I feel responsible to warn you that this chapter can get a bit creepy and bloody.
Kirsten and Sandy looked up when they heard a sound from the hall, and Kelly showed up in the door way. She wasn't crying anymore. She walked into her parents' bedroom.
"I guess I have to go now…" she sounded sad, she knew how this night might end. In tragedy. She thought about the gun in her bag. She shivered.
Sandy stood up. "Ryan and I are coming with you, to bring Seth home" he added when she opened her mouth to argue, she shut it and nodded. She turned to Kirsten.
"Mom, I'm so sorry, but I guess this is it." Kelly said, brought to tears by her own words, and so was Kirsten.
"Come here sweetie" Kirsten said through her crying and Kelly walked over to her and wrapped her arms around her mother. Kirsten closed her eyes and inhaled her daughters scent. Kelly felt Kirsten's body shake from crying.
"Will you come and visit us? Or at least call?" Kirsten asked, her voice was nothing more but a whisper, but everyone heard her. Kelly swallowed and answered "Yeah, yes of course I'll call" She knew that had been a lie but she couldn't tell them the truth, she was a little worried about Sandy and Ryan coming with her, but that just meant she'd have to wait till they had gone if she was going to do it.
"I love you mom" Kelly said and let go of her mother's back. They held hand for a moment until Kelly backed away and they lost each other. Kirsten put her hand over her mouth to stop her crying.
"I love you too, sweetie. I love you so much, you know that, right?" Kirsten asked and Kelly smiled through her own tears. "I know. I love you. Bye" She said and walked out of the room and down the stairs. In the kitchen she lost it. The bag slipped out of her grip and landed with a thump on the floor. She grabbed a chair so she wouldn't fall too. Everything seemed so hard, even breathing and standing, when she realized she was actually doing this. She heard Sandy and Ryan coming down the stairs, so she dried her tears and took a deep breath and turned around just as they showed up in the doorway. She looked at them with eyes full of sadness, but also strength and confidence.
"Let's go" her voice was hard as stone and she picked up her bag and walked towards the door, with the two men right behind her.
Sandy drove them to the Newport Group, he glanced at his daughter who was sitting next to him. He thought about how angry he had been on her before she left, how sad he had been when she was gone and how happy he had been when she returned. Now the sadness was all over him again, this time it was the hardest and most painful sadness he had ever felt. He was going to lose his daughter, maybe for forever. 'How can she do this?' he thought.
"I'm sorry, dad. I'm doing this because I have no choice. You know I love you" Kelly suddenly said, almost like she had read Sandy's mind.
"I love you too" was all he could say. He pulled over at the parking lot outside the Newport Group, there was still cars there, so that meant there were people in the building.
They got out of the car and Kelly looked around, it had been along time since she had last been here. When she was a kid she had been here a lot with her mother. Now she was here in more serious businesses. She turned to Ryan.
"Where's the basement door?" she asked and Ryan pointed with his finger.
"On the back of the building, you can go through there" he said and Kelly ran of to the bushes Ryan had been pointing on, Sandy and Ryan ran after her. Kelly saw a small passage between the bushes and the wall leading around the Newport Group, she didn't hesitate, and she kept running. She felt the wall brushing against her bare arms. She heard the others behind her, she didn't want them to come with her, but she couldn't say goodbye here. She kept running until she saw the basement door. She stopped and waited for the others to catch up with her.
"Is this the right place, Ryan?" Kelly asked and Ryan nodded and tried to catch his breath.
Kelly turned to face them. "I don't want you to come with me through that door. Stay here and I'll send Seth out to you. It'll be too dangerous in there. And…" she hesitated "there's something I don't want you to watch, or know anything about. So let's say goodbye out here. Please?"
Without a word Sandy took a step forward and wrapped his arms around her.
"I love you, kid" he said and fought against the tears. They stood in each others arms for several minutes, until Kelly broke away.
"Ryan?" she said to get his attention. He looked up at her, she smiled sadly. "I wish we would have had time to get to know each other, you're a cool kid." He smiled at her and went to hug her.
"I wish I could've gotten to know you too" he said and let go of her.
Kelly looked at Sandy. "Goodbye dad". With that she took up her bag and walked towards the door without looking back. The door shut behind her, she was gone.
"Now we just gotta wait for Seth" Sandy said sadly and sat down onto the ground.
Kelly walked in a corridor. It was dark and small and smelled weird. She kept walking until she reached a door at the very end of the corridor. She knocked on the door.
"It's open!" she heard Logan's voice answer. She took a deep breath and thought 'I won't come out alive'. Her hands were shaking from fear. She opened the door and entered a big room, the walls and floor were plain concrete and it was cold in there.
"Logan?" she asked carefully. She turned around when she suddenly heard a sound. The door was closed and Logan was leaning against it. He smiled a creepy smile.
"So you came, does that mean yes?" he asked and took a step closer. She nodded her head. "Yes" she whispered.
"Frankly I'm a little surprised you came here alone"
"Dad and Ryan are waiting outside for Seth. You're going to release him, right?" Kelly asked. 'What if this was a trap? No, he didn't want Seth; he had just been using him to get to me. He was going to let him go' she thought, but Logan's evil smile could not be a good sign.
"I'm going to release him, in due time" he said and his smile got wider. He leaned his head closer to hers, and said in a whisper "You know you just agreed to a life where I'm going to use you, make you do things you wouldn't even do in your worst nightmares"
Kelly swallowed. "If you promise to leave my family alone, if you promise to never touch them again, then I'll do whatever you want me to do"
"Just so you know I never loved you. I thought you looked good, so I decided to seduce you and then…torture you. Cause that's what I do, I find a beautiful girl, seduces her and torture her to death. I'm a murderer."
Kelly thought she was going to faint. Murderer?
"How…how many girls have you…killed?" she asked, her voice shaking. He walked away from her over to an old bed that was standing in the corner. "Want to take a look in my photo album?"
When she didn't move he got up and went back to her. His grip on her arm was crushing and he dragged her back to the bed. He threw a book onto her lap and opened it. Kelly immediately looked away. 'Oh my god!' she thought. Logan noticed she wasn't looking and slapped her head. "Look" he demanded and she had no choice but to look at the pictures. She thought she'd throw up when she looked at the girl on the first picture.
She was naked and her hands where bound with a rope hanging from a ceiling. Her skin was dirty and cut, blood were running down her legs and dripped onto the floor. Kelly looked down her legs, and got a terrible surprise. Her left foot was gone! He had cut of her foot! She looked at her face. She was alive. Her eyes were expressing fear and pain.
"She was my first victim. Do you want to know how she died? I think her body's buried somewhere in the bushes around here, a few feet away from her heart"
'He killed her here?'. Her eyes searched the floor. Dried blood caught her eyes. She swallowed. Logan moved on to the next page. That girl had a letter carved on her stomach, L.
Kelly didn't found it hard to figure out what it meant. The girl was lying down and her hand was cut off, it was lying on her naked chest.
"She's buried somewhere in the woods outside Chicago." Logan explained. Kelly frowned.
"You mean you travel around the country trying to find pretty girls to slay?" Kelly asked. That actually made sense. It would seem suspicious if girls kept go missing from one place, instead of different locations of the country, no one would connect a murder in Newport Beach to one in Chicago.
"Where's Seth?" Kelly suddenly asked and Logan laughed.
"I almost started to think you'd forgotten you brother. He's in there" Logan said and pointed at a door at the opposite wall. Kelly got up and started to walk towards it, when she suddenly fell to the floor.
"No, I will get him. I want him to see this" Logan said and took a step towards her with a long rope in his hands…Kelly just wanted to scream.
"Where the hell is he?" Sandy asked, Seth should have been out by now, unless something had happened. Ryan walked over to the door, he placed his ear against it, trying to hear something. He didn't hear anything; he was just about to walk away when he heard a scream. The doors blocked the sound a bit, but he heard it was a girl who was screaming…
"He's hurting her!" Ryan shouted and burst the door open and started to run with Sandy at his heels. They reached the second door, Ryan tried it, it wasn't locked…
The scene that met them on the other side of the door froze them. Kelly was hanging in her wrists from the ceiling, screaming from pain, her top bloody, and Logan was holding Seth, forced him to look at his sister.
"What the hell?" Logan yelled and threw Seth into the wall, he sank down to the floor, not moving a limb.
"Kelly!" Sandy whispered. Logan forced them to sit on the bed. He gave them the photo album. "Why don't you two look in this, the next photo that will join in will be Kelly's. And you're going to watch when I slowly take away her life. When she's dead I'll let you go, could only take a couple of days. Too bad I'm going to have to kill her right away, she's a fine woman" he said and stroke his hand over her hip. Sandy got shocked by the pictures in front of his eyes. How the hell could he…?
Logan locked the door and took up knife from a table. He slowly started to slash her top, Sandy and Ryan saw her naked back. Logan moved around so he also saw it. He smiled, this was going to be fun.
"What do you think should be carved on her back? A star? Or maybe a heart…" he said as he held the knife against her skin. "A heart should fit" he pressed the knife harder until blood started to run down her back. Kelly screamed. He drew the knife across her back until it formed a heart. Blood streamed down her back and she screamed. Sandy couldn't stand to look, he closed his eyes and felt a sharp pain running through his arm. He opened his eyes and saw Logan standing next to him with the knife held. Sandy looked down on his arm. He had a long cut across it.
"I want you to see this, Cohen. Now look at your daughter's back!"
Sandy looked at the bloody heart, he heard Kelly crying. He lost it. He got to his feet and punched Logan in the face, he fell to the floor.
"Congratulations, Cohen. You've managed to piss me off completely" Logan said and jumped to his feet. Sandy wasn't quick enough. Logan was over him and pinned him against the wall and started to punch him.
Ryan acted unnoticed. He had taken the knife Logan had dropped and started to cut the ropes around Kelly's wrists. He felt a bit guilty not trying to help Sandy, but this was his only chance to free Kelly. The knife got through the rope and Kelly fell to the ground, she was still conscious. Ryan helped her free her wrists and he made sure she was ok before hurrying to check on Seth. Kelly knew what she had to do. But first she took a piece of her sliced top and covered her breasts, then she hurried over to her bag. The gun was on top, she took it with her other hand, the hand that wasn't pressing the garment against her chest. She was in pain.
She aimed the gun at Logan's back, and pulled the trigger. He fell immediately, leaving a bloody and beaten Sandy against the wall. He looked at his daughter, she looked at him, and then she sank to the floor, Sandy noticed a long bleeding cut across her chest and up her throat.
