Close to Home

by Lisa Jackson

  “Let me do it!” Jade shouted. “I’ll pretend to be sick. I can do it, I know I can.”

  “No. Stick to the plan,” Rosalie hissed.

  “Yeah, Jade, don’t screw things up.” Mary-Alice, of course.

  “But she can’t . . .” she stopped, not wanting to denigrate the girl, then thought, oh, to hell with Candice’s feelings. This was Jade’s life they were playing with! “She’s too wimpy. She’ll never be able to dupe them. I can make it work!”

  “He won’t believe you. He’ll expect a trick.” Rosalie was desperate. “You defied him earlier and he hit you, right? He won’t fall for it. What we’ve got going will work. So. Everyone. Stick to the plan.” Usually calm Rosalie was definitely losing it, her voice rising an octave. “We might not get the chance, but we have to try. No matter who walks through the door, Candice, you’re on!”

  Frustrated, Jade banged a fist against the wall and swore. “Okay, fine,” she said, then shut up and held tight to the horseshoe.

  “I’ll do it,” Candice, in her little Minnie Mouse voice, insisted.

  Jade closed her eyes. God help us.

  CHAPTER 38

  Hardy Jones, with his mop of shaggy, thin hair and perpetual sneer, was defiant, almost cocky, as he sat in the interrogation room. Bellisario didn’t like him. A worm, she thought, that’s what he is, A useless piece of human flesh in a beat-up jean jacket and worn Levis.

  She was tired, getting nowhere fast, and the clock on the wall said it was eleven-thirty. They’d been at this for hours.

  “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” he insisted, having taken the chair so recently vacated by Roger Anderson.

  “I’m talking about your life and your freedom,” Bellisario said succinctly. “Either you tell us what you know, where the girls are, or you’re going away for a long, long time.”

  “I don’t know nothing about any girls.” But there was a spark in his eye, as if he had something on her.

  “That’s not what Roger Anderson says.”

  “He’s a liar. Ex-con.”

  “So are you.”

  “But I never did nothin’ to no women. That’s his deal. Not mine.”

  Hardy had a point. And yet... “Well, then, let’s look at it this way,” she said calmly, hoping to somehow get the worm to turn. “It’s not what Dodds is saying either.”

  “Who?”

  “Joss Dodds. You know him.”

  “Nah.” Jones’s Adam’s apple wobbled, and a sweat began forming above his sideburns.

  “Sure you do. He’s the guy who lives in the mountains of Idaho, just across the border in the panhandle. Antigovernment type. Always gettin’ into trouble. You met him a couple of times down at The Cavern.” She was bluffing here, but pushed it a little, realizing that finally the smug grin on his grizzled face was slipping a bit. “We’re just waiting on the security tapes to confirm, but Dodds says he knows you.”

  “Lyin’ son of a bitch!” Jones leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his scrawny chest. “I’m tellin’ ya, I don’t know him. And I’m not into dealin’ guns, er ammo—” He shut up. Real quick.

  “I didn’t say he dealt weapons.”

  “You said he was antigovernment. What else do they do?”

  “A lot, Hardy. Most of it illegal,” she said, with a knowing smile. “And some of them, they’re not very nice to their women, always looking for someone who might want to be a servant. Or a slave.” She pushed a little harder, remembering something she’d read. “Or maybe even a wife. Or two.”

  Hardy Jones snorted. But Bellisario knew he was thinking, trying to figure a way out of this. In the past, he was quick to point fingers, to shuffle off blame.

  “Roger Anderson says he thinks you keep the girls nearby, that way you could scoop one up and take her to a hiding spot until you got the next. Now, it’s not your apartment, we checked, so I’m thinking it might be somewhere in the hills. A secluded spot. So if your captives yelled—”

  “I ain’t got no captives! No girls!”

  “No one could hear them.”

  The Adam’s apple was really rocking now, but Hardy had shut up, and that was the problem. She’d hit a nerve talking about hiding the girls nearby, but that didn’t help a lot. The town was small, but the area around Stewart’s Crossing was vast, a steep wilderness abutting the river.

  She figured there was another culprit involved. Jones wasn’t smart enough to be the brains of the operation, so it had to be someone a little slicker. Someone who knew the area. Someone girls might trust. Someone, she thought, that Rosalie Jamison, at the very least, had known. And if Bellisario was reading this right, Hardy was trying to pin the crime on his old cell mate, Roger Anderson.

  Was making Anderson the fall guy Hardy’s idea? She stared at him hard. Probably not. The man was a soldier, not a leader, and a weak soldier at that.

  Then who was behind it all?

  She thought about anyone close enough to Roger Anderson to know how to paint him as a criminal. Someone who knew him? Maybe someone he trusted and had hung out with? A few names sprang to mind, those who had visited Anderson, in particular. Was it possible that the man she was thinking of had visited not only Roger Anderson, but our boy Hardy Jones as well?

  She was about to spring the guy’s name on Hardy, when, as luck would have it, he saved her the trouble.

  “Look, I’ve got an alibi,” he said hurriedly, obviously trying to think on his feet and stumbling badly. “Anytime one of those girls was taken, you know I got an alibi. And . . . and if you don’t believe me, call Clark Valente, he’ll tell you. I was with him. He’ll tell you! I think he was goin’ to that party the dentist and his wife are throwin’. You know, Dr. Bigelow.”

  “Roger’s brother-in-law?” she asked, the thrum of knowing she’d hit on something valuable propelling her on. “You know, I think I will.” And fast, she silently added as she left the room.

  “Hey!” Hardy cried. “You can’t just leave me here!”

  Sure she could. She saw a deputy in the hallway. “Hold him,” she pointed to the interrogation room. “Don’t let him near a phone.” And then she was running.

  Sarah paced the living room. As tired as she was after enduring her ordeal in the tomb and then giving a statement to the police, she was too keyed up to sleep. A blanket wrapped around her, Clint stoking the fire, Gracie and the dogs huddled on the couch, Sarah was heartsick and anxious and wished to high heaven she knew what to do. She and Clint had talked, and she’d even told him about the Madonna statue and the damned ghost, but all the while, no matter what the conversation was, they thought about Jade, where she was, who she was with, and if . . . if . . . Oh, God, if she were still alive.

  “We’ll find her,” Clint said, but his words sounded hollow rather than reassuring.

  “How?”

  “The police. Bellisario.”

  She shook her head in despair.

  “FBI.”

  “We need to do something,” she said, and he nodded, feeling it too. She saw the restless energy in him, knew that he was staying calm for her. “Okay, I can’t stand this a second more.” She felt trapped in the house, as if the ancient walls were closing in. “I’m going to the roof.”

  “Why?”

  “Because these walls are closing in on me.”

  He glanced at his watch but didn’t tell her it was almost midnight. She knew. She knew every second that Jade had been missing. “I’ll come with you.”

  “Me too.” Gracie said, and for that, she was grateful. She didn’t want her youngest child out of her sight for an instant and was still blaming herself for letting Jade drive home on her own. That had been her mistake, one that Clint hadn’t called her on. He was too busy feeling guilty himself to blame her.

  Needing to get out, to breathe, to think and clear her mind, she headed for the stairs.

  As she climbed, she held onto the rail, but she didn’t falter. The knowledge that she now had, the truth
she’d heard from Roger Anderson, pushed her ever upward. She wanted to settle an old score, one she had with her father. She’d step out onto that widow’s walk and never again fear the darkness and fear of that night so long ago. With Clint and Gracie at her heels, she climbed two flights and passed by the room on the third floor where her parents had slept and fought. Now she understood why. Not your parents, she reminded herself, your father and your grandmother.

  Her head ached from all she’d learned, all the secrets that Roger had kept. He’d sworn to protect his mother too, despite the fact that Arlene was a murderess. As she passed Theresa’s room, she forced herself not to look inside, not to even glance at the broken statuette or the shattered mirror. Through the attic door they filed, up the stairs and across the floor to the final staircase that curved upward through the cupola. She felt that same clamminess cover her skin, the same fear toy with her mind, but now she remembered the source of it, and, at least she could try to banish it forever.

  Once on the widow’s walk, she sucked in deep lungfuls of air. Finally the fog had lifted, the full moon without its shroud a bright disk casting a silvery glow over the land. The night was quiet, even the river hushed, no sounds of trains rolling on distant tracks or owls hooting in the surrounding woods.

  She shivered, and Clint draped a strong arm over her shoulders, holding her tight, while she wrapped her arms around her daughter’s slim frame, and Gracie leaned back against her, a family of three staring into the night and thinking of Jade.

  “We will find her,” Clint promised, leaning a comforting cheek against the top of her head.

  “God, I hope so.” She tried to feel secure, but as she stared to the east, upriver, she wondered if she’d ever see her daughter again.

  Clint squeezed her just as she caught the glimmer of something in the distance. Headlights, she realized, and started to look away. Until she saw more headlights, a string of them. Not a big deal, generally, but it seemed the vehicles were closer than they should be, inside the county road, snaking through the trees . . . where? In her mind’s eye she saw the plot map for the property, remembering landmarks, and the old logging road . . .

  “Clint?” she said, her insides tightening. “Why would anyone be going up to the old logging cabin?”

  “Don’t know,” he said, turning his attention in that direction.

  “All that’s up there is what?”

  “The cabin, if it still stands. And a stable, if I remember right.”

  “No one’s been up there in years,” she said. Until now, “Trespassers?”

  “Don’t know.” They looked at each other, and Clint said grimly, “Let’s find out.”

  The door of the stable banged open, and the lights snapped on.

  Here we go, Jade thought nervously.

  “Okay, girls. Tonight’s the night,” he announced.

  “Tonight?” Rosalie asked, sounding alarmed.

  So far he was alone. The little man who was his partner in crime, the one the others had talked about, wasn’t with him, or at least wasn’t in the barn. Maybe he was guarding the perimeter, Jade thought, and tucked the horseshoe under her sweatshirt.

  “Your new husbands are coming, and I want you all to behave,” their abductor told them.

  “Husbands?” Mary-Alice repeated.

  “That’s right, Princess. Husbands. Men who are looking for obedient wives.”

  “What?” Mary-Alice again. Horrified.

  Stop it, stick to the script! Jade thought. You’re the one who wanted to go along with depending on Candice,

  Shaken, Mary-Alice murmured, “Jesus, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “Do not use His name in vain!” He was snapping, his voice rising. “And yes, you’ll be obedient!”

  “You’re selling us to be wives?” Now Dana was chipping in, showing her disgust. “I think that’s illegal!” and then caught herself as she belatedly realized that everything the scumbag did was outside of the law.

  “But I thought it was tomorrow night.” Rosalie again.

  “Things have changed, so pull yourselves together.”

  Oh, shit!

  “Trust me, it will go better for all of you if you behave. The boys, they like a little fire, but they want wives who will serve them. The nicer you are to them, the more you do what they want, the better your lives will be.”

  No effin’ way, Jade thought, wishing she could kick this pervert in his balls just as she heard another engine, a second vehicle, fast approaching. They were coming—the men who planned to buy them. There was no more time. None!

  Come on, Candice, she silently thought. Now’s the time,

  But the girl in Lucky’s stall didn’t do anything.

  Jade was sweating, pacing, trying not to panic and failing badly. Didn’t the twit of a girl hear them? Dear God, there was a second engine and maybe a third.

  From down the line, Rosalie cleared her throat, an obvious attempt to signal Candice to get the ball rolling.

  Still nothing.

  Come on!

  Frantic, Jade decided she should just take the bull by the horns and pretend to be sick herself. Candice wasn’t coming through; she wasn’t doing anything. Jade opened her mouth, ready to moan, when she heard the first whimper, a soft, low moan.

  “Ooohhh.” Then coughing. “I—I think I’m going to be sick,” Candice groaned as if in agony, and she was so effective Jade was certain it wasn’t an act.

  The kidnapper said, “You’re fine.”

  “No . . . No . . . I’m so sorry,” she said in that little mouse of a voice. “Ooooh. Oh, God,” Candice said and began making retching noises so loud that Jade was sure she was losing the contents of her stomach.

  “Stop it!” he snarled, losing control.

  More retching, and then the sound of upchucking, liquid hitting the bottom of the pail.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Not now!” he declared furiously. Then, as if he heard the sound of the approaching vehicles, he added quickly, “Listen up, Lucky, you need to clean yourself up. You too . . . you other girls.”

  “Ooooohhhh.” Candice wasn’t giving up. Her moan was louder, reaching the rafters, and Jade held her breath, her teeth sinking into her lower lip.

  “Crap!” A lock clicked and a door squeaked open. “Okay, Lucky,” he said, angrily. “What’s the prob—”

  Bam!

  The sound of a pail cracking against a skull, and the slosh of liquid as the bucket spilled. He cried out at the same time frantic footsteps peppered the floor.

  “You little bitch!” he roared, but it sounded as if Candice had escaped.

  She dashed to the next stall and threw the bolt.

  Thud,

  Another hit, probably from Dana, hitting him with the stall door. He let out a strangled yell, but he kept coming, his heavy tread hard on the floorboards. Dana squealed, and then there was the sound of a scuffle, Dana screaming, him swearing. “Get back in there, cunt!” he cried, and the stall door slammed shut, the bolt thrown.

  Jade’s heart sank.

  Candice couldn’t fight him alone, and there were others who would join him soon! The engines were roaring. Close. So damned close. Oh, God.

  She heard the sound of tires crunching on gravel, men’s voices over the thrum of idling engines.

  “Let me out!” Dana yelled, locked up again and hurtling her body against the door to no avail.

  Damn it,

  “Come here, you,” he yelled, and Candice let out a frightened little mewl.

  No!

  Click! The dead bolt on her stall slipped.

  The door flew open.

  Under the overhead light, Candice—frightened, appearing about to pee her pants—took one look at Jade, then dashed away as Jade rushed into the open area of the stable.

  He was there. In a heartbeat. One huge hand caught her by the throat and lifted her off her feet. Damn! “Get back in there!” he ordered, his eyes wild, his face a vibrant shade of red. She didn’t
think twice, just reached into her blouse and yanked out the horseshoe, swinging it hard and slamming it against his skull.

  His legs wobbled, and he lost his grip as Candice opened another stall door. Rosalie burst out and wasted no time. As Jade struggled with the bastard and the sounds of more vehicles arriving reached her ears, Rosalie threw open the other doors, letting the girls into the common area. God, how many men were coming here to bid on them? Sick, sick, sick!

  “What’s goin’ on?” A man shouted from outside the building. “Valente!”

  Valente? Jade had heard the name before. Oh, shit was this jerk-face a relative? She struggled to get away from him, but though he was dazed, he flung himself at her as she scrambled to get free. She went down hard, her chin slamming against the floor. Pain exploded through her jaw, her skin splitting open again.

  Blood poured from the wound.

  She kicked at him again as he dragged her backward. Twisting around, she shook off his grip with several hard kicks and stumbled to her feet. He was up too, but staggering backward. She saw his phone, peeking out of the pocket of his slacks, and leaped at it, yanking it from his pocket just as Rosalie, from out of nowhere, sprang onto his back, one arm around his neck. He spun around, trying to knock her off, as Jade frantically dialed 911.

  “Help!” she cried as the operator came onto the line, and Rosalie, reaching around the bastard, swung hard and rammed the small weapon she had in her fist into the monster’s eye. Blood spurted. He yowled, a shriek of agony, and fell to his knees, while she clung to him like a burr. She pulled her bloody fist back, then jabbed it even harder into his eye socket. Again. His scream of pain was a bloodcurdling shriek that streaked to the heavens. Crazily he reeled, howling and trying to dislodge her, but Rosalie hung on with a vengeance.

  Boots rang outside. Men shouted at each other.

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Let’s get out of here!” The male voice was panicked. Gravel crunched. Engines roared to life. Too late!