Page 48 of Sinister Legacy
My head explodes with pain, and I fall to the ground. My cheek meets the frosty grass as a bloody rock rolls in front of me before coming to a stop a few inches away from my face. Groaning pitifully in the dark, I fade in and out of consciousness. I can’t move. My limbs won’t obey me.
“Time to die,” a distorted voice taunts. My ankles are grabbed, and I’m dragged further into the forest, away from the lawn and out of sight. Pine needles and sharp twigs cut the skin at my stomach, where my T-shirt rides up.
I try to speak, to call for help, but my voice is nothing more than a pained murmur.
I fade out for a moment. When I come to, I’m on my side with the scent of damp moss and earth in my nostrils, while he ties my hands together behind my back. I try to scream, but there’s duct tape over my mouth and eyes.
He rolls me over onto my back, and I kick out with my feet as he tries to grab them.
What the fuck is happening? I can’t fucking breathe through this agony. My nostrils flare while I kick and scream, the sound muffled beneath the duct tape. I shuffle my shoulders, desperately trying to wriggle away. I can’t see, which only heightens the fear.
He kicks me in the ribs, causing me to double over with pain. I sob, my sore wrists rubbing against the rope as I try to wrench free.
Despite my feral kicks, the monster finally overpowers me and ties my ankles together. Silence falls once more before his weight lands on my thighs. He straddles me and slips something cold beneath the hem of my T-shirt.
What the fuck? I lift my neck off the ground and kick out with my bound ankles, trying to buck him off me.
Fed up with my struggle, he grabs hold of my head and whacks it against the ground. The impact rattles my brain. I’m dizzy, my head lolling as the cold feeling returns.
“Lie still,” he demands in his distorted voice. “Let’s cut this T-shirt off your body.”
The icy, cold scissors slide up my stomach and chest. He puts them down, and then something sharp is pressed to my belly button.
I begin to scream uncontrollably, and my chest constricts with panic.Please. Please. Please. I don’t want to die.
My body jerks as red-hot pain rips up my belly and spreads up my chest like liquid fire.
His mask brushes against my ear. “This is how your friends will find you. Gutted like a fucking pig, in a sea of your own innards.”
It’s icy cold, and the threat of snow hangs in the air. I pull up the police tape and duck beneath it, careful not to knock over any of the evidence markers on my way over to Riveiro, who crouches in front of the gutted, decapitated corpse.
The flash goes off as she takes another picture.
“What have we got?”
“Young male. Cut open from the stomach to the chest. The killer removed both the heartandthe head.”
I nod, scanning the corpse covered in pale innards, and the blood-soaked ground. The chest cavity has been pried open.
It’s nothing I didn’t expect.
Jimmy Hill did the exact same thing to his third victim.
Well, almost. “The removal of the head is a deviation from the original crime.”
“Yes. Jimmy Hill removed the heart and kept it in a freezer in the garage, but he never decapitated any of his victims.”
I scan the nearby vicinity. There’s a flurry of movement as men and women, covered head to toe in white, scour the ground for evidence. “Where did you find the heart and the head?”
“We didn’t.”
My head snaps in Riveiro’s direction. “What do you mean?”
“They’re missing.”
Rubbing a hand over my face, I let it drop by my side. This case is proving to be too much. Whoever this killer is knows how to cover his tracks. Everything is perfectly planned out.
“And the victim?”
