Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place

a lover. But the content didn’t match the tone. Not at all. “I killed Lorrie and Shelley,” he said. “Neither of them understood me. Not really. I mean, not the way that you do”
    In a split second of clarity, Tina Winston understood for the first time that Dylan Daniel Walker was a monster. She said nothing more to him that day or any other day. She knew that whatever she carried inside her was the spawn of evil, a child she could never love. A mistake she could never obliterate.
    Olga listened intently as the words tumbled from Tina’s trembling lips. She stopped and blotted her eyes, careful not to smudge her makeup. “You know, that’s the first time I’ve said his name in all these years. With Bonnie I just used `him’ or Dash. I didn’t want to give his name life, he was so dead to me after what he’d done”
    “But that’s not all,” Tina went on. “He said there had been others. Others no one you, the police didn’t know about”
    “Did he say who?”
    Tina shook her head. Droplets of her tears hit the shiny marble floor. “No. And I didn’t ask. I just wanted to get out of there and throw up”
    Olga waited for Tina to get a grip. It would take a while. Tina had gone from stunning and confident to haggard and limp like a wrung-out dishrag in about a half hour. Her eyes were puffy. Her nose was red. Every wrinkle on her face had suddenly etched itself deeper.
    Something nagged at Olga. Something Tina had said before she had told her story. That’s it. When she d asked why Bonnie had sought her out shed said `At first. At first I thought.”
    “Why did Bonnie come and find you?” she asked.
    Tina took a deep breath and swallowed hard. Her eyes looked downward. “She said Dylan had gotten out of prison and was back in the Northwest. He was in Tacoma. She’d waited for him and he for her. She came to me to gloat, I guess. She was rather smug. As if we’d been in some competition and she’d finally had the upper hand. She’d been the chosen one. She’d been the one all along. You know what her last words to me were?”
    Olga didn’t have a clue and said so.
    “Our son-that’s what she said-our son and Dash and I are going to be a family.”
    “Anything else?”
    “Yes, she used the phrase, `there are some flies in the ointment’ and she said she was sorry.”
    Monday, exact time and place unknown
    Jenna Kenyon had worked her hands free. The release of her wrists and arms sent a quake of pain through her body. She expected that she’d feel her pain diminish, but the opposite had been true. She let out a little, soft cry and called over to Nick.
    “I think I can get loose now,” she said. “Nick, how are you coming?”
    When she didn’t hear anything, she pulled herself up, and moved her feet like she was dolphin kicking at the Cherrystone community pool. At last the cords that held her ankles together slipped to the earthen floor. It was too dark to see, so Jenna crawled on her hands and knees to where she’d last heard Nick’s voice. She touched the floor lightly, timidly. No broken glass. Thank God. She didn’t want to allow the thought to take hold, but it managed to slip inside her brain: What if he’s not asleep? What if he’s not drugged? What if he’s dead?
    She wondered where her mother was, if she was looking for her at all. She found herself praying to God and Jesus that she’d be able to wake Nick up, and they’d get out of the cruel darkness and she’d find her mother. My mom will get us out of here. My mom won’t let whoever is doing this get away with it. My mom is the toughest woman I know The thin line of light in the black, which she now assumed was a doorway, had been dimmed. It seemed so far away.
    On her stomach, feeling the hard, muddy floor, she slithered in the direction where she had last heard Nick’s voice. Groping. Reaching. She put her hands out, touching a damp, soiled blanket. Her fingers were extended like claws. She was Helen Keller, probing with her fingertips to find something. To find Nick.
    “Where are you? God, Nick, where are you?”
    But once more, no answer. Jenna could feel her heart pounding deep inside her chest. It was thumping hard. But there was nothing to answer it back. No call for her to be calm. “Where are you?” She spun around and called in every direction, but nothing.
    Jenna Kenyon was completely alone.
    Monday, 7:45 EM., near Meridian, Washington
    Olga Morris-Cerrino returned to her farmhouse, fed