I killed the lights, eyes focused on the dark as I led us toward our final destination. The drive was quiet but for the music. I stopped outside of the property lines, hiding the truck from sight behind an old barn.
I wasn’t sure how this was going to go. But if we got out, I wanted to make sure we had the truck ready.
Out of all of the bad men, Earnshaw was the only one the PI couldn’t get much on. He never left his home. Hadn’t left in two years. As far as the PI knew, he had no guards. There was no sign of a housekeeper. Just an occasional delivery man. The PI didn’t know what he was delivering.
I wasn’t surprised. Earnshaw was always the smart one. The creator of the fucked-up life he and the uncles led. The chess player moving us all around, his fucking pawns. He had never touched me. I didn’t know if he had touched Dolly. She had never mentioned him in her conversations with Ellis.
But I knew he had touched all those kids I saw being brought in at night. Delivered in trucks, for God’s sake. My blood ran cold as I wondered if that was what was being delivered to his door. More kids from foster homes. Carers paid off with thousands of dollars taking kids to be raped.
“Rabbit?” Dolly’s voice dragged me from my fucked-up thoughts. “Are you ready?”
I nodded, staring at her in her blue dress, striped socks and the crown on her head. Her makeup was impeccable. Then I looked at the scars on her arms. The ones she gave herself when she had begun to go insane. The ones she inflicted on herself because of what he let happen. When he had sent me to that hell, the Water Tower. Endless days in darkness, devoid of Dolly.
My blood began to boil, like a kettle bubbling with rising heat. He had been responsible for all of this. He had been the one to take me into that fucking office and ply me with whiskey. Got me so drunk, day after day, for the Cheshire Cat to fuck me. To hold me down and fuck me hard.
He had been the one to take Dolly on her tenth birthday and give her to the Jabberwock. The man responsible for so much hurt over so many years that her mind had blocked out her life, retreating into the world of a zombie. A shell of the little girl who liked to sing and dance, and hold imaginary tea parties with me.
The boy she loved . . . who was sent away for killing one of them.
That fucker had deserved to die.
“Rabbit?” Dolly asked again.
Nodding, I exited the truck. I kept my cane close. I walked to Dolly’s door and lifted her out onto the long grass. The night was humid and sticky. Dolly held her doll’s head in her left hand. Her knife and gun were tucked into her waist belt.
Dolly slipped her hand into mine. I stared at our intertwined fingers. We always walked this way now. Ever since the night at the field, she never let me go. I had only taken her that way once since. It wasn’t in me to be . . . romantic. I needed more. Needed the blood. The fight.
Dolly needed that too. But she also needed me to be soft with her. Gentle. To keep her by my side, to have her happy after so many years of being lost, it was a sacrifice I could make.
The house had only just come into sight when I pulled us to halt. Turning to Dolly, I said, “I don’t know what’s waiting for us in there.” I stroked her cheek over the blush she’d so expertly applied to her porcelain skin. I drank in her huge blue eyes, committing them to memory . . . just in case.
“Rabbit?” she whispered and lifted to her tiptoes to kiss my cheek. “You look sad.”
I thought about it. Sadness. Shaking my head, I pushed the truth of her statement away and said, “I don’t know what will happen in there, Dolly darlin’.”
She blinked, long false lashes brushing the tops of her cheeks. She looked down, then back up at me. She swallowed, like she understood what I was saying. “It could be dangerous,” she ventured.
I nodded, touching her face again. I ran my fingers down her cheek, her neck and down her arms. I squeezed her hand still joined in mine. “He knows we’re coming,” I said and saw Dolly hanging on my every word. “He will have seen us on the news. He will know that we have killed his friends.” I paused when Dolly took a deep breath. “He will be expecting us.”
“It will be dangerous.” This time there was greater certainty in her tone. When her eyes fell and she held my hand just that little bit tighter, I knew she understood perfectly.