She shook her head over and over. “He’s going to come back and I’m going to be good.”
My hands squeezed into fists as a current of desperate frustration coursed through me. I didn’t know how to reach her, how to make her understand that the past fifteen years were not real life. It would probably take a very long time before she could see that. But I needed her to get it now. I had to try something else.
“Sarah,” I said. “Did you know that Brad is in jail?”
She said his name again, clutching her belly.
“He’s in jail for murdering your parents,” I continued. I wiped a slick of perspiration from my forehead. My mouth was bone-dry. “But he didn’t do that. Did he?”
She said nothing.
“Once we get out of here,” I said, “and you tell the police what really happened? You can get Brad out of jail. You can take your life back. You can be in control. None of this has to count.”
“The police,” she murmured, miserable. She looked from me to Veronica. Then Sarah sat down on the bed, her hands balled into fists. “This isn’t what was supposed to happen,” she said.
I moved the flashlight so it was facing the bed and I crouched in front of her. “What’s supposed to happen?” I said.
“He said,” she began. “He said that in the new house, it would be better and we could be like a family and he wouldn’t lock the door upstairs. And I could go outside sometimes, into the yard. And there could be a swing set and a garden, that’s what he said. It’s a big yard. He showed me.” Her eyes welled up and overflowed.
I wondered how often Derrow had taken her out of the house. Maybe dozens of times over the last decade and a half, and everyone in Belmont was too self-involved to see. Maybe he’d gotten cocky, assuming nothing could ever touch him. Or maybe—probably—he was out of his mind. A family? How was that supposed to work? I felt the minutes rushing past like water down a drain. “Sarah, he’s not a good guy. You don’t want to stay here.”
“It’s not as bad anymore,” she said. “Now that he trusts me, almost.”
“He made you a prisoner,” I said. “He’ll never let you be anything other than that, not until you get away from him.”
“He told me I love him.”
“You don’t, Sarah,” I said. But she didn’t look too sure about that. She didn’t look like she believed me at all. “Listen,” I said, desperate. “He trusts you. Because he tested you before and you didn’t fall for it. Right?”
She nodded.
“He even took you to see the new house, right?” I guessed.
Another nod.
“You were at a gas station about two weeks ago,” I said. “That’s why I knew you were here. Someone saw you.”
“How do you know that?” she whispered.
“Because I’ve been looking really hard for you. That’s how you can tell this isn’t another test,” I said. “Because he already trusts you. He wouldn’t test you again, not after he trusted you enough to let you get out of the truck at the gas station. Right?”
The sideways logic appeared to reach her. She looked up at me, her head tipped to the side. “But you knew about Veronica,” she said. “Brad wouldn’t know about Veronica.”
“No, Brad doesn’t know,” I said. “But I found out, while I was looking for you. I found out a lot of things. He’s killed other women.”
Sarah continued to stare at the floor. “It’s because of his sexual problem,” she said, like what was wrong with Jack Derrow just needed a prescription remedy. “He can’t help it. He can be okay. He doesn’t chain me up anymore when he leaves, and he lets me use the bathroom now. And take showers. He’s not so bad.”
“Sarah, yes, he is.” I went to the window. I didn’t want to leave to get help myself in case Derrow came back sooner rather than later, but maybe I could get someone’s attention. The plywood covering the window was nailed down every two inches. I grabbed at the edges, hoping for a weak spot.
“He said we could be like a family.”
I looked back at her. “He killed your family. Didn’t he?”
She nodded. “He—” But then she stopped.
“What happened,” I whispered.
“He gave me a ride,” she said after a minute.
I yanked on the plywood as hard as I could, but nothing gave way except my fingernails.
“I got a flat tire on my bike, and I saw him driving by, and, and,” she said, shaking her head, “he stopped to help me.”
This was how it had gone down, I realized, for Sarah and the other women. Out and about in Belmont, maybe in some kind of distress, maybe not. There was nothing weird about a cop pulling over, especially one that you knew. On the street below, I heard a car approach, but it kept going past Derrow’s house. I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. He could return at any moment. I abandoned the idea of opening the window and went back to the bolt that secured Veronica’s chain to the floor. I squinted at it in the near-dark and considered the Swiss army knife on my keychain. Although I’d managed to get my father’s office door open with the Swiss army knife the other day, I’d need better tools than that if I was ever going to get this sucker open. A better light, too. Steady hands. Lots of time. And maybe not even then.
“He was my dad’s friend,” Sarah continued. “So I knew him, so I let him give me a ride home. And he took my bike in and his hands got all greasy from the chain and I said he could come in, to wash his hands.”
“Sarah, it wasn’t your fault.” I stood up and looked at her. Sarah’s eyes were wide, glued to the floor in front of her. I needed to get her to do more than talk. “Please. Help me.”
But she continued, “And then in the kitchen, he had, I saw he had an erection.” She stopped and wiped her eyes. “It made me really uncomfortable and I was going to go upstairs. But then my parents got home. And Jack went outside to help my dad with something on the car.” Now she looked right at me. “I told my mother about what I saw. And then he walked back in. Mom started yelling at him to get out, and she was calling for my dad, screaming his name. Jack got this knife out of his pocket and he just snapped his arm out and then my mom was clutching her throat. There was so much blood. So much. My dad came running in and Jack stabbed him too. He hit me and then I woke up here.” She pressed the heel of her hand against her mouth again, hard. “He told me he didn’t want to kill me, because I was good, I was a good girl. But he said he would do if it he had to because it was all my fault.”
“Sarah,” I said, my voice cracking. I had no idea how much time had passed but it felt like a year. “It isn’t your fault. You have to believe that. You can change the story, starting now. You will change it. But we need to act fast here. Please.”
She sat there without saying anything for a moment, just looking down at her hands. Then she reached out to me like she wanted to give me something, and she dropped a small silver key onto my open palm.