Page 34 of Devoted

I don't argue as I try to work up the courage to tell him I know about his past. It's harder than I realize. I reach for another sip of wine, but this time it goes down rough. I swallow hard to fortifymyself.

"Turner Vossnik," I sayquietly.

I stupidly expect him to stand up quickly or show alarm in his face, but I forget Kane doesn't show shock. Anger, lust, even hate but shock,no.

His shoulders broaden with a deep breath. "I wondered how long that would take. Guess they really are spending time and money hoping to catch the elusive KaneFreestone."

19

Kane

Angie looks into my eyes,seemingly waiting for more reaction than I am willing to give. That part of me is so dead, so destroyed, I never react to it. It's a heavy weight I am shackled with for the rest of mylife.

She reaches for another sip of wine. It seems the topic has her more on edge than me. "A friend of mine is working on cyber research into your business and past," she says between drinks. "He sent me some clues to let me find out on my own. His theory is that I needed to better understand you to come to grips with everything thathappened."

"Nothing to understandreally."

I get up from the couch. It's stuffy enough in the tiny house that I crack open the glass door to allow in the ocean scented breeze. I breathe in the briny fragrance for a few seconds and then turn back to her. She's stronger, healthier, clear eyed. She's that radiant, smart red head who gazed at me through the mirror. I walk back to the couch but decide not to sitdown.

"I grew up in a house of horrors. Only no one knew it. The neighbors would walk past and wave hello to my dad as he smoked his cigarette on the front porch. I'd be at the table doing my homework listening to him making small talk with everyone as if he was an actual human. And during those times, when he was chatting amicably with friends and neighbors or walking through the grocery store asking me what I'd like for dinner, I almost believed he was humantoo."

I stop and find myself speechless as I look into her brown eyes. As a teenager I wanted badly for someone to listen with interest and empathy the way she's listening now, but it was always just clinically trained experts mostly wanting to pry grisly, provocative details out of me. They were more interested in the insane psyche of my serial killer dad than in making sure I came out of my nightmare a functioning adult. Or at least that was how itfelt.

"I can't even try and imagine what it must have been like for you." Angie reaches up and takes hold of my hand. Her touch warms my entire arm. It's too much for me to bear knowing I'll never have her again. I gently pull my handaway.

She seems to understand why I withdraw it. "Those eight scars," she says. "You carved them into your arm. Tally marks. Eight women. Eightmarks."

I pull a chair from the kitchen table and position it across from the couch. Sitting close to her is hard enough, especially when I'm talking about that dead part of me. "On the nights when he—" I shake my head and restart. "There was this tiny room at the back of the house that we used to store old stuff. He'd tell me I had to stay in the room until he came to get me. I was seven when he brought his first victim home. I can remember being scared and nervous because he wasn't himself for about a week before. If I'd been an average seven-year-old, I probably wouldn't have noticed the subtle differences. Skipping his morning newspaper. Not answering the phone when it rang. Agitated by every sound. But I wasn't an average seven-year-old. The school I attended was already trying to create an advanced curriculum to keep me from going out of my mind with boredom. That first time, I sat obediently in the room, covering my ears and closing my eyes to block out the unexplainedsounds."

There are tears in Angie's eyes. She wipes them away. "Sorry. It's just so hard to think about a little boy sitting in a room while his dad slashes a woman todeath."

"I sat there for hours. Peed my pants and everything. I remember being worried that I'd be in trouble for wetting myself. I finally dozed off sitting against a stack of old boxes. When sun poked through the window and woke me, I figured my dad forgot to come get me. I opened the door and peered out into the dimly lit house. The house was empty but I could hear noises in the backyard by the garage. I walked to the window. I had to stand on a box to see outside. My dad was holding something wrapped in the heavy plastic he'd used to paint the house the year before. I wasn't an average seven-year-old. I knew he was holding the woman. I knew I was watching my dad put a dead body in the trunk of his car. He drove away leaving me alone in the house for severalhours."

Angie draws her knees up and curls her arms around them. It triggers a heart thumping memory for me, walking into her room and seeing her sitting anxiously waiting for me to come. Those days were gone forever but I planned to relive them for the rest of my life. Sometimes, replacing horrific, bone-chilling memories with ones that left you breathless and delirious with happiness was the only way to survive. Especially if the bad ones were pounded like metal stakes into yoursoul.

"Did you carve the first scar that night?" she asks, resting her chin on her knees. It's the middle of the night. Her lashes grow heavy withdrowsiness.

"You're tired, Sweet Sin. I'll go and let yousleep."

She sits up straighter and drops her arms. "No, please. Nothing I read online is going to give me a true picture of what you endured. I need to hear the story from you. Unless it's too much," sheadds.

"Nothing is too much if it means spending a little more time with you." I stand up and pace the small room. "I was young. I brushed off the incident and even managed to convince myself the woman had done something terrible and that dad had to kill her to save us. He was my only family. His parents were both dead and my mom died when I was four. I had no one but my dad. And kids my age were so behind me intellectually that I couldn't stand them. And they absolutely couldn't stand me." I hold out my arm and stare down at the eight scars. "I didn't start cutting my arm until victim number two. She had short, dark hair and she kept calling me sugar. I think he picked her up at a local bar, a prostitute just looking to make a little cash. When dad sent me to the back room, I knew it was happening again. It all followed the same pattern. He acted strange and told me not to leave the room until he came to get me. At dawn he packed the plastic draped body into the trunk of his car. When I heard our car roll out of the driveway, I walked into the kitchen and pulled out a butter knife. I carved one for the first woman, and a second one for the woman who was being dropped into the river as I stood in thekitchen."

"Surely your dad noticed that you were carving gashes in your skin. Or yourteachers?"

"I hid it from teachers but I made sure he saw. I hoped it would let him know that I knew. He ignored it. It was as if during those normal times, when he was chatting with the neighbors or fixing macaroni and cheese on the stove, he didn't know he was a serial killer. He kept such a straight face about it all, I almost had a hard time believing it myself. But after number eight, when I was running out of room on my arm. I decided to follow him. It was just three days before my tenth birthday. It was cold and foggy that morning as I pedaled my bike along the road, following the glow of his tail lights. I saw him stop on the bridge, look around like a true monstrous serial killer and heave the body into the river. I knew then my life was going to change forever. I was going to lose my only family. The police didn't seem to be making much headway, so I moved things along with a letter. They took him away. I was stripped of my identity and given a whole newexistence."

Angie is clutching a plaid throw blanket in front of her. She's holding back a torrent oftears.

A breath catches in my throat as she tosses the blanket aside and walks over to me. She presses herself against me. Every cell in my body reacts but I tamp down the rush of heat she's sent through me. I lightly wrap my arms around her. It's all I allow myself, a briefhug.

It feels as if someone has ripped her from my arms but she merely steps back. "It seems as if life failed you at every turn back then," she says. "The parties for the homeless women, that was your way of erasing some of thepain?"

"Yes, but as you no doubt discovered, there was just enough wrong in what I was doing in Lace Underground to tip the scales towardwicked."

"The women I met on the streets likened getting into your world as winning the goldenticket."

"Compared to what life had to offer them in the real world, it's easy to seewhy."

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