Chapter Eleven

Jacob

I was the happiest I’d been in a long time. Sharing the murder of my father with Alana was better than any gift I’d ever planned to give her. She was magnificent, amazing. Beautiful. An avenging angel. I wondered how proud of her Noel would be if he could have seen what his mother had done for him.

She was so fucking perfect. She took pleasure in the pain my father went through and joined with me in blood and hell. And that kiss—the taste of her mouth still lingered on my lips. It was her I smelled over the musk of her ill-washed body She smelled sweet, like lily mixed with the blueberry Pop-Tart. If I sucked hard enough, my saliva still held spots of her, but I didn’t want to waste it. I would be back with her once I had my father cleaned up and out of here. She wouldn’t need to be in the cage anymore. Instead, she’d be in my bed, and we’d only come down here when she needed to be punished. When she had to be reminded of who was in control.

“But that is later, much later,” I said aloud. I whistled as I walked into the Punishment Room. Blood was all over the floor, coating the already dirty, stained concrete bright-red.

“So much work to do. I shouldn’t be wasting my time with you while my girl is getting ready upstairs, but I don’t want you around her anymore. And we’ve got work to do, don’t we? I made a promise.”

It took time, but I did it. I painstakingly cut him up, using a hacksaw for the larger parts and a miter saw to cut to better sizes. I dumped his insides into a refuse bucket. I was covered in fleshy bits and blood by the time I dragged the tarp to the grave I’d exposed, but it was done. Enough time had passed for Alana to be finished with her bath and maybe getting some good rest in my bed.

I was eager to get back to her, so I wouldn’t take the time to cover the grave. That would be hours I’d have to spend away from her, and it had already been long enough. We could come back out tomorrow and do it. I spread the lye heavily, so the smell wouldn’t attract any wild animals, and headed back to the house.

But something was wrong. The moon was rising in the sky. Daylight had come and gone. I had worked longer than I thought, and flashing blue and red lights twinkled near my home.

“Alana!”

I didn’t think, didn’t care. I had to get to her. They couldn’t take her from me. Not after all we’d been through. Not after what we’d done. They’d think she had something to do with it, and she’d get in trouble for killing my father. I knew it. I fucking knew it. I’d stop them. I had to. I pumped my legs hard, reaching the house in minutes, only to stop when a spotlight swung my way.

“Alana!” I screamed again. “Where are you?”

“Son, we want you to lie on the ground, legs spread, and put your hands on your head.”

“Where is she? Please tell me where she is. She can’t be out here alone. You can’t take her. Please.”

“I won’t tell you again. Get down on the ground, legs spread, with your hands on your head. If you do not comply, we will shoot.”

“You aren’t supposed to be here,” I said. I knew she was gone. They took her. She was somewhere, in another cage, crying for me. Trying to get back. And they had me.

I cried into the dirt. We’d been free. Those precious few hours I’d spent cutting him up and cleaning were too long. I should have stayed with her.

Feet pounded the ground next to me and hands gripped me. I didn’t struggle as they handcuffed me, the cold metal biting into my wrists.

“We’ll take him from here. Based on the witness report, he’s got a lot of questions he can answer.” The man who spoke wore a navy-blue jacket with large, yellow letters reading FBI.

“This is our town. He’s going to the sheriff’s department here and then, after he’s questioned, he can be moved. Macon and Atlanta want to speak with him as well.”

“You had our behavioral unit called in and we came to help. He’s been traumatized as much as the girl. We were told that. If you want him to talk, then he talks to us.”

“He’s that sick fuck’s son, and he’s covered in fucking blood. He was part of it, not a prisoner.” I recognized the country visage of Willacoochee’s Sheriff Green. He watched me with cold, blue eyes. I wished they were green. That they were Alana’s and she would kiss me again.

“Now who’s jumping to conclusions and ignoring the information we’ve received? This could potentially be the break for twenty years of missing persons all over the state of Georgia. You want to be the ones to mess this up, or get it right?” The FBI agent held me firmly in hand as he waited for a response from the sheriff. I didn’t care either way.

“Take him and get the information we need,” Green said.

“He goes to the hospital first, and we go from there. Load up.”

There was nothing to say or attempt to do as they lifted me to my feet and walked me to a squad car. All I could do was stare at the house—our house, our sanctuary—as they put me inside the car. I kept my eyes on the house, remembering and praying as we drove away until I couldn’t see it anymore.

Then, the world changed. My father hadn’t let me out of the house much except to help him on the property, so the most of what I’d seen of the world had been on TV. Homeschooled, my father was my entire existence, except on those nights I could sneak away and look at cable channels to look at how other people lived. The only approved shows for me were news channels so I could keep an eye on what was happening in the areas my father took his toys. Now, things were real.

I hated the hospital. They handcuffed me to the bed and made sure I was treated, but it smelled funny inside the building. My clothes were cut from my body and I was provided a gown that opened in the back. They took blood, did X-rays and so many tests that I couldn’t keep them all in my head. Then they put me on IVs and fed me. They’d said something about me being dehydrated and malnourished. I ate. I always did. But like father’s toys in the basement, I was allowed two meals a day and nothing extravagant. Eating large meals was wasteful. Then the FBI agent came back.

His dark-blond hair was cut short but left a little longer on the top, and he had green eyes. Like my Alana. My love. My girl. Where was she? Was she afraid? Looking for me? Were they doing horrible things to her in a fucking cage somewhere? Things only I had the right to do? I wanted her back. I wanted to hold her. Kiss her. Fuck her. Love her.

“I’m Supervisory Special Agent Amery, from the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI. I want to understand what happened to you and the women who disappeared in that house, Jacob.”

He knew my name. And he looked like her. Reminded me of my toy. “Where’s Alana?”

“I know you’re worried about her. She’s okay. And as long as you talk to me, you will be okay too.”

“Are they hurting her?”

“What do you mean?”

“Hurting her like he did.”

“Like your father?”

“Yeah. I don’t want them hurting her like that,” I said. I knew well enough to not tell him I wanted to hurt her like that. It wasn’t his business. That was between Alana and me.

“How did he hurt her?”

“He’s dead. He can’t hurt anyone anymore.”

“The blood on you belonged to your father, didn’t it? She was telling the truth that you killed him to get away.”

“You’ve talked to her? Let me see her. Please. Just once, so I know she’s okay.”

“She’s in the hospital, Jacob. She’s been through so much, and her body is shutting down. You want her safe, right? Don’t want her to go to jail? Put back in a cage? Then you have to talk to me. I’m the difference between her falling on the wrong side of the law or walking away.”

For her, my Alana, I’d do anything.

“My father has been killing women longer than I have been alive. The first one I remember was my mother. Josephine Mettlebrook. She was from Athens, Georgia, and he had her for three years before she got pregnant with me. He killed her when I was five. I remember what her blood tasted like if I think back. She held me in her arms when he shot her in the arm for punishment one time. He learned guns caused injuries that put toys out of commission for too long.”

“Toys?”

“That’s what he called them all, his toys. Women who were whores and needed training. When he tired of them, or when they got pregnant with girls, he got rid of them.”

“How did he know they were pregnant with girls before they delivered?”

“Because the same doctor who delivered me treated all the toys. Treated Alana when she lost our Noel.”

“Our? Were you the father?”

“No. He would have been my brother. But … it’s nicer to think he was mine because I would have loved him.”

“I’m going to say the names of ten girls from the last ten years. I want you to say yes if your father was responsible. Can you do that for me?”

For Alana. This was for Alana. If I gave them the truth, they would understand we had to kill him. Had to be free of him. They never had to know how far we went. That was our secret.

So I answered the only way I could. “Yes.”

“Maria Vargas.”

“Yes.”

“Tammy Pullock.”

“Yes.”

“Sarah Weissman.”

“Yes.”

“Tasha Byrne.”

“Yes.”

“Teresa Cole.”

“Yes.”

“Katherine Yates.”

“Yes.”

“Celia Whittaker.”

“Yes.”

“Alana Masters.”

I closed my eyes as I whispered, “Yes.”

“And did you kill your father, Jacob? With Alana’s help, did you cut his throat and dump him into a lye grave?”

That was the story Alana had given. She’d kept our secret too. I was proud of her. So fucking perfect. Always perfect. “Not exactly. After the grave, I sent Alana in to get some rest and cleaned up. Then I cut him to pieces.”

They would find the grave and see he was chopped up. There hadn’t been enough time for him to decompose. I wouldn’t want them to say we lied and then bring charges on us, so I had to take the blame for the rest. Then they’d give Alana back to me.

“Why did you cut your father up, Jacob?”

“Because he held me there. Beat me. Controlled everything. He ripped my soul out on the kitchen table when he took my ass. And because he hurt the one precious thing in my life. Alana. He hurt her, and hurting her made me strong enough to fight him. I hadn’t been before. I couldn’t. Every time I tried, he knocked me down. But then I found her, and I wanted to save her life more than I wanted to live.”

“You did a wonderful thing for her. And people will know you saved her life. She will go back to her family and live her life because of you.”

He got up and left the room, taking my confession and the deeds of my father with him. I knew he’d come back. That there would be more questions. A trial. So much. But what made me cry, what broke my heart, was he’d said Alana would go back to her family. That she’d have a normal life.

People like us weren’t normal, and they didn’t understand. They were ripping her from the man she needed in her life. They didn’t know her darkness or understand what we had suffered did to the human soul. All they did was send a monster back to suburbia and task me with finding her.

One day I would because she’d told me I had to find a way to get the girl back if I lost her. And she would be mine.