LOST BOY Read online

  LOST BOY

  Author

  Ker Dukey

  Contents

  Lost Boy

  Author note

  Quote

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Ker Dukey’s Books.

  Lost Boy

  A Psychological Romantic Suspense Title

  By

  Author Ker Dukey

  Copyright © 2020 Ker Dukey

  Cover Design: Amy Queau with Q Designs

  Photo: Model Franggy

  Editor: Word Nerd Editing

  Proof: Teresa nicholson

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information and retrieval system without express written permission from the Author/Publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Author note

  If you’re new to my titles, please read with caution.

  This title contains dark content.

  If you’re an avid Ker Dukey reader, then go forth with your dark heart. You’re already too corrupted to heed caution.

  Rosa,

  When you’re lost in a world of uncertainty and the darkness is consuming, know that without it, you wouldn’t see the light surrounding you.

  And your light burns bright.

  You’ve got this!

  The world is yours for the taking.

  When I’m on the cusp of consciousness, I can hear the cries of the lost.

  One

  June 8th, 1995

  Blue River Prison

  Visitor: Mrs. Langford

  “Are you sure you can do this?” Detective Hernandez asks, but he knows I don’t have a choice. The only way my husband would give them a confession is if they allowed him to see me one last time before our worlds change forever. It already has.

  “I need to do this,” I assure him. We can’t put those families through a trial. The girl… I take a deep breath, forcing down the stone lodged in my throat.

  Lights flicker, dimming in and out. Shadows dance along the corridors, stalking me as I take each soul-shattering step toward the man I promised to love for better or for worse. How much worse?

  The wind howls, battering against the concrete walls of the prison holding me inside their cold embrace. Do I belong here too? No.

  “Storm’s getting worse.” The guard escorting us groans.

  Both inside and outside of me. There’s no shelter for the hurricane running rampant within my mind, saturating me in its destruction. The man who promised me a happily ever after destroyed me, us, them…everything.

  My chest restricts as an icy hand snakes up my spine. A wave of tiny bumps rise over my flesh. I suck in a breath to try to calm the nerves rapid firing throughout my body. The atmosphere thickens with each thud of my heart, as if the evil in this place haunts the very air I’m breathing.

  “Might need to cut the visit short at any point, so be prepared,” the uniformed giant informs Hernandez without turning his gaze to mine. I wouldn’t want to look at me either.

  A soft thump protrudes from my stomach, the baby kicking within my womb, reminding me why I’m here. I sigh, resting a palm instinctively over the bump, stroking, protecting, loving, wishing I’d been able to prevent this from happening—wish I would have seen the illness in his blood before I let him into my heart, my bed, my body. Images of his creation ravage my thoughts.

  “It will be okay,” I promise my unborn child and myself. A mantra I repeat over and over, reminding myself I will do everything I can to make sure my baby doesn’t end up like him. We don’t belong here. The sickness is inside him. I won’t let him infect us anymore. I’ll run. I’ll flee as far as I need to untether the threads binding us to him.

  Thoughts of the girls linger in my mind, my dreams, hounding me.

  Could I have done anything to stop it from happening?

  Yes. No.

  Red blotches litter my flesh as an imaginary itch akin to a million bugs crawling beneath the skin causes me to dig in my nails, scratching at the surface until it almost tears. The sense of not being clean is ever-present. Knowing what that monster did to innocent girls before coming to me, soiled in betrayal, death, evil…

  Questions plague me, hammering at my sanity like a child at a locked door.

  How did he hide his true nature for so long?

  Did they know they were going to die?

  Did he think about me when he was with them?

  Hernandez slows to a stop beside me as steel barriers to keep the evil inside clank open, startling me.

  Can I do this?

  I have to.

  Frowning in my direction, a prison officer nods impatiently, urging me to continue toward another metal door—another barrier coming down. I’m traded off from one guard to the next.

  This new guy’s eyes burn into the side of my face, those chaotic thoughts, erratic and judgmental, a constant torment seeping into my skin, saturating me in shame.

  Dust particles dance under the ever-glowing lights, the death parade welcoming me.

  Memories of once being happy elude me now. Was I ever really happy? Normal?

  Yes. With him.

  The nervous energy fizzles, turning my stomach, fearing the worry, the stress, will cause the unborn life inside me harm. But I have to see him one last time. I need to look him in the eye and ask him why.

  That question is a constant hum in the back of my mind. I see those girls every time I close my eyes, what he did to them. A shudder ripples through me.

  I know nothing he tells me will be acceptable for the hell he inflicted, but it may stop the rampant theories and self-blame. Give me some semblance of closure.

  “Detective. Mrs. Langford?” The warden nods toward us as he approaches, holding his hand out for Hernandez to shake. Once again, the gaze offered to me is one of judgment. If I keep his name, I will feel it for the rest of my life. If people know who he is—who I am—who the baby’s fathered by.

  I can’t stay in our once happy home and have already packed up the house and loaded our camper van. I’ll never return there. Starting over won’t be easy, but it’s the only way to forget—a new life where he’ll never darken our skies again.

  “This way,” he informs us.

  Doors open, and I’m ushered inside a room with a wave of a hand and jerk of the head.

  Panic flares within me when Hernandez doesn’t follow me inside. Without him there as an anchor, will the man I once knew try to use his allure to convince me everything they say he did is a lie?

  Go
d, how I wish that were the case. But I know better.

  My heart booms in my ears. The warden steps into the room, standing silently in the corner, and I breathe a little easier.

  It’s a small, square room. No windows. No air. It’s suffocating. A coffin.

  Scanning the room, my eyes find his.

  Mr. Willis Langford.

  Husband.

  Father-to-be.

  Serial killer.

  He sits on one side of a small metal table bolted to the concrete floor, his wrists chained to a hoop.

  The rattle of my ribcage from the beat of my own heart causes my head to swim.

  I can’t do this.

  Is this really how it ends?

  A smile so natural and beautiful sits plastered on his flawless face.

  How can he look so normal, so…mine?

  He’s so young. So impeccably handsome. How can this be happening?

  The questions barrel into me, chipping away chunks of my soul.

  Scruff on his chin is longer now than he’s ever kept it, and his once long, wavy brown locks have been shaved.

  “Hey, precious.” He beams at me. Just like that—like he hasn’t taken everything from me. He broke me. Ruined everything. There’s nothing left of the life he promised me. It’s all corroded.

  Vomit threatens to spill from my mouth. Even though I know what he is, my soul longs for it all to be false. I can’t force myself to stop loving him. Why can’t I stop loving him?

  Love is for the weak. I’m weak.

  “Let me look at you.”

  The words spilling from his lips are a caress. The pet names incite overwhelming longing. I hate him for it, but hate myself more. He’s a monster, yet my heart refuses to stop loving him. That makes me a monster too.

  “Sit down, precious,” he commands, and I do, just like always. His word is law to the infatuated teenager still in love with him.

  I’m a woman now—a mom-to-be. I have to be strong. Leave here and never return. I know this, but in his presence, all strength flees. I will put miles between us. Once I’m gone, he’ll become a memory of a past life. History. An echo.

  He lifts his hand and jiggles the chains that clank and jar against the ring, confining them. The sound resonates around the small room, teasing me. What if they freed him?

  No, he’s never getting free. This is his tomb now.

  “Sorry you have to see me like this. They wouldn’t take them off, even though I’d never hurt you. Don’t be afraid of me. I couldn’t bear that.”

  What? An un-amused laugh wants to rip from my chest, but it releases as a sob instead, filling the space with soft cries. I want to scream, to beg for this all to be a dream, a nightmare.

  “Please don’t,” he murmurs in a soothing tone, caressing my sorrow. How can he still incite any warmth within me? Am I that deluded—that damaged?

  Wiping my face on the sleeve of the blouse I spent an hour picking out for this visit, I look up at him through dark, wet lashes.

  “I need to know why you would do something like this. Was it something I did?” I ask, the words broken, my soul deflated.

  His eyes narrow, the affection seeping from him moments before replaced with annoyance. “What could you have possibly done to make me do what I do?” he snaps, and my spine curls.

  Been a bad wife, not given him enough attention, sex? Questions fire off in my mind, each blow taking more of my life than the last.

  “Was I not enough for you?” I murmur instead, hating how pathetic I sound, ashamed, marred beyond repair. The break in my voice only angers him.

  He cracks his neck, rolling back his broad, powerful shoulders, every muscle moving, morphing before my eyes into the beast he kept so well detained until now. My breath quickens, and I find myself flinching when he sighs. As if sensing my fear, he uncoils his muscles, his body relaxing back into the man I know...knew. His eyes appraise me for a beat, then he breathes out, “It’s not about that. It’s part of who I am. A part I never wanted to touch you. I thought I could stop when I met you, but the urges, precious, they’re so powerful, consuming.”

  Urges to rape, kill?

  I think of his victims…the girl who was found still alive in the bed of his truck. How will she ever have a normal life now? Would it have been better if her injuries had killed her?

  His eyes gloss over. It’s the same look he has when we’re making love. It brings a fresh wave of sorrow for what I’ve lost.

  The lie he brought with him into my paradise. My happily ever after.

  “You said you wanted to stop. How long have you been doing this?”

  Acid burns in my throat. The room expands, then shrinks.

  The forgotten guard shifts his position to my right, making me recoil. Him witnessing our truth, my failing, makes it all the more real.

  “None of that matters, precious. You look ready to pop. I’ve missed it all.”

  His gaze drops to my swelling stomach, and an urgent need to cover myself swarms over me. This is my child—not his.

  “I want a divorce,” I blurt, the edge in my tone offering more confidence than I feel.

  “You’re in shock. It will pass,” he replies almost too fast. Rehearsed.

  Leaning forward, he tilts his head, studying me, daring me to defy him.

  “No, Willis. This isn’t a fleeting feeling of regret. This is a train hitting me full force. Everything I thought we were, our life, was a lie. You were a lie. I want a divorce, and you will never see me again once I leave here.” I will my voice to stay steady.

  He jerks forward, hands reaching but grasping air, the chains preventing him from getting anywhere near his target. I retreat all the same, jumping up, almost tripping over my own feet. Bastard.

  The room is suffocating with his demons stuffed inside, trying to leak from his pores, to get loose, to torment, threaten, hunt.

  “You love me,” he fumes. The calm from before has vacated the body hosting it. Liquid fury is the only thing left, burning bright in his penetrating eyes. But he can’t move any further toward me—can’t prevent me from speaking my truth, from leaving this place, with him and his sins forever locked inside.

  “Loved,” I choke out. “You put a fever inside my bloodstream, I won’t lie, and I couldn’t fight it. The burn was too strong. You overwhelmed me, siphoned every ounce of my energy and replaced it until all that was left was you. But no more.”

  “Don’t do this. You’re carrying my baby,” he bellows, trying to stand, but hunching over the table, his bound wrists not giving him enough leverage.

  “No!” I bark, finding the courage to pour all my anger into my reply. He can’t hurt me—can’t touch us. He’s reduced to a caged animal because that’s what he is.

  “I’m carrying my baby, and they will never know you.” I reach inside my pocket and pull out a photo he took of me with a hand on the growing baby bump we created in the lie that was our marriage. With a shake of my head and a tear slipping loose from my eye, I flick my wrist forward, throwing the image onto the table.

  “That will be the only thing you will have of us.”

  Scrambling for the picture, he bores his gaze into it before lifting his head to meet mine. The dark pits of his stare send a quake through my body.

  “At least tell me what it’s going to be?” he implores.

  I study him, his question screaming inside my head.

  Boom.

  Boom.

  Boom.

  “A boy.”

  August 9th, 2003

  8 years later

  I always thought I’d be a good mother. That nothing that had happened in the past would matter the first time I held my child. But Willis set my world on fire, and the flames consumed me from within. I was buried deep in the ashes of my broken dreams and couldn’t find my way out.

  Every time I look into my child’s eyes, Willis looks back at me.

  Reminding me. Punishing me. Hurting me.

  Eight years have passed, an
d the pain is just as raw now as it was the day I learned who Willis truly was. I’m frozen in time.

  No matter how much I wish my baby could save me, mend me, they only hardened me.

  The life given to me by a monster was innocent, but also a constant reminder of all I lost. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

  Willis had taken all my love and discarded it in blood and violence, leaving me in ruins with a life inside me that fed from the rotten core that was now my soul.

  I tried so hard to be a good mom, did everything I was supposed to. I fled, I kept us safe, but deep down, I knew this day would come.

  I would never escape him.

  You can’t outrun fate.

  Willis was always going to be my undoing. My end. My fate.

  I squeeze the telephone receiver to my ear, my body numb, frozen to the spot.

  “Mrs. Langford, did you hear what I said?” Detective Hernandez asks.

  I haven’t heard his voice in such a long time, but recognize it immediately. My blood chills at his use of my former name. I thought he was going to tell me Willis was dead. You hear about prison riots and killings all the time. Mixed emotions collide inside me. Did I wish him dead? I want to tell him Mrs. Langford isn’t my name anymore, but it’s irrelevant. To him, I will always be the wife of the Hollywell Slayer.

  “Have you been watching the news?”