Page 47 of Broken Hearts

20

Celeste

My stomach twistedinto knots as we headed down a dim road. I thought I’d feel better with every mile we put between us and Alex’s place, but instead I felt worse and worse with every minute that passed. My insides felt like they were quivering, and somehow I felt too hot and too cold at the same time as my mind replayed the harrowing events of the last few months over and over.

I could barely believe my narrow escape, and I could barely believe what Alex really was. But the evidence was right there for everyone to see now, as told to me by the FBI agents sent to save me. Alex wasn’t just a serial killer punishing a ring of disgusting sex offenders… he was a man who kidnapped and murdered innocent girls too.

Even though I’d suspected it over the last few weeks, with parts of me even believing it at some points, I knew I would’ve never fully accepted it unless I was shown evidence by someone else. Now that had happened. Now the logical side of me knew for sure that one day, Alex would’ve killed me too.

And yet I still didn’t want to believe it. I still wanted to believe that somehow, the FBI had it all wrong about him. Somehow, he really did love me, and he never lied, and someone else had planted Evangeline’s dead, battered body in his backyard along with all the photos and mementos in his house.

But even as I thought it, I knew how ridiculous and impossible that was. I needed to accept that I’d given my heart to the wrong man. I’d fallen in love with a psychopath who lied and killed without remorse.

I twisted my neck and peered out the back window, my eyes darting all over the place as I checked the horizon for any headlights. The coppery taste of fear scratched at the back of my throat as I imagined Alex’s car right behind us, gaining on us so he could run us off the road and finish what he started with me.

Agent West must’ve seen what I was doing, because he spoke up a moment later, making me jump. “Don’t worry, we’re taking quiet backroads, and we’re going a long, roundabout way, just in case. No one’s following us, and we’ll be back in the city in under an hour,” he said. I swallowed hard and nodded. “Things are going to get back to normal as soon as possible. Just keep taking deep breaths,” he added soothingly.

I let my hair fall in front of my face and pretended to scratch behind my right ear, hoping the movement hid my fear that life would never, ever be normal again.

I wanted to keep crying like I had earlier when Dwyer led me out of the house, wanted to scream and wail and weep buckets of tears. But I resisted the urge. If I started sobbing again, I might not be able to stop this time. I had to do something to distract myself instead.

I straightened myself in the back seat. “Where are we?” I asked in a small voice.

“About halfway between Burgettstown and Hickory,” Dwyer replied. “Thirty miles out of the city.”

I nodded slowly. I knew where the area was in relation to the city. Back in middle school, we had to take a trip out to this area to visit a small organic produce farm. It was near Burgettstown, so it was probably only a few miles from where Alex had kept me in captivity.

“How did you find me?” I asked.

Dwyer looked over at West and grinned. “I’ll let him answer that. It was his dedication and hard work.”

West smiled back and turned his head over his shoulder to face me again. “It started with your friend Samara, like I said earlier. She came in and begged me to look for you. She and your neighbor had filed reports with the police, but they assumed that you.…” He coughed and shifted in his seat. “It was assumed that you ran away.”

“Oh.”

“Samara didn’t believe that, and neither did I once she told me why. She said you’d been worrying her lately, telling her that you thought you were starting to remember something. We both figured that perhaps you’d started to remember seeing the Heartbreaker’s face, from when you were a kid, and perhaps he’d figured that out and taken you to stop you from telling anyone. Thatis why he took you, isn’t it?”

No, that wasn’t true. I never actually saw Alex’s face the day he killed my father, only his eyes… but he did take me because I was beginning to remember things from my childhood. Things about the Circle that might help him track down more members so he could kill them. That was the real reason he took me, and yet, I didn’t want to tell anyone that particular truth right now. Somehow, after everything, I still felt a fucked up sense of loyalty to him and his mission against the depraved Circle.

“Yes,” I lied. “That’s why he took me.”

West smiled victoriously. “Knew it. Thank god for that friend of yours. She’s the reason I didn’t give up. She was so sure he’d taken you.” He paused and took a deep breath before continuing. “Anyway, as to how I found you… it took a lot of work.”

“And guts,” Dwyer cut in. “Almost got suspended over it.”

I frowned. “Why?”

“Foley didn’t want me looking into it,” West said. “Your disappearance wasn’t official FBI business, and he assumed you’d just run off somewhere, so…” He trailed off and shrugged. “He was being an asshole, essentially.”

“He’s always an asshole,” Dwyer said with a snort of laughter.

I almost giggled too, because for a second, it felt like I hadn’t been away all this time. It felt like we were all just colleagues from the field office again, bitching about Foley, who was honestly one of the grumpiest pricks I’d ever met. I understood why he didn’t want West ‘wasting his time’ looking into my disappearance, seeing as it wasn’t technically his job, but still… he was a dick.

“What happened then?” I asked.

West twisted his lips. “Well, I had to try and make connections where there didn’t seem to be any on the surface. It took a whole lot of little pieces of information and a few assumptions, fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle, for me to really put things together. But the real breakthrough came from your neighbor, Ms. Rossi. She said she used to see a car in your neighborhood sometimes, and she remembered a partial plate. We figured he may have stalked you, and that it could be his vehicle she remembered seeing.”

“Good old Cora,” I murmured. She’d always been sharply observant and nosy as hell, but she’d also always looked out for me.

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