She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,190

with a lion at a zoo in Germany. One of the lion’s handlers accidentally left the cage door open. Not much, mind you, just an inch or so, but open. About midway through the day, the lion realizes this, you can see it on the video—she’s walking in circles around the interior of her cage, and she pauses at the door, nudges the iron with her nose, then stands there for at least five minutes. Finally, she goes back to pacing and lies down in the corner for a nap. She had been in that cage for so much of her life, the idea of leaving when she could didn’t occur to her. Or possibly it did, and she decided she didn’t wish to go. Her life was inside that cage, not on the other side of the bars. The safety of the known outweighing the unknown. As I stood in the driveway of that house next to his car, I nearly ran back inside. I think I was going to. I killed that day, I didn’t want to, but the people who worked at the house, they kept grabbing me, trying to pull me back in, and I was wearing short sleeves, so the moment they touched me, they…I didn’t mean to hurt any of them. I was so rattled by it all. Then there was all the gunfire and the explosions. This man, he was like an army with all the destruction he brought.”

She paused for a moment and took a sip of her drink, then set the cup down. “He yelled at me to follow him, get in his car—it was parked about halfway down the driveway. That’s when the police man showed up. He came running up behind us, yelling, ‘Pittsburgh PD, drop it! Drop it!’”

“Detective Brier,” I said quietly.

Stella went on. “The man with the GTO turned toward him, prepared to fire, but then didn’t. I thought for sure he’d kill him, but something stopped him. Then Ms. Oliver’s SUV slid up behind both of them. One of the men with her jumped out before the vehicle even stopped moving, and he fired at the detective before the detective could fire at him. I was horrified. I was so busy watching this man die, watching so many die, I didn’t see Ms. Oliver get out of the car and run up to me. I didn’t even recognize her voice when she shouted at me. I just spun around and grabbed her, purely defensive on my part. I wouldn’t have hurt her if I’d known it was her, and I let go of her arm the second I realized, but she was screaming, screaming so loud.” Stella paused and took a deep breath. “The man with the GTO, he grabbed me by the back of my shirt and pulled me away, got me to his car. I could hear her screaming the entire time. I still hear her screaming.”

I nearly reached for Stella’s hand. I wanted to comfort her, but she was wearing a white tank top, her arms bare. No gloves. I couldn’t touch her. I couldn’t console her, I could only sit there.

“He drove me to New York City. Five hours in the car, and he didn’t say a word to me. I was so frightened, I was certain he planned to kill me. I yelled for him to let me out. I nearly touched him, several times. I pulled off my gloves and reached right for his neck. I didn’t care that he was driving or how fast we were going, or what would happen. I only wanted to get out. But he didn’t even flinch. It was like I wasn’t there. When we got to New York, he took me to Grand Central Station and parked out front. He reached into the back seat and handed me a duffle bag—” She nodded at the bag on the floor. “—that duffle bag. And said there were clothes inside, new identification, and ten thousand dollars cash. He told me to get out and pick a train, any train. He didn’t want to know where I was going. I asked him again, ‘who are you?’ and he just pushed the bag toward me and told me to get out, so I did. The second I stepped out, he left. He just sped away and left me standing there, like some big inconvenience to be discarded on the sidewalk.”

“So you have no idea who he is?”

“I