Page 43 of Broken Hearts

Dwyer glanced at his phone before replying. “Out the front, keeping an eye out just in case Magnusson comes down the driveway. I had the rest of the team find alternate routes onto the property so they could get it all surrounded quickly. Don’t worry, you’re perfectly safe. He can’t hurt you now,” he said soothingly.

After all these weeks of mental torment, I was so used to not being able to trust anything anyone told me that I almost didn’t believe Dwyer. But then we stepped outside, and I saw Agent West standing right there on the front porch. This was a real rescue mission. If I wanted freedom, this was it. I finally had it.

West’s face lit up when he saw me. “You’re really here,” he said gruffly, stepping over to me. “You’re really okay.”

Dwyer patted me on the back. “Yup, she’s okay. You did good, West.”

“Thank you for finding me,” I said, my voice scarcely above a whisper. “I can’t believe you did it.”

West waved a hand. “Don’t thank me. I was just doing my job. Thank your friend, Samara. She didn’t give up, and she practically forced us to keep looking for you.”

I was overcome by another wave of emotion. This whole time, I’d wondered if anyone was still looking for me. To hear that my best friend refused to give up on me made me want to cry grateful tears for hours.

“Did he hurt you at all?” West asked, his forehead creased in concern. His eyes were searching my face and any other bare skin like my hands and neck, presumably for any bruises, cuts, or blood.

I hesitated. Did Alex hurt me? He whipped me, spanked me, and paddled me, which hurt… but I liked that pain. He knew I liked it, even when it was framed as punishment. “No. He actually helped me,” I ended up saying. “He helped my nerve pain. It’s much better than it was.”

Dwyer’s lips pressed into a thin line. “He killed a lot of people, Celeste.”

“I guess,” I said softly. I looked up at West, then back at Dwyer. “Before we go, can I... can I go back inside and get something?”

I saw the two agents exchange meaningful glances. I knew what they were thinking. This girl is crazy. Stockholm syndrome to the max. Maybe they were right. But I couldn’t just leave here without taking some sort of memento. This might be the last time I ever saw this place, and as insane as it sounded, it had been my home for the last couple of months. I didn’t want to tear myself away from it with nothing to remind me.

Dwyer checked his phone, and then his watch. “Look, if you really have to, then you can,” he said slowly, as if he were speaking to a child. “But we need to be quick about it. The team has the place surrounded now, and apparently Magnusson’s car was just spotted heading out of the city. He’ll probably arrive in under half an hour, and I’d rather you weren’t here when he’s taken down.”

My stomach lurched. “Okay.”

“I’m coming with you.” Dwyer led me back inside and followed me up the stairs. With the power out, I was able to get into Alex’s study again, and I went straight for the cupboard with the boxes. I opened the one with my name on it and rummaged through it, searching for the silver bracelet with the heart charms on it.

“That yours?” Dwyer asked, looking down at it once I found it.

“Yes. Alex, uh… he stole it from me,” I said, not wanting to admit that it was actually originally a gift from him. Dwyer would really think I was insane if I told him I wanted to keep it in that case.

When I went to put the bracelet in my jacket pocket, the photo of Evangeline slipped out. Before I could put it back in, Dwyer picked it up, staring down at it with furrowed brows.

“How and why do you have this?” His head jerked back up. “Did he tell you about her?”

“No. I found it a while ago. There’s more photos of her in the other box. Do you know something about her?”

He sighed heavily, then checked his watch. “We still have a few minutes, and you’re going to hear this eventually anyway, so….” He nodded toward Alex’s computer chair. “You’re going to want to sit down.”

I did as he said, my stomach churning with anticipation.

“This is Evangeline Gibson,” he said, holding up the photo. He paused, and I nodded, already knowing that much. “She vanished a long time ago. I remember working the case. But she was never found. Not until... until today.” He swallowed hard.

My brows shot up. “Today? Is she alive?”

He crouched before me and put one hand on my left knee. “No,” he said softly. “Magnusson has more than one property. We searched the other two first, seeing as they were closer. A sniffer dog led us to a shallow grave in the backyard of one of them, and we unearthed a young female skeleton. At first we thought it was you, and that we were too late. But our forensics guy on the scene said it looked like it’d been there for a while; too long to be you. Obviously DNA takes a long time to come back with results, but dental records show that it’s almost certainly Evangeline Gibson. Marks on the bones show that she was stabbed repeatedly. That’s likely how she died.”

I stared at him, my eyes wide with horror. It felt like the study walls were caving in on me. This was it. Confirmation that Alex really did murder the other girl. My suspicions were correct all along.

“We’re so lucky, Celeste,” Dwyer went on. “If we didn’t find you in time….” He broke off and let the words dangle in the air, not needing to finish the sentence. We both knew what he meant. If they didn’t find me in time, I could’ve ended up just like the other girl, stabbed to death and buried in an unmarked grave.

I clenched my hands into fists, digging my fingernails so deep into my palms that I was sure I would bleed. “Please get me the fuck out of here,” I said in a ragged whisper.

Dwyer nodded. “Yes, of course,” he said softly. “Let’s go.”

Before we left the room, I took the photo from him and stuffed it back in my pocket. Evangeline looked happy in the picture—it was one of the pictures taken before she’d been seriously abused. Perhaps her family would like to see it one day. It could help them believe that she’d at least had a few happy moments during her captivity, before she was killed.

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