A Troubled Brother:
Year 1996:
The Heskes family was fortunate to be in Los Angeles. Their father was a renowned author, someone people looked to when they had problems and someone that always told the truth whether it was wanted or not. Most people thought that type of quality was bad, but others seemed to think it was good. Muriella Heskes was her father's favorite. Being the youngest in a family of five, she knew that she was to exceed her family's expectations and go beyond the limits. But she never got the chance to be a normal girl. She was just 12-years-old when her life was taken from her. Her older brother Jack had been watching her and he had gone inside the house to get something to drink, but by the time he came back out, she was gone, taken far from her home and never to laugh again.
The Heskes searched and searched for the daughter that they had lost but by that time Muriella was in Canada, sitting in a room playing dolls with Carey Petrowski. Carey seemed to sense the good and bad in people and even though she knew her father was a bad person, she could do nothing to stop him as she was only twelve herself. But oh how she tried. Carey and Muriella had almost made it to freedom when Carey's father had found them, running in the woods trying to stay off the beaten path. He had been following them since they took off, shortly after noon and he had served them lunch. The girls hadn't stopped but had kept on running despite both feeling sick. Muriella was trying to get back to her family and Carey was just running from a father she knew would kill her one day.
Mr. Petrowski grabbed both girls up and dragged them kicking and screaming back to the small farm house, throwing Carey into the cellar and locking the doors before dragging a kicking and screaming Muriella to the barn where he threw her onto the wooden work bench in the middle of the barn. He strapped Muriella's arms and legs to the bench. She was screaming but he didn't care. He raped Muriella that day and for the next three days he kept her strapped to the bench and raped her repeatedly. It wasn't enough that she was only twelve, he wanted to defile her before he killed her. That's what he did to his victims. He would defile them until he was tired of them and then he would kill them.
Muriella saw the axe lying on the ground next to the bench she had been strapped to. She saw but would not believe that this was happening to her. As Mr. Petrowski raped her, she went to her happy place, she went to the surfing spot she had found and loved to surf every day when she got her brother and sister to take her. When Mr. Petrowski was done with defiling Muriella, he got off of her and though he left her strapped to the bench, she knew that death was just around the corner. He left for about fifteen minutes and when he came back, he picked up the axe and walked over to the bench. She screamed as he swung the axe and it made contact with her left leg. She kept screaming as he chopped her right leg off, then both of her arms. She was even still alive when he chopped her body in half. She was still screaming when he chopped her head off.
Muriella was dead that day, just one week after he had kidnapped her from her home in Los Angeles. She was dead and her family would never know what had happened to her. But because she was a trophy just like his other victims, he wrapped her in first plastic, then a blanket then lay her gently into one of the many small red tool boxes that he had bought plenty of. The recording of what he had done to her, he took out of the camera and went back to the house. His daughter would become a substitute for the girl he had just killed. He always needed an outlet and when he was done with the girls in the barn, he would always return to his daughter.
Year 2012:
Joshua Heskes and his sister Jayden had moved to Toronto shortly after their parents had died in a car accident, three years prior. The man that had taken Muriella and killed her so violently had been arrested in 2001 after his daughter had turned him in. Jayden had brought her younger brother with her to Toronto shortly after receiving a scholarship to go to college there. He now worked after school at the local pizza parlor. They were happy together, and they knew that their sister was with them always since her body had never been found.
But even though Muriella was gone and Jayden was happy with her life now that she was dating someone from the school she was going to, Joshua had never gotten over losing Muriella. And so he hatched a plan. He had seen Carey Petrowski during the trial and had started seeing her around the streets of Toronto in a cop's uniform and had put the two together. She would never forget the faces of her father's victims but she had apparently forgotten the faces of the victim's family members. She really shouldn't have forgotten.
He knew of an abandoned warehouse that was in a secluded spot which had a basement that no one would ever look in. He had been going to the warehouse since finding it nearly two years ago. It was his thinking spot as well as his cool off spot. It was where he started to collect tools he could use against Carey once he had her in his grip. It was where he knew he could make her suffer the worst and knew that nobody would ever be able to stop him even if they tried to find him.
Joshua started following Carey home from work, started watching her routine, noticed that she always left the house at the same time and wasn't conscious of the fact that someone was following her. She seemed to think that just because she had changed her last name, that nobody would ever know who she was if they hadn't been at the trial or one of the victims family members. She went about her life as if she deserved a second chance. And though it might have felt like she deserved that second chance, Carey was about to get a rude awakening from Muriella's brother that would tell her that he hadn't forgotten what her father had done to his little sister and all those innocent little girls around the world.
He waited till she got out of her car and was near her apartment to make his move. He had been following her all day and even though she was starting to feel someone watching her, she never saw him coming until too late. He had covered the washcloth with chloroform and had it in his gloved hand. He snuck up behind her and put the washcloth over her mouth and nose and waited for her to lose consciousness before carrying her back to his van. He was an eighteen-year-old brother whose sister had been murdered by her father and was about to get the answers as to where his sister and all the rest of the victims of Jacob Petrowski were buried, even if it took forever. He was not letting her go without the answers that he knew she had.
Will Carey be okay? Will Joshua do something he will regret further on in his life? And how will Jayden and the 15th find Joshua and Carey once they figure out that the two cases are connected?