The tears in her eyes would not break him. No woman would break him.
Ryn blinked them away. “I … I deserved that.”
Jackson forced a breath out his nose—a half-suppressed, cynical laugh. “No. You didn’t. But until you realize that, you’ll always be the victim.”
Chapter Five
Darkness.
Finally. The lights were off or Jillian had died. The latter being her preference. The desert heat pulling every ounce of moisture from her body intensified as she came to. The question of Heaven or Hell for the duality of Jessica and Jillian seemed to be answered.
“Welcome back. Hungry?”
Of course, the psycho daughter of Edgar Brighton would be in Hell too. Or maybe she was the Devil. It all began to make sense until the wretched smell of animal carcass infiltrated Jillian’s nose.
“Sorry. The chef doesn’t accommodate vegetarians.”
Jillian opened her eyes, taking a slow survey of the room. “Oh my God,” she whispered.
“So you remember this place? I thought you might. I had two places in mind when I planned this years ago, but this one felt like the best fit to give you closure. The other place would have given me closure, but I’ll make this work for both of us.”
The odds of leaving that room alive for a second time felt stacked against her. Jillian’s captor was one sick bitch.
“I can’t tell you how disappointed I was that they painted the floor. The thirteen-year-old blood stains would have added to the effect I’m going for, but I bought it anyway.”
They were in San Diego, in the same basement where Claire died. The red glow of heating elements from at least a dozen space heaters gave the dungeon a dim light like a piece of meat under the broiler. Jillian preferred the bright lights and icy water that left her blind to her surroundings and the memories they evoked.
Psycho Bitch perched on a stool in the corner, holding a personal fan up to her face.
“You knew Four.”
“Four.” She laughed. “I heard that’s what you called him. Monsters don’t deserve human names and all that crap, right?”
Correct assumption by Psycho Bitch. The bow and arrow on the floor next to the stool caught Jillian’s eye. She tipped her chin to see the wound on her shoulder minus the arrow.
“No. I didn’t know Edwin Harvey until he cut your BFF forty-four times.”
Jillian bared her clenched teeth like a rabid animal.
Psycho Bitch shrugged. “What? Is that not how it happened?” She rolled her eyes. “I’m kidding. As I told you earlier, I know more about you than you do. Now, Matthew Green? I did get the chance to make his acquaintance, but just via phone conversations. It took me a little while to track down that slimy little worm, but when I found him he couldn’t resist a hundred grand to kill you.”
“I killed him.”
Psycho Bitch shrugged. “I thought you might. It was a win-win for me either way. If he killed you, I wouldn’t have had all the fun I’m having now, but the end result would have been the same. And if you killed him, which you did, then I didn’t have to dish out a hundred grand and you—Jillian Knight—officially had blood on your hands, and it opened the door to fuck with your brain when I decided to send you all those messages.”
“It’s all about the mind-fuck.”
“I spent five long years in a mental institution so yes … I get a high from manipulating everyone else’s brains.”
She sighed. “Anyway … as I was saying, Edgar took pity on me after I graduated college. My exemplary grades in school earned me a job with G.A.I.L., working in intelligence and logistics. A behind-the-scenes position. Before Jude Day was allowed to snap anyone’s neck, I made sure the intelligence we had was accurate. Very few people saw or knew me. I had a small cubicle and a computer with security access that rivaled the Pentagon. Edgar gave me a code name, and that’s all anyone knew.”
The heat. Jillian’s brain lagged several steps behind the long explanation. Hunger and dehydration vied for her attention more than the story behind Edgars’s stepdaughter and her road to insanity. The bowl of brown sludge on the floor brought bile inching up her throat.
Dog food. Psycho Bitch didn’t miss a thing, including Four feeding Claire dog food.
“G.A.I.L. did a psychological evaluation on you afterward. The report said you refused to eat. Are you still a vegetarian? I bet I’ll break you of that. I bet you’ll be licking the contents of that bowl before you die.”
Jillian had a lot of bets going on too. She bet Four’s murder would look like child’s play compared to what she had planned for Psycho Bitch. Jessica Day had been young, still valued her life and possessed a few give-a-fucks in her conscience. Not Jillian Knight. She would blow up the whole city of San Diego to seek revenge on one person.