Steel Hearts - Patchwork Princess Ch. 02

"No, no, no, no, no," Holly repeated and held up her hands to fend off Teddy as he started towards her. Finally, she backed into her bedroom, turned, and rushed into the bathroom, locking the door behind her.

Teddy took a minute to look at the doll and discover what had frightened her. The Doll wore a bikini, but her torso was tattooed with a stylised creature in the middle of a circle. Then the image caught up to him, and he hurried to the bathroom, not wanting to believe anyone could be that cruel or that Holly could be affected so strongly by the image all these years later.

"Holly, if you don't talk to me, I can't help you," Teddy said near the bathroom door. She made no sound he could hear, so he knocked and repeated what he said. "Holly, don't make me break down this door to find out if you are okay!"

"No! Go away!" she cried out in obvious distress.

"I will give you ten minutes to have your little breakdown, but then you are going to talk to me," he stalked back to the dining room, where the doll that looked oddly like Holly lay. Using a pair of tongs from the kitchen, he examined it, noting all the marks on the belly and back. While he had told her that he knew what had happened to her, he didn't know all of the details. Those were not available to him at the time. He couldn't imagine Holly would have tattoos all over her belly and lower back, considering there were no other marks on her body. He knew she had been in hospital for some time recovering what had been done to her, but the marks on the doll were too extensive and precise to be random scars. His phone rang, and he absently answered it, still studying the doll and wondering why it would have gotten such a bad reaction from Holly.

"Teddy," he said tersely when he answered.

"Teddy, it's Carter. Are you still at Holly's place?" she asked, sounding out of breath and harried.

"Yeah," he answered slowly, his hackles rising to the sense of urgency in her voice.

"Great! I'm on my way. I need you to pack up the doll and leave it outside where you found it. You can take it to the police later if you want, but you need to get rid of it anywhere so that she won't have to see it. So outside would be best," Carter instructed.

"Okay, but why?" he demanded to know. Of course, if Holly needed it gone, it would be gone, but he needed to understand why.

"Please, just do as I ask. I'm pulling into the car park now. I was close by when she called," Carter explained.

"Okay, but I will need an explanation at some point, you realise," he huffed.

"You've been dating her for two weeks. I'm surprised you don't have all the explanation you need," she huffed. "I'll be at the door in a matter of minutes. Just make the doll disappear if you haven't already." Carter ended the call.

A few minutes later, Carter walked into the apartment and headed straight for the kitchen, ignoring Teddy, standing in the centre of the living room with the package between two hands covered in oven mitts. She walked back through the living room holding the bottle of wine Holly had opened when she arrived home and two glasses and went through the bedroom to the dual-entry bathroom.

"I'm here, honey. It's all going to be okay now. Unlock the door for me, please?" Carter asked in a soft, gentle voice.

Teddy stood where he could see the interaction and cursed as the bathroom door opened, and Holly fell into Carter's arms. He wanted to be that person for her, but he could also admit that she was broken in ways he still couldn't understand and that one day when he had earned her trust, he would be the only person she turned to when distressed. Teddy continued to stand close to the door of Holly's bedroom as Carter expertly handled her friend, cooing to her in soft words that Teddy couldn't hear and helping her first to sit and then lie on her bed to relax for a little while.

"She'll sleep for a little while now," Carter said quietly as she re-emerged from the bedroom and looked at Teddy thoughtfully before walking into the kitchen to dispose of the empty bottle of wine and the two glasses. "Can you bring the doll into the kitchen so I can see it now that she is calmer?"

"If you stop and tell me what s going on," Teddy demanded.

"Show me the doll, and I will explain as much as possible," she said quietly. "It's Holly's story, but I feel we need to call the police this time, and you will need to know some of it."

Frustration was riding Teddy hard as he retrieved the package again, handling it with oven mitts rather than touching the packaging. He then grabbed the tongs he had been using to examine the doll before Carter's call.

"You've seen all the text messages, right?" Carter began. "They don't seem to make much sense, do they, until you look at the names properly. Juliette was a tease, like you. Helen was a cheater, like you. Rose was a selfish bitch, just like you. You see what they all have in common?"

"I don't even know who the hell they all are!" he answered, his frustration rising.

"Romeo and Juliette, Helen and Paris, Rose and Jack, all of the men died for the one they loved. If you go through all the texts, her stalker is sending. You can see they are accusing her of being a black widow, more or less. Only she had never had a boyfriend who died. You're not dying, are you?" Carter asked.

"No," He chuckled, but he planned on having Medusa look into those connections to see if Carter was right. He continued unpacking the doll as she had spoken and finally stepped back, handing her the tongs to look at the doll properly.

"Well, no wonder she had such a big breakdown that I had to come and medicate her," she sighed.

"Wait, you what?" Teddy raised his voice with the question.

"She has an Ativan script for when things get too much, and she starts withdrawing from the world. I hold onto it for her because when she withdraws and becomes anxious or depressed, a whole bottle of pills can seem too tempting, so she has two on hand, and the rest I keep for her. If she ever takes the two here, she calls and asks for more, and I know shit has gone down. It's not a foolproof system, but it works for us," Carter explained.

"And if you're not close by when the shit hits the fan?" Teddy pressed, still sounding angry.

"Then I call one of the other girls to babysit her until I can get there," she shrugged. "Don't look so worried it's rare that she has a full meltdown these days, and this was only a little one. Unless you cleaned up any mess, she made during a tantrum?"

"There was no tantrum. Instead, Holly went pale, kept saying the word 'No' repeatedly, and held up her hands as if to ward me off, then hid in the bathroom and wouldn't come out. Then, when I knocked to try and help her, she told me to go away," he explained.

"Okay, the doll looks a little like her. Even the blue/green eyes that's a pretty hard detail to get right. Don't you think?" Carter asked.

"I guess so. I was more concerned with the doll's torso than her eyes," he indicated the mess of melted plastic and red lines of fake blood and scar tissue that covered the belly of the doll and the scar and blood that ran in a line across her lower back.

"So the melted marks are a brand that was burned into her torso, and the red lines with raised edges are slash marks. Someone tried to make the brand unrecognisable before dumping her almost dead body at the hospital emergency department. There's a scar on her lower back too where they managed to cut out what we think was a tramp stamp tattoo," Carter said it all clinically with no emotion. "Now, aside from myself and now you, the only people who know about these scars are the police, hospital workers, and the people who did it to her. Who do you think has been sending the texts now?"

"Fuck!" Teddy swore and lifted his phone to his ear. "Medusa, I need you at Holly's place. She can't authorise another card right now, so I'll come and get you." Teddy ended the call and looked at Carter. "You're a smart woman, Carter. You've more than proven that over the last few weeks. So, I will get you to work with the smartest woman I know, and we will find out who is stalking Holly and stop it, okay?"

"Alright," Carter said slowly.

"Watch over her while I get help. I have some contacts in the police department. Medusa is downstairs. I'll grab her and bring her up as fast as I can. Then I'll call my contacts in the police department and see if any of the original investigators are still there. Watch over her until I return," Teddy commanded, retaking charge of the situation. He had only filled his brothers in on the basics and told them he needed some time away from the Doss House since finding Holly again, but he needed their support and expertise now that things were rapidly spiralling out of his control. He called Beau on his way downstairs and asked if he could reach out to the police force and find an investigator who knew the case so they could avoid the first responders who would need to ask questions he knew she wouldn't want to answer tonight or ever again if she could help it.

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