Memories clear away, leaving one distinct image in my mind. I see him, my father. He's on a bed, tied there. He's old-older than my other memories of him. I'm in the room, smiling wide at him as I inject a needle into his fat hairy arm. He cries out in pain, making me jerk the needle a little more. I can see it dragging under the skin as he screams. There's a small second when I almost open my eyes to stop the image, but I don't. I force myself to watch as I drag a blade across his chest, cutting in. Then I pour a type of acid across the skin. In the haze I see the label of the white bottle as my gloved hand lifts it-citric acid. His screams are delicious. I rub him down with cream, his entire naked body including his flaccid cock; touching it makes me gag but I do it. I douse him in something that makes him scream in a way that just seeing the memory makes me shudder. His skin is flaming red, and his eyes are bulging from his fat head. He goes pale in the face after a few moments, clearly in shock. I grab the paddles and shock him to bring him back.
He screams and cries. He begs and pleads. But like my words once fell on his deaf ears, his do now to mine.
The scene fades away. I open my eyes, unsure how Derek could have killed my father if I was the one torturing him.
The airport isn't any different when my eyelids lift, but I am.
I remember small bits of being me. It's not whole, but the bits and pieces give me a clue to a few things I didn't know.
I remember Rory-I remember not hating him at all.
Getting up, I hurry down the hall to the bathroom. The door slams open as I burst through it and instantly stick my arm into the trash bin. My fingers touch things I might have squealed about seconds ago, but now I'm unfazed by it. My armpit pinches as I reach to the very bottom of the trash and paper until I touch the pale-pink phone. I squeeze it with my fingertips, lifting it slowly so I don't drop it back into the filth. I press 911 and put it on speakerphone, not even washing my hands.
"Tell me you changed your mind." Rory's desperate voice makes me wince.
"Ror, I need you." He doesn't respond, so I speak again. "Ror? You there?"
I can hear him breathing and, I swear, swallowing hard. "Sam?"
I wince again. The name is mine. "Yeah. It's me."
"You remember?"
"Sort of." I nod, like he can see me doing it. "I think so. I think I remember a lot of things. I need you to come and get me. My aunt was at the American Airlines counter and got a ticket to Austria. I need her found and taken somewhere safe."
Again he pauses. "We followed her to the gate for Colorado, not Austria. She's there now. I was just looking at her. We got here about ten minutes ago. She was being incredibly slippery earlier. We tracked the phone and followed that way. We assumed she meant to leave the phone at the airport and sneak out another way. That's sort of the thing Dash would do."
It's my turn to pause. "Fuck. He might actually be doing that. He left me at the gate for Austria. What if he ran?"
"Come to the Colorado gate. It's twenty-seven. Come here and we'll regroup."
"Okay." I don't want to leave Derek/Dash in case he's on to me. I don't want him to run. I have to assume I've wasted almost seven years trying to get him. "I'll be there in a couple of minutes." My head isn't clear, and my heart is conflicted, but my thirst for revenge has become the only emotion I am capable of feeling.
He didn't kill my father.
He didn't save me.
I saved myself.
Fuck him. Guess I am back to not trusting him again. The back-and-forth is making me dizzy.
Before I go, I scrub my hands thoroughly to wash off the trash-bin filth. When I've dried my hands twice, I leave, constantly scanning the hall for him. In the seats for the gate to Austria I see him. His head cocks to the side, he lifts an eyebrow, and stands, walking toward me. He stops ten feet from me. "Plain Jane find her way home?"
The sentence makes me tremble. "What did you do to me?"
"I couldn't kill you, Sam. I know I should have. I know I should have killed you and been done with it, but I couldn't. And you wouldn't listen, would you? You never do."
"Oh God, you did this to me twice, didn't you? This is the second time you've screwed with my brain. I've remembered already once, haven't I? What was it that time?"
"We were in California, and there was something like the Ronald problem." He shrugs, and I hate him. It's less than I love him, but it's enough to keep me from walking to him.
"You killed Ronald?" The answer is so obvious now. I suspect I always knew that. He smiles wide, making my hate grow. "You killed Ronald? Why are you doing this?" It's the only question I have.
"Jane, I need you to understand that for me this isn't over." His sickening smile sells me on the severity of his disease, past the fog in my head and the way I make myself see him. For the first time I really and truly see the man behind the curtain. He nods. "It won't ever be. You can run and you can hide, and I will chase you because we are meant to be. We are each other's light."
I follow his advice, turning and running as fast as I can. I don't know what else to do.
12. WHAT WHIP MARKS?
When I get to the gate for Colorado I pause. I recognize Antoine and Rory at once, but the woman they're sitting by isn't my aunt. She looks similar, but she is definitely not my aunt. I frown, bringing Rory to me with just the look. He smiles cautiously. "Hey!"
I look at the woman. "That's not my aunt."
He glances at her. "I know that."
"Where's my aunt?"
"In custody. She thinks you're in danger, and she's freaking out." He looks past me. "Where's Dash?"
I point behind me with my thumb. "Back there. He's freaking out too. Mostly just freaking me out." I look up into Rory's dark-blue eyes and nod. "I need some answers from you-now. No holding back."
"What do ya remember?"
"Not much." I shake my head, not sure how to tell him what I do remember. But the crowded and noisy airport suddenly seems like the perfect place to blurt out something so horrid. If I'm lucky the words will get lost in the noise and crowds of this hectic place. I need to say it aloud to rid myself of the burden of being the only one who knows, and he suddenly seems like the right person to tell. Taking a large breath, I prepare myself for the sentence as I say it. "I think I might have kil-murdered my father and hidden it like it was an accident."
He glances at me in a funny way, clearly disbelieving my statement. "We were in Germany when your dad died. I know, because I was with ya when you got the call."
"I remember torturing him. I burned him and cut him and made him scream."
"Well, not to sound like you're insane and remembering shit that never happened, but if the cuckoo shoe fits, ya might have to wear it." He lifts a cynical eyebrow, and the disbelief thickens in his tone. "You couldn't be in the same room as your dad, no matter what. I also know this for a fact because I was with you once when he showed up at Pat's house. You started shaking and lost all the color in your face. Pat screamed at him and called the cops. He was calling ya a liar and screaming crazy things. I didn't even know who he was until afterward, but during his two-minute stay at the front door, you became a different person."
I know we dated or something, so I ask a question he might know the answer to. "Did I have nightmares? Did I do horrible things at night? Wake with blood on me and such?"
Rory sighs. "No. What is this?"
"I don't know." And God help me, but I don't. I don't understand how any of this is possible. I have woken with blood on my hands. I recall horrible things even if they seem very unlikely. "What was I like?"
He leans on the back of a chair next to us. I don't know if he's contemplating telling me the truth or if he's trying to find the words. Either way, I have to assume it's bad. "Sarcastic and bitchy. Sort of a control freak. Ya never liked anyone to help ya with anything. You'd fuck something up six times and get it right on the seventh and still not take a hand from someone who knew how to do it. Ya drove me nuttier than squirrel shit. Ya slept with a night-light. That was odd and annoying to the people in the room who liked it dark." His smile twists into a wry grin. "But ya were worth every second spent sleeping in a lit room."
I sigh. "Can you try to be professional?"
"No, but I'll be honest. Ya were a badass bitch who liked to do things her way and get fucked, hard. Ya didn't like things soft or slow. Ya didn't like men who were sweet, and ya didn't cry, ever."
I step back, sort of scared I might have actually been a man. "I never cried, not even with sad movies when animals were hurt or killed?" I don't even want to touch on the sex.