Tears tumbled down my cheeks. “No. You’re right. I have to leave.” Mostly because I feared what Garen would do to my family in an effort to hurt me. I couldn’t let that happen. I had to protect them. I had to hide.
He kissed my hand. “If that pig kills you, it will destroy me.” I saw something in my father’s eyes I’d never seen before. Hate.
“I love you.” I squeezed Dad’s hand and let go. “And you too, Mom.” As my brother backed down the driveway, my mom cried in my dad’s arms. My own tears clouded my vision as we drove away.
Chapter 24
Present day
The hands tightened around my throat. “Hello, Terese.” My stomached lurched at the sound of Garen’s voice. I gasped for air, scratching at his hands as my feet kicked frantically. He pulled one hand off my neck and backhanded me across the cheek. My vision flashed white as he dragged me from the bed and shoved me to the floor. I scurried backward to the wall, having nowhere else to go. A single beam of light shone from the living room through the bedroom door and fell on the face of the man I feared most.
Instead of his pristine shirts and sharply creased pants, Garen wore dirty sweatpants and a ripped t-shirt. His hair stuck up everywhere, as if he’d run his hands through it several times. His appalling body odor reminded me of a sweaty gym shoe.
He came at me again. I jetted my legs out and kicked at him, catching him behind the knee. His leg buckled and he dropped down. He roared out in pain, twisting around to face me. My stomach dropped when I saw the rage that held his eyes to mine.
He forced me flat to the ground as I fought him, and straddled my hips. He delivered several well-placed punches to my ribs, forcing the air from my lungs. I struggled to draw breath as he punched my head repeatedly. I stopped fighting. Why did I think I stood a chance against him? He outweighed me by close to eighty pounds. How stupid.
He climbed off as sweat striped down his face. “You should know better, whore.” His spit splattered my face as I lay back, defeated. He stalked over toward the bed and grabbed a butcher knife from the top of the nightstand he must have placed there, and stabbed viciously at the mattress and sheets. I huddled tightly against the wall, in pain and speechless as wave after wave of nausea crashed over me. I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t move. This can’t be real. It has to be a dream. Please be a dream.
As he continued viciously hacking my bed, a deep gut-wrenching chill wrapped around me. Horrifying images of Garen doing the same thing to me filled my head. I cringed each time the knife plunged into the mattress.
My heart broke as I thought about Booker and all he’d been through, all he’d lost. Now he’d have to bury me, too, because no way would Garen allow me to leave alive. I only prayed Booker wasn’t the one to find me. I didn’t want to add my butchered body to his bitter memories.
Garen turned and hurled the knife at me. It embedded into the wall mere inches from my head, and wobbled back and forth. I wished it had pieced my heart and hastened my inevitable doom. What a fool I’d been. Why did I ever believe I could escape him? What a stupid, stupid fool! I’d never be free of the monster. Ever. I sank lower as all hope seeped from my heart.
“Where’s your gun? And don’t lie, I know you have one,” Garen demanded, wiping sweat from his forehead onto the shoulder of his t-shirt.
I said nothing, I couldn’t. The knife, so close, beckoned to me, and yet it might as well have been miles away. Terror kept my arms useless. Instead, I pinched my eyes shut and prayed I’d wake from the nightmare.
“Tell! Me!” he screamed. I cringed, hearing him stomp my way and waited for the punch. I received a kick to my thigh instead. One turned into four, and still I couldn’t speak. I just shook my head, repeating wake up, Tess, wake up, Tess, over and over again. Garen kicked me one more time before storming back across the small space. He flipped over the mattress, and then the entire bed in his frenzied searched for the gun. Next he kicked over the nightstand. The knob-less drawer slid open and the gun tumbled out. He snatched it, and in his rage, kicked viciously at one of the stand’s legs, snapping it off. He spun around, his eyes wild, wielding the gun at me. I flinched, still too terrified to scream.
“Next time I ask you a question, you’d better answer me, whore.” His voice was low and threatening as he tucked the gun into the waistband of his pants.
He jerked the knife from the wall. “Gonna need this.” He smiled gleefully before gripping my upper arm and dragging my trembling body into the living room. He shoved me next to the front door where he’d wedged a kitchen chair under the doorknob. “That chair isn’t going anywhere so don’t even think about running.” He kicked it to prove his point. The thing didn’t move.
Garen took the knife and proceeded to slice away at the couch like he had the bed. With each plunge of the knife he cursed me for ruining his life.
“I lost everything because of you,” he said, slashing along the back of the couch. Stuffing tumbled out onto the floor. He bellowed random words. “Selfish. Tramp. Disappointment. Ignorant.” His volatile anger continued to fuel him on as he attacked the chair next.
I pushed tighter against the wall, wishing I could bury myself inside it. Wishing I could disappear. This nightmare’s never going to end. I’ll never escape the madman. I pulled deeper into myself. It felt like I was watching a movie. A horrible, sick movie, and I desperately wanted it to end. But it’d only just begun.
Garen straightened, panting as he glanced around the small trailer. When his eyes landed on the kitchen, they lit up like a child’s on Christmas morn. “I’ll bet it’s a disaster in there,” he said under his breath, as if the thought excited him.
He all-but ran into the kitchen. I cringed as he tossed the gun on the stove before opening the cabinets. He threw his head back, laughing in delight. “Just as I expected. Still a disappointment in here, too.”
He busied himself arranging the cans and boxes, shortest to tallest, by color, perfectly, laughing with glee as he worked. He’d lost his mind. He’d completely lost his mind.
I curled into a ball, my knees pressed to my chest, my hands clamped tight over my ears as feelings of deep despair paralyzed me. I rocked back and forth, praying silently he’d kill me quickly when the time came.
When he finished, he dragged me to the kitchen and shoved me into the corner next to the stove. “This is how you properly arrange a cabinet.” The amusement in his voice was now replaced with hatred. He reached into the cabinet, and with one swipe, emptied the shelves. Cans and boxes flew everywhere, some landing on me. I hardly felt them.
Next, he tore the dish cabinet open and seized a stack of plates, dropping them onto the counter. I heard several crack. Garen emptied the cabinet of all the dishes, meticulously lining them up on the counter, despite the fact that several were now broken. He turned and jerked me up by my hair. “Unsophisticated mess,” he complained about my hair before hurling me across the room. I stumbled backward, falling onto the destroyed couch. Springs jabbed me in the thigh and back. I sat still.
“Don’t move,” he chuckled, grabbing a cast iron skillet from the sink and smashing the dishes on the counter. Pieces of glass flew through the air like razor sharp snowflakes, some hitting his face. Like a madman on a mission, Garen didn’t flinch once. Within seconds the dishes once belonging to Booker’s grandfather lay in hundreds of shards. Next, he turned to the glass table and, with a fierce swing of the skillet, shattered it also.
In his fury, he snatched the gun from the stove and placed it atop the broken glass pieces on the counter. With a sledgehammer he must have brought with him, he repeatedly hammered away at the gun. Breathless, he stopped and picked it up with his finger and thumb, the once round barrel now smashed almost flat. “I guess you won’t be using this piece of evil again.” He tossed it recklessly on the floor. The absurdity of Garen’s comment was lost on him.
I curled my legs under me as I continued to shake violently. I pinched my eyes shut as he ran toward me and pulled me to
my feet by the shoulders of my pajamas. Heat radiated off his body in waves.
“Please don’t do this,” I whispered, my voice wobbling.
“Don’t do what, Terese?” His arm snaked around my waist and he jerked me into him. “Don’t ruin your life like you’ve ruined mine?” Garen ran his hand over my hair, fisting it, and jerking my head back. His vile breath beat against my face. “I’ve lost everything. Graft fired me, said I was too volatile, mentally unbalanced. He thought my obsession over finding you put him at risk.” Garen’s jaw ticked. “Should have known. After everything I’ve done for him, the little leech. You can never trust a politician.”
“Please,” I begged as he crushed me tighter.
“You destroyed my Life Plan, you and that sleazy lawyer of yours.” Garen laughed. “I’ve already dealt with Velazquez. He got what he deserved.”
“What do you mean?” With every fiber of my being I didn’t want to know the answer.
“Seems someone broke into his office and torched the place. Sadly, Velazquez didn’t make it. He may or may not have been tied to his desk.” Garen shrugged. “They’ll never know because everything was burnt beyond recognition. The authorities had to use dental records to ID him.”
“You killed him.” The very thought sickened me. Michael Velazquez was my friend’s father. He helped me not only to divorce Garen, but he did his best to assist me as I got back on my feet.
“The two of you destroyed my life, Terese. He had to be taught a lesson. Now it’s your turn.”
I was staring into the face of an insane man. “Please don’t do this. What about your dream to be president?” Not that he could possibly achieve that now, but I was desperate.
“Gone, Terese. All my dreams, all my plans, destroyed.” He shoved me backward and my head hit the wall with a thud. “It seems Graft spread his lies about me to his contacts. No politician will hire me now. All my dreams, gone up in smoke. All.” He jabbed his finger into my breastbone. “Because.” Jab. “Of you.” Jab.
“I’m sorry,” I said, struggling to normalize my trembling voice. “H—how did you find me?”
“Pure dumb luck. I was sitting in the dentist’s office waiting to have my teeth cleaned when I picked up a copy of USA Today. There was an interesting article about revitalizing depressed areas, and low and behold, I saw a picture of my wife, in Rome, New York, of all places, at the opening of some swanky hotel.”
He wrapped his hand in my hair again and twisted, jerking my head back. “I wasn’t sure it was you at first. The dark hair threw me a bit. And the fact that you came so far north. Never in a million years did I think you’d go somewhere cold, knowing how much you hate it. Good one.” He jerked on my hair once more, forcing my head sideways. “Your hair looked better black.”
“Garen, can we put the past behind us—”
He cut me off and continued as if I’d not said anything. “The article featured the developer, Wayne Bushman, who gushed on and on about some attorney named Gatto and how he helped him get the project started.” He pushed me tighter against the wall, wedging his forearm on my throat. “At first I thought, no, that can’t be Terese. Then he mentioned that Gatto and his secretary Tess Bennett had come from Port Fare, New York, to help him celebrate the grand opening. That’s when I knew. Tell me, did you legally change your last name or did you marry some other poor sap?”
“Changed my name.” I didn’t even think about the pictures making the national news. One little mistake was going to cost me everything. “Garen, can’t we part as friends? A good looking and successful guy like you can have any woman he wants. You certainly don’t need to settle for a loser like me.”
He pressed his arm tighter against my neck. “I see you’ve moved on. I watched you making out on the porch with the scumbag lawyer.” Growing lightheaded from the lack of oxygen, I began sliding down the wall. Garen let go and I dropped to my knees, coughing.
He laughed. “Did you like my Christmas card?”
“Christmas card?” I sputtered between coughs.
“It was pretty clever, if I say so myself. I cut out letters from magazines and pieced them together into words before gluing them all into a lovely Christmas card. Kind of serial killer-like, don’t you think?” He sat on the arm of the dilapidated couch.
“That was from you?” I asked. A proud grin split his face. “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”
“Not right away. I have some plans for us first.” He stood and went into the kitchen. He returned with the sledgehammer in his hand. I screamed and scurried tight against the wall.
“Don’t worry.” He chuckled. “This isn’t for you.” He held the hammer like a baseball bat and swung it into the wall. After two swings, he’d made a decent size hole.
“There it is,” he said, nodding to the two-by-four stud behind the wallboard. He reached in the hole and grabbed the wallboard, jerking it back. A large section tore away from the studs, exposing the framing in the wall. “That’s for later, after I teach you a lesson or two.”
Pulling me to my feet, he dragged me across the broken glass to the kitchen again where shards cut into my feet. He picked up a sharp knife he’d thrown on the floor earlier and clutched a handful of my hair and hacked away at it. The tugging of the knife hurt my head as he chopped at my hair, but I didn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing. I kept my face stoic as large sections of my hair fell to the floor.
“Tsk, tsk. What have I always said about long hair?” He patted my head, as if I were a dog.
I didn’t answer.
When he finished butchering my hair, he took the knife and slipped it under the edge of my pajama top. Closing my eyes, I waited for him to plunge it into me. He didn’t. Instead, he cut off my pajamas.
“Before I kill you, I’m going to mark my territory, if you will.” He chuckled at his vulgar analogy. “I want my face to be the last thing you see as you die.” He shoved me to the floor in the living room, next to the hole he’d made earlier. “But first, your punishment.” He tugged off his belt. It rippled through the loops with a swooshing sound I doubted I’d ever forget. I closed my eyes and curled into ball on the floor, waiting for the beating to begin.
“Relax. This part won’t be as bad as you deserve. I want you fully cognizant for the grand finale.”
Despite his words, the beating was intense and littered with crude profanity, though nowhere near as savage as the beatings had been in the past. Nevertheless, all hope of ever being free, of ever being happy seeped from me as I curled into a ball, not caring anymore how much it hurt. I just wanted to die so I could finally escape him.
After the beating, he savaged my body, my heart . . . my soul. When he finally crawled off, he shoved my face into the carpet before reaching into his discarded jeans and removing a pair of handcuffs. He hooked my arm and I braced for another beating. Instead, he shoved me against the wall, and cuffed my right wrist. He looped the cuffs around the bared wall stud then cuffed my other wrist.
As I lay naked, tethered to the stud, he gathered his clothes and headed for the bathroom, calling over his shoulder, “Don’t go anywhere while I wash your stink off me.”
I began shaking, unsure if it was from the cold or fear. I noted the sun had risen. I’d lived through the night, something I hadn’t expected. Exhausted, I closed my eyes as tears tumbled down my face to the floor.
I must have fallen asleep, or passed out, because the next thing I knew Garen, fully dressed, stood by the door twisting sheets and towels into rope-like strands.
“Good morning. Did you sleep well?” He chuckled to himself as he placed the sheets around the front edge of the living room. “What am I doing, you ask?” He spoke the question I was indeed thinking. “I’ll tell you, Terese. Have you ever talked to someone who’s been badly burned?”
I tried to sit up, forgetting I was cuffed to the stud. I didn’t like where this conversation was going.
“I have. He told me it was excruciating. Well, at fir
st. Once the burn goes deep enough, the nerves are dead so the pain ends.” He squatted down next to my battered body. “I’m going to watch you burn until it gets to that point.”
“You’re insane,” I spit out. “Absolutely insane.”
“That comes from having your dreams destroyed.” He smacked my forehead. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to board up a few windows.” He went outside and returned with a small toolbox, from which he removed a hammer, a screwdriver, and a box of nails. He removed two doors from the kitchen cabinets and walked into the bedroom. I heard him pounding on the wood. He came back out and removed two more, taking them into the other bedroom.
“There. The windows are covered so you can’t get out of the trailer, just in case you somehow break free.” He pointed to the sheets and towels. “As you can see, the front of the trailer will have a wall of flames keeping you in, so we’re good. I’ll light the towels in front of the door on my way out so I have an escape route.” He smiled proudly, as if he’d done a good thing. He took a long blue lighter like the kind I’d seen my dad use to light the barbecue from the toolbox. “I was going to use gasoline, but I worried about the fire moving too fast. Fast is not my objective here. Slow and painful is.”
I struggled fruitlessly against the cuffs. Thankfully the sheets wouldn’t catch. “Maybe a little accelerant won’t hurt.” He jogged to the bathroom and returned with a bottle of clear nail polish and some polish remover. He sprinkled the sheet furthest from me with the remover. It sparked to life. “Whoa, too much.” He chuckled and stomped out the flames. Garen took the hammer and smashed the polish, smearing it along one of the towels before carefully sprinkling remover over the sheets.
“See this window?” He jerked one of the curtains down. “When it gets too dangerous for me in here, I’ll watch from outside.”