The uncertainty of how AJ’s family would welcome the woman who stole their son’s last days felt like a brick resting on her heart until that point. One of them had arranged to have her picked up at the airport and just like that … her heavy heart lightened a bit.
“I’m Jillian Knight.” She forced a small smile for the lady. The smile felt foreign to her lips. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d truly smiled.
“A pleasure, Miss Knight. Do you have any checked bags?”
Jillian shook her head.
“Very well. If you’d like to follow me, I have a car waiting for us.”
Jillian followed her to the exit like a zombie, having not slept more than a few hours each night since she and AJ arrived back in Omaha. It had begun to take its toll on her body and mind.
“I’ll put your bag in the back.”
Jillian forced another smile as the woman held open the door to a white SUV with tinted windows. After relinquishing the bag, she climbed into the back seat and sighed, feeling her whole body deflate. In twenty-four hours she would be on a plane to someplace far away from the men who all claimed a piece of her heart, a shred of her humanity, and had a hand in her feeling of utter ruin.
The driver opened the back hatch. Jillian’s bag landed with a thunk. “Traffic is not too bad today. We should be at our destination before too long, Miss Knight.”
Jillian barely registered the voice behind her until it was an icy whisper in her ear. “Or do you prefer Miss Day?”
A needle plunged into Jillian’s neck two seconds before everything went black.
Chapter Three
Frigid shock sent Jillian’s body into jerking convulsions. Her eyes flew open. Sharp pain cut through the skin along her wrists and ankles bound with rope and zip ties. She winced from the pain and piercing light, the kind that felt like staring into the sun until everything burned white and then faded to black again. Every inch of her body shivered with pin-pricking goose bumps because every inch of her skin was exposed.
“Funny how you’re the crazy one, yet I got sent to the psych ward for five. Long. Years.”
Jillian squinted one eye open, twisting her head side to side, searching for the slightest reprieve from the light and a glimpse of her abductor. No such luck.
“But you know what happened in those five years?”
“You lost every one of your fucking marbles?”
Another wave of icy water crashed into Jillian’s face, wedging her restraints deeper into her skin as she jumped in response. The stitches in her hand ripped away from her wound each time she tugged against the zip ties.
“Try again, whore. I’ll help you out a little. I’ve been texting you hints for months now.”
The infamous biblical texts.
“You memorized verses in the Bible for five years?”
“I found God.”
Jillian chuckled. Giving up on trying to see anything, she closed her eyes, dropping her chin to her chest. “God was in the psych ward?”
“I met a man in there who was a preacher. His wife committed suicide then something inside of him snapped. Love can do that to you. He read the Bible to me every day. It was so cathartic to purge my sins. God has forgiven me.”
“Forgiven you for what?”
“We’ll get to that.”
Jillian gasped as cold water doused her naked body again. “Dammit!”
“Consider this a sort of baptism—a washing away of your sins.”
“W-what sins?” she shivered, teeth chattering.
“Sex with a married man.”
“N-no …”
“Yes! You fucked my husband and so did your mother.”
Her captor’s insanity knew no boundaries. Jillian squeezed her eyes tight, continuing to shake her head.
“What are you … talking about?”
“I-I apologize,” the woman said, in a tight, labored voice. The hollow breath of an exhale followed a long puffing. “I won’t lose my temper again. I need you to trust me so you will repent and I can absolve you of your sins before I put an end to your life.”
Jillian had no qualms with death, but repenting and trusting the baptizing psycho for some twisted sort of absolution of her sins wasn’t ever going to happen. She grew up going to church, and in spite of the times in her life that felt like the opposite of a blessing, she believed there had to be something—someone—greater than the whole of humanity. The voice before her did not represent anything greater than the grimy floor beneath Jillian’s bare ass.
“I have a funeral to get to. Sorry my mother and I had an imaginary threesome with your husband. Sorry I cheated on a history test in the seventh grade. Sorry I dodged a speeding ticket when I was sixteen by claiming to have just started my period. Does that do it for you?”
“Yeah, about that … Sergeant Monaghan’s funeral was yesterday. You’ve been out of it for a little while. I may have overdone it a bit on the tranquilizer, but with your history I couldn’t take any chances.”