The Last Straw (The Jigsaw Files #4) - Sharon Sala Page 0,44
life, some rain must fall,” Wyrick said and then rolled her eyes. “I’m just full of parables tonight.”
“How about filling up on salad instead?” he said and pushed the bowl toward her.
She looked up. “That was a good one. If I had an eyebrow, I’d arch it. There’s hope for you yet.”
Charlie didn’t like it when she made fun of how she looked.
“Eyebrows are overrated,” he said.
Wyrick appreciated the comment and served herself some salad.
Except for the occasional clink of fork to plate, or the clink of ice in a glass, quiet ensued.
Nine
Sonny rubbed his hand across the front of his sweatpants, testing the tenderness in his crotch. He was done with the game and Rachel Dean. He wanted to clean out his little playroom and forget this ever happened.
It wasn’t an issue to finish her off tonight, but it would be an issue getting her body out of that room and into his car without hurting himself all over again. He was still considering his options when he heard a big rumble of thunder.
Shit. If it rained, he couldn’t get to the burying grounds. Maybe he should just wait another night. He’d be that much stronger, and if it rained enough it would make digging easier.
Thunder rumbled again, and this time bringing with it the wind and the rain. That did it. He gave up the notion and headed to the kitchen to make himself some dinner. He wasn’t much of a cook, but he loved chicken potpies, so he took one out of the freezer and popped it into the oven.
Potpie for him.
One more night on earth for her.
* * *
Rachel didn’t know it was night. She didn’t know it was raining. But her situation was real. Sometime in the past few hours she’d awakened from a nightmare of fever-driven hallucinations, desperate for a drink of water. But instead of following the wall at the foot of the mattress, she forgot where she was, went the wrong way and, with one shoe on and one shoe off, walked across the floor of broken glass.
The shock and then pain of the shards going through the sock and into her foot made her fall. Instinctively, she reached out to catch herself and wound up on her hands and knees in even more of the glass. There was nowhere to walk, nowhere to crawl. She was trapped in the dark that she’d created. Sad to the bone, she rocked back on her heels, threw back her head and screamed.
She was past the prayers. Past making promises about what she’d do with her life if God would just save her. All she wanted now was for it to be over. She didn’t know if they’d ever find her body, which made her sad for Millie. But more than anything else, she wanted to be dead before Sonny came back. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of doing it. If she hadn’t lost the damn knife, she’d take herself out.
“Don’t I matter to anyone? Isn’t there one fucking person even looking for me?” Rachel sobbed, then cried until she couldn’t breathe.
After a while a resigned calm came to her. The total darkness in which she sat was the only safety net between her and Sonny. If he never came back, she would die, but he’d never touch her alive again. And if he did come back, he would be at a disadvantage, because he would not be expecting the darkness.
She also accepted she couldn’t stay here forever, so she began brushing away the bits of glass around her. Once she had a space free of glass big enough to sit in, she eased herself down and began picking glass out of her hands, and then her knees, then she felt along the bottom of her sock, pulling out the shards as she went.
Once she was satisfied that she’d done all she could do, she rolled back over onto her hands and knees and felt her way around the room until she found the mattress, then finally found the door.
Reoriented to the direction she was facing, she then made her way to the sink and let the water run free between her fingers until she was satisfied the glass debris had washed away.
Then she leaned over, resting her forearms on the sides of the sink; she cupped her hands, caught enough water to sluice across her face and on the festering sore at her neck, before drinking from the flow.