Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 107766 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107766 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
She stayed awake that night, and they came again, their beady eyes shining in the low light as they moved toward her. Her breath came quickly, heart leaping with fear. She rattled her chains loudly, yelling as she shook her body back and forth. They retreated, scampering backward. Tears rolled down Josie’s cheeks. How many times could she scare them before they grew bold enough to test her again? To move closer? Attack her, maybe? She didn’t know anything about rats or how aggressive they might be.
With the sunrise, she slept, unable to keep her eyes open. A sharp pain roused her, and she moaned, something scratching at her foot and moving near her shoulder. She screamed, sitting bolt upright as one rat scurried away and the other one dug at her mattress near where her foot had been hanging off the side.
She screamed, rattling her chains hysterically, kicking at the creatures. She heard footsteps, and the door opened. Marshall stood there in his mask, his chest rising and falling as his gaze fell to the rats scurrying back to the corner in reaction to his arrival.
He took a surprised step backward, the bag he held in his hand falling to the floor, his head jerking slightly. He looked to where Josie sat, her limbs pulled into her body, visibly shaking. After a very brief hesitation, he walked over to her, squatting next to the mattress and running his fingers over her ankles. Her eyes followed the movement, and she saw that there were red marks marring her skin. They looked like bites, though Josie didn’t remember being bitten, just scratched. Had she slept that deeply? Another shiver wracked her body. Marshall stood, walking to the corner where the rats had disappeared into the wall. He stared at it for a moment before returning to Josie’s side. “They must have just f-figured out a way in here. They probably s-smell you. Or the food that I b-bring.”
“Please let me go,” she begged, her voice a hoarse whisper. “This isn’t right. Please.” She’d asked him over and over, begged, cajoled, but he’d always ignored her before this. This time, he paused, staring at her, tilting his head as if in thought. She held her breath. But he simply turned, walking to the doorway where he’d dropped the fast-food bag, picking it up, and tossing it at her. It landed on the floor next to her mattress. Marshall closed the door behind him, and Josie took in a lungful of air.
She ate some of the older food under her mattress and saved the fresh food as part of her rations, surprised when she heard Marshall returning a little while later.
He came into the room with a bag in his hand, walking directly to the place the rats had come from. He placed something down on the floor and then went to each corner, placing the same black boxes down there as well. “B-bait stations,” he said. “They’ll eat the p-poison and go back to their nests and die.” He turned toward Josie. “Did you know that a p-pair of r-rats can produce twenty-f-four to s-seventy-two offspring in a year? I know about r-rats,” he finished quietly.
Josie swallowed. He continued to stare at her. His eyes roamed her body, lingering on her large belly. Her blood grew cold. He hadn’t touched her since he’d felt the baby move, and she’d dared to hope he wouldn’t touch her again. Her body was no longer only hers. It housed her child, and the thought of being used—abused—right then was particularly horrifying. “I hate r-rats,” he said, his eyes lifting to hers. And then he turned and he left the room.
Chapter Seventeen
Zach felt like he was experiencing horrific déjà vu. The girl in front of him lay on the floor, her hands shackled in chains behind her back, body in a state of decomposition. He resisted the urge to flinch at the awful stench that met his nose. This one had died more recently than the last.
“Despite your many good qualities, I was really hoping we wouldn’t be seeing each other again for a while,” Dolores said, putting what looked like a thread held with tweezers into a small plastic container.
“Likewise.”
Zach heard his name behind him and turned to see Jimmy stepping through the doorway to the basement room they were in, the one that had once been dark and now was flooded with bright LED light, criminalists working in various areas.
“Dolores,” Jimmy greeted, and she nodded up at him before focusing back on her work. He squatted next to Zach, taking in the victim in front of them. “Straight out of a horror movie,” he muttered. “Who found her?”
“A vagrant looking for a place to sleep. Says he smelled her the minute he walked in. He’s a Vietnam vet, and he told the operator that once you’ve been around a dead body, you know the smell anywhere.”