Allison Brennan - The Prey

They were anything but normal.

Rowan hadn’t realized the image on the video was paused until Bobby pressed “play” and the image switched to a baby. He paused it again.

“Me,” he said, with both disdain and pride in his voice. “The only MacIntosh worthy of being born. The bitch should have had her fucking tubes tied, but no, she couldn’t keep Daddy trapped if she couldn’t get herself knocked up.”

The baby was beautiful. Bald, with startling blue eyes. Round and chubby. Bobby sat in a little baby chair in front of a Christmas tree, about a month old. He could have been the Gerber baby.

Bobby. How could a beautiful, innocent little baby turn into a monster? Rowan closed her eyes.

“Open your eyes!”

She felt the sharp sting of something on her face. Tears sprung to her eyes at the sudden, unexpected pain, but she swallowed them. She glared at Bobby. He had a whip in his hand.

“Don’t close them again. You don’t want to know what I’ll do.”

“You can torture me, but I won’t break,” she said through clenched teeth, anger seething beneath the surface.

“We’ll see.” He grinned.

The videotape started rolling again. The baby picture stayed on for another minute, before switching to a picture of Bobby, Melanie, and Rachel. A portrait, taken at the shopping mall. Bobby was three or four, Melanie a year younger, and Rachel a baby.

They were three beautiful children, Bobby fair, Mel and Rachel dark-haired like their father. Young, happy children.

Bobby didn’t look cruel. But was any four-year-old capable of knowing he was going to grow up and kill his family? Kill innocent human beings in his warped sense of vengeance and revenge?

Bobby didn’t pause the pictures. Several snapshots of the three oldest MacIntosh children rolled across the screen. At birthday parties. At Christmas and Easter and wearing their Sunday best. Playing in the yard, in the park, having a tea party in the backyard.

Rowan searched Bobby’s eyes for the turning point, when he had changed from a happy little boy to a murderous thug who terrorized his younger siblings.

Then she saw it. Not in Bobby, but in Melanie and Rachel.

They were young girls, four and six or so, and Rowan saw their eyes change. Bobby’s didn’t. Bobby looked the same. But one snapshot of Rachel showed fear as she glanced at him, the photograph preserving her emotion for all time. Another showed Mel hugging Rachel. It could have been the sweet scene of two sisters embracing; instead, Rowan saw anger in Mel’s eyes and tears in Rachel’s.

Had their mother known? Had she known what Bobby did to her other children? She would have had to, Rowan thought. Rowan remembered many times when her mother had told her to take Peter outside, away from Bobby. All the times Mel had taken them for ice cream. The sullen look in Rachel’s eyes whenever Bobby had been in the same room.

Her mother had known. Yet she kept them all in that house. Knowing Bobby terrorized them. Taking the abuse of her husband yet welcoming him in her bed. Rowan would never understand her mother. She couldn’t hate her, though she wanted to. After all, she was dead. Murdered by her abusive husband.

They were all dead.

Except Bobby and her. And Peter, Rowan thought gratefully. Peter was safe in Boston.

If Rowan died at Bobby’s hands, she would die knowing Bobby hadn’t won. Peter was alive. And because Bobby thought he was dead, he was safe.

The images started flashing by rapidly, pictures of Mel and Rachel and Mama. Where had they come from? As she watched, she realized that the same ten or so pictures repeated. Over and over. They looked familiar to her, but why?

Her photo album. He’d found her cabin in Colorado and stole the one thing she had left of her family.

Suddenly it stopped on Mama’s bloody body.

Rowan screamed, then closed her eyes.

Bobby whipped her across the neck and she winced. “Open them!”

“Go ahead, whip me to death! I don’t care!” She tried to control her pain and anger but couldn’t.

“Open them, or your lover will be next.”

Her eyes shot open and she glared at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Though Bobby didn’t know it, John was dead. He’d never have left Tess.

She quickly blinked back her tears. She couldn’t think about John now. She wouldn’t be able to focus on what she needed to do.

Bobby leaned back, smirking, tucking the whip into his lap. “Yes you do. Watch.”

Stone-faced, preparing herself for more bloody images of the family she loved, she stared at the television.

Music started. Loud, surrounding her through speakers in all corners of the room. Some unidentifiable rap tune with verses that highlighted the word “kill” and a beat she felt in her gut. She wanted to vomit.

Mama’s picture was in black and white. The shades of gray did nothing to mask the terror of the scene. The blood almost black against the pale gray of the linoleum, arcs and splatters across the too-white cabinets, the stark lighting giving everything an unreal feel, like a bad B-movie.

Mama was followed by a picture of her father taken recently. His dark hair gray, his eyes vacant, empty, hollow. Bobby must have taken it when he visited Daddy . He looked just like Rowan remembered seeing him last week.

Then Mel and Rachel, together, smiling. Then lying dead and bloody in the foyer.

Kill, kill, kill the bitch!

Rowan shivered at the lyrics, wondering how Bobby had obtained the crime-scene photos. She almost laughed out loud. She could hardly believe he’d escaped from prison and had found a fool to replace him. Stealing crime photos would be child’s play.

Peter at five, his kindergarten photo. Then Peter dead.

No, not dead, Rowan reminded herself. He wasn’t dead.

There was a photo of a cop carrying Peter out of the house. Peter wore his dinosaur pajamas and they were covered in blood. It was Dani’s blood, not his. Dani’s blood . But Peter’s eyes were closed and his mouth was open and he appeared lifeless.

The image changed to Dani. Dani . A whimper escaped her throat but she forced herself to look. Beautiful Dani as a baby. As a toddler. At three, playing tea with her stuffed animals.

Then the small body bag. Somehow, the black bag was worse than seeing her dead again. So generic, so sterile.

Rowan didn’t know she was crying until her cheeks felt hot and damp.

Her tormentor grunted. “I never understood why you liked that little crybaby so much. Oh, well, she’s dead and buried, isn’t she? You couldn’t protect her. What’d you do? Put her body in front of yours? So she’d die in your place?” Bobby barked out a laugh, and Rowan wanted to strangle him with her bare hands. She had never hated anyone so much in her life. Black fury burned as she steadily worked on the ropes that bound her, careful not to let him see what she was doing.

The music changed to the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer,” the upbeat tune paradoxical to the gruesome photos that followed.

A bloody body massacred, cut into bits, lying in a Dumpster. It took Rowan a moment to realize this was Doreen Rodriguez. Bobby had taken pictures of his crimes. Bile rose in her throat and she swallowed it back.

The florist, stabbed to death, pretty blonde hair matted with blood.

The Harpers. The little girl while she still had her pigtails. The mom staring dead into the camera.

Pretty Melissa Jane Acker, raped, strangled, her body left spread-eagled in the signature style of Rowan’s fictional killer in Crime of Corruption .

“You’re sick,” she muttered.

Bobby laughed, and her fingers continued working on the ropes. Were they looser? She thought so. Her fingernails were raw and wet with her blood as they broke in her quiet fury.