13 Nights of Horror: The Disappearance of Rose Hillard by Amy Cross Page B

out there, watching him, but there was no sign of her. Hearing movement inside the house, he turned just as Michael swung the door open.
    “You got news?” he asked. “Did you -”
    Before he could finish, Gorman stepped forward and grabbed him by the neck, swinging him around and slamming his head into the wall. Dropping his cane, he turned Michael toward him and landed a punch straight in the center of the man’s face, sending him sprawling to the ground.
    Reaching to his waist, Gorman removed his gun from its holster.
    “What the hell is wrong with you?” Michael spluttered, as blood flowed from his broken nose.
    “Carey and the kids are downtown,” Gorman replied, flicking the safety catch off. “I told them to stay there for a while. I didn’t tell them exactly why, although I suppose they’re gonna have to learn the truth eventually. Then again, I think Carey probably already guessed.”
    “What are you -”
    “I know, Michael.”
    “You know what?”
    “I know that you lied to me that night.” He aimed the gun straight at Michael’s face. “I’ve always prided myself on being a good judge of character,” he continued, “but in this case I couldn’t have been more wrong. You see, it never occurred to me that a man might lie about the circumstances surrounding his own daughter’s torture and murder. I guess I just couldn’t comprehend the idea that so much pure evil could exist in one man’s heart, but you manipulated me, didn’t you? You treated me like a goddamn idiot and I fell for it.”
    “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Michael replied cautiously, edging back along the hallway as he stumbled to his feet. “Ben, why don’t you come through and we can talk about this? You’ve obviously got something all mixed up here…”
    “Ricky wasn’t the third man,” Gorman continued, with the gun still in his trembling hand. “I don’t know why he was there. Maybe he was trying to help Rose, but whatever, the third man who never showed his face on the video, that was you.”
    “Are you serious?” Michael asked, his face filled with shock. “You think I’d do that to my own daughter?”
    “I know you did it.”
    “Jesus, I…” Michael paused, still backing away. “Ben, you’re making a huge mistake.”
    “You were doing it to her all her life, weren’t you?” Gorman continued, as tears gathered in his eyes. “That poor little girl never knew a time when her own father wasn’t… So what happened that night? Did you accidentally go too far? Did you push her a little too deep, cut her too much, and she died? Or did you intend for it to happen that way? Had you got tired of all the old thrills and found you needed to actually murder her while you were -”
    “Stop!” Michael shouted.
    “Your own daughter!” Gorman shouted back at him.
    “It was an accident!”
    Silence fell for a moment, as the rain continued to fall outside.
    “Go on,” Gorman said finally.
    “She enjoyed it,” he continued. “I know that might be hard for you to believe, but she really liked it. She got off on that kind of thing. We tried it vanilla a few times, but she was always the one who was pushing to take it to the next level, to make it more dangerous.”
    “You’re still lying,” Gorman replied.
    “I swear I’m not,” Michael told him as he backed all the way to the wall. “I told her we should slow down, but she was the one who wanted to use the battery, and the one who wanted to get other people involved, and the one who wanted it all filmed so that she could, I don’t know, get off on it later or something…”
    “Liar!” Gorman shouted.
    “You weren’t there,” Michael continued. “You don’t know what she was really like. I mean sure, everyone thinks Rose was this sweet girl, but she had a dark side. She was all over me, she was always the one who initiated everything. That girl was insatiable. I know I should have been stronger, I should have held back and