Blood of My Blood (3 page)

“Thought it would taste different,” he remarked, as though to himself.

He wiped his other fingers clean on Connie’s shirt, quick and efficient, not pausing to linger at her breasts, as if she was nothing more than a towel to him.

“Ain’t done with you yet,” he told her. “You still owe me that secret. That memory of my boy. And I aim to collect. But right now, I got something important to do. So you’ll have to sit still for me.”

With no further preamble, Billy produced a handkerchief and shoved it in Connie’s mouth before she could move or protest. Then he grabbed the back of her chair and rocked
her onto the back legs. She went dizzy with the sudden movement and the lingering aftereffects of the Darkene. One-handed, Billy hauled her, backward, across the floor, the chair rattling, the legs scraping the hardwood as she went. He opened a door and dragged her in, righting the chair a few feet inside. Connie had only a moment as Billy stepped around her and over the threshold—she desperately fired her vision everywhere she could, even twisting her raw and abused neck to look around. Small room. Some kind of rubberized egg carton–looking stuff was stapled to the walls. The only furniture was a bed, covered with an unruly hump of blankets.

Standing in the doorway—the only source of light—Billy fixed her with a hard stare.

“Now, I got a couple chores on my list. While I’m gone, I want you to think about two things, and two things only: One, I want you to think about what I want to know, about your first time makin’ my kid happy. Second, you think about how persuasive I can be when I need to be. Got it?”

Connie nodded wildly.

Billy held up the wrist on which he wore Connie’s severed braid. “I’m keeping you real close, girl. I’ll be back for you soon.”

And then he closed the door. The room went starkly, immediately black. There was the depressing and unmistakable click of a lock.

From outside, she heard Billy’s footfalls on the floor. Then the apartment door. Then nothing.

Connie waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Billy
had turned out the light in the outer room when he left, so there was only a bit of gray murk around the doorframe, light only in comparison to the pitch black around it. She looked down and could barely make out her own sleeves. So that was it, then.

Think, Connie. You have some time. Maybe five minutes, maybe five hours. Who knows. Use it. Now
.

She wondered: Could she somehow hop the chair over to the bed she’d seen? Maybe there was a rough edge or an exposed screw or nail that she could use to saw through her ropes. As best she could tell, Billy had tied her by her ankles and wrists to the legs and arms of the chair, using what felt like coarse, thick rope. It chafed her skin at the wrists. She was bound tightly. She could move her feet a little and waggle her fingers, but that was it. At least she still had some circulation going.

Okay, Connie, enough with the medical exam. He could be right back. Get moving
.

She took a deep breath through her nose (thank God the handkerchief was clean—it tasted only of fresh cotton) and pushed against the floor with all her might, hoping to lift the chair an inch or two. At the same time, she flung her weight back, toward the bed.

She teetered for a moment, then fell over backward, her entire body rattling with impact. Her head smacked against the floor, and she whooshed out all her air and a scream into the handkerchief, both muted, then tried to suck in another breath, couldn’t, panicked, and began sucking on the handkerchief for a starry, terrified moment before her reflexes
took over and she greedily snorted great wallops of air in through her nose, exhaling noisily, gustily.

Oh, crap. Crap. Now I’m screwed. Damn it
.

Her head throbbed and pounded. Something wet ran along her cheek; her still-bleeding neck had squirted a little puddle on the floor, and in her contorted, breathless moments, she’d rolled into it.

Get up, Connie! Get
up
! Do it! Before he gets back! Figure this out! Now!

Her hammering heart threatened to burst. She forced herself to walk away from her own panic, imagining it as a boulder fallen in her path. Thank God for all that guided imagery and meditation she did.
Yoga saves lives
, she thought.

Stepped away from her own fear, she began to calm her breathing and bring her heart rate back to normal. She was, she knew, flooded with all kinds of endorphins and fear hormones right now. There was nothing she could do about that. She would have to take the best action she could imagine and hope that it was the right one.

First order of business had to be getting to the bed. It was the only thing in the room. It was the only tool she had.

She struggled for a moment, willing her restricted body to find a way to sit upright again, but it was fruitless. Then again… why sit up? Could she somehow inch along the floor as she was? Thrash around just the right way and make it to the bed?

She took another deep breath. This wouldn’t be easy. She couldn’t rely on her legs or arms. She would have to use her
core. She had a great core. The solitary yoga instructor in Lobo’s Nod wasn’t very good, but in the few classes Connie had taken, the woman was big on boat pose. Which was suddenly a very good thing for Connie.

Just then, something in the room shifted.

Connie froze. Her breath was suddenly enormously loud. Impossibly loud.

Another sound. Arms and legs shifted under cloth.

That mound on the bed.

Not just blankets.

Oh, God. She wasn’t alone.

Howie came to with a lot on his mind and wanted to say it all. All he managed, though, was “Guh!”

“He’s awake!” a man called.

“Stay still, kid,” another voice said. It was a woman. Under normal circumstances, Howie would be inclined to listen, but his head was on fire and he ached all over, so he tried to lift his arms, but something strong held him down. Pinned him.

Even through the fire in his head, he was keenly aware of the bruises that had just been inflicted on him. He groaned with pain and closed his eyes against it.

“What the hell?” the man said. Definitely a man. Or a woman with a frog in her throat. One or the other.

“Jesus!” the woman barked. “You hardly touched him—”

“Kid, are you a hemophiliac?” the man asked.

Well, duh!
Howie thought, and then realized he’d actually said it out loud.

The woman swore like someone who’d just dropped a
chainsaw on her own foot. Howie couldn’t help it. He laughed.

And then passed out again.

“You have
got
to start wearing your medical bracelet,” a familiar voice said.

Howie blinked sleep gunk out of his eyes, but his ears told him the tale long before his eyes came on line—he was in the hospital. Again. The steady
beep-beep
of his heart monitor and the sound of squeaky IV-pole wheels on linoleum in the distance were unmistakable.

For a moment, he considered how sad it was that he’d been in the hospital enough times to recognize it with his eyes closed. Then he decided that this was probably a decent superpower. He was Ear-Man.

“I’m totally Ear-Man,” he said, his voice clogged and unfamiliar. He cleared his throat with a disgusting hawking sound.

“Of course you’re human,” said Dr. Mogelof, standing at his bedside and obviously mishearing him.

“Hey, it’s my favorite ER doctor!” Howie clapped a little, then got too tired.

“We have to stop meeting like this, Howie. People will talk.” Dr. Mogelof tapped a few spots on her iPad and nodded as though satisfied. “Get some rest. Your parents are on their way.”

Oh, joy
.

The last thing he remembered was Jazz’s aunt Samantha knocking him to the floor and ripping the shotgun out of his hands. The bandages on his right hand told the tale—he’d been stitched up well there. And it was the hand he jerked off with, too. Damn.

Had he passed out from the pain? The blood loss? He didn’t know.

Wait.
Not
the last thing he remembered.

He called out to Dr. Mogelof as she was leaving, “Hey, before you go—how’s Gramma?”

“What?”

“The old lady. At the house with me. How is she?”

“Kid, you need to worry about yourself right now.”

“C’mon. I need to know.”

“I can’t tell you about another patient. Besides, someone else got her. I was lucky—they gave me you again.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere with me, doc, but seriously.” Howie pushed himself up in bed, gritting his teeth against the pain. He was bruised all over from his fall to the floor, and now that he was fully awake, he could feel the zone of null-sensation on his forehead where Dr. Mogelof had injected him with lidocaine before stitching him back together. Yeah, he’d passed out, all right. The last thing he remembered was Sam standing over him with the shotgun. He’d probably smacked his head a good one when he blacked out. He wondered if he would have yet another scar. Probably.

“Anyway, the other person they brought in. That’s Jazz’s grandmother. I think she had a heart attack. And Sammy J
was with us and where the heck is
she
and did anyone call me ’cause Connie’s on a plane to New York and oh man what time is it and did G. William show up and—”

“Whoa! Whoa!” Dr. Mogelof darted a nervous glance at Howie’s heart monitor. “Don’t make me knock you out for your own good.”

“Doc, honest, there’s a lot of shizz going down, and I gotta get back in the game.” If Howie hadn’t noticed the thudding in his own chest, the heart monitor would have given it away. As it was, the two of them in syncopation was kind of like the world’s worst hip-hop backbeat. “I gotta call people and check on people and—”

“Slow down. Start from the beginning.”

Howie considered. What
was
the beginning? You could go all the way back to age ten, really, to that day when Jazz had kicked the hell out of the bullies poking bruises into Howie’s arms, but that seemed like a lot of effort, and he was getting tired.

“I think I’m in love with my best friend’s aunt,” he blurted out.

“Well, that’s… nice.”

“I also think she might be a serial killer.”

Dr. Mogelof stared at him. “You know how to pick ’em, don’t you?”

“I’m sort of unlucky in love,” Howie admitted. He finally managed to sit up, wincing. “How soon can I get out of here, doc?”

“Probably in the morning. This is nothing like when you were stabbed.”

“Not stabbed,” Howie admonished her. “Slashed. There’s a difference.”

“Believe me, I know. I’m the one who sewed you back together. Anything else? I need to get back.”

“Gramma. The old woman. I need to know about her. And there might have been a younger woman with her. That’s Sammy J.”
Sister to Billy Dent, but I’m not telling you that ’cause who knows if you’ll call the media. Patient confidentiality doesn’t extend to the relatives, right?
“I need to know, really.”

“Look, there’s nothing I can tell you. We picked you up on a nine-one-one call from the Dent house.” There was a slight pause in her voice between
the
and
Dent
. Like from pretty much everyone else in Lobo’s Nod. “You’ll be okay. Try not to walk into any more knives or floors, hmm?”

“Can I at least have my cell phone?”

Dr. Mogelof rolled her eyes and pointed. Howie craned his neck to follow her finger; his cell was next to him, on the bed’s tray.

“Right. Thanks.”

As soon as she left, he snatched up the phone. There was a text from Connie that made no sense. It was an address in New York, followed by
bell, guns, Eliot Ness? Mean anything?

Uh, no.

First he texted Connie back:
wht up, girl? you ok?

Then he took a deep breath and tapped on
JAZZ
in his contacts list.
in hospital. again. ok, though
. He started to gnaw at his lower lip and stopped when he realized he would now
have a bruised lip to add to his troubles.
call me
, he finished. He couldn’t bring himself to text
your gramma might be dead
to his best friend.

He sighed. This was supposed to be easy. Keep an eye on Gramma. Keep the other eye on Aunt Samantha. He wasn’t supposed to end up in a hospital bed.

He figured he’d better get as much done as possible before his parents arrived. He called the Lobo’s Nod Sheriff’s Office, depressingly noting that he was probably one of the few people in town to have the number stored in his phone.

“Hey,” he said when Lana, the sheriff’s dispatcher, answered, “can I speak to G. William?”

“Sure,” said a nearby voice, and Howie looked up to see G. William Tanner, sheriff of Lobo’s Nod, standing in his doorway.

Oh, goody
, Howie thought.
Here we go
.

Connie froze on the floor, stupidly hoping against hope that as long as she didn’t move, the other person in the room wouldn’t be able to find her. But it was a small room. And there was nowhere to hide. Even in the dark, she’d be found. Easily.

“Who’s there?” a voice asked.

In her panic, Connie felt her blood rush into her ears. She heard the voice as though it came from a seashell. Connie went silent, but the sucking sound of her own breath through her nose seemed as loud as hurricane winds.

“Who’s there?” the voice demanded again, and this time Connie thought she detected a tremble in it. Was it possible…

Was it possible she wasn’t Billy’s only prisoner?

She heard more movement on the bed, and then—yes!—she heard the sweetest sound ever.

Metal on metal.

Handcuffs. She was sure of it. At the very least, it was definitely the
clink
of a chain of some sort.

Connie grunted and struggled against her ropes, fruitlessly. Her fall had loosened them a tiny bit, but not nearly enough. Not that she had expected to be able to wriggle out of them.

She shifted gears, straining her jaw to its widest, then poking at the handkerchief with her tongue. It was, without a doubt, the most ridiculous thing she’d ever done in her life, but in that moment, it was also the most serious. She had to get the handkerchief out. She had to be able to talk.

“I’m not totally helpless,” the voice said, and Connie’s panic subsided enough to return her hearing to normal; she realized it was a woman’s voice. Her slight quaver could have meant a lie or an adrenaline-fueled truth. With the right length of chain, someone on the bed could still stomp Connie’s head in as long as she was on the floor.

Connie made muted grunting and moaning noises, trying to sound as docile as possible as she worked at the handkerchief.

Billy had stuffed it in there tight, but not tight enough. With a gagging, near-vomiting lurch, she finally managed to spit it out and hauled in a huge breath through her mouth.

“Don’t come near me!” the woman on the bed shrieked.

“I’m not going to hurt you!” Connie let her head droop until it touched the floor. She was still feeling some buzz from the Darkene. “I’m not going to hurt you, I swear.”

“Are you on the floor?” the woman asked.

“Yes. I’m a prisoner here.” She waited a moment. “Like you.”

The woman said nothing for what seemed a long, long time. Connie heard her breathing—slow, even. Then she heard the
clink
of the chain again.

“How do I know that?” the woman asked softly. Scared.

“Because I’m tied to a chair and pretty much helpless on the floor,” Connie admitted. “Look, my name’s Connie.”
Humanize yourself to them
. Good advice for dealing with serial killers, but also with their captives, she imagined.

Her fellow prisoner once again fell silent for a while. Then, at last, she said, “There’s a light switch, Connie. Maybe if we work together, we can get to it somehow?”

Even though she was bound and helpless, sweet relief flooded every cell of Connie’s body, anyway.