Page 57 of The Intruder

Nell’s house key is in my jeans pocket.

As I cross the border into Massachusetts, I think about what I’m going to say to Jolene.

She and I need to have a little talk about what she has done to her daughter and what she will do next to protect her, starting with getting rid of Jax.

Of course, if she is already dead, the talk will be very brief. Problem solved.

Jolene Kettering lives in a small town. The basement apartment she is renting might cost even less than the cabin where I’m living, though it’s likely a close call.

The entire house looks like it is one broken shingle away from being condemned.

The first floor of the house is dark. Good.

Nobody else is home, which means nobody will hear us.

As I round the side of the house to get to the entrance to the basement, I can’t help but think of my own house growing up, which looked nice on the outside but was horrifying on the inside. As often as I have nightmares about the fire, I have even more nightmares about the inside of that house.

And this is why I don’t have a boyfriend. Who could spend the night with me when I wake up screaming half the time? Certainly nobody I have dated so far.

I park around back, pulling up behind a broken-down Pinto.

I climb out of my truck and walk up to the door to the basement apartment, which is down three steps.

I start to pull off my leather gloves, which I use when I drive, but then after a moment of hesitation, I leave them on as I knock on the door.

No answer.

I knock a second time and wait a few minutes, but then I dig into my pocket to get the key. I fit it into the lock and push my way in.

The house is cluttered, but nothing out of the ordinary. The stench of cigarettes is in the air, covered by a layer of air freshener, but on the plus side, I don’t smell the rot that comes with the decay of a body.

“Ms. Kettering?” I call out. “Jolene?”

No answer. Not a good sign.

I walk through the living room, stepping over some cardboard boxes stacked up near the kitchen. I get a whiff of something rotting, and for a moment, my heart sinks. Is she dead?

But that smell is familiar to me, even though the stench of a decaying corpse is not. It’s spoiled food rotting in the kitchen—not a human being.

And when I get to the kitchen, sure enough, there she is.

Jolene Kettering is a sturdy woman in her late thirties, with bleached-blond shoulder-length hair and a square jaw.

She has dark brown eyes and a small beauty mark below her mouth that I recognize from those horrific drawings in Nell’s notebook.

In real life, Jolene and I don’t look much alike, but I can see how the childlike sketches of her might have resembled me.

But the most important thing of all about Jolene Kettering is that she is very much alive.

Well, perhaps “very much” is an understatement. But she is alive, and I am glad.

Jolene is in the corner of the kitchen, dark red blood staining the front of her glittery pink tank top, which looks better suited for a girl twenty years younger.

Her skin is very pale and clammy, and her breaths are shallow, but she is sitting up.

Her eyes are open to slits, and when I enter the room, she looks up at me.

“You the paramedics?” she asks in a hoarse voice.

I don’t know how I look like a paramedic, considering I’m wearing a big puffy coat and hat. But this woman is not in her right mind. She has likely been in and out of consciousness on her kitchen floor since yesterday. If nobody came to check on her, she’d probably be dead in another day or two.

“Yes, I’m the paramedics,” I say.

“It’s about time! I’ve been yelling my head off since yesterday.”

I clear my throat. “Are you okay, ma’am?”

“Do I look okay?” she snaps.

My gaze flicks down to the blood staining her shirt. A lot of it is dry, but there’s also a glisten of fresh blood. She’s still bleeding.

“What happened?” I ask.

She hesitates, probably not eager to incriminate her boyfriend. “None of your business.”

I doubt she’ll ever come clean about what Jax did to her.

Nell was scared her mother would tell the police that she was the one who stabbed her, but I doubt she’d do that.

Even though my first concern is always for the child, I recognize a lot of their parents are having a rough time.

Jolene was clearly struggling to get through life, and nobody has ever been there to help her.

“Do you have any children, ma’am?” I ask, hoping to get her talking about Nell.

She shoots me a look. “That’s none of your business either.”

I feel a flash of anger. Doesn’t she even care that her twelve-year-old daughter is gone? Isn’t she the slightest bit worried?

“I just want to make sure that the welfare of any children on the premises is taken care of,” I clarify.

I’m giving her one more chance to prove that she loves her daughter.

“Yeah, I got a kid,” Jolene says. “But she’s rotten. Never learns her lesson no matter how many times I try to teach her. Good riddance to that one. She’s a bad apple. Bad to the core.”

A bad apple. How many times have I heard that phrase about myself?

Jolene tries to get up but gasps in pain. I wonder how long she’s been trying to get up for. “Why are you asking me all these questions anyway? Where is the gurney? I need to get to the hospital.”

I walk past Jolene to the small table in the center of the kitchen. Jolene’s purse is lying on the table, gaping open. I rifle around in her purse while she narrows her eyes at me.

“What are you going through my purse for?” she snaps at me. “Let’s go to the hospital—now.”

Finally, I find what I’ve been searching for: a crumpled pack of cigarettes.

I’m pleased to find there are still a dozen cigarettes left in the pack.

I place one between my lips, shove the rest of the pack into my pocket, then pull out the lighter in her purse.

I wish I still had the lighter Anton gave me—it’s the one thing I’m sorry I lost in that fire all those years ago.

“Hey,” she says. “What are you doing with that?”

“Hang on,” I tell her. “I’m just having a quick smoke.”

Jolene watches me light the cigarette, her breathing ragged.

She can’t quite figure out why I’m smoking her cigarettes, but she doesn’t have the energy to yell at me.

The smoke fills my lungs, and it’s all I can do to suppress a cough.

It’s my first time smoking a cigarette, and it’s every bit as vile as I imagined it to be.

I crouch down beside Jolene and take a second drag, then blow the smoke directly into her face.

“Hey,” she snaps at me. “You mind putting that out?”

I arch an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Because I’m injured.”

“So?”

She gives me a funny look. “I said put it out. Or else I’m going to file a report.”

“Sure,” I say. “No problem.”

I grab her arm and press the lit end of the cigarette deep into the soft flesh of her forearm. She howls with pain and tries to yank her arm away from me, but I’d be stronger than her even if she weren’t weak from all the blood loss. I don’t let her go until the flame has been extinguished.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she screams at me as she cradles her injured arm. “That really hurt!”

Oh, I know exactly how much being burned by a cigarette hurts.

She tries again to get up, but between the stab wound and her burned arm, she isn’t going anywhere. “Aren’t you supposed to take me to the hospital? I’m reporting you to your boss!”

I almost laugh at how ridiculous her statement is. “I’m not a paramedic, Jolene.”

“Then…” She looks me over, and for the first time, a flicker of fear passes over her sallow features. “What are you doing here?”

I look up at the kitchen counter. There’s a knife block there, full of extremely sharp blades. But when I look at the painfully thin woman squirming on the linoleum floor, I don’t think I need them.

No, the pack of cigarettes will do just fine.

“You know,” I say. “There were bruises all over your daughter’s arms. Would you like to tell me how that happened?”

She narrows her eyes at me. “How do you know Nell?”

I meet her gaze, staring at her until she looks away. “Answer the question, Jolene.”

“Beats me,” she finally grunts. “That kid is always asking for it, and it looks like someone finally taught her a lesson.”

I retrieve the pack of cigarettes from my pocket and pull out another smoke.

I use the lighter to light the second cigarette the same way I watched my mother do it a million times when I was a child.

It’s hard to use a lighter with my leather gloves on, but there’s no way I’m taking them off.

As soon as it’s lit, I pull it from my lips before too much smoke gets into my lungs.

“We’re going to play a little game, Jolene,” I tell her. “I’m going to ask you some questions, and every time you lie to me, I’m going to light another cigarette.” I pause. “But before I light a new one, I’m going to have to put out the last one.”

Jolene’s eyes widen, her legs kick in vain. “You’re a psychopath! What the hell is wrong with you?”

“You know,” I say, “when a child is found to have cigarette burns like Nell does, the culprit is almost always an adult family member.”

Beads of sweat form on her clammy forehead. “Why are you asking me all these questions about Nell? What are you blaming me for? I’m the one who got stabbed!”

“Last chance, Jolene.” I hold the cigarette between my thumb and forefinger. “How did Nell get those cigarette burns?”

“I don’t know!” she growls at me. “She’s a stupid kid. She probably did it to herself.”

I smile. “Wrong answer, Jolene.”

I press this next cigarette into the delicate skin on the back of her hand. Jolene howls like…well, like she’s being scalded. I hold it there for as long as I can, and when I pull the cigarette away, the skin underneath is red and raw.

“You’re crazy,” she gasps.

“Oh yes,” I say. “But at least I don’t hurt defenseless children.”

A tear falls from Jolene’s left eye. I know exactly what she’s feeling right now—how bad she’s hurting. I have burned both her arms, and she’s not sure which one to devote her attention to. And that on top of the stab wound in her belly.

I reach into the pack of cigarettes and pull another one out. Then I light it.

“No,” she manages. “Please, no.”

She tries to bat at me, but she’s as weak as a newborn kitten. At least she’s not blind like a kitten. Although I’ve got plenty of cigarettes left so that may very well change.

“Jolene,” I say quietly. “Did you burn Nell with a cigarette?” She opens her mouth, but before she can get any words out, I say, “Keep in mind, this next one is going out on your face. So you better not lie to me.”

I can actually hear the woman swallow.

“Fine.” Her voice is trembling as she whispers her answer. “I burned Nell a couple of times. But believe me, she deserved it. You don’t know what that little brat is like. She never ever listens. These rotten kids—you have to teach them a lesson.”

I stare at her, the smoldering cigarette still between my fingers. It’s what I knew I’d hear from her, but I wish she had said anything else. I wish she’d told me she loved her daughter instead of telling me she was a brat.

Maybe if she had, I could have put the cigarette down.

“Why are you still holding that?” she gasps. “I told you the truth! You promised me if I told you the truth, you’d stop!”

I stare down at Jolene, cowering on the kitchen floor. I never thought I could hate someone as much as I hated my mother, but here we are.

“No,” I say, “I definitely never promised.”