Sara ran the case, trying to stop the bleeding. The girl started to convulse, jerking out the IVs, kicking over the supply tray at her feet. Sara leaned over her, trying to stop the girl from doing any further damage. The seizing stopped abruptly, and Sara thought she might have died. Her pulse was strong. Her reflexes were weak but registering.
A pelvic examination revealed the girl had recently had an abortion, though not one that had been given by a qualified physician. Her uterus was a mess, the walls of her vagina scraped and shredded. Sara repaired what she could, but the damage was done. Whatever healing she would do was left up to the girl.
Sara went to her car to change her shirt before talking to the girl’s parents. She found them in the waiting area and told them the prognosis. She used the right phrases, like “guarded optimism” and “critical, but stable.” Only the girl did not make it through the next three hours. She had another seizure, effectively frying her brain.
At that point in her career, the thirteen-year-old girl was the youngest patient Sara had ever lost. The other patients who had died under Sara’s care had been older, or sicker, and it was sad to lose them, but their deaths had not been so unexpected. Sara was shocked by the tragedy as she made her way toward the waiting area. The girl’s parents seemed just as shocked. They had no idea their daughter had been pregnant. To their knowledge, she had never had a boyfriend. They couldn’t understand how their daughter could be pregnant, let alone dead.
“My baby,” the father whispered. He repeated the phrase over and over, his voice quiet with grief. “She was my baby.”
“You must be wrong,” the mother said. Rummaging around in her purse, she pulled out a wallet. Before Sara could stop her, a photograph was found—a school picture of the young girl in a cheerleading uniform. Sara did not want to look at the picture, but there was no consoling the woman until she did. Sara glanced down quickly, then looked a second, more careful time. The photograph showed a young girl in a cheerleading outfit. She held her pom-poms out from her sides. A smile was on her face. The expression was a sharp contrast to the one on the lifeless girl lying on the gurney, waiting to be moved to the morgue.
The father had reached out, taking Sara’s hands. He bent his head down and mumbled a prayer that seemed to last a long time, asking for forgiveness, restating his belief in God. Sara was by no means a religious person, but there was something about his prayer that moved her. To be able to find such comfort in the face of such a horrible loss was amazing to her.
After the prayer, Sara had gone to her car to collect her thoughts, to maybe take a drive around the block and work her mind around this tragic, unnecessary death. That was when she had found the damage done to her car. That was when she had gone back into the bathroom. That was when Jack Allen Wright had raped her.
The picture Jeb had just shown her was the same picture she had seen twelve years ago in the waiting room.
“Sara?”
The song changed on the stereo. Sara felt her stomach drop as the words “Hey, hey, Julia” came from the speakers.
“Something wrong?” Jeb asked, then quoted the words from the song. “ ‘You’re acting so peculiar.’ ”
Sara stood, holding up a can as she closed the refrigerator. “This is the last Coke,” she said, edging toward the garage door. “I’ve got some outside.”
“That’s okay.” He shrugged. “I’m fine with just water.” He had put his sandwich down and was staring at her.
Sara popped the top on the Coke. Her hands were shaking slightly, but she didn’t think Jeb noticed. She brought the can to her mouth, sipping enough to let some of the Coke spill onto her sweater.
“Oh,” she said, trying to act surprised. “Let me go change. I’ll be right back.”
Sara returned the smile he gave her, her lips trembling as she did so. She forced herself to move, walking down the hall slowly so as not to raise the alarm. Inside her room, she snatched up the phone, glancing out the bank of windows, surprised to see the bright sunlight pouring in. It was so incongruous with the terror she felt. Sara dialed Jeffrey’s number, but there were no corresponding beeps when she pressed the buttons. She stared at the phone, willing it to work.
“You took it off the hook,” Jeb said. “Remember?”
Sara jumped up from her bed. “I was just calling my dad. He’s coming by in a few minutes.”
Jeb stood in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. “I thought you said you were going by their house later.”
“That’s right,” Sara answered, backing toward the other side of the room. This put the bed between them, but Sara was trapped, her back to the window. “He’s coming to get me.”
“You think so?” Jeb asked. He was smiling the same way he always did, a lopsided half grin that you would find on a child. There was something so casual about him, something so nonthreatening, that Sara wondered for half a second if she had drawn the wrong conclusion. A glance down at his hand snapped her out of it. He was holding a long boning knife at his side.
“What gave it away?” he asked. “The vinegar, wasn’t it? I had a bear of a time getting it in through the cork. Thank God for cardiac syringes.”
Sara put her hand behind her, feeling the cold glass of the window under her palm. “You left them for me,” she said, going through the last few days in her mind. Jeb had known about her lunch with Tessa. Jeb had known she was at the hospital the night Jeffrey was shot. “That’s why Sibyl was in the bathroom. That’s why Julia was on my car. You wanted me to save them.”
He smiled, nodding slowly. There was a sadness around his eyes, as if he regretted that the game was over. “I wanted to give you that opportunity.”
“Is that why you showed me her picture?” she asked. “To see if I would remember her?”
“I’m surprised you did.”
“Why?” Sara asked. “Do you think I could forget something like that? She was a baby.”
He shrugged.
“Did you do that to her?” Sara asked, recalling the brutality of the home abortion. Derrick Lange, her supervisor, had guessed a clothes hanger had been used.
She said, “Were you the one who did it?”
“How did you know?” Jeb asked, a defensive edge to his tone. “Did she tell you?”
There was something more to what he was saying, a more sinister secret behind his words. When Sara spoke, she knew the answer before she even finished her sentence. Taking into account what she had seen Jeb was capable of, it made perfect sense.
She asked, “You raped your sister, didn’t you?”
“I loved my sister,” he countered, the defensive tone still there.
“She was just a child.”
“She came to me,” he said, as if this was some kind of excuse. “She wanted to be with me.”
“She was thirteen years old.”
“ ‘If a man shall take his sister, his father’s daughter, and see her nakedness and she see his nakedness, it is a wicked thing.’ ” His smile seemed to say he was pleased with himself. “Just call me wicked.”
“She was your sister.”
“We are all God’s children, are we not? We share the same parents.”
“Can you quote a verse to justify rape? Can you quote a verse to justify murder?”
“The good thing about the Bible, Sara, is that it’s open to interpretation. God gives us signs, opportunities, and we either follow them or we don’t. We can choose what happens to us that way. We don’t like to think about it, but we are the captains of our own destinies. We make the decisions that direct the course of our lives.” He stared at her, not speaking for a few beats. “I would have thought you learned that lesson twelve years ago.”
Sara felt the earth shift under her feet as a thought came to her. “Was it you? In the bathroom?”
“Lord, no,” Jeb said, waving this off. “That was Jack Wright. He beat me to it, I guess. Gave me a good idea, though.” Jeb leaned against the door jamb, the same pleased smile twisting hi
s lips. “We’re both men of faith, you see. We both let the Spirit guide us.”
“The only thing you both are is animals.”
“I guess I owe him for bringing us together,” Jeb said. “What he did for you has served as an example for me, Sara. I want to thank you for that. On behalf of the many women who have come since then, and I do mean come in the biblical sense, I offer a sincere thank-you.”
“Oh, God,” Sara breathed, putting her hand to her mouth. She had seen what he had done to his sister, to Sibyl Adams, and to Julia Matthews. To think that this had all started when Jack Wright had attacked her made Sara’s stomach turn. “You monster,” she hissed. “You murderer.”
He straightened, his expression suddenly changed by rage. Jeb went from being a quiet, unassuming pharmacist to the man who had raped and killed at least two women. Anger radiated from his posture. “You let her die. You killed her.”
“She was dead before she got to me,” Sara countered, trying to keep her voice steady. “She lost too much blood.”
“That’s not true.”
“You didn’t get it all out,” she said. “She was rotting from the inside.”
“You’re lying.”
Sara shook her head. She moved her hand behind her, looking for the lock on the window. “You killed her.”
“That’s not true,” he repeated, though she could tell from the change in his voice that part of him believed her.
Sara found the lock, tried to twist it open. It wouldn’t budge. “Sibyl died because of you, too.”
“She was fine when I left her.”
“She had a heart attack,” Sara told him, pressing against the lock. “She died from an overdose. She had a seizure, just like your sister.”
His voice was frighteningly loud in the bedroom, and the glass behind Sara shook when he yelled, “That is not true.”
Sara gave up on the lock as he took a step toward her. He still held the knife down at his side, but the threat was there. “I wonder if your cunt’s still as sweet as it was for Jack,” he mumbled. “I remember sitting through your trial, listening to the details. I wanted to take notes, but I found after the first day that I didn’t need to.” He reached into his back pocket, taking out a pair of handcuffs. “You still got that key I left for you?”
She stopped him with her words. “I won’t go through this again,” she said with conviction. “You’ll have to kill me first.”
He looked down at the floor, his shoulders relaxed. She felt a brief moment of relief until he looked back up at her. There was a smile at his lips when he said, “What makes you think it matters to me if you’re dead or not?”
“You gonna cut a hole in my belly?”
He was so shocked that he dropped the handcuffs on the floor. “What?” he whispered.
“You didn’t sodomize her.”
She could see a bead of sweat roll down the side of his head as he asked, “Who?”
“Sibyl,” Sara provided. “How else could shit get inside her vagina?”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Is it?” Sara asked. “Did you bite her while you fucked the hole in her belly?”
He shook his head vehemently side to side. “I didn’t do that.”
“Your teeth marks are on her shoulder, Jeb.”
“They are not.”
“I saw them,” Sara countered. “I saw everything you did to them. I saw how you hurt all of them.”
“They weren’t hurting,” he insisted. “They didn’t hurt at all.”
Sara walked toward him until she was standing with her knees against the bed. He stood on the other side, watching her, a stricken look on his face. “They suffered, Jeb. Both of them suffered, just like your sister. Just like Sally.”
“I never hurt them like that,” he whispered. “I never hurt them. You’re the one who let them die.”
“You raped a thirteen-year-old child, a blind woman, and an emotionally unstable twenty-two-year-old. Is that what gets you off, Jeb? Attacking helpless women? Controlling them?”
His jaw clenched. “You’re just going to make it harder for yourself.”
“Fuck you, you sick bastard.”
“No,” he said. “It’ll be the other way around.”
“Come on,” Sara taunted, clenching her fists. “I dare you to try.”
Jeb lunged toward her, but Sara was already moving. She ran full force toward the picture window, tucking her head as she broke out the glass. Pain flooded her senses, shards of glass cutting into her body. She landed in the backyard, tucking as she rolled a few feet down the hill.
Sara stood quickly, not looking over her shoulder as she ran toward the lake. Her arm was cut across the bicep and a gash was in her forehead, but these were the least of her concerns. By the time she got to the dock, Jeb was close behind her. She dove into the cold water without thinking, swimming under the water until she could no longer breathe. Finally, she surfaced ten yards from the dock. Sara saw Jeb jump into her boat, too late remembering she had left the key in the ignition.
Sara dove under the water, pushing herself, swimming as far as she could before surfacing. When she looked back around, she could see the boat coming toward her. She dove down, touching the bottom of the lake as the boat sped over her. Sara turned underwater, heading toward the rock field lining the far side of the lake. The area was no more than twenty feet away, but Sara felt her arms tiring as she swam. The coldness of the water hit her like a slap in the face, and she realized that the low temperature would slow her down.
She surfaced, looking around for the boat. Again, Jeb came at her full throttle. Again, she ducked under the water. She came up just in time to see the boat skimming toward the submerged rocks. The nose of the boat hit the first one head-on, popping up, flipping the boat over. Sara watched as Jeb was thrown from the boat. He flew through the air, splashing into the water. His hands clawed helplessly as he tried to keep himself from drowning. Mouth open, eyes wide with terror, he flailed as he was pulled down below the surface. She waited, holding her breath, but he did not come back up.
Jeb had been thrown about ten feet from the boat, away from the rock field. Sara knew the only way she would make it to the shore was to swim through the rocks. She could tread water for only so long before the cold enveloped her. The distance to the dock was too great. She would never make it. The safest route to the shore would take Sara past the overturned boat.
What she really wanted to do was stay where she was, but Sara knew the cold water was luring her into a sense of complacency. The lake’s temperature wasn’t down to freezing, but it was cold enough to bring on moderate hypothermia if she stayed in too long.
She swam a slow crawl to conserve body heat, her head just above the water as she made her way through the field. Her breath was a cloud in front of her, but she tried to think of something warm; sitting in front of a fire, roasting marshmallows. The hot tub at the YMCA. The steam room. The warm quilt on her bed.
Altering her course, she went around the far side of the boat, away from where Jeb had gone down. She had seen too many movies. She was terrified he would come from the deep, grabbing her leg, pulling her down. As she passed the boat, she could see a large hole in the front where the rock had torn through the bow. It was overturned, the belly up to the sky. Jeb was on the other side, holding on to the torn bow. His lips were dark blue, a stark contrast against his white face. He was shivering uncontrollably, his breath coming out in sharp puffs of white. He had been struggling, wasting his energy trying to keep his head above water. The cold was probably lowering his core temperature with every passing minute.
Sara kept swimming, moving more slowly. Jeb’s breathing and her hands pushing through the water were the only sounds on the still lake.
“I c-c-can’t swim,” he said.
“That’s too bad,” Sara answered, her voice tight in her throat. She felt as if she were circling a wounded but dangerous animal.
“You can’t leave me her
e,” he managed around chattering teeth.
She started to sidestroke, turning in the water so as not to put her back to him. “Yes, I can.”
“You’re a doctor.”
“Yes, I am,” she said, continuing to move away from him.
“You’ll never find Lena.”
Sara felt a weight drop onto her. She treaded water, keeping her eyes on Jeb. “What about Lena?”
“I t-t-took her,” he said. “She’s somewhere safe.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He gave what she assumed was a shrug.
“Where’s somewhere safe?” Sara demanded. “What did you do to her?”
“I left her for you, Sara,” he said, his voice catching as his body started shaking. From the recesses of her mind, Sara recalled that the second stage of hypothermia was marked by uncontrollable shaking and irrational thought.
He said, “I left her somewhere.”
Sara moved slightly closer, not trusting him. “Where did you leave her?”
“You n-n-need to save her,” he mumbled, closing his eyes. His face dipped down, his mouth dropping below the waterline. He snorted as water went up his nose, his grip on the boat tightening. There was a cracking sound as the boat moved against the rock.
Sara felt a sudden rush of heat through her body. “Where is she, Jeb?” When he didn’t answer, she told him, “You can die out here. The water’s cold enough. Your heart will slow down until it stops. I’d give you twenty minutes, tops,” she said, knowing it would be more like a few hours. “I’ll let you die,” Sara warned, never more certain of anything in her life. “Tell me where she is.”
“I’ll tell you on th-th-the shore,” he mumbled.
“Tell me now,” she said. “I know you wouldn’t leave her somewhere to die alone.”
“I wouldn’t,” he said, a spark of understanding in his eyes. “I wouldn’t leave her alone, Sara. I wouldn’t let her die alone.”