Page 9 of Keep Breathing

“This can’t be happening,” Livy gasped breathlessly. I instantly moved to her side and wrapped my arm around her, needing to comfort her. I needed the comfort of having her close too. I couldn’t face losing Evie. Not after everything we had already been through in our lives. We couldn’t lose our sister. Life couldn’t be that cruel, could it?

“It’s going to be okay, love. We’re going to get her back,” Kade assured Livy as he took her hand in his.

“Damned right we are,” Kyle agreed. I nodded to them both, completely in agreement. We had done everything in our power to protect and keep Evie safe since the day mom carried her into our home at one day old. She was our pain in the ass baby sister who we all adored. Nothing and no one was ever taking her from us. We wouldn’t allow it.

CHAPTER 4

EVIE

Four months later…

My heart was pounding way too hard as I hurried inside the crumbling apartment building, slamming the door closed behind me. I paused there a moment, my weight braced against the door as I fought to catch my breath and calm down.

This was my new reality – this pathetic, weak, freaked out shell of the person I had once been, who lost her mind every time she was forced to walk down a slightly busy street. That was what had happened – that was why my heart was pounding so hard the sound was rattling through my body, and why a sheen of sweat covered my entire, badly trembling, body. Panic attacks were my new normal, and all that needed to happen for one to be triggered was for one person to get just a little too close to me, or even just speak to me.

I was a wreck. Not one iota of the confident, brave, vocal girl that I had been brought up to be, remained. It had all been tortured out of me and all that was left was an empty shell. I didn’t even look the same, my body a patchwork of evidence of everything that had led to my utter destruction.

“You!” The loud bark had me jumping around in fright, and I was instantly face to face with the scumbag landlord of the slum I had been hiding out in for the last few months. “You owe me rent, girlie!” he pointed a withered finger at me as he glared with his beady eyes. He was at least in his early sixties, skeletal, and greasy looking. He gave me bad vibes from the moment I met him, but this had been the only place I could afford at the time and I’d been desperate.

“T-tomorrow. I…I g-get paid tomorrow and I…I’ll pay then,” I stuttered. I couldn’t even make myself speak without stumbling over my words. The fact I was lying didn’t help either. I had already been paid that day, the cash I had been handed clutched tightly in my hand, inside of my pocket, but I couldn’t give any of it to him. I needed it.

“See you do or you’re out on your ass! I got plenty of other people can fill that unit!” he growled, before shuffling into his apartment and slamming the door so hard my body jolted with fright. Loud sounds were just another thing that set me off now.

I raced past his door and ran up the two flights of stairs to my apartment, my hands shaking so badly it took me four attempts before I got the key into the hole.

I slammed the door closed once I was inside, but I didn’t relax. There was no such thing as relaxing for me anymore. No place I felt safe. Because I wasn’t safe. I never would be. Not as Long as he was alive. He knew where I lived. He knew everything about me. Safety was not a word I even allowed myself to remember any longer. I didn’t have that luxury.

I flicked on the overhead light in the dingy studio apartment and looked all around the tiny, crumbling space with a sense of terror, sure, as I was every time I entered that crap hole, that that would be the day he’d be there, just waiting for me.

But the apartment was just as I left it. The twin bed in the corner was unmade, the sheets twisted and rumpled, the same way I had left them when I woke from yet another nightmare early that morning. The faucet in the tiny kitchenette was still leaking badly, drip-dripping into the cracked porcelain basin. Off in the corner was a tiny shower room, the door wide open, just as I left it so I could peer in without fully entering – checking for him. It was a disgusting space I would never have stepped foot in before I was taken, but after – after weeks of hell – I hadn’t cared about anything other than getting a locked door between me and the rest of the world, and ever since I had been focused on nothing but just staying alive, one day to the next.

I was broken. In so very many ways. I was alone in the world for the first time in my life and there was nothing I wanted more than to reach out to my family and have them come. I wanted to be enveloped in their love. I wanted my brothers overbearing protectiveness to swallow me up and keep me safe. I just wanted a moment where I could stop the constant fear and just breathe.

But I couldn’t have any of that. It had been one of the rules that allowed me to live. I couldn’t go to them or contact them. If I did, he would kill them. That was what he had told me. He told me I had to live far away from them and stay away.

A month ago I had tested his rules. I had been so alone and afraid. I was in the public library, where I had work cleaning early morning and late evenings. A staff member had left their computer logged on when they left for the night. I had thought it would be safe. I had thought he would never know. I sent a message through an anonymous text service to my brother, Matt, telling him I was alive and that I loved them all. I was too afraid to tell them where I was, or any other details, but I needed them to know I was okay.

Two days later I awoke from my fitful sleep to an envelope on the nightstand beside my bed. Inside was an article from the local news site of my hometown, detailing the near miss my brother, Matt, had had when the brakes of his car failed. He got away with minor injuries but he had been very lucky. On the back was written, ‘This is your only warning.’

I had no idea how he knew I sent the message, or even how he knew where I was. I had no idea how he got to Matt’s car, or how he knew exactly where I lived. But he did. He knew all of it, and he got into my apartment as I slept. It was all of the warning I needed. I couldn’t go near my family as long as The Number Killer was still roaming the streets. I also couldn’t ever feel safe. He knew where I was and he was watching me somehow.

I had lived in even greater terror since that day, not just for me but for everyone I loved. I had resolved to never contact any of them again. I was alone and I would have to stay that way. I went through the motions of life, working crappy cleaning jobs to buy essentials and cover the cost of the hole I lived in. I ate. I slept. I survived.

And then a few days ago, I saw on the news that two bodies had been found around a hundred miles from where I was now living in Boston. Number seven and nine. The press were confused about where number eight was. The number killer always left three bodies, but this time one was missing. But I wasn’t confused. I knew where number eight was. Right here. She survived. I survived. I felt so much guilt about that. I sobbed as I watched the news story unfold, sure that those poor girls were dead because of me. If I’d just been brave enough to ignore his stupid rules and gone right to the cops the minute I was free, would they have gotten to him and to those girls before it was too late for them? Would they be alive now? Could I have saved them?

I knew there was at least a chance, and that was tearing me apart. I didn’t know much about him. I didn’t know where I’d been held or many details that would lead the police back to him, but maybe there was something I could tell them that would take that monster off of the streets. Maybe I was sitting on information that would get him caught and prevent other innocent girls falling into his clutches to be tortured and murdered. But I was also terrified. He had threatened to kill my entire family if I even walked past a police station, and after what he’d done to Matt, I believed him. I couldn’t risk that. I couldn’t go to the police until I had something solid that they could use.

I had survived this far. I needed to be smart now. I couldn’t give up the second chance at life I had.

I didn’t know why I had gotten that chance. I didn’t understand why the other two girls had been killed, while I had been freed. Was this another form of torture – isolating me from everyone and everything I knew, then terrifying me until I finally gave him what he wanted?

I had considered it. I had really fucking considered it. Two little words. That was what Soloman wanted. That was what he told me to call him - the bastard who took me - though I avoided using it as much as possible, not finding that sonofabitch worthy of a name that would make him seem even fractionally human.

Those two words though. They were the reason he took me and tortured me, and also the two girls who’s identity’s I learned from the news. I didn’t know if he had been holding them at the same time as he held me. I had never seen evidence of anyone else there, but it had been a big building and I guessed, judging by his pattern, we had all been taken around the same time, and therefore held together too. He took girls in groups of three and held them for weeks, torturing them and eventually killing them. The reporters didn’t know his motives, but I did. I knew why he held the girls for weeks before killing them. I knew he held on to them so he could torture them until they cried out those two words that somehow made him feel justified. Righteous even. He was a sick sonofabitch. Crazy and unhinged.

I hadn’t ever given him what he wanted. I couldn’t. No matter what he did to me I refused to give up. My brother’s had survived hell. Livy had survived years at the hands of a monster who broke her again and again. But none of them ever gave up. They were strong and brave and they taught me to be too. So I fought. I survived and I refused to give up. I guessed that was why he freed me, but ever since he did, my strength and determination to fight had waned. Being alone was the hardest thing I had ever done, especially when I was so truly broken. Was my life really worth living if this was all that lay ahead for me? Maybe I should just say those words. Would he hear them? Would he come for me if I finally just curled up in a ball and quit? If I finally said those two little words - Kill me.

But then I saw that news item. I thought about those two innocent twenty-something year old girls who had given in and said those words – no doubt under extreme duress and in agony – terrified beyond what anyone could ever understand. I knew why they had done it. In a way I was relieved for them that they got to finally find some peace. But it also woke a fire in me. They were gone and somehow I still remained. I couldn’t waste that. I couldn’t waste the life I still got to live in this pathetic, miserable existence. So I came up with a plan.

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