She yelled, and I pulled her hair tighter. “Shut up and I’ll let go. We need to talk. Understand?”
“Yes,” she said, moaning and whimpering.
I flipped Jori onto her back and wrapped my hands around her throat. “Now you’re going to answer a few questions. What did you mean when you told the cop it’s Buddy?”
“N-nothing,” she stammered, eyes glazed with panic.
I pressed my thumbs into the soft hollow of her neck. “Liar. I don’t have much time. Why do you think it was me on that tape?”
She didn’t answer right away, and I realized I was squeezing her throat too tight for her to speak. I eased up on the pressure. “Well?”
“Your voice,” she whispered hoarsely. “I recognized it.”
I frowned. “How could you possibly . . .” Then I remembered. Oatha had mentioned several times in the past that Jori had something called colored hearing.
“What bullshit,” I said fiercely. How could something so abnormal . . . so freaky . . . defeat me? I refused to let it.
I thought fast, realizing I had very little time before either a cop or maybe even Dana came looking for my niece. I’d have to kill her. And quickly. The cops couldn’t prove anything, especially if her body were never found. Momentary guilt stabbed my heart, but I tamped it down. Killing Oatha’s beloved grandchild, the great-niece I’d watched mature into a kind, intelligent young lady . . . well, it was such a shame.
Keeping one hand wrapped around her neck, I retrieved her cell phone from my pants. “Password?”
“Noscam8871.” Despite her fear, loathing filled her eyes. “You sick bastard.”
I winced inwardly at the insult. Jori didn’t understand that you could care about someone but recognize that all that really mattered in this world was your own survival. My needs came first, always. Quickly, I dialed Cash. “We’ve got a problem. Bring the car around to mile marker five on Conch Road. I’ve got a hostage and need a quick getaway. How soon can you get here?”
“Five minutes,” he promised, then hung up. That’s what I liked about Cash. He never asked questions, never acted surprised. Just did what he was told. If only everyone were so malleable, there’d be no need to silence them.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said to Jori. “We’re going to walk toward the road and then go for a ride.”
Her eyes shot daggers at me, but she wasn’t stupid. Reluctantly, she nodded. “Okay.”
“Up you go.” I twisted one of her arms behind her back and jerked her to her feet.
I guided her off the beaten path and shoved her in front of me, still twisting her arm behind her back. She stumbled forward at a slow clip in what I suspected was a deliberately passive-aggressive move. Didn’t matter. Even at this slow rate, we’d reach our destination before Cash arrived with the car.
I didn’t like this situation one bit. But I’d do what was necessary, even if she was family.
Chapter 33
JORI
“You little witch,” Uncle Buddy muttered, strengthening his hold and twisting my arm another degree tighter until tears ran down my face. “Why can’t you just mind me? It will be easier on both of us that way.”
A car motor sounded from the distance and roared closer before coming to a complete stop. From the trees, I made out a black truck. Cash Johnson opened the door and stepped out.
“Buddy?” he called.
“Over here.”
Fear paralyzed my muscles, and I sagged against Uncle Buddy. If those two forced me into the car, my fate would be sealed. Buddy’s voice wasn’t the only one I’d heard on that tape. Cash had been there as well. “Please don’t do this,” I begged. “I won’t tell anyone.”
“Cat’s out of the bag already,” he said. “I’m truly sorry.”
“I’ll make up some kind of story for Tegan,” I promised. I’d promise him anything at this point.
Cash walked to the edge of the woods, then entered, stomping through the dense underbrush.
“What kind of story?” Uncle Buddy asked.
“Like I was mistaken. That I can’t identify your voice.”
“Don’t believe anything she says.” Cash burst through, scanning me from head to toe with open contempt.
I swallowed hard. The man had always creeped me out, but until this moment his disdain had been shadowed, hidden beneath a thin veneer of politeness. The mask was stripped away now.
“Jori Trahern’s been nothing but a slut since she was in high school,” Cash continued. “Always sneaking around at night meeting her boyfriend. Screwing him in that old smokehouse.”
The memory of Deacon and what these two had done to him fueled me with rage. He shouldn’t have died so young. He’d been denied so much, his life stolen.
“Why did you kill him? Why?”
They ignored my anguished question. Cash grabbed my free arm and twisted it behind my back. I was trapped between them as they dragged me forward. We reached the street, and I desperately searched in both directions. Not a car or person was in sight. Cash opened the passenger door to the back seat. I stared at the gray interior with mounting terror. My inner voice screamed a warning.
Do not get in that truck.
If I did, there’d be no escape. I’d be totally at the mercy of these two psychopaths. They would kill me.
My feet dug into the ground like leaden weights, and I leaned backward, struggling to free my arms from their grasps. Their fingers dug grooves into my already abused biceps. Still, I screamed and flailed from side to side, hoping against hope to break free of their grip for just one second. If I could, I might be able to outrun them, considering they were so much older than me.
“You bring some rope?” Uncle Buddy asked Cash. His voice was strained, and he panted from exertion.
Rope? I redoubled my efforts to get free.
“It’s in the back floorboard,” Cash said. “You get it while I hold her.”
The moment Uncle Buddy dropped my arm, I kicked Cash in the shin with all my strength, desperate to get away.
Sharp pain exploded from my left shoulder with a loud pop. The dislocation burned like a hot poker and stole my breath.
In a haze of pain, I screamed uselessly as Uncle Buddy returned to my side and bound my wrists behind my back. Next, he bound my ankles with rope as Cash kept the pressure on my dislocated shoulder. I was shoved into the back seat, Uncle Buddy beside me. The truck door slammed shut, sounding like a death knell.
I was entirely at their mercy—a quality I knew they both distinctly lacked.
Cash entered the front of the truck and threw a torn piece of cloth at Buddy. “Want to gag her?”
Without answering or any hesitation, Uncle Buddy grabbed my jaw. I twisted my head from side to side. He slapped me hard in the face. The stinging flesh on my right cheek temporarily stunned me. He placed the cloth between my teeth and roughly tied the gag. It was suffocating. I felt like I couldn’t breathe properly. I forced myself to calm down, slowly inhaling and exhaling.
Uncle Buddy shoved me to the floorboard, and the truck began to roll. The vibrations rumbled through my body as I attempted to collect my wits. I had to think. I had to develop a plan. The first step was to be aware of my location. If I made it out of the vehicle alive, I needed to know which direction to run.
“Where to?” Cash asked Buddy.
“Number eighteen.”
The answer made no sense to me.
The truck made a sharp right, and the pitch of the tires changed. We were on the main road, heading past the dock. The sounds of other vehicles passed by—so close, and yet I could do nothing to signal my distress. A boat horn sounded from the gulf. Probably the last of the shrimp boats headed to open water for the first day of the season. Tourists as well as the locals would be heading home about now.
I struggled to rise up and pound on a window for help, but Uncle Buddy yanked on my hair, pulling out a handful.
“Don’t you dare,” he threatened.
<
br /> I moaned around the gag. “Please, stop.” My words were garbled, but I’m sure he understood what I was trying to convey. He let go of my hair and leaned back in his seat, smiling and waving at a passerby.
My heart pinched as I thought of my grandmother and Zach waiting for me at home. How many hours would pass before Mimi called the police? Too many to do any good, I was sure. And that was even if she was thinking clearly today. Poor Zach. With Mimi’s descent into dementia and me gone, what would happen to him? He’d be dependent on the kindness of strangers. Or—my heart dropped as it occurred to me—Uncle Buddy might become his guardian.
That horror redoubled my determination to escape. If that meant lying to these two bastards, then I would. I’d never been much of an actress, but I’d do my best.
Cash turned the truck left. We were heading downtown.
“Here.” Cash tossed a blanket over the seat to Uncle Buddy. “Better cover her up to be safe.”
Thick wool was thrown over me, scratchy and hot against my skin. It smelled of musk and wet dog. With each breath I drew, the wool formed a suction over my mouth. Suffocating. The dark was as complete as though I were buried in a coffin.
From outside came the muffled sounds of people talking and laughing, other vehicles humming along the road, an occasional blast of a horn. I longed to be free. To feel the fresh gulf air with its tang of salt, to see the decorated ships with their colorful triangular flags and Old Glory flapping in the breeze.
Another left turn, and the sounds grew more distant.
“Anyone on our tail?” Uncle Buddy asked.
“Nope. We’re good.”
I swallowed my despair and tried to refocus on where we were. We must be on the Shell Beltway, which led to 1-10 toward Mobile. Only a minute later, Cash took another left. But which road? It could be any of a dozen dirt roads that lined the highway. The truck veered left, and the ride became bumpier. The tires dug into less-compacted sand. My body bounced painfully as we ran over a deep pothole. The road must have narrowed, as tree limbs scraped along the truck sides, resulting in a metallic screech that sent indigo flames zapping my brain. It was one of the few sounds that actually sparked an unpleasant physical jolt through me.
We were driving farther and farther from a chance encounter with anyone.
Abruptly, the truck stopped. My heart beat wildly. Now what?
A door opened. The blanket was lifted. I squinted up at Uncle Buddy. Cash’s rough hands grabbed me under my arms, and he pulled me out of the truck. Unceremoniously, he dropped me to the ground, and I fell on one side, the pain in my dislocated shoulder flaring on impact. Despite the agony, I rolled my bound body from his booted feet, afraid he’d kick me.
Uncle Buddy stooped down and grabbed my legs. “Don’t want to carry her inside. She’s too heavy.”
Cash loomed over me, a silver buck knife glinting in the bright sun. He swooped down closer, and I let out a strangled scream. I braced myself for more pain, and Cash chuckled. But instead of plunging the knife into my chest, he angled it toward my feet. With a deft, experienced twist of his wrist, the ropes fell from my ankles.
“You’re going to be a good girl, right, Jori?” Uncle Buddy asked. As though I were a child and he was taking me out for a walk in the park. There was even the tiniest suggestion of sadness, as though he were a reluctant disciplinarian who had my own good at heart. “No kicking,” he admonished.
I nodded my agreement.
“And no screaming,” he continued. “I don’t think anyone would hear you, but . . .”
I vigorously nodded, eager to have the gag removed. Instead of untying the knot at the back of my head, he took Cash’s knife. The cool blade against my face sent shivers down my spine. The lethal edge of the blade ripped through the fabric, and it fell off.
I took long gulps of air, thankful for the small mercy. Cash reached for my arm, and I scrambled backward.
“I can stand on my own,” I said, not wanting his rough handling to make my injury more painful. It was an awkward struggle with my bound hands, but I rose to my feet.
Across from me was a small hunting cabin with Uncle Buddy’s signature placard hanging on the front door: ENIGMA OUTDOOR EXPEDITIONS, CABIN #18.
“We’ll head inside for a talk,” Uncle Buddy said.
I walked as slowly as possible without giving them a reason to clamp their hands over me and drag me inside. A quick glance in all directions revealed no one else was around. This might be my only chance. I darted forward, but Cash grabbed my wrists from behind and jerked me against him.
“You ain’t goin’ nowhere,” he grumbled in my ear.
The only hope I had left was that Tegan would somehow find me. But that hope was small—last I’d seen her, she’d been busy with event security.
I felt disassociated from my body, like this was all happening to someone else, not me. Perhaps that was partly the result of physical shock. The sun shone brightly like any ordinary day, yet I wondered if by nightfall I’d be joining Deacon in some vast, mysterious beyond.
I could delay it no longer. With the two men pressed close against my sides, I stepped over the threshold. Musky darkness enveloped me, and it took several moments for my eyes to adjust.
The one-room log cabin was sparsely furnished with only a couch and two chairs. One of the men pushed me from behind.
“Get in the chair,” Uncle Buddy commanded.
I dropped into it and faced them, biting the inside of my mouth to keep my lips from trembling. It’s showtime. Act stupid. Act compliant. Buy as much time as you can.
Uncle Buddy pulled out my cell phone. “Password again?”
I recited the code, and he pulled up a screen, then handed Cash my cell phone. “Jori’s been texting a cop. Can you believe this shit? They have a recording from the Cormier incident, and Jori identified my voice for the cop.”
“I’ll say I was mistaken,” I promised. “I won’t ever tell.”
Cash turned on the recording. Deacon’s and Clotille’s voices came alive in the tiny cabin, their familiar colors and shapes playing in my mind. The gunshots fired, and the whirring began.
Cash frowned. “I didn’t hear us on there. She’s lying.”
Uncle Buddy raised a brow at me.
I considered lying, telling them that they weren’t on the tape, that I’d been mistaken. But Uncle Buddy wasn’t stupid. At some point, he’d replay the recording in its entirety and hear it for himself.
“Fast forward to near the end,” I said.
The voices returned, speaking only a few seconds, and then the recording stopped.
“You can’t tell nothing from that,” Cash said. “If you could, the cops would have done taken us in years ago.”
“Ah, but now they have my niece.”
Cash glared at me. “So what?”
“She has a . . . special talent for identifying voices.”
“Bullshit. She can’t prove nothing. It’s her word against ours.”
Uncle Buddy regarded me thoughtfully.
“He’s right. I can’t prove anything,” I said quickly. “Who are they going to believe? A respected county commissioner and prominent businessman—or me? My ID using synesthesia would never hold up in court.”
“Syna-what?” Cash asked, his forehead drawn in lines of confusion.
“I’ll handle this, Cash. You go wait outside and keep an eye out.”
“No. I’m in this too. Ain’t no way—”
“I said, get out!” Uncle Buddy drew up his fists, then dropped them to his sides, regaining his composure with effort. “I’ll take care of everything,” he insisted.
With a final glare, Cash stomped out of the cabin, slamming the door behind him.
“Thank you,” I gushed. With Cash gone, I figured my odds for getting out of this alive had just improved.
Uncle Buddy paced the room, not even glancing my way. His silence began to unnerve me.
“Like I said, I’ll keep quiet.” I scramble
d for more reasons to sound believable. “I-I know how much Mimi and Zach depend on you. And they need me too. We’re family. For their sakes, let’s forget this whole thing happened.”
“I never wanted to kill Deacon and his mother,” Uncle Buddy began.
His tone was casual. We could have been discussing accounting, for all the emotion he showed in that brutal admission of guilt.
“I went there that day to talk some sense into Louis. Make him agree to stop investigating Ray Strickland’s claims against me.”
“You mean Raymond guessed about the illegal adoption?” I asked, my mind racing. The scattered murders, occurring over nearly thirty years, were finally forming a terrifying pattern, one with Uncle Buddy right at the rotten center. Had Jackson discovered Uncle Buddy’s secret depravity in stealing him from his biological mother? Had he at least guessed at the truth? If so, it would have been natural for him to confide in his friend Ray. I kept my eye on Cash as he leaned against his truck, glowering and puffing a cigarette.
“Ray started blackmailing me in prison.” Uncle Buddy’s face darkened to a murderous purple. “At first, it was chicken shit amounts. I mean, how much money do you really need in prison? You can only buy so many cigarettes and candy bars in the prison canteen.”
The pieces of the puzzle still did not perfectly fit the puzzle. “But he must have realized if you killed Jackson over the adoption, then you were the one that also framed him for his friend’s murder. That should have been worth lots of money.”
Uncle Buddy shook his head. “That’s not what he had on me.”
“What else did you do?” My mind went to a dark place. Was Uncle Buddy a serial killer with dozens of victims strewn across South Alabama and beyond?
He shrugged as though what he was about to admit was of little consequence. “It was all about drugs, of course. Ray was a dealer, right? He and Jackson got a whiff of what was really going on in town.” Uncle Buddy waved a hand over the room. “I have over a dozen remote cabins here in the bayou. What better place to smuggle in drugs and divide up the merchandise?”
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