Fixing Perfect Page 20

  Donovan grabbed her around her middle and hauled her upright. “Aren’t you excited? You’re never going to have to do this again. No more struggling. No more not being able to walk. You’re going to be perfect.” His words huffed with the effort of carrying her weight.

  She jerked her sore elbow back, and it collided with his stomach.

  He grunted and laughed again. “Don’t be silly. And stop fighting me. I’m going to help you.”

  “Let me go.” She tried to wriggle out of his hold, but his arms tightened around her.

  “Nope.” He pulled her around, still with her back to him, and hauled her toward the living room.

  “I’m going to set it all up right here. Right in the middle of the room. I forgot my camera, though. Stupid Sam. He sent me down here, and I came so fast, I forgot everything. It’s all happening so fast now. But that’s OK. It’s time. They’ll take pictures, anyway.” He stilled. “Not that they’ll ever be as good as one of mine.”

  Robin shook her head, her body limp with shock, and struggled again. Sam hadn’t sent him. Donovan’s mind was so far from reality he wouldn’t be able to tell the truth if he tried.

  Maybe he’d seen Sam, which was likely enough. Sam had gone to his house, after all, sure the kids were there.

  But then, what had Donovan done to Sam?

  Dare she ask?

  “Where’s Sam now?” The words came, forced out by fear and longing, words she never meant to say.

  “All fixed up, Robin. Remember? I fixed him up. On the beach, remember?”

  She closed her eyes. Did he mean Simon, whom he’d arranged to look like Sam, or was he talking about something he’d done tonight?

  She sagged in his arms. Now she had nothing. Nothing to hold between herself and this monster, this depraved aberration who was so intent on killing her and calling it a good thing. Because if she didn’t have Sam, if he’d killed Sam to get to her, what did she have?

  God.

  She had God.

  Nothing but God. And that was enough.

  God wouldn’t want her to give up or give in to death. And so she wouldn’t. Donovan might still win. He might succeed in setting up his gruesome display, and she would still die, but not with her consent.

  Her crutches, caught against her sides, banged her legs. If she could get one free, she could try to hit him again. She wriggled harder, twisting her arms any way she could to break his hold.

  “Stop it!” Donovan’s hand shot out, clipping her under her jaw. Robin’s head rolled, and mist went gray at the edges of her vision.

  She might end up losing sooner than she’d expected.

  19

  Sam’s heart refused to stop pounding, though he couldn’t move.

  Jake stopped on the edge of the street and set Becca on the ground. As he straightened, she kept her arms locked around his neck. He whispered something to her, and she nodded. She let him slide her down until she could lean against him, and stick her thumb in her mouth. Even in the dim light, Sam saw how much weight she’d lost since she’d posed for her kindergarten picture. Her face was pale and smeared, and both she and Jake probably hadn’t bathed or changed clothes since they’d been taken.

  Jake looked up at Sam. “He meant he’s gonna kill her.”

  Finally, he could move. “I know.” Sam fumbled for his cell phone, got it open. The dispatcher took note of Robin’s address and said she would send officers out immediately. Her voice sounded calm and unruffled, standard issue, when he wanted her to scream in alarm and promise Robin would be all right, promise that no one on the force would let Donovan hurt her.

  She couldn’t. He knew that, but that didn’t stop him wanting her to.

  “He really is gonna kill her,” Jake said. “You know her, right? He’s got some crazy idea—I mean, he’s really crazy—that killing her is gonna fix her.”

  “How do you know?” What had the idiot exposed these kids to? Had they seen the deaths or the bodies? And if they had, what kind of irreparable damage would they carry for the rest of their lives?

  Thank God he’d socked Kerry away in that virtual dungeon, instead of exposing him to more of his filth.

  “He told us. He said he was going to fix her like he fixed Lehanie and them. He’s crazy.” Jake, as thin and pale as Becca, with darkened bruises on his face, looked up at Sam. Several of the cuts still bled.

  Sam set Kerry down but kept his arm around him. The young man clung to him, and pushed hard against his side. Sam resisted the urge to thrust him away and sprint down the road to rescue Robin. He shook his head. “When was this?”

  “Right after he brought Kerry. A while ago. It took me a long time to make the hole big enough for Becca. And I broke Kerry’s leg brace doing it. I bent it all up.” Jake patted Kerry’s arm. “I’m real sorry, but your brace saved our lives.”

  “That’s OK. I’m glad we got saved.” Kerry’s voice veered from scared and weepy, and crept closer to his more cheerful self. “Sam and you saved us, Jake. You’re both heroes. Did you know that, Jake? You’re a hero, and you’re just a little kid. That means you’re awesome.”

  “Yeah. Right.” Jake rolled his eyes. “What about this Robin? Are the police gonna get to her house in time?”

  Sam saw the struggle the boy had, trying to keep the tears from filling his eyes. “I don’t know. God willing, they will.”

  Becca pulled her thumb out of her mouth. “God will help.” Her light, sweet voice sounded like a tract from a Sunday school class. “He helped us, and He sent Kerry to us so we could get out. He’ll help the p’lice get to her and save her.”

  Sam knelt in front of the little girl and brushed dirty hair off a dirty cheek. “God did a great job saving you three, didn’t He? We should thank Him.”

  “I did. Right when you pulled me out of the hole.”

  Oh, for the faith of a child. Sam wished he still had it. “Pray for Robin, honey. Pray hard.”

  Becca nodded. Her thumb slurped comfortably back into her mouth and her eyes squeezed shut.

  Answer her, please, Sam begged. He turned to Jake. “Did he take anything with him when he left?”

  Jake shrugged. “How should I know? I never got out of that room until just now. But he’s had lots of time to get to her house. It only takes like ten minutes to walk from the beach up here, by that path he uses. That’s how he got me and Simon up here.”

  His scout leader. Jake probably knew the man had died, but Sam didn’t want to ask. If Jake didn’t know, Sam sure didn’t want to be the one to tell him.

  A police siren broke over the edge of the hill, lights glowed like a sunrise. Soon the car roared up the bend and stopped beside them. Macias left the motor running and his door open. Before he could start asking questions, Sam said, “You’ve got to find Donovan. He’s after Robin.”

  “I heard the call go out. No one’s seen him.” As if that made it less likely that he was stalking his real victim.

  “He’s gone after her. He told the kids he was going to get her.”

  “All right.” Macias leaned inside the car for the radio and listened to the static. “Officers are already on their way to her house.”

  An ambulance pulled up behind his squad car, followed by three more police cars.

  Sam’s heart thudded as he saw the number of officers swarming the hillside. “They’re all here.”

  Macias waved a hand, more interested in the kids. “Not all of them.”

  “Drive me down there.” Sam grabbed Macias’s arm.

  “No one’s taking a civilian into a dangerous situation.”

  Sam turned on him. “You used me,” he ground out. “You put everyone in danger—Kerry, all the kids, Robin. Especially Robin. And now you’re not even concerned? Take me down there now.”

  Bricker ambled over from another car. “I’ll take him down.”

  After a moment of studying Sam’s furious face, Macias nodded. “You’ll just be in the way, but go ahead. Keep him out of the action, y
ou hear?”

  Bricker nodded. “I hear. Come on. Let’s go.”

  

  Some of the mist blinding her faded, and Robin turned her head to see Donovan frowning at her. His hand on her stinging cheek was gentle and made her tremble with horror.

  “You’ll get a bruise, Robin. You shouldn’t do things that leave marks, you know. It’s not good for the pictures.” He straightened and glanced at the bed, then up at the ceiling, before he looked back at her.

  “I didn’t—” She stopped, fury mixing with revulsion. Her skin wanted to crawl away from his touch. He was not rational. How could she expect to reach him like a normal human? Yet, at the moment, he neither looked nor sounded insane. He’d slipped back into normal, and that made him more frightening than anything she’d ever experienced.

  He shook his head. “Everything has to be perfect. You see that, don’t you? If it’s not, it hurts something. Me. It hurts something inside me.” He sounded like a crime victim on a confessional talk show with his hand clasped to his chest.

  “Hitting me hurts me,” she said.

  “No one wants you to get hurt. Sam doesn’t. Kerry doesn’t. I sure don’t. But you already know that.”

  “Hurting Lehanie and the others—how can you justify that?” There she went again, expecting him to respond like a rational person.

  “Robin, I didn’t hurt them. I swear it. I fixed them all up, yeah, but you know how I feel about hurting people. Kids, especially. That’s who you’re worried about, right? Little Becca and the baby. There was a baby, you remember? And the scout guy the kid was so fussed about. Oh, and the kid. And Kerry.” He smiled, looking so much like a fond uncle that she wanted to throw up.

  Maybe if she did, it would make him leave her alone.

  “I never laid a hand on those kids. I swear. I took care of Becca. I read her a bedtime story every single night, and she let me tuck her in bed, but I never hurt her.” For half a second she saw a ray of sanity, as though he knew she would escape to tell the truth, but madness swallowed it. The sudden change in his tone of voice was like a whip across her back. “Don’t you ever say I hurt them. You better believe me.”

  She shrank away and nodded.

  “I didn’t hurt them.” He took a breath, seemed to fill himself with a dangerous calm, and nodded, once, sharply. “Promise me you’ll tell them I didn’t hurt anybody. That’s important to me, all right?” He didn’t wait for her to answer, not that she could have.

  Rage and confusion filled her throat.

  “Look at the mess you made with all these beads.” He waved his hand at the floor, shaking his head. “They were so pretty, too. Almost perfect.”

  She really was beginning to hate that word. But now, with him calmer, she might be able to really fight, on her terms. She fit one hand into a crutch, backed up a step, and shifted the other to her right hand.

  “No, Robin. You don’t need those anymore. Remember? I’m going to fix you so you never have to use them again. Come on. Let’s just leave them here.” He reached for her crutches, and, when she shifted them out of his reach, he waved toward the bed. “I want you to lie down. In just a couple minutes, everything’s going to be perfect. See? I have the stuff right here.”

  He fumbled at his chest and pulled a plastic bag out from an inner pocket. Robin thought she saw a syringe. “See? Won’t leave any marks the camera can see. It’ll be inside your elbow, one little needle prick, that’s all, and your arm is going to be around me. Around my neck.” Sweat broke out on his upper lip. “You’re going to be hugging me, right? And our legs will be entwined, just as if yours were normal. Perfect. No one will be able to see the inside of your elbow, so it’ll be perfect.”

  And I’ll be dead. Robin took a breath that didn’t want to fill her lungs. “What about you? You’ll know it’s there.” And who was crazier, Donovan, or herself for trying to talk to him like a sane person?

  “I’ll be right there with you. There’s enough here for both of us, I promise. I was going to have you dancing. Maybe we should both be dancing. Would you like that better?”

  Robin’s weight shifted. She staggered away from him. God, is this what You want? Am I the sacrifice that will stop him from killing other people? Because if he dies with me, then everything is all right?

  But she didn’t want to die.

  20

  On the short trip down the road, Sam gave Bricker the more pertinent details, the most important being what Donovan planned for Robin.

  “They’ve got officers there now.” Bricker pointed at the radio, which had been silent during the entire ride. “Got there before we started, OK? She’ll be fine.”

  “He’s out of his mind. Criminally insane.” Sam scrubbed the top of his head, desperate to relieve the tension that told him jumping from the car and running across the scrub would get him to Robin faster.

  “We knew that from the beginning.”

  “Yeah, well, now he’s after Robin and that makes it—” Sam stopped, unwilling to finish. Said aloud, the words would have too much terrifying reality attached to them. “No one has any idea what he’ll do. I doubt he does. He told the kids he was going to fix her.” No way could he imbue that word with all the hatred he felt toward it and toward the man willing to kill Robin for some broken synapses in his brain.

  God, help me. I know I’m supposed to love my brother, but I can’t see him that way. If it comes to a choice between them, You know who I’m going to pick.

  Bricker tapped the steering wheel. “I’d go faster if I could.”

  That didn’t help.

  The radio flared, and Sam thought he heard Robin’s name. He held up his hand, straining to understand the words, but nothing more came across.

  “She’s fine.” Bricker sounded as if he wanted to make them both believe a lie.

  Sam groaned and yanked on the door latch.

  “It’s locked.” Bricker pulled into the tiny Avalon neighborhood and glanced at Sam. “She’ll be fine.”

  Sam closed his eyes. God, I can’t help her. One more time I’ve let someone who needs me down. And this one is going to kill me, because she’s my life. And why had it taken him so long to admit that? He must have known for years. Every time he’d held her in his arms, waiting for her to swing her bat, waiting for her to start her run to first base, his heart had known.

  One more corner and they were on Robin’s street.

  Several cruisers blocked his view of the house, and finally, Sam was able to give in to his impulse and bolt from the car. Within seconds an officer stopped him, hand on Sam’s chest, the other arm spread to keep him from dodging around him.

  “No. Let me by.”

  “It’s a crime scene.”

  That floored Sam. Crime scene meant crime, and what besides murder…?

  He stepped back, turned, and when the cop lowered his arms, he darted around him and ran through the front door.

  

  Donovan’s smile put Robin into horror overload. She lifted her chin. She might die trying to save herself, but she wasn’t going to give in. Her death was no guarantee of his. If she lived, the police would still know who they were after, finally. They would hunt him down, and he would never get the chance to hurt another human being again. She didn’t have to die to ensure that happened, and she would not give in kindly or easily.

  God, be with me now. I don’t want to die.

  She slipped her right hand out of the crutch cuff and slid it down the staff, gripping tight. With the other crutch, Robin pushed herself straight. The first, she still held short, and she dropped the one holding her up to be able to put both arms into the swing.

  She’d practiced plenty on those swings, and her upper arm strength was phenomenal.

  Donovan ducked away and stumbled on the beads, slid a few feet, and caught his balance. He backpedaled, his feet without purchase atop the tumbling beads, and his arms flailed.

  She swung again. The crutch was a bat, Donovan, her target.
She put every ounce of her strength into the swing, betting on a home run, betting on sending the ball out of the park. She had to think of it that way, and not as attacking another human being, or she would never be able to finish.

  The metal pole collided with Donovan’s head. Warm blood spattered her, her face and clothes and room, and he went down.

  Robin tilted on her unsteady legs, fighting the urge to vomit, struggling to stay upright. She won the first battle, lost the second, and crumpled into a heap on her floor, amidst the rolling beads.

  A muffled shriek came from the living room, and her grandmother rushed in. “Did I hear you scream?”

  Robin lay her head down next to Donovan’s unmoving body, uncertain whether to laugh or cry.

  

  Sam’s rush stuttered to a stop just inside the front door. Robin lay in the doorway between her bedroom and the living room, her face splattered with blood, but alive, breathing. Grams came from the kitchen with a wet towel and handed it to her.

  “Where is he?” Sam demanded. His chest heaved and rather than relief or thankfulness, his heart felt like lead. How could he have let this happen? How could he have let her down?

  “In there. I hit him.” Robin wiped the blood off her face and handed the towel back to her grandmother. Three officers filled up the living room, and one pointed into Robin’s bedroom. Donovan lay amidst hundreds of beads, blood covering his face, groaning.

  Defeated, far more than the man on the ground, Sam turned away, ready to let the officer throw him from the house, ready to walk away and let someone worthy of Robin find her and live for her. Because he hadn’t. He hadn’t saved her.

  He heard his name, at first gentle, but it became more strident. He ignored Robin, ignored her grandmother, ignored all the words she was saying that he didn’t want to hear. Either she knew the truth and berated him, or she didn’t, and everything she said would be a lie.

  Before he could finish turning away, a growl from Robin’s bedroom made him look back. Grunting, Donovan rose from the floor. Blood mottled his face, streamed into his eyes and mouth. He held out his arms like a father running into a child’s hug, and bellowed.