“You confess for the whole world to see, or I’ll pump your sister with so much heroin she’ll be brain damaged.”
Miley’s voice was muffled as he pointed the camera at her. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. He reached forward and snatched the tape off her mouth. She screamed and he placed the camera down, but kept it angled at her. I could see him cupping her mouth, whispering something in her ear.
She nodded helplessly and he released her slowly. “Please,” she begged.
“No, no. I don’t want you to beg, Miley girl. See, I know how Melanie operates. She used you the same way she used me.” He picked up the camera and turned it to Melanie again.
“I’m sorry, Calvin!” she cried. “Please! Just let us go!”
“Let you go? I served NINE YEARS in prison because of you, bitch!” His voice boomed and he was in her face again. “I was beaten and shanked and raped! Actually fuckin’ raped, unlike you! So you tell the world what you did! Right now!”
She sobbed, unable to form a coherent sentence.
Calvin pointed the camera away, back at Miley. “Okay. Since you don’t wanna fucking speak.” He charged to Miley again, focused the camera down to face her, and there were ruffling noises in the background. Miley was pleading for him to stop and wait, but he didn’t. He was in the camera frame too, and he used a knife to cut at what I assumed was tape behind her back. Then he gripped her wrist and slammed her left arm on the table.
“Calvin, please!” Melanie begged in the background.
But he didn’t listen. He picked up the needle he had on the table and wasted no time injecting it into Miley’s arm. Then he looked into the camera with a sneer and said, “One down, many more to go.”
The video cut off then, and I flipped through it to see if there were more videos, but there was nothing else of Melanie and Miley. Just dog pictures and more random women being recorded.
Hands still shaking, I replaced the camera and then moved the shelf that was above the deep freezer. There was a lock on the freezer, which meant he was definitely hiding something.
I looked around and spotted a hammer, snatched it up, and then whacked at the lock. I heard Roland calling my name, but after that video, I couldn’t stop. I was right to be suspicious of Calvin. He had been with both of them!
I didn’t stop hitting it, not until the lock popped and broke off.
When it did, I pulled it off and opened the freezer.
There were frozen bags of vegetables inside as well as frozen meat. I moved all of it aside, digging deep, ready to give up . . . but then I noticed something that didn’t look like meat at all.
I pushed the bags over; it was dark inside the shed and I couldn’t tell what the hell it was, but I pushed down and it was hard, yet soft in places. Taking my phone out, I turned on the flashlight and flashed it down.
And when I saw what it was, I screamed louder than I ever had in my entire life.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
I stumbled backward, bumping into one of the shelves.
“Samira! Samira! What happened?” Roland shouted through the window.
I gripped my chest, my heart pumping rapidly, beating like a drum. No . . . no. It couldn’t be.
I went toward the freezer again, flashed the light down. Beneath a plastic bag was a face. The eyes were wide open, the tip of the nose pressing against the bag. Dark hair and red lipstick smeared the bag from the inside. I recognized her face. I knew it very well, despite its frozen state.
It was Melanie. It had to be after what she did to ruin his life.
He brought her all the way back here. And he killed Miley. That was why they found heroin in the body. That was why there was trauma to her head. Calvin forced her to relapse and then killed her.
Something thudded outside the shed and a sharp gasp left my lungs. I rushed back to the window. Roland wasn’t there anymore, and I couldn’t see anything from the side.
“Roland!” I shouted. No answer. “Roland!” I screamed.
I heard what sounded like a gunshot and dropped my phone to clutch my chest. “Roland!” I screamed again.
There was a crack in the shed by the door and I bent down to look through it with shaky breaths. I heard feet shuffling through the grass. Saw Cannon pacing back and forth, in a frenzy. Then I saw someone walking toward the shed, dressed in all gray with dirty sneakers. And it wasn’t Roland or Dylan.
I looked around, but there was nowhere to hide. The door rattled as he grabbed it, then the whole shed shook as he grunted and snatched at the lock.