Sketched

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  SKETCHED

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Sketched

  By

  E.M. Townsend

  S. Prescott Thrillers

  Copyright 2017 Summer Prescott Books

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication nor any of the information herein may be quoted from, nor reproduced, in any form, including but not limited to: printing, scanning, photocopying or any other printed, digital, or audio formats, without prior express written consent of the copyright holder.

  **This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons, living or dead, places of business, or situations past or present, is completely unintentional.

  Author’s Note: On the next page, you’ll find out how to access all of my books easily, as well as locate books by best-selling author, Summer Prescott. I’d love to hear your thoughts on my books, the storylines, and anything else that you’d like to comment on – reader feedback is very important to me. Please see the following page for my publisher’s contact information. If you’d like to be on her list of “folks to contact” with updates, release and sales notifications, etc…just shoot her an email and let her know. Thanks for reading!

  Also…

  …if you’re looking for more great reads, check out the Summer Prescott Publishing Book Catalog:

  http://summerprescottbooks.com/book-catalog/

  Contact Info for Summer Prescott Publishing:

  Twitter: @summerprescott1

  Blog and Book Catalog:

  http://summerprescottbooks.com

  Email: summer.prescott.cozies@gmail.com

  And…look up The Summer Prescott Fan Page and Summer Prescott Publishing Page on Facebook – let’s be friends!

  To sign up for our fun and exciting newsletter, which will give you opportunities to win prizes and swag, enter contests, and be the first to know about New Releases, click here:

  https://forms.aweber.com/form/02/1682036602.htm

  SKETCHED

  CHAPTER ONE

  * * *

  July 23rd 2012 12:35 pm

  Dixon City - Suburbs

  She had given up on the hope of surviving this.

  Perhaps it was hours ago that the switch had been flicked in her brain, but it could have been minutes. It could’ve been days. Anything remaining of Megan’s sanity, that rational part of her that had the ability to form coherent thoughts had dissolved as quickly and completely as a sugar cube in a cup of scalding tea.

  The only thing she knew now for sure was pain. It had taken over her mind, hand in hand with a kind of fear that she couldn’t have possibly comprehended before. It was a combination that no one survives to talk about.

  Her world had been reduced to the basement she was being held in.

  Beth.

  She had assured Megan that the dealer was legitimate. The house had seemed safe enough. Nevertheless, a nervousness had blossomed the moment they stepped off the bus, and it had continued to grow in her stomach with every step the two of them had taken to the address Beth’s new online ‘friend’ had given her.

  “C’mon Megan. Don’t be a chicken shit,” Beth had scowled.

  Beth was scary when she was mad.

  She always had been. Her narrow eyes and wiry red hair gave her an off-putting look that she’d used to her advantage since childhood. Beth had practically dragged Megan up the cracked concrete path that led to the house, her freckled arms so much more powerful.

  There had a been a dog barking in the background, she could remember that much. For some reason, it’s yapping had sent warning signals off all through her body, only increasing the tension that was building steadily inside her.

  Megan had known that they were risking it by skipping school to buy drugs in the worst part of town. She’d seen enough horror movies to know that this was how all immoral teenage girls were punished. Instead of knocking on the door of a drug house, she should’ve been in first-period biology. But she wasn’t.

  She hadn’t wanted to be chicken shit.

  Megan blinked at the paneling and matted green carpet that decorated her prison. Beth had escaped. Of course she had, she had always been the stronger one. Thick boned and fearless like some kind of suburban Viking.

  It hadn’t come as a shock at all when, through eyes clouded with tears, she saw Beth begin to successfully loosen her wrist bonds. Her skin had torn from the rope, and the blood that coated her hands like red satin gloves eventually helped her to slide free.

  Beth hadn’t looked back at her when she slipped through the basement window. Her face had been so transformed with fear and outright panic that she looked more like a wild animal than a human.

  It had been when Megan helplessly watched the soles of Beth’s sneakers disappearing through the casement window that the rational part of her mind had broken.

  Two girls never escaped. There was always one left behind.

  There was always one set of parents collapsing with grief in the background while the survivor’s family turned their elated smiles to the news cameras.

  Megan Coogan, who had willingly allowed Beth to cheat off her in school almost daily. Megan Coogan, who had lied to Beth’s parents so that their daughter could make out with some nameless boy in the dusty corner of a playground.

  That Beth would carry on, finish school, get married, get a job, maybe even have kids.

  Megan Coogan would never leave this basement.

  The sound of footsteps on the creaking stairs sent a surge of adrenaline through Megan’s system, drowning out her thoughts and causing her limbs to go rigid. Breathing heavily, she listened to the wood groan as he moved slowly down the steps, as if deep in thought.

  The door opened carefully, and he stepped in the room.

  Grotesquely thin, he barely had to open it halfway in order to make his way through. His bones jutted against his t-shirt, causing the cotton to hang like curtains off his shoulders and collarbones. He smiled at her. She could see every tendon in his impossibly thin neck contract to help him maintain the expression. He was all teeth, a ravenous beast.

  “Are your hands numb yet? I tied you awfully tight. But what can I say? It was a reaction. I should’ve been a bit more careful with your chubby little ginger buddy.” He admonished himself, shaking his head in disappointment.

  His movement across the room was as smooth as his voice; mellow and surprisingly deep for a man his size.

  He had sounded legit. That was what Beth said when she hung up her cell phone earlier. They just had to stop in for a few seconds, pick up the weed and then they’d be on their way.

  He’s not a perv or anything Megan; Beth had said, rolling her eyes impatiently for the millionth time, he’s been following my Instagram forever. I mean, he messages me like, every day.

  He was closer to her now, his face turning as he examined her ruthlessly. She heard a whimpering noise. For a second someone else was in the room, a little girl maybe. A keening child that he had lured into the house just like he had done to her and Beth.

  When he reached out and stroked her arm where they were trussed
above her head, she realized the noise was coming from her.

  Megan jerked at his touch, writhing away as she sobbed against the cloth gag he had stuffed in her mouth. Her tongue battled against the fabric, where it sat, wet, heavy and tasting of her own bile in the back of her throat.

  He shook his head again, his nose wrinkling up in disgust. “And now you’ve wet yourself. Filthy. You’re quite the wreck, aren't you?”

  He pushed the girl peevishly, causing her to swing backward. The toes of her right foot dragged along the matted shag carpet. He had tied her legs together as well and she had lost one of her sandals as she struggled. She was vaguely aware of moisture against her bare toes where they dragged through the puddle she had created underneath her. The ropes pulled against the hook buried in the plaster of the ceiling as she swung slowly.

  “I’m going to have to clean you up now.” He glared at her as she swung back to him, spinning slightly as she came forward. “That’s more time wasted. I’m sure you’ve heard her up there. She’s been howling at me since that beast squeezed her bulk through the window.” He pushed her again, his long fingers splayed out against her chest. There was a bored expression on his face similar to one she’d seen on parents pushing their children on swings. “If your giant ginger buddy hadn’t run off and gotten us all in trouble, we could’ve had hours. As it is, Her Royal Highness is already impatient to leave.” He sniffed. “Not that I can blame her. I mean look at this place. Still, I can’t imagine how I’m going to be able to really enjoy myself with time constraints. That’s typical of her. God forbid I actually do what I’d like for once.”

  Megan swung backward, her arms tearing in their sockets against her own weight. The carpet slowed her down, her feet dragging across the thick fibers only causing her more pain. She cried out as the muscles up and down her flanks burned. When she swung back to him, mute and heavy as a side of beef in a slaughterhouse, he caught her by the face.

  She sobbed, shuddering at the feel of his cold fingers on her skin. He turned her head back and forth, appraising her under the dim basement lights. “That’s the problem with all these filters and things these days,” he said, half to himself. “Your friend Beth looked much thinner and much prettier in the photos she posted. No wonder she never wanted to join me in a little video chatting session. She probably couldn’t fit her fat face in the screen.” He spat the word fat out like it had turned his mouth foul. “I’m still in shock that she actually managed to drag herself through that tiny window. She should’ve been stuck there like a dog in a cat flap. You, however…”

  He moved his fingers from her face down to her neck. He ran both hands along her throat and to her collarbones where she felt his fingers trembling against her skin. “You’re well formed at least. Disgusting but well formed.” He moved away from her, leaving her spinning slightly where she hung.

  Sighing and still shaking his head, he moved to the other side of the room. There was a desk that Beth had used to climb on top of under the window. Her captor sighed again as he flicked a large brass desk lamp on.

  Due to the fact that all the windows in the basement had been blacked out with waterproof paper, the only real light had been from a lamp behind Megan where she had been hoisted up. Now with the banker’s light on, she was able to make out more of the room. Someone had lived here once. The bulky shadows in the room transformed into velvet floral patterned couches, a glass topped coffee table and a big screen television that looked more like a primitive rock monument than the flat screen her parents had at home.

  Home.

  Her eyes filled with tears again as her parent’s faces came to her with a sudden, vivid ferocity. She’d never see her parents again. She’d die in this damp smelling room, her final moments watched over by the outdated portraits of a family she had never met. A family this man was not a part of either. She wondered absently if they were upstairs, trussed and gutted like she was no doubt about to be.

  The man was carefully replacing the knives and saws Beth had knocked off the desk when she had scrambled out what seemed like hours ago. He moaned slightly as he bent down to retrieve his scattered instruments.

  “I think she dented my favorite one with her fat little feet,” he murmured. He held the blade of a long knife under the light. His bright grey eyes flickered as he examined the blade. He inhaled, drawing his breath in through his gritted teeth like a hiss. “What a shame. This was my go-to, you know? Any other one would’ve been better.”

  He looked up suddenly when a second set of footsteps caused the narrow stairs leading to the basement to creak. What there was of confidence in his face drained and Megan watched, surprised, as he scuttled to clean up the mess. Was he frightened? He seemed to be holding his breath, his hands a blur as he arranged his ‘instruments’. He finished just as the knob turned on the door.

  A woman entered, bringing with her a rage so thick that it was almost visible. Her anger seemed to move with her, slipping into the dim room behind her like the train of some kind of rotten dress. Megan knew she had heard a woman’s voice coming from upstairs. It had vacillated from calm to hysterical and back again. Initially, she had believed it was the voice of the woman in the photos that dotted the paneling around her. Standing before her now she knew she had been wrong.

  There was no doubt that she was this man’s mother.

  She glared at Megan, her thin lips twitching against each other.

  “Oh, for god’s sake Kingston,” she said. “What are you waiting for? What did I say to you upstairs? What did I say? Were you even listening? Are you that stupid? You truly are an idiot. An absolute god damn embarrassment. You always have been.”

  She was as terrifying as her son. Every word she spat out of her cruel mouth felt like a slap, her voice filling the room with an icy fury. She had the same delicate bones as her son but hers were covered with skin so taut from surgery that Megan thought she could make out the shadows behind her eye sockets as she glared at the two of them in turn.

  “I was getting to it! Jesus, Mother! You’re going to give me a migraine.” Kingston spoke through his set of perfect teeth, clenched and shining white inside his skeletal face. “The other one, the chubby girl, she knocked all my things to the floor. I need to get organized first. You know the process. After all, you’ve helped enough.”

  The more he spoke to her, the redder his face became. “If you hadn’t spent so long having a little tantrum upstairs, I would’ve been done by now.”

  One of her penciled eyebrows raised but her face remained the same. Her son’s rage seemed to have an effect on her.

  “Why don’t you tell me how we have time for organization, Kingston? Why don’t you explain to me how you’ve got, now how do you put it again? Oh yes, why don’t you explain to me how you’ve got this entire thing ‘down to an art’. You’re sloppy. You’re getting lazy. Smarten up and prioritize.”

  She opened the large alligator bag slung over her forearm. She pulled a plastic grocery bag from it and dangled it out toward her son like it pained her to touch it. There was a shimmer when she moved as a series of diamond bracelets caught the light from the desk lamp.

  “Take it,” she said impatiently, walking across the floor. When she passed, the cloud of expensive perfume that followed made Megan gag against the cloth in her throat. “Just get it over with. We need to get as far away from this hell hole as we can.”

  Megan’s captor groaned and dropped his head with exasperation.

  “But I didn’t want to do it that way Mother,” he said, hissing through his teeth again. “It’s such a disappointment when you rush me. It’s an impossible let down. All it does is make me want to start again sooner, you know that. If you’d just give me a bit of time! I have everything I need here, see?”

  “Yes, wonderful.” His mother gestured to the window where Beth had escaped from. “But if you hadn’t been so goddamn careless, you’d have all that time you so desperately need. That fat one is probably with the police, in fact
, they are probably on their way here already. Frankly, I’m making myself exhausted listening for the sirens.”

  “Did you see the size of her? I doubt she’s made it down the block already.”

  His mother pushed the bag toward him impatiently.

  “We need to leave Kingston. Kill her or I will.” There was a pause where the two stared at each other, the bag dangling between them stupidly. Finally, Kingston scoffed.

  “You couldn’t kill her,” he spoke softly and with a fake bravado that betrayed his nerves. When Kingston reached into the back pocket of his loose khaki pants, Megan to could see his hands had begun to shake violently. He pulled out a handful of candies, their colorful wrappers shining as bright as his mother’s jewels. With some struggle, he managed to take one and began to twist the wrapper open.

  “Kingston.” The rage in his mother’s face had somehow managed to increase.

  In the dim light of the room, Megan watched her face twist in a way that was purely frightening. Her eyes were fierce, her body tight like she was ready to pounce as she watched him pop the candy in his mouth. “You don’t need those,” she said, her voice trembling. “Where did you get those from?”