we can get the hell out of this state."
"It should have been two," Kane said, almost to himself.
"I'll tell you what, I'll let you have all the fun, okay?" Jarrod said, putting his hands up. "When the time comes, she's all yours."
When what time comes? Chrissy wondered, her heart beating a mile a minute. What were they going to do to her? The way they were talking, it didn't sound like they planned on letting her escape with her life. She had to figure out a way to get away from them before her time came. The most obvious excuse was also the most acute one.
"I need to go to the bathroom," Chrissy said, addressing Jarrod. "Please?"
Jarrod looked to Kane for confirmation, and she watched as he jerked his head toward the front door. They didn't have an indoor bathroom? If they let her go on an outhouse or something, at least she'd be out in the open for a short while. She could run. Her hopes began to soar, but she tamped down the smile that wanted to break free.
Any trace of a smile that may have flicked across her features went out with the rough rope tightening around her neck. She gasped for air and Jarrod loosened the noose a little. With a couple of tugs on her restraints, he released her from the chair, the rope around her neck keeping her prisoner just as well as being tied to the chair had.
"All fours," Kane ordered and Chrissy stared at him. He wanted her to crawl on the ground outside to relieve herself like some animal in the woods?
"You heard him," Jarrod said, tugging on the rope in his hand so that the noose tightened around her neck again.
Tears streaming down her face, her body silently shaking with unreleased sobs, Chrissy bent down to the ground and the cabin door opened for her. It had grown dark outside and it was raining. The dirt that served as a parking spot was dotted with puddles. Her hands met with mud and her knees sunk into it.
"Hurry up, I don't want to be out here all night," Jarrod said and steered her towards the woods. Moss and pine made for a softer - or at least cleaner - surface than the mud had. The humiliation, however, was no more tolerable.
Present day (2013)
"I should have known," Marianne whimpered. "It was too good to be true, a guy like that being interested in me. I was so happy for the attention I didn't even stop to think that it was weird he didn't want to be seen with me in the open. He said he worked with people all day so he just wanted it to be the two of us when he had time off. I thought it was sweet."
"You couldn't have known," Jenny said, consoling Marianne. "Northcrest is quiet, safe. No-one expects psychopaths to show up."
"You did."
"What?"
"All the years I've known you, you were always careful around strangers. It was like you were expecting someone to show up and hurt you on a daily basis."
Jenny closed her eyes and felt the truth of Marianne's words, and the truth of Carter's. She'd missed out on so much in life because she'd feared this precise thing, and in the end she hadn't been able to escape it anyway. She'd wasted ten years of living her life and now she was going to lose it all.
"This is the same man that took my best friend when we were in high school," she said, almost too quietly for any human to pick up, but with the silence in the cabin, her words still reached Marianne's ears.
"What? How is that possible?"
"I'm so sorry, Marianne. He was after me, and you got caught in his web. If it weren't for me, you'd be safe."
Marianne didn't say anything, maybe she was too shell-shocked to process, and Jenny feared the well-deserved outpour of blame coming her way.
"If I'd described him to you, would you have been able to ID him?" Marianne asked finally.
"Maybe."
"So it's just as much my fault."
"No-"
"How could you have known that the mystery guy I was dating was the one you've been afraid of all these years? You told the sketch artists what he looked like when it happened, right? I remember pictures in the paper when I was a kid."
"Yes. They ran them for a long time, but there weren't any leads."
"So I should have recognized him."
"How could you? It's been ten years, and you were just a kid when it happened. A picture in a paper doesn't stay with you for that long."
"But it stayed with you."
"Yeah. I remember him... looking at me. When Chrissy left the mall with them, he looked at me in a way that gave me chills. I could never forget that."
"What do you think he's planning to do with us?"
Jenny looked at the front door, wondering if he was standing outside, listening to them speculate. Did he get off on it? Their fear? Was that why he'd kept Chrissy for so long? To savor the kill?
"I don't know. I do know that there's one of him and two of us. His partner is locked away for Chrissy's murder, so I doubt he has backup coming."
"What are you saying? That we should fight him? Look at us!" Marianne raised her hands, making the chains rattle. "We don't stand a chance."
"At one point, he's going to have to release us."
"How can you be sure of that?"
"Because if he wanted us dead, he would have done it already. He wants something else. He kept Chrissy alive for days for a reason. We've still got time."
"Maybe you do. I'm running out."
"What? What are you talking about?"
"Look at me. He's already had his fun. He's done everything imaginable to me. I'm just waste now."
"No. No, listen, he said something. He said he wanted two, right? Which means he needs us both alive for whatever he has planned. And we're going to stay alive." Jenny felt the power of the words as they left her lips. It was ten years in the making, but she was ready now. She was ready to fight for her life.
Carter rubbed his head, which felt like it was the size of a shoebox, only slightly more rounded. The sand in his eyes he first woke up with had made them water and he'd crawled, partly blinded, to the edge of the shore to wash them.
"No, she was taken!" he said as forcefully as he could without blacking out from the pain in his skull. "He came up behind me and knocked me out. When I woke up, Jenny was gone. No, my car's still here. The tires have been slashed. I'm telling you, someone took her!"
Why wouldn't they listen to him? Carter wanted to throw his phone into the wall out of sheer frustration, but he had to make them understand.
"She was shot at just a few weeks ago. Someone is after her. I don't know who! Damn it, listen to me! You have to find her before he kills her."