Page 28

28

LENNY

Everything was black when I finally woke again. I tried to open my eyes, but they fluttered against something. When I tried to move my hands, I found them bound behind my back, my body upright and my hands touching a metal chair.

Finally, I heard someone speak and lifted my head, moving around to try to gain my bearings.

My body jumped as hands touched the back of my head. The fabric fell away, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the light of the room. I tried to crane my neck to get a look at them.

I didn’t need to. They walked around the chair to stand in front of me, and my breath caught in my throat.

No, this wasn’t right.

Mallory hovered in front of me, red lips pursed and arms crossed. She scowled as I struggled to catch my breath again.

“Why did you have to do this?” she asked. “Everything is ruined.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, still confused.

My mind raced with every possibility.

Mallory started to walk around my chair, examining me. Her hand brushed my shoulder, and she picked up my curls, slowly starting to hum.

The sound was eerie, almost haunting. I recognized it. My mind didn’t want to admit it, but I’d heard that same exact sound before.

“It was you,” I said. My throat burned as I got the words out.

“Obviously,” Mallory said. “It was me who took care of you all these years.”

“You tried to kill me,” I choked. “You ruined my life.”

“I saved you from him.” Her hands tightened on my curls and yanked them. My neck snapped back, my head forced to look up at her. I found my eyes staring into hers, looking down at me.

“They all leave. I saved you from the pain of it. I saved all those women from the pain I had to endure.”

“I don’t understand. This isn’t you, Mallory,” I tried.

I knew I was lying to myself, but if there was a chance I could get out of here alive, I had to try.

She scoffed. “Do you know how I met Ethan?”

I shook my head, and she let go of my hair. I heard heels tapping against cement floor as she walked back around the chair. I tried to look at my surroundings, but I didn’t recognize anything in the room.

“That’s where he left me: The High Tide Pub. Ethan was working that night; he’s the one who called the sheriff’s office. We were supposed to get married only two weeks later, and he left me.”

I’d never heard the story before. I knew Mallory hated men, but she never talked about any of the ones she’d been with. Never once had I heard her mention a fiancé. I always assumed she had bad luck with dating apps or some wild dates, but never this.

“I don’t understand,” I tried.

My throat was dry, a combination of whatever drug she used to get me here and the lack of water.

“They’re all the same. He left me for some other woman and moved across the country, leaving me here. For months, I was forced to sit there and watch every happy couple who came to the pub. It was our spot, and he left me there.”

She kept repeating it over and over.

“I’m sorry,” I said, part of me meaning it.

Mallory was my friend, and it still hurt me to know she experienced such pain.

“I had to watch all those couples come to the pub and pretend like they were happy. I had to watch them get drunk and celebrate like everything was fine. It wasn’t fine. Those men would have left them like he left me,” she said, her eyes distant.

I could barely tell if she knew where she was. “I don’t understand why Ethan would help you.”

“He understood,” she said. “I sat there for months at that bar. He cared. He knew what it was like to be left, to be overlooked. I saw the way that women at the pub stared at him and judged him. It wasn’t fair,” she said, shaking her head.

The perfect team. They found comfort in each other, a way to inflict pain on others who had something they never did.

“You used Ethan,” I guessed. “You lied about the code needing to be changed that day, and you used him to deliver the threat.”

She nodded.“I needed you to stop looking.”

“You used him to place that last call?”

“It was easy enough to time the call with when I knew he made his weekly run to the warehouse for Bobby,” she answered and shrugged.

“And the falsified police reports? That was you?” I asked, trying to buy myself time.

“I told you Chris was someone to stay away from. He has more secrets that should stay buried than myself. It was easy enough to find proof and blackmail the sheriff.”

“I’m sorry, I really am, that your fiancé left you, but that isn’t a reason to hurt others. They didn’t deserve that,” I tried, my mind reeling.

“They didn’t deserve the pain. Don’t you see?”

“See what?” I asked.

“I see them,” she insisted. “I saved them. I gave them peace and made sure they never knew the pain I felt.”

It was all coming together.

“I never wanted to be saved,” I argued.

“You needed to be,” she said firmly and shook her head.

“I would’ve left him eventually.”

“He was only going to hurt you,” Mallory insisted. “I saved you.”

My stomach turned, and I held back the growing nausea. “Is that why you stopped?” I asked, my stomach thinking of every last victim who died at Mallory’s hands.

“When I saw how free you were because of what I did to you, I knew I’d fulfilled my purpose,” she said. “All this was meant to bring me to you. I know it was.”

“You knew who I was,” I guessed. “That day at the café when we first met. That wasn’t an accident?”

“Of course not. I knew who you were. I had to know. When you survived, I had to make sure you didn’t go back to him. When I met you, you were so sad. I knew you understood. I knew you felt the same pain as me. That’s why the world brought us together.”

The delusional thoughts only got worse the more I pushed. I tugged gently at the binds holding my hands, but they didn’t budge.

“I believed you, all these years,” I said, feeling the anger festering in my chest. Everything in me screamed at me to have some sense of self preservation, but I couldn’t stop the words tumbling out.

“I trusted you! You were my friend.”

“We still are friends! Can’t you see? I did all of this for you,” she cried.

“What do you mean?”

“I killed those two women for you to show you, to help you understand.”

“No,” I said. “That wasn’t for me. I never wanted that.”

Something seemed to snap inside of Mallory, and her entire face shifted, her scowl growing. I swallowed hard.

“Ungrateful,” she spat into my face. “I did all of this for you. I sent you that gift, and you’re going to sit here and pretend not to understand.”

“I don’t understand!” I shouted back.

I knew it was a mistake the second I said it. I was only adding fuel to the fire.

“You’re only saying that because of him,” Mallory accused. She paced back-and-forth in front of me. “He ruined it. He lied to you, made you hate me.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

While she was distracted, I tried again to pull at the restraints holding my arms. There was no use; they were tied tight. I would have to break my thumbs to wiggle my way out of them, and I wasn’t convinced I could do it without drawing her attention.

“That agent,” she said. “The second he came to town, everything was ruined.”

“Stone?” I asked.

“He took you from me. I warned you what men would do. I told you they all leave, that there’s no point, that you don’t want to end up like you did with Jake, but you didn’t listen.”

Her eyes burned with hatred. The drugs were wearing off, my head starting to feel a little less cloudy.

“I’m the one who invited him here,” I said. “If you want to hate someone, hate me.”

That was the final straw. She pulled out a knife and my entire body tensed, preparing for the pain it was so familiar with. The same knife that had taken all those lives pointed at me.

“He’ll come back for you,” she said quietly.

Before I could react, the knife was to my throat.

She forced me to stand, my arms sliding up and above the chair, still bound together.

The knife remained at my throat.