A First Love to Die For

Chapter Forty-Two- Out of The Shadows

(Lincolns POV)

"I heard you were asking about Josie, Lincoln? I was wondering how she was feeling?" I had only made it two steps when Mildred's nasally voice stopped me in my tracks.

I turned around slowly, here I had been working up an excuse to get myself out of a meaningless, nasty conversation and I had to backtrack. "Why do you ask Mildred?"

My heart was racing.

What were the chances?

Could she know something?

"Well, this morning she looked so under the weather and Candy said she was taking her to the doctor. I thought maybe you'd know how she..."

I interrupted her, "She was with Candy? Do you mind walking me through exactly what happened this morning Mildred? I haven't talked to Josie yet today."

Having lots of experience being a busybody, Mildred dove right in. "I was out for my morning walk and when I passed Josie and Candy, I stopped to see if they needed help. Candy was basically carrying Josie to her car. I stopped and asked them if they were okay and Candy said that she thought Josie had pushed herself too hard on her run and needed to get to the doctor. She really didn't look good. She could hardly stand on her own."

My stomach dropped.

Holy fucking moly.

How had we missed it? "Did Josie talk at all Mildred?"

Mildred thought about it for a moment. "I don't think she did Lincoln. She seemed really out of it."

I knew that my questions and my panic must be bleeding into my voice because she started to appear distressed. "Should I have stopped them?"

I shook my head. "No, not at all. Thanks for coming to find me, Mildred."

She gave me a smile, still seeming a little bit upset with the seriousness of how I reacted.

Come to think of it, I couldn't remember a time that I had ever responded to something she'd talked to me about seriously before. She was probably spinning out.

I managed to thank Mildred for caring and let her know that I would get back to her. Then completely rattled, I made my way upstairs to Lee's apartment. He must have known I was coming because he met me at the door.

I stumbled in, as he asked, "You okay man?"

I knew that I was talking way too loud but couldn't control my volume, "It's fucking Candy. Mildred saw her almost carrying Josie into her car."

Lee's eyes widened and met Lucy's as he said, "Mother Fucker. That's why her tracker went dead. She made her car a dead zone."

I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling the terror rushing through my veins and taking root in my body. I knew I needed to calm down but the more I told myself that, the harder it was to get air.

I closed my eyes.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Lee and Lucy must have been getting a handle on their own emotions because they were just as quiet. As my mind cleared enough to think, I said, "We need to figure out the places around town that Candy has access to. I don't even know where she's living right now."

We were going to tear Fenelon apart looking for Josie.

Knowing that it was Candy all along, I had a feeling that she wasn't going to be anywhere easy to find, but we knew it was her now.

I found myself torn between wanting it to be personal for her. She had always had a problem with Josie and me. Would she keep her alive longer? Did I want that, cause then what was she doing to her?

Holy shit, Candy broke us up on purpose. Candy roofied me. I had been dating Izzy. Was I part of her trigger? If so, how mad was she that Josie and I had been seen together so much in the last couple days?

I knew what she had done to her previous victims. The idea that this was Josie in her clutches strengthened my resolve. "Charlie is back at the station. Let's convene there and make a game plan."

I was out the door before they could say anything else. We didn't have any time to waste.  I was going to do whatever I could do to find her because fuck if that monster was murdering the love of my life on my watch.

We'd fucking find her.

(Josie's POV)

I woke up still thinking about my top ten favourite memories. I was going to do whatever I could to not spiral into pure panic.

My arms kept falling asleep from their lack of mobility. I was making it a point to rotate them every few minutes, they could only go so far because of the chains. It wasn't ideal but was the best I could do at the moment.

Although stiff, I could feel my strength returning. The not-so-great thing about that was that I knew how secure the chains were. They weren't going to budge. I didn't need to see through the vast darkness to feel their immobility. I could feel it with each pull.

I continued to work on calming myself, I had moved on to thinking, dreaming about our first kiss. Which led me to thinking about our second first kiss just last night. I hoped I would get a chance to kiss him again because we had just found our way back to one another.

My eyes opened wide as I heard the door open above me and a sliver of light peeked in, allowing me to finally look around. I was definitely in a basement. It was unfinished, and dark and my gaze looked down and tracked the dark stains all over the cement floor. Made sense, she had brought me back to the place she had killed the other women. 

I watched as Candy clomped down the stairs, holding a battery-operated lantern. It cast an eerie glow over the face of my bat-shit crazy captor. The mask of sanity that she had worn prior was well and truly gone now and I was looking at the face of a monster.

I had to tear my face away to track the space while the light was shining. There were approximately ten stairs and I was a good 5 metres away from them. The basement was littered with possible weapons, I just needed to free my hands to access them.

My eyes tracked back to Candy and I knew what I needed to do. My least favourite cover was when I had to play dumb. I knew this monster well, and I had decided that the best way to keep myself alive was to play to her sense of power. I needed to keep her talking. She loved her own voice, may as well let her use it.

She reached the bottom of the stairs and rather than turning on a light, she held the lantern higher. Giving me another look at the space around, and at her. Now that she was out of the shadows, her eyes were positively glowing with mania.

God damn it. I hated the fact that I hadn't seen it before. My job was seeing through the façade so that I could recognize the crazy. How had I missed this?

I rattled the chains a little and used every ounce of acting ability to keep up an act of calm, confusion, as I asked, "Candy? What is going on here?"