Page 134 of The Twenty (Major Crimes)

Adam freezes. His muscles tense, his mouth goes dry.

“And he did, Adam. He put a roof over my head. Gave me food. Water. So I did what he asked. Unlike those other girls.”

Shit. Fuck.

“I survived.”

It’s her. The fifth woman. The one that walked out of that outhouse of horrors into the outside world. Court orders banned the showing of her photograph; she changed her name and disappeared.

Except she hasn’t. She’s here. Not dead, after all.

There’s merely six feet between them. And she’s small, slender. He could easily overpower her if he needed to.

“I went to visit him,” she continues. Her voice is quiet and cool. “I missed him. How could I not? We were so close when we were together all those years ago. Every day I’ve been away from him since is agony.”

Adam blinks in surprise. “But he kidnapped you. Locked you up. Raped you.”

“At first, I was scared of him. He said he would kill me, hurt me, if I didn’t do what he said. But then he realized I didn’t care. I had nowhere else to go. He gave me life.” She pauses, crossing one slim leg over the other, slowly. Considering.

“Those guys on the street,” she continues. “That was rape. I didn’t want to have sex with them, but I needed the money. For the heroin I pumped into my veins. All those men, those stinking desperate beasts, wanting to hump me like animals. For me to suck their dicks. They didn’t care about me as long as I did what I was paid to. But with him, it was different. I was loved. He saved me, got me clean. Kept me safe. And then they took him away.”

“You refused to testify at his trial,” Adam says, slowly realizing the truth. This woman was brainwashed. All those months, locked away in that shed, and her allegiances had turned.

“We chose them together. Elijah and I.”

“Chose who?”

“The victims. Drug dealer. Hooker. A husband who pretended to be a family man while cheating on his wife with prostitutes. The worst society could offer. And the people that had let us down. Lawyers. A teacher. A social worker.” She pauses. “Police,” she says with a smile, and Adam feels a burn of hatred. “He told me his story. What that man had done to him. Who could blame Elijah for what he’s compelled to do? Twenty victims, in his father’s name. Revenge on the people who didn’t save us.”

“But those people were innocent,” Adam replies. “What had Pippa Hoxton ever done to you?”

She ignores him. “A cop came to his door. When Elijah was a child. The neighbors finally called 999 in response to his mother’s screams. And what did they do? They had a beer with his father. Sat in the front garden. That’s why he hates them. Me too. They never did anything to help me. Arrested me for solicitation. Then they took me away from him. From the only man who ever loved me.”

“Elijah Cole didn’t love you,” Adam says in disbelief. “He was using you.”

“I was his first.” She smiles, as if lost in a warm memory. “And then he brought those other girls along. Screwed them in front of me. But he was only trying to make me jealous.”

Adam can’t speak, horrified by the words coming out of this woman’s mouth.

“I told him to lock them in those cages. I decided whether they could eat that day; if they could have a blanket to keep them warm at night. Sometimes he even brought me up to the house. To sit at his kitchen table and eat with him when his daughter was in bed. Like man and wife. It was his reward, his way of thanking me.”

Adam can barely dare to ask. “For doing what?”

“For choosing who should be next. Who should die. Those women could only serve a purpose for so long, so when they became too sick, too pathetic …” She shrugs. “But Grace. Christ, that woman never lost hope. Not even when she closed the door on us. She lost it then. Started shouting, pulling at her chains. Thought she’d take her hands right off, she was that determined.” She looks at Adam again. “Do you know what that’s like? To see freedom and have it taken away from you? I thought it would kill her. But she started shouting about getting out, making him pay. Testifying in court. Of course, I knew then that it couldn’t happen.”

Adam tries to swallow but his spit is like sand. “You killed her.”

“Whacked her around the back of the head with a bottle.” Her voice is cold, matter-of-fact. “She went down without a fight. And I was right to. They came barely hours after that. Set me free, so they said.” Her face hardens. “But all they did was take him away from me. We found a way to speak, eventually. You have no idea what that was like, to see him again, at the prison. We were reunited. My Elijah.”

Adam’s hands go to his mouth. He glances to the door, to the mobile phone he’s left in his coat pocket in the hallway.

“He protected me. He never said a word. He loves me.”

“You need help, Catherine,” Adam says gently. “I can help you.”

“You can’t help me! You can’t even help yourself, you useless man. Elijah was right—you aren’t worthy of his daughter. You weren’t then, and you certainly aren’t now. You chased around for days after Maggie. A woman so deranged she thought that she could earn her father’s love by killing those people. I was her therapist too. That made things easy. Nurturing her madness until there was barely room for reality in her crazy brain.”

“But Catherine, look at yourself. You’re successful. You’re a doctor of psychology, you’re living a normal life—”

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