Page 129 of He Sees You
The cabin materializes from darkness like a wound in the forest.
Single story, isolated, windows covered with blackout curtains.
How many girls have disappeared into this place?
How many never left?
We're forty-five minutes early.
Perfect.
Inside, the cabin is worse than I imagined.
It's been retrofitted as a processing center.
Multiple locked rooms, each with a single mattress, bucket, and chain anchored to the wall.
The main room has a desk with ledgers, photos for "advertising," and a box of zip ties.
In the back bedroom, I find what Sterling prepared for his special order.
A room decorated for a teenage girl—pink bedding, stuffed animals, music posters.
Clothes laid out on the bed, all in my size from when I was sixteen.
He's recreated my childhood bedroom, waiting for a girl who looked like me to fill it.
"Jesus Christ," Cain breathes behind me.
I pick up one of the dresses—something I recognize.
It's one I donated to charity years ago.
He kept it.
My father kept my clothes to dress his victim in.
The rage that fills me is nuclear, world-ending.
I understand now why Cain kills.
Sometimes violence is the only language adequate to express certain truths.
"Celeste—" Sterling starts.
I whirl on him, Patricia's gun in my hand before I realize I've drawn it. "You kept my clothes? You were going to dress some child in my clothes?"
"It wasn't—I didn't mean?—"
"Stop lying!" The gun shakes in my hand. "For once in your pathetic life, tell the truth. You wanted a girl who looked like me because you've always wanted me. Your own daughter."
His silence is confession enough.
"I never touched you," he whispers. "Never."
"Because I was too close. Too risky. But a stranger who looked like me? That was safe, wasn't it?"
Cain takes the gun from my shaking hand. "Not yet. We need him to be functional for the next hour."
