Page 100 of Is Anyone Listening?
"No. I used my brother."
Surprise dropped my jaw, and he smiled. "You weren't expecting that answer, were you?"
"I wasn't."
"Tom and Ellen have their own operation going. You think they're better than me? They're not. They've been trafficking women for years. And it's always the same routine. The women are driven to the shopping center in Cork Harbor before dawn. Then they walk to the bus stop and get on the number twenty. At the first stop, they get picked up and taken away. Sometimes, I'm the one who takes them away. They think they're on some journey to freedom, but they're not."
I didn't really understand because fear was making it difficult for me to think. "What about Jessica? She got on a boat?"
"I don't know what happened to her. She didn't follow the routine. Maybe they changed it up after all the people came asking questions about Natalie."
"And your brother doesn't know what you're doing?"
"That's the best part. Tom thinks he knows it all, but he knows nothing." Jeff's hands clenched into fists. "My brother destroys everything and everyone that he touches. And no one ever holds him accountable."
"So you kill innocent women to punish him?"
"To punish all of them!" His voice rose, echoing off the concrete floor. "Every woman who thinks she can walk away from me."
I glanced at the stairs. He was blocking them, but maybe if I could get past him?—
"Don't even try. You'll just end up in more pain before this is over," Jeff said, reading my intention. "And there's nowhere to go, no one to help you. Do you think anyone in this town will be anything but happy if you disappear?"
"I'm not like the others. I'm Ellen's granddaughter. You don't think she'll look for me?"
"She has too many sins of her own to cover up."
"Someone will figure out what you're doing, and then you'll be the monster and your brother will be the hero when he puts you in jail. He'll win again, just like he always does."
"Shut up."
"But you could turn against him," I continued. "You said that Tom and Ellen are trafficking women. Why don't you tell people that? Why don't you take him down? Then you'll be the good one, and he'll be the bad one."
"I said shut up!" Jeff lunged forward, catching my arm and throwing me back against the hard wall behind me. My head bounced off the ragged wood, sending a shocking pain through my temple. But as he came toward me, I kicked him hard in the groin, the way I'd learned in the self-defense class I'd taken when I moved to Manhattan.
He let out a yelp of pain as he staggered backward. I tried to run around him, but he grabbed me again and dragged me toward him, a furious rage giving him what seemed like superhuman strength.
I twisted and kicked, finally breaking free. I scrambled away from him, my eyes darting around the basement for something I could use as a weapon. Old gardening tools leaned against the far wall, but Jeff was between them and me.
He stood slowly, touching his lip, which I'd somehow made bloody with my fist. He looked at his fingers with something like surprise, then smiled. "Good. I was hoping you'd make this interesting." This wasn't the jovial man I'd met at the inn. The one who'd joked about Dorothy's stories being better than reality TV. That man was gone, replaced by something dark and twisted and utterly insane.
"Let me go. I won't tell anyone. I'll leave town."
"You had your chance to leave, but you didn't take it. You wanted your listeners to feel what Natalie felt. But they won't feel it; you will."
He rushed forward, shoving me backward, and I crashed into a stack of boxes. They tumbled down around me, old Christmas decorations and moth-eaten blankets spilling across the floor.
I grabbed a heavy box—filled with something solid—and swung it at him as hard as I could.
It connected with his shoulder. He stumbled, cursing, and slugged me in the face.
I made it to my knees before he caught me, throwing me down again, and as we hit the concrete floor together, the impact drove the air from my lungs.
His weight pressed down on me, crushing. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think.
This is how I die, I thought distantly. In a basement in Maine, and no one will ever know what happened.
No!
