Her Dying Breath (41 page)

She almost turned and ran back to the car, but she was too close now. She wanted answers.

So she opened the door, the music pounding louder as she stepped inside, the walls vibrating with the bleak intensity of the tune.

The lodge looked dismal and deserted inside, the only light seeping in from the fog-coated windows. The wood floors were dusty and squeaked as she pivoted to search for Seven. Assuming she was playing the piano, Brenda walked toward it, but a board behind her creaked, and suddenly she felt the barrel of a gun stab her back.

“Hello, Brenda,” a low, throaty female voice murmured.

Brenda stiffened, forcing herself not to react. She really didn’t want a bullet in her back. She took a deep breath, bolstering her courage. “Surely you didn’t ask me to come so you could kill me.”

A bitter laugh rent the air. “Maybe.”

A knot of fear clogged Brenda’s throat. She thought about Nick and how they’d left things. How she still wanted him, even though he’d been prying in her past.

“No, I don’t think you did. I think you wanted to see me again.” Brenda slowly turned to face her. “That you want me to hear your side of the story.”

The woman’s face was steeped in the shadows, her clothing all black, a dark hoodie over her head.

But a thin stream of light filtered through a hole in the ceiling, and Brenda nearly gasped at the wild look of insanity in her eyes.

“That is what you want,” Brenda said quietly. “You want to tell me your story, so everyone will know what happened to you.”

Seven’s slow smile sent a frisson of alarm up Brenda’s spine. “All in good time.” She shoved a phone at Brenda. “First, call the Blackwood brothers. I might as well explain it to everyone at the same time.”

Brenda’s hand felt clammy as she lifted the phone. “Are you going to turn yourself in?”

Another laugh, this one harsh and sinister. “No—I’m going to finish what I’ve begun.”

Brenda’s mind raced. Seven wanted her to lure Nick and Jake into a trap. Then she would kill them all.

“I
’m fucking sick of this,” Nick muttered as he phoned Jake to relay the news that Laddermilk was dead.

The crime scene unit was already on the way.

“Whoever killed him got past his security system,” Nick said.

“Your theory about the killer knowing her victims could be right.”

Nick contemplated the killer’s signature and checked behind the man’s ear. The number four.

Jake cleared his throat. “Hell, she might have posed as someone working with the campaign.”

“So he trusted her and let her in.”

The crime team’s van zoomed into the parking lot. “Pull up photos of a list of all of the senator’s staff and volunteers. And let’s focus on the ones who recently joined his campaign.”

“Good idea, I’ll get on it asap,” Jake said. “I paid Ms. Lettie a visit today.”

“What did she have to say?” Nick asked.

Jake heaved a weary sigh. “She’s still not talking. The Commander must have done a number on her head.”

“She’s probably too afraid to talk. Afraid she’ll end up dead.” Nick huffed as he hurried down the steps to let the crime techs in. “Did you find Amelia?”

“Yes—she told Sadie she has a boyfriend.”

Nick opened the door for the team. “Is she mentally ready for that?”

“Good question,” Jake said, his voice worried. “She won’t tell Sadie who the guy is either. Sadie encouraged her to talk to her therapist about the man. And she’s going to persuade Amelia to let them meet.”

Maddison met Nick on the steps. “Which way?”

“Upstairs.” Nick’s phone was buzzing again, and he checked the number. Brenda.

He led the team inside, hoping they’d find evidence this time. But other than that blood droplet, Seven had left only bread crumbs, teasing them with the fact that, so far, she had escaped detection.

His phone went silent, and he pointed out the master bedroom as they reached the top of the stairs. “In the master suite.”

His phone started up again. Brenda.

He punched connect and stepped into the hall as the techs went to work.

“Brenda, I’m in the middle of something. What’s going on?” Hell, maybe she knew Laddermilk was dead and was on the way with the news van.

“Nick, please don’t hang up,” Brenda said in a strained voice. “I’m with Seven.”

Nick froze. Seven had Brenda?

Brenda clutched the phone, desperately searching for a way to warn Nick that he was walking into a trap.

But the odds were that he already knew that.

A deep breath echoed back. “Are you okay?”

The thick ropes Seven had used to tie her to the chair cut into her wrists and ankles. “Yes. But she wants to see you and Jake.” So she could kill them all and move on with her killing spree.

“Hang on.” He rushed in and told the tech he had to leave, then strode down the front steps of Laddermilk’s mansion, already on the way to his car. “Where are you?”

“The lodge at the old 4-H camp. But, Nick—”

“I’m on my way,” Nick said. “Just try to keep her calm.”

Brenda started to speak again, but Seven grabbed the phone from her hand and disconnected the call.

“Why are you doing this?” Brenda asked. “I thought you wanted me to be your voice, to speak for you and the other subjects, but I can’t do that if I’m dead.”

Seven’s eyes darkened to black, accusing, in the dim light. “You were at the hospital. You know what they did to us.”

Brenda shook her head. “I didn’t remember what I saw,” she said. “Just that I was taken there when I was small, and then again when I was a teenager. But everything in between is a blur.”

“You wrote a news story about the experiments,” Seven snarled as she circled Brenda. “You painted Jake and Nick Blackwood as heroes. But they aren’t. No one is. No one saved us back then.”

“Because the families were in the dark,” Brenda said, desperate to help Seven understand that the people of Slaughter Creek hadn’t intentionally abandoned her. “They were all snowed by the doctors because they were giving free services.”

“Then there you were, and you were special,” Seven whispered in a voice laced with pain and accusation, as if Brenda had betrayed her.

Brenda dug one finger beneath the rope around her wrist, struggling to untie it. “What do you mean, I was special?”

Dark pools of anguish lined Seven’s face. Brenda saw her enormous brown eyes, the eyes that had pleaded for help so many years ago, and felt a pang in her chest.

“He let you go.” Seven counted the steps as she circled Brenda. Seven to the right, seven back, seven more…

Brenda’s fingers paused in her work. “I don’t understand,” she finally said. “What do you mean, he let me go?”

Seven waved the knife blade in front of Brenda’s eyes, then pressed it to her own arm and punctured the skin, watching as blood pooled on the surface. Brenda noted old scars, fresh ones…Had Seven tried to kill herself or was she a cutter?

Images from her nightmares flashed in Brenda’s head.

“That little girl in the basement was you, wasn’t it?” she asked.

Seven watched the blood drip from her wrist with a sadistic smile. “Yes. See, you do remember.”

“Not everything,” Brenda said. “I was brought into the sanitarium because…well…I don’t exactly remember everything. I have nightmares about being with a crackhead.”

Confusion marred Seven’s expression. “No, you were
his
,” she said in a high-pitched voice. “So the Commander let you go.”

A wave of terror washed over Brenda. “You mean I was part of the experiment?” Brenda asked.

Seven shook her head, a strand of her unruly hair sliding across one cheek. She pushed it back with the hand holding the knife, and a faint stream of light from the window illuminated the scars on her throat.

They were similar to the markings on her victims. The abused had become the abuser.

“Was I part of it?” Brenda asked.

“No!” Seven shouted as if Brenda was an idiot. “I told you he saved you because you were special.”

Memories twisted in Brenda’s mind. Was Seven delusional, or did she know more about Brenda than Brenda did?

A frisson of panic clawed at her. Faced with the daunting reality that something horrible had happened to her at the hands of her own mother, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the truth. “I wasn’t special,” Brenda said. “I think my real mother was a
drug addict, that she…” What? That she allowed those men to have Brenda, in exchange for drugs?

No…in her dream, the woman had fought for her, told her to run.

So how had they wound up at the hospital?

“Yes, you were special. You belonged to him. He gave you a name, not a number,” Seven said, her voice filled with hatred and envy and other emotions Brenda couldn’t define.

“Who gave me a name?” Brenda asked, her heart hammering.

Seven held the tip of the knife to Brenda’s cheek. “The Commander. You were his.”

Panic surged through Brenda. “What do you mean—
his
?”

“His daughter,” Seven shouted, her voice brittle. “You were his little girl, so he gave you to a family to keep you safe from the experiment he conducted on us.”

Brenda gasped. She was Arthur Blackwood’s daughter?

No…that was impossible. She had slept with his son Nick.

Nick met Jake on the outskirts of town so they could drive to the 4-H camp together.

“What exactly did Brenda say?” Jake asked as Nick veered onto the mountain road.

“Just that Seven wants to meet us.”

“You know it’s a setup,” Jake said.

“Of course it is.” Nick tightened his fingers around the steering wheel. “But we have to go.”

Jake nodded. “Maybe this means she’s done with her killing spree. That we’re her end game.”

A frown pulled at Nick’s brows. “Then she must know who we are.”

Nick checked his weapon. “But why involve Brenda?”

“Good question.” Nick didn’t like any of the answers that came to him.

If Seven had killed the senator’s son to punish the senator, then he might go after Brenda to get revenge.

Nick’s phone jangled, and he snatched it up, hoping it was Brenda, but it was the crime lab instead. “Agent Blackwood, we found a paint match to the sample Deputy Waterstone scraped off of Brenda Banks’s car.”

“And?”

“It was a black 2009 car. Brenda said it was a sedan, so I did some research. There are two matching that description that belong to residents in Slaughter Creek. One to a Wade Willingham, age sixteen. But he’s been out of the country on a study program, and the car has been at his parents’ home.”

“And the other?”

“The other belongs to Jordan Jennings, a weather girl who works with Brenda.”

Nick’s pulse jumped. Maybe the woman was jealous that Brenda had gotten the lead investigative reporter spot. “Thanks. I’ll have her picked up for questioning.”

He hung up and explained the lead to Jake. Jake phoned his deputy. “I’m with Nick right now. We have a lead on the Strangler, but we think we know who ran Brenda Banks off the road. Her name is Jordan Jennings. She drives a black 2009 Toyota Corolla. Bring her in for questioning and impound her car.”

“Sure,” Deputy Waterstone said. “About those photos you asked me to dig up from the senator’s employee and volunteer files?”