Page 45 of The Last Straw

Potpie for him.

One more night on earth for her.

Rachel didn’t know it was night. She didn’t know it was raining. But her situation was real. Sometime in the past few hours she’d awakened from a nightmare of fever-driven hallucinations, desperate for a drink of water. But instead of following the wall at the foot of the mattress, she forgot where she was, went the wrong way and, with one shoe on and one shoe off, walked across the floor of broken glass.

The shock and then pain of the shards going through the sock and into her foot made her fall. Instinctively, she reached out to catch herself and wound up on her hands and knees in even more of the glass. There was nowhere to walk, nowhere to crawl. She was trapped in the dark that she’d created. Sad to the bone, she rocked back on her heels, threw back her head and screamed.

She was past the prayers. Past making promises about what she’d do with her life if God would just save her. All she wanted now was for it to be over. She didn’t know if they’d ever find her body, which made her sad for Millie. But more than anything else, she wanted to be dead before Sonny came back. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of doing it. If she hadn’t lost the damn knife, she’d take herself out.

“Don’t I matter to anyone? Isn’t there one fucking person even looking for me?” Rachel sobbed, then cried until she couldn’t breathe.

After a while a resigned calm came to her. The total darkness in which she sat was the only safety net between her and Sonny. If he never came back, she would die, but he’d never touch her alive again. And if he did come back, he would be at a disadvantage, because he would not be expecting the darkness.

She also accepted she couldn’t stay here forever, so she began brushing away the bits of glass around her. Once she had a space free of glass big enough to sit in, she eased herself down and began picking glass out of her hands, and then her knees, then she felt along the bottom of her sock, pulling out the shards as she went.

Once she was satisfied that she’d done all she could do, she rolled back over onto her hands and knees and felt her way around the room until she found the mattress, then finally found the door.

Reoriented to the direction she was facing, she then made her way to the sink and let the water run free between her fingers until she was satisfied the glass debris had washed away.

Then she leaned over, resting her forearms on the sides of the sink; she cupped her hands, caught enough water to sluice across her face and on the festering sore at her neck, before drinking from the flow.

But when she pulled down her pants at the toilet and felt more glass in her knees, she stayed seated and by feel alone, began picking it out. She could feel blood on her fingers and on her knees, and got back up and washed herself off again, shaking from exhaustion.

Once she got back to her mattress, she crawled back into the corner, then sat with her knees pulled up beneath her chin, and her back against the wall. Her belly growled. From the rumble in her stomach, she guessed it had been more than twenty-four hours since Sonny’s last visit.

She knew she’d hurt him.

She hoped it was permanent.

And then she closed her eyes.

In time, her fever turned to chills, waking her again. She needed to find the blanket and began crawling around the mattress, trembling and shaking, and found the knife instead.

The feel of it in her hands gave her courage and strength of purpose, and so she tightened her grip and kept crawling and patting the mattress top until she felt the fuzzy warmth.

Clutching it to her as if she’d just found the Holy Grail, she wrapped the blanket around her, then curled up, making herself as small as she could, with the knife clutched tightly in both hands.

The leftover lasagna from Wyrick and Charlie’s dinner had long since been put away, and the dishes were done.

He was back examining the blueprints, and she was in the office. Except for the wind and rain blowing against the windows, the old mansion was quiet.

All of a sudden, Charlie heard Wyrick’s footsteps running up the hall toward him. Before he could react, she was standing in the doorway.

“You will not fucking believe what I just found!”

Charlie blinked. “I cannot believe you just said fucking.”

She shrugged. “I know more curse words. Do you want to hear them, or would you rather find Rachel Dean?”

“Sorry. It was just a surprise. Talk to me,” Charlie said.

“Rachel Dean is not the first woman to go missing from Detter House. She’s the fourth. Over a period of eleven years.”

“Holy shit! Why didn’t the police—?”

“I don’t think anyone’s connected the dots yet,” Wyrick said. “The first one who disappeared had no family. Same story, more or less with two more, and neither one of them had family who would have been concerned. But here’s the kicker. There hasn’t been any activity on their social security numbers since. Not job-wise or otherwise. Rachel Dean is the only one with a living family member who is raising a fuss.”

“Were they reported as missing persons?” Charlie asked.

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