“It’s going to end badly,” I tried. But he didn’t care. When we were in Florida, it was as if I didn’t exist. Jacob didn’t care about me.
But Lindy did. She knew I hated her. She knew their evenings together left me sick and shaking and dry heaving.
My revulsion excited her. Sending me trembling and pale into the next bar to help select their newest target turned her on.
Can you miss a coffin-size box? Because I did, I did, I did.
Eventually our time in Florida would end. Mostly because Jacob had to earn money. And paychecks came from the big rig, so sooner or later, he’d roll back into the sleeper cab and away we’d go. Me exhausted and strung out in the passenger’s seat. Jacob subdued and chain-smoking behind the wheel.
Neither of us would speak until we crossed state lines. Then, it was as if it never happened. Florida became our Las Vegas. What happened there stayed there, never to be spoken of again.
Eventually, I would call out the letter A. Then he’d find B. And we’d be okay again.
Because that was life heading west. And after enough time, anything can become normal, even hanging out with your kidnapper who’s killed three women and counting.
In Georgia we stopped to refuel. Jacob was gone for a long time inside, doing whatever it was he did. I sat. I stared out my window. I saw cars and trees and blacktop. I saw nothing at all.
And I wondered how long a person could live like this. Dying inch by inch. Mile by mile every time she crossed the Florida line.
I pictured my mom. I thought of her for the first time in so long. Not because you ever really forget but because a person can only take so much pain. But now I allowed myself to picture her. Wearing one of her stiff outfits from the press conferences. The sheen in her eyes. The silver fox at her throat.
I wondered what she’d say if she could see me now. I wondered if she’d still beg for my safe return. Or if she would realize, as I had realized, that there are some things a person can’t come back from. I wasn’t a child from the wilds of Maine anymore. I was the plaything of monsters.
And just for a minute, I wished I could see her again. If only to tell her to let me go. Move on. Be happy. Build a life.
But let me go.
Because then maybe I could let myself go. I wouldn’t fight so hard, do such terrible things in order to survive anymore. I’d just fade away.
Surely that would be better than this.
For the first time in a long while, I sent my mother a prayer. I prayed she would never find me. I prayed she’d never see me like this. I prayed that all the things I’d done were things she’d never have to know.
Then Jacob returned and we drove and we drove and we drove. And he found the letter Q and later I found X, and then I started to laugh, and then I started to cry, and Jacob said we’d driven far enough. He splurged for a motel, told me to shower and clean up. He even left me alone after that as I lay curled up in a ball and cried and cried and cried.
For the mother I hoped and begged and prayed would never see me again. For the little girl who’d once fed foxes and now helped hunt humans for sport. For the life I’d lost and for the future I needed to give up. Because I couldn’t go back to Florida again. There was only so much you could adapt to and accept.
I’d hit my limit and Florida was it.
Which meant it was time to let go. Give up.
After all those days, nights, weeks, Jacob had threatened to kill me—now I needed him to get the job done. He had a gun. I’d seen it. A single shot through the head. Certainly it would be kinder than what he and Lindy had done to the others.
But how to provoke him? Crazily enough, he seemed to have come to like me. Lindy might be his homicidal partner, but I was his audience. A man liked an audience.
In the morning, I would refuse to climb back into the rig. I would scream. I would scream and scream and scream. Then he’d have to shoot me, if only to shut me up.
In the morning.
*
I NEVER GOT MY CHANCE. At dawn, just as I was starting to open my eyes, a loud explosion came from the window. Shattering glass. The sound of gunfire. Then a hissing cloud of . . .
Jacob running out of the bathroom, shirt still untucked. He had a towel in his hands. He slapped it, wet and dripping, around my lower face. I didn’t understand, not him, not the hissing gas, not the shouts from outside.
Jacob raced to the other bed. Coughing, hacking. I watched his eyes swell, tears streaming down his face, snot flooding from his nose. His hand under the pillow pulling out his gun.
I remained sitting, mesmerized behind my dripping face mask as the door of the motel room flew open and black-clad men poured into the room.
Jacob falling to his knees. Moaning. Groaning. Sobbing pitifully. He stared straight at me, reaching out with his hand.
Offering me his gun.
So I took it. Hefted its weight, felt its heaviness.
While black-clad men continued to stream in and yell words I couldn’t compute.
This wasn’t about them. This had never been about them.
This was about Jacob and me.
His lips were moving. He was begging me to shoot him. No, he was ordering me to shoot him. Just do it. Pull the trigger.
The black-clad men came to a halt. They stood all around us. They didn’t seem to know what to do.
Because of me, I realized. Because I was holding a gun and they didn’t know what to expect. No doubt they had instructions to shoot Jacob, his murderous ways having finally caught up with him.
But me? No one knew what to do about me.
For the first time in four hundred and seventy-two days, I was the one holding the gun. I was the one in power.
“Do it,” Jacob commanded. “Pull the fucking trigger. I ain’t ever going back, so come on now. End it. Put us both out of our misery.”
Then, when I still didn’t move: “Hell, save a bullet for yourself. Why not? Once they hear what you’ve done, think they’ll take it easy on you? Think you’re really any different than me?”
I knew what he was saying. I understood completely.
“You’ll never get over me. You’ll never forget. I’ll always be inside your head. Every night you wake up, you’ll reach for me. Every time you drive down a highway, you’ll look for me. Any man you’ll meet, you’ll wish he was as tough as me. There’s no coming back. So just pull the trigger. Fucking end it.”
He was right, I thought. But he was wrong.
I was not who I was, and yet I wasn’t who he wanted me to be.
My mother. Stiff clothes, silver fox charm. My mother begging to see me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. But I wasn’t talking to Jacob. I was talking to my mother, who had no idea she was about to get exactly what she’d wished for, which, if memory served, was a kind of ancient curse.
I placed the gun against the top of Jacob’s head. Then I leaned down and I whispered in his ear:
“I’m not going to die. I’m going to stay alive. And someday, when I’m strong enough and skilled enough, I’m going to head to Florida. I’m going to track down Lindy, and then, I’m going to kill her. There will be nothing of you left, Jacob. You, your daughter, the ‘strong ones.’ I will kill you both, and it will be all your fault; you never should’ve snatched me from that beach.”
His eyes widened. A look of fear, not for himself but for his precious Lindy.
“I will never think of you again,” I promised, swore, lied.
Then I pulled the trigger.
A fine mist. Blood and brains in my hair. The men in black surging forward.
I won, I thought.
I lost, I already understood.
Then a woman was standing there. “Flora, it’s okay. Flora, Flora! My name is SAC Kimberly Quincy. I’m here to take you home.”
I felt sorry for her because I already understood that the Flora everyone once knew and loved would never be going home again.
There was simply me.
And I didn’t even know who that was anymore.
Chapter 42