If Rowan died at Bobby’s hands, she would die knowing Bobby hadn’t won. Peter was alive. And because Bobby thought he was dead, he was safe.
The images started flashing by rapidly, pictures of Mel and Rachel and Mama. Where had they come from? As she watched, she realized that the same ten or so pictures repeated. Over and over. They looked familiar to her, but why?
Her photo album. He’d found her cabin in Colorado and stole the one thing she had left of her family.
Suddenly it stopped on Mama’s bloody body.
Rowan screamed, then closed her eyes.
Bobby whipped her across the neck and she winced. “Open them!”
“Go ahead, whip me to death! I don’t care!” She tried to control her pain and anger but couldn’t.
“Open them, or your lover will be next.”
Her eyes shot open and she glared at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Though Bobby didn’t know it, John was dead. He’d never have left Tess.
She quickly blinked back her tears. She couldn’t think about John now. She wouldn’t be able to focus on what she needed to do.
Bobby leaned back, smirking, tucking the whip into his lap. “Yes you do. Watch.”
Stone-faced, preparing herself for more bloody images of the family she loved, she stared at the television.
Music started. Loud, surrounding her through speakers in all corners of the room. Some unidentifiable rap tune with verses that highlighted the word “kill” and a beat she felt in her gut. She wanted to vomit.
Mama’s picture was in black and white. The shades of gray did nothing to mask the terror of the scene. The blood almost black against the pale gray of the linoleum, arcs and splatters across the too-white cabinets, the stark lighting giving everything an unreal feel, like a bad B-movie.
Mama was followed by a picture of her father taken recently. His dark hair gray, his eyes vacant, empty, hollow. Bobby must have taken it when he visited Daddy. He looked just like Rowan remembered seeing him last week.
Then Mel and Rachel, together, smiling. Then lying dead and bloody in the foyer.
Kill, kill, kill the bitch!
Rowan shivered at the lyrics, wondering how Bobby had obtained the crime-scene photos. She almost laughed out loud. She could hardly believe he’d escaped from prison and had found a fool to replace him. Stealing crime photos would be child’s play.
Peter at five, his kindergarten photo. Then Peter dead.
No, not dead, Rowan reminded herself. He wasn’t dead.
There was a photo of a cop carrying Peter out of the house. Peter wore his dinosaur pajamas and they were covered in blood. It was Dani’s blood, not his. Dani’s blood. But Peter’s eyes were closed and his mouth was open and he appeared lifeless.
The image changed to Dani. Dani. A whimper escaped her throat but she forced herself to look. Beautiful Dani as a baby. As a toddler. At three, playing tea with her stuffed animals.
Then the small body bag. Somehow, the black bag was worse than seeing her dead again. So generic, so sterile.
Rowan didn’t know she was crying until her cheeks felt hot and damp.
Her tormentor grunted. “I never understood why you liked that little crybaby so much. Oh, well, she’s dead and buried, isn’t she? You couldn’t protect her. What’d you do? Put her body in front of yours? So she’d die in your place?” Bobby barked out a laugh, and Rowan wanted to strangle him with her bare hands. She had never hated anyone so much in her life. Black fury burned as she steadily worked on the ropes that bound her, careful not to let him see what she was doing.
The music changed to the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer,” the upbeat tune paradoxical to the gruesome photos that followed.
A bloody body massacred, cut into bits, lying in a Dumpster. It took Rowan a moment to realize this was Doreen Rodriguez. Bobby had taken pictures of his crimes. Bile rose in her throat and she swallowed it back.
The florist, stabbed to death, pretty blonde hair matted with blood.
The Harpers. The little girl while she still had her pigtails. The mom staring dead into the camera.
Pretty Melissa Jane Acker, raped, strangled, her body left spread-eagled in the signature style of Rowan’s fictional killer in Crime of Corruption.
“You’re sick,” she muttered.
Bobby laughed, and her fingers continued working on the ropes. Were they looser? She thought so. Her fingernails were raw and wet with her blood as they broke in her quiet fury.
Then she stopped.
Michael.
He was half lying, half sitting against the wall in what she presumed was his apartment, his chest a bloody mess, his eyes unfocused. Dying.
A sob escaped her throat and Bobby said, “I thought you were screwing him. But you’re the ice princess.” His tone was mocking. “Ice cold, no feeling. The press didn’t like you. I don’t think you’ve made any friends now, have you?”
Michael. He didn’t deserve this. None of them did. “You fucking bastard,” she whispered. “I’ll kill you!”
The whip stung the back of her neck again and she felt warm blood ooze down her back.
“You’re hardly in a position to threaten me, Lily Pad.”
The videotape rolled. Images of Tess. John. Roger. Herself. Many taken from the vacant house next to hers. Roger in Washington. Tess going into her apartment.
He paused it.
“Well, she’s in a bazillion pieces, or burned to a crisp. Either way, your lover’s sister is dead. Along with Roger Collins. Asshole. He deserved it. His fucking mocking attitude, thinking he was so much better than me. Well, I showed him, didn’t I? Didn’t I?” Bobby lashed out with the whip again, this one cutting across her arm.
“Yes, you sure did.” Oh, Roger! I’m so sorry.
“I was going to get his stupid wife, but didn’t have the chance. Now it won’t be any fun to knock her off. So, I guess she’s going to live.” He sounded almost sad.
“You are sick,” she said quietly. That they shared the same parents, the same blood, made her nauseous.
“No, Lily Pad, I’m not sick.” He paused the videotape and turned to her. “Look at me.”
She did, her hatred for Bobby filling her soul.
“Our father is sick,” he said, his voice bitter with hate. “Weak, pathetic, sick. Stupid fuck let that woman pussy-whip him into getting her way every fucking time. When he finally stood up to her and slapped the bitch down, he cried and apologized. Of course she forgave him. What’s one bruise when she had whatever she fucking wanted? If he’d only showed her who’s boss, she’d never have gotten away with screwing around.”
“She didn’t. That’s your own twisted logic.”
“Oh, Lily, you are naÏve. Dad finally confronted her that night. They were in a huge fight when I walked into the kitchen. Dad pounding on her and I thought finally, he was going to kill her.”
“What?” Rowan wasn’t sure she was hearing Bobby correctly. He saw their father kill their mother? But-hadn’t he come in later?
“You heard me. I told him to kill the bitch. And you know what the fucker did? He hit me.”
Bobby sounded surprised. Rowan was stunned.
“So I did what he never had the balls to do. Took Mama’s biggest knife and sliced her open. And he just watched. Stupid fool.”
“You? You killed Mama?” Rowan’s stomach dry-heaved. She’d seen her father with the knife. Saw him kneeling over Mama’s body. Saw him drop the knife. Watched as Bobby walked in and said The bitch is finally dead.
“Of course I did. He’d never do it. All he ever did was beat up on her and then cry and apologize and whine. Over and over. I was sick and tired of it. I’d have killed him, too, but he wasn’t putting up a fight. Just knelt there and picked up the knife and held it. Lost it completely, by the look of him.”
“You’re sick.”
“You think I’m sick? What about you? I’ve read all of your books, Lily. All of them. You came up with crimes so horrific I was shocked.” Eyes wide, he splayed his hand across his chest in mock surprise.