Her Dying Breath
Authors: Rita Herron
Tags: #Romance, #General, #Suspense, #Mystery & Detective, #Fiction
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2013 Rita Herron
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance
PO Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781477805930
ISBN-10: 1477805931
Prologue
A journal entry, March 2
T
he first time I died, I was only five years old.
I remember seeing rainbows and carousels and the golden wings of an angel dancing in the wind, ready to sweep me to the heavens and save me from the monster who chased me through the endless dark forest of child-eating trees.
But then he was there again, blotting out the angels, and the darkness came. The minutes that bled into hours. Hours where I fought for my life. Hours where the carousels turned into evil beings with dragons’ wings, with fangs and claws that reached for me and twisted my neck until it snapped.
I didn’t want to die.
But I had no control.
The Commander would kill me over and over again. All while the piano music played in the background, as if Mozart’s music could soothe me as I took my last breath.
It was a game, he said. A test of wills. A regiment to make me strong.
Even then, when I begged for him to send me to my grave, he didn’t.
Because he liked to listen to my dying breath rasp out. He said it brought him pleasure.
Voices rumbled in the common room, and I carried my journal with me, anxious to see what the commotion was about.
But there was no one except Six there. The TV was on—a newscast about the story in Slaughter Creek.
A picture of the Commander flashed on-screen, and I wanted to run. But my eyes were glued to his face in the same morbid way rubberneckers are drawn to the scene of a fatal accident. You can’t turn away.
“This is Brenda Banks coming to you from Slaughter Creek, Tennessee, where a shocking case has just been uncovered,” the dark-haired reporter said. “Arthur Blackwood, a commander in the armed forces and the former director of Slaughter Creek Sanitarium, who went missing ten years ago, is not only alive but has been arrested and charged with multiple counts of homicide.
“In a bizarre twist, Commander Blackwood, who is believed to have been working with the CIA, was arrested by his own sons, Sheriff Jake Blackwood and Special Agent Nick Blackwood, who discovered that the Commander had spearheaded a research project called the CHIMES at the local sanitarium.
“At this point, the CIA disavows any knowledge that Blackwood was working with them or that they sanctioned the project, which used unsuspecting children as experimental subjects. Commander Blackwood is now in custody, but word is that he is not cooperating with the police and refuses to reveal the names of his victims.”
I lifted my hand and stroked the tiny number that had been branded behind my ear.
The Commander wouldn’t release names because to him we had no names. Just numbers.
I am Seven.
My friend who sits beside me, Six.
The reporter continued to babble about the experiment and its horrific effect on the subjects they had identified.
The subjects, that’s what they called us. Guinea pigs. Freaks was more like it.
“If you have any knowledge or information pertaining to this case, please contact your local law enforcement agency or Special Agent Nick Blackwood.” The reporter smiled, stirring a faint memory in the back of my mind.
I had seen her before. Years ago at the sanitarium…would she remember me?
“Again, this is Brenda Banks coming to you from Slaughter Creek. We will bring you more information on this case as it becomes available.”
Six turned to me with an evil glint in his eyes as the broadcast finished airing. “Everyone must pay.”
I nodded and glanced at the keeper of the home we shared. Six pulled a pack of matches from his pocket and gestured toward the back, where our rooms were.
His devious mind already had a plan.
Five minutes later, a blaze erupted in the bathroom, and I grabbed my bag from my room and slipped out the back. Blood soaked Six’s pocket, but I didn’t ask what had happened. I didn’t want to know.
Flames shot into the air, smoke billowing in a thick cloud. I heard a scream from inside, and then Six appeared through the cloud of smoke, his eyes scanning the property.
I hooked a thumb toward the car on the corner, and we ran toward it, ducking our heads as a siren wailed and a fire engine roared past us, heading to the blaze.
Silence fell between us, deep and liberating, as we climbed into the car. I hot-wired it in seconds and pulled away. With Six, there was no need to talk. We had bonded years ago in the sanitarium.
I could read his mind now.
We would go back to Slaughter Creek, to where it all began. Where the Commander started his reign of terror.
Where the townspeople had allowed it to happen and ignored our pleas for help.
Heat flooded my veins as I imagined him chained to some godforsaken table, where he became the pincushion for the doctors’ needles and drugs. Where the CHIMES drained his blood and watched the life flow from him, one breath at a time. While he screamed for help that would never come.
Prison was not good enough for the man who’d tortured and deceived me and the others.
The police, the federal agents—they thought they knew the Commander’s secrets.
But they knew nothing.
Red Rover, Red Rover, send Seven right over…
I would show him what he’d turned me into.
And then I would kill him, just as he’d killed me.
Over and over and over again—seven times, I’d take his life, until he begged me to extinguish the light and finally let him slip into peace.
Then I would kill again, just for the fun of watching him die.
S
pecial Agent Nick Blackwood hated his father.
The bastard had ruined the lives of dozens of young, innocent children in the name of his research.
He’d ruined the lives of his two sons as well.
Nick had his own stories to tell.
Stories that he’d never shared with a single living soul. Not even his brother, Jake.
But they were his secrets to keep, and he wore them like a badge of honor. The painful memories had shaped him into the man he’d become.
A cold, ruthless killer for the government. And now a cold, ruthless federal agent who hunted down the most wanted, the sick and depraved.
Psychopaths like his father.
The scars on his back ached as he walked into the interrogation room where Arthur Blackwood sat, scars his father had inflicted from the time he was three, but he refused to massage the pain away. Seeing his discomfort would only bring the Commander pleasure, and he refused to give him that, just as he refused to react to his father’s pleas to get to know him again.
Instead, Nick wiped all emotion from his face and mind.
This man meant nothing to him. Nothing but a means to an end. He had information Nick wanted.
The interrogation techniques Nick had learned in the military taunted him. He’d like to use those on the Commander. In fact he would
enjoy
using them, making his father suffer as he’d made others suffer.
Unfortunately the TBI didn’t allow torture as part of their tactics.
The downside of being a fed—he had to play by their rules.
He and several other agents had already questioned the Commander a half dozen times and gotten nowhere.
But they kept hoping he’d slip somehow and reveal the names of other parties involved in the mind experiments they’d conducted at Slaughter Creek Sanitarium.
