Broken Dolls (A Jefferson Winter Thriller) by James Carol

Author:James Carol [Carol, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Crime thriller
ISBN: 9780571302758
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2014-01-14T00:00:00+00:00

38

There were four scars in total. One on her stomach, one on each arm, and the fourth on her thigh. They burned into Rachel’s skin, branding her. The longest and deepest was four inches long and ran down her left biceps. She’d passed out by the time Adam started cutting into her thigh and didn’t remember that one. That final scar was the shortest, only an inch in length. When she’d stopped screaming, he’d stopped cutting.

While she’d been unconscious, Adam had tidied up her wounds with disposable stitches and disinfectant. The smell of TCP clung to her skin. Rachel was still in the dentist’s chair but the restraints had been removed. She was naked and cold, her muscles stiff from sitting awkwardly for so long.

The lights slammed on and Rachel’s heart rate rocketed. Her eyes immediately turned towards the dog flap and she waited for Adam’s voice to boom from the speakers, waited for something to be pushed through the flap. Nothing happened. She got up too quickly and almost collapsed. Her head was spinning from dehydration and the after-effects of the drugs, and she felt weak. She stumbled over to the nearest corner and stared into the black eye of the camera.

‘What do you want from me?’ she screamed.

The speakers stayed silent.

‘What do you want?’ she whispered.

Rachel slid down the wall onto her knees and curled into a ball. Hot tears slid down her cheek and she swiped them away with the back of her hand. The reality of the situation suddenly hit her, and it hit hard. She was never going to see the sun again, never feel it warm her skin on a summer’s day, never feel hot sand between her toes. She would never again waste time gossiping with her friends, sharing laughs over a bottle of wine, never eat in her favourite restaurant.

Then there was the future she would never have. She had taken it for granted that she would have children one day, maybe even two or three. Jamie had led her to believe he wanted the same thing, but whenever she brought up the subject, he would come up with some lame excuse why it wasn’t the right time.

She wasn’t going to miss Jamie, she realised, and this made her cry even harder. Tears for all those wasted years. Her father was right. She could have done so much better. At the time she thought he was being overprotective, but now she saw he had a point. She wiped away the last of her tears and lifted her head. This was her world now. A twenty-metre-by-twenty-metre cell with a cold tiled floor, a stained mattress and that bloodstained chair, her future defined by Adam’s whims.

‘Stop it,’ she hissed to herself. ‘Stop it, stop it. Stop it!’

Rachel realised she was talking out loud and stopped as abruptly as she’d started. Things were really bad when you started talking to yourself. Only crazy people talked to themselves. Did that mean she was going crazy? And

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