Page 102 of Preying Heart
Project from the lungs,my drama club teacher says.Relax your throat.
I give the speech I prepared on the long ride down. “She jogs every morning. Starts at her house and goes down East Mercer Boulevard to Clarke Beach Park. The road is narrow and tree lined. It’s an accident. You’re driving too fast and she’s hit. Killed. Do it for me so I can marry Gavin.”
“You mean kill Claudia?” Slade asks.
“Yes, that’s why I’m here. To tell you—” My tongue is slow but a bolt of ice pierces the fog. “Gavin set this up. He has our mom. He’s going to kill her. I don’t want to marry Gavin. I love Heath. Slade, you have to help me. Help Lucy. The cowboy took us—”
A sharp pain cracks my side. I double over and roll off the log.
“That’s enough,” Gavin says. “You, Slade. Do exactly as she tells you. If you succeed, your family will be saved. We’ll ship the three of you to Canada with new identities. Don’t try anything funny. If you fail, your mom dies. You heard her instructions. I have them recorded. She and you go to prison forever.”
“But I’m the one doing the hit,” Slade protests.
“Make it look like an accident. Exactly as Remi instructed you. Listen again.”
I hear my voice. I projected nice and loud. Said my lines perfectly until—I went off script. He cuts it off.
“No, no, don’t listen to him. Don’t kill Claudia. I don’t—”
A dirty cloth is stuffed in my mouth. My arms are yanked and something hard snaps around my wrists, tying my hands together. I need to pee. I feel sick.
There’s a creaking sound like the sound of a door opening. I’m out of the fog and into a dark tunnel. The hand tightens around my arm. I wonder if I’ll bruise.
It yanks me around and lets go. I fall forward, but my hands are tied in back of me.
I land on my face on a sour-smelling mattress where I throw up, spitting the rag from my mouth.
The door slams and it’s quiet. Dark. Smelly. Sick.
I wonder where the screaming woman went. Where Slade went.
I moan and move myself from the vomit, wiping my face on the dank and greasy cloth. It’s so dark, I might be blind. I hear shuffling noises. Is there a mouse in here, or a rat?
The walls are closing in on me and I can’t breathe.
“Mommy?” I flash back into that nightmare. It’s always the same. I’m underneath the stairs, banging on the door. “Let me out. I can’t breathe. Hug me, Mommy. I’m scared.”
I crawl into a corner underneath the stairs and hide in the very back, making myself small, and squeeze my eyes shut. My heart flutters like the wings of a trapped bird, and the feeling of doom presses down on me.
“Let me out, Mommy. Let me out.”
A clammy hand touches me in the dark.
I jump out of my skin, hit my head, and scream, cowering. “Who’s there? Who’s there? Slade, are you there? Don’t leave me. Heath. I’m sorry. I love you, but it’s too late.”
There’s no sound other than my ragged breathing. Maybe I imagined it. Maybe I’m already dead and this hole I’m in is hell. I hug myself tight and curl into a ball. Waiting for judgment. Sorry. And alone. Too far gone. Too dark.
“God, will you hear me?”
ChapterThirty-Eight
Heath
Police vehicles surround the Farm, a charitable shelter for ex-addicts and abused women. On the surface, the compound looks respectable. It consists of a larger lodging house which used to be a hotel back in the days when the stagecoach passed through—at least that’s what Justin told me on the drive up. There’s a barn where the residents work on crafts to sell at local flea markets and online to earn money, and scattered cabins left over from the campground and dude ranch that used to exist.
“Stay back,” Justin commands me. “Let the officers handle this.”
“She’s not inside that hotel. I’m sure he has her hidden in one of the garden sheds or cabins.”
