Page 102 of The Lost Bones
She wasn’t a victim. She was the huntress.
There was boldness in her step. A certain pride in the way her chest swelled. A laser-sharp focus with a touch of madness in her dark eyes.
She teetered on the edge of insanity. One foot in lunacy and the other in ingenuity.
“I believe you recognize your old house, Mackenzie?” She looked around, waving a knife in the air. “The latest owners made some changes. It’s been in foreclosure for the last three months. Which works out for us.”
“I don’t understand.” Mackenzie grimaced at the pain shooting up her arms. “Why? You got away… you escaped…”
“I didn’t escape,” Jane Doe confessed, and Mackenzie realized how even her voice had changed. It was deeper, stronger. “I made sure you found me.”
That didn’t make any sense. Mackenzie remembered that night clearly. She had been lingering outside the carnival, by the edge of the woods, simmering in her thoughts, when she noticed the disturbance in the trees and an injured Jane Doe had stumbled right into her arms.
“Who are you?” she demanded, her voice dripping in accusation.
“I’m Kai.”
Kai.It was the codename of Fletcher’s operation. The name that had popped up in his inquiries. How the girls feared Kai.
Except it wasn’t Judge Hamilton’s alias. It was this woman.
Kai strutted around Mackenzie, watching her like she was a prize. Like she was her muse. Her inspiration. But behind her adulation, there were glimpses of something else. A burning hatred. Intangible wickedness.
Like she was that child who expressed love for a doll by picking it apart.
“That can’t be true,” Mackenzie breathed. “You are one of them.”
“Iwas.” Kai’s eyes were faraway. “I was taken a very long time ago. I don’t even remember my old life.”
“And then what happened?” Mackenzie’s brain was a sponge, absorbing everything. She needed to understand.
“I had a mother. Whenever I cried, she would sing this lullaby…”
Kai sang like a nightingale, her voice filling the basement. She sang like she was all alone, and not with a woman she had chained to the pipes and a half-unconscious man she had tied to a chair. It was a beautiful song, bursting with love at the seams, a jarring contrast to the blood and violence around her.
When she had finished, she slithered down the wall and hugged her knees. “You have no idea what it was like. How it felt to have to let men touch you and do things to you. First they blackmail you to make you sleep with just one friend of theirs. And then there’s more and more and more. The next thing you know, you aren’t a person anymore. I forgot what I was like.” Her forehead wrinkled. “I forgot the voice of my mother. It’s easier that way. When you stop thinking of yourself as a person, it doesn’t hurt as much.”
Mackenzie had stopped struggling, too captivated by Kai’s tale.
“I was just flesh and bones. My only purpose was to let them run their hands and lips and… other things all over my body.” Bitterness leached into her voice, and she began scratching her arm aggressively. Mackenzie watched in horror as she drew blood. “But I’m a survivor, Mackenzie. Soon I realized I wasn’t like the rest. I wasn’t stupid. I had a spirit they wouldn’t crush that easily.” She tipped her chin high. “So I helped them.”
“You helped them?”
“Hamilton, Jennings, and all the other men I’m sure you’ll find the names of soon.”
Andrew made a gurgling sound. He was coming around. When his eyes found Mackenzie, he started shouting, but his words were muffled behind the cloth. Kai stood up, pissed off at being interrupted. She marched over to him and made to strike him with the hilt of the knife.
“Please don’t,” Mackenzie begged. “I think he needs to listen too.”
Kai lowered the knife and turned to face her. “I became more than just flesh and bones. They needed someone to control the girls. Someone to find new ones. Someone who could easily gain their trust…”
“You helped them recruit new girls?” Mackenzie gasped. “After everything you went through, why would you—”
“I choseme.” Kai spoke with a fierce determination. “I couldn’t escape. Who would I have gone to? The police? I knew the men I was being forced to sleep with and how far their reach was.”
“So you helped them inflict that same pain on others?”
Kai got in her face. “I have a mantra.Better you than me. You see, when no one in this world protects you or stands up for you, you have to choose yourself. Even if it means hurting others. Eventually I was allowed more freedom and control. I wasn’t a victim anymore. They didn’t break me. I joined them. I was so angry at my damn luck, at those men who thought they had the fucking right to touch me without my permission. This life had decided that my existence was going to be empty, pointless, and only for the pleasure of the scum of this earth. It was sounfair.” Her jaw trembled violently and she had to take deep breaths. “There is no reward for good and no penalty for evil. That’s life. Those men continued living in their mansions with their perfect families and careers, safe and protected. Meanwhile, I and other girls like me, who weregood, who wereinnocent, spent our time being passed around at parties. So yeah, I made a call. I saved myself once I accepted that morality is just fiction. At least I wasn’t hurting anymore.”
