by Karen Rose
One escaped to the outside, ending fifty yards from the house. The other tunnel led to the existing basement, specifically to a room that had been originally used for storage when the house was built. His great-grandfather had hidden the basement access by yet another swinging bookshelf.
If an idea worked, his great-granddad had run with it. Not a bad approach, all in all.
The shelter was how Betty had left it, which was how Mitch’s mother had left it.
Minus the blood and brains, of course. Mitch had done the cleanup and it had not been pleasant. He remembered it every time he came down here. Given the room wasn’t much bigger than his prison cell had been, that wasn’t all that often. But each time his hate was renewed.
His mother had killed herself in this room. He still had the gun she used, eventually returned by the police. He’d hidden it where his younger brother couldn’t find it. Cole had enough bad memories of that time, because, at only five years old, Cole had found her.
Mitch had been twenty-one, stationed in Iraq. It had taken him a week to get home for her funeral. A week that the mess his mother left behind had remained, putrefying. The cops took the gun and the ME took the body, but nobody had cleaned.
Aunt Betty didn’t. To hire a company to clean the mess hadn’t occurred to her because she was in shock. Even if she hadn’t been, there’d been no money to pay anyone else. And she couldn’t have cleaned it herself – she was too old by then to climb down the ladder. Which was why she’d given Cole the lock combinations in the first place – their mother had been missing for four days and her fits of alcoholic depression down in the shelter had never lasted so long before.
So the cleanup had fallen to Mitch and the memory of that day was never far from his mind. For a long, long time Mitch hated his mother for being a drunk, for taking the easy way out, for leaving her body for her little boy to find. For me to clean.
He’d hated his stepfather for breaking her heart and driving her to suicide, for refusing to acknowledge Cole as his son. After having cheated on her for years, his mother’s husband had accused her of cheating.
It wasn’t true. Mitch knew his mother would never have done such a thing. But even if it were true, Cole was a child, undeserving of the cruelties heaped on him by the man Mitch’s mother had loved to distraction long after he’d cast her aside.
But Mitch had picked up, moved on. He’d had to – there was a small boy who’d needed him. He’d finished the last few months of his army tour and had come home to care for Cole, getting him counseling, trying to be both mother and father to the boy.
And through those horrible years, Mitch had learned a lot of things the hard way.
Like what he thought was hate for his mother was really grief and that time did heal. Eventually the grief of losing his mother had dulled, the hate softening to anger, then to sad disgust for a woman who’d loved a man who never wanted her.
He’d learned that sometimes people aren’t as bad as they seem – they could be worse. This was definitely true of his stepfather.
Mitch had returned home from Iraq to a horrible economy. In desperation, he’d accepted what was to have been a temp job from his stepfather. Mistake number one.
Mistake number two was learning the true nature of the family business and not running like hell the other way. Drugs are bad, Mitch, Aunt Betty would say with a wag of her finger. Just say no. Man, did he ever wish he had.
Because mistake number three had been the biggest one. Lured by the promise of a fast buck, Mitch had actually believed his stepfather would allow him to make a place for himself in the family drug empire. Mitch had considered the temp job a foot in the door. Then once he had a toehold, he’d find a way to take it all, leaving the bastard crying and alone.
He’d had time to reflect on the colossal stupidity of that third mistake. Three years, to be exact, as he’d served his sentence for distribution.
A delivery had gone bad and Mitch had been caught. He hadn’t been worried at the beginning. Employees – even ones without family connections – got the company’s legal support. But no attorney showed up for Mitch. Just the public defender. And me.
Mitch’s revenge had taken root the day he cleaned his mother’s blood and brain from this very room. It had taken form and substance as he’d listened to the jury declare him guilty of possession with intent to sell. It had become a fully fleshed out plan during the years he’d been incarcerated. His endgame – to see his stepfather suffer, excruciatingly. And to see him dead.
To jumpstart his plan he’d needed a little spending money. Fortunately prison was chock full of guys with connections. Mitch had landed a highly illegal, but highly lucrative job on the outside before he’d walked through the prison gates, a free man once again. But first he’d come home, to this house. He loved this house.
What had greeted his eye only served to harden him further. Betty had grown too old to properly care for a growing boy and Cole was thin, hungry, and dirty. Mitch had arranged for a neighbor to check on her and then taken the boy with him, settling in Florida to implement the first phase of his revenge. Building his nest egg.
But things had gone wrong once again and he’d had to run from the law to avoid another prison sentence. He’d come home once again. This time to his house. Mine. Because a week after he came home, Aunt Betty had died peacefully in her sleep.
In her nightstand drawer he’d found the will in which she’d left the house to him, God bless her. But bundled with Betty’s papers he’d also found his mother’s diary and when he’d read that, everything changed. Well, almost everything changed.
He still loved Cole and still hated his stepfather. That hadn’t changed.
But now he understood the pain his mother had endured. Mitch had always thought his stepfather was a player, screwing a different woman every night. What he learned by reading his mother’s diary was the opposite. His stepfather had one woman, all those years, one who was also married. He’d left Mitch’s mother every night for a woman who’d rubbed the affair in his mother’s face. Who’d laughed at her, considered her a joke.
Mitch now knew that woman’s name.
He sat down at the old desk and pulled the drawer out, revealing the leather-bound volume. Carefully sat it on the desk and opened it to the page he knew by heart. Read the words penned in his mother’s hand on an autumn night eight years before.
Tonight I followed him. I did. I put the baby in his car seat and I followed him. To the Motel 6 in Winchester, VA.
Motel 6? Really? I was so relieved. Just a prostitute, I thought. He’s not in love with someone else. And then her car pulled up. A Bentley. A Bentley in the lot of Motel 6. I would have laughed if I hadn’t been crying.
Because Daphne Elkhart got out of the car. He took her in his arms. Right there in the parking lot.
How do I compete with a woman like her? She’s beautiful. She’s rich. I can’t compete. But I can’t just give up without a fight. I’ll give her one more chance. I’ll go see her. I’ll ask her to leave my man alone. I’ll take Cole with me. She’ll see he has a child. That she’s wrecking a home. And if she doesn’t back away, I’ll tell her husband. He’ll fix her. He’ll make her behave. And if Travis won’t, his mother will. I’ll make someone listen if it kills me.
Mitch closed the diary, put it back in the drawer. The entry was dated two nights before she killed herself. There was one more entry, the following night. His mother had confronted Daphne, begged her to leave her husband alone. And Daphne had laughed at her.
The ME had placed time of death sometime the day after that last entry.
Knowing who had destroyed his mother’s life had rocked him soundly, making him hate his stepfather all the more. He and Daphne deserved each other. So he’d started to plan how he could get them both. All at once. If he could use them against each other? Even better.
Mitch had been setting things up for months. His stepfather’s endgame. Daphne’s endgame. The Millhouses taking the fal
l so that nobody suspected him. Things had finally started to cook last night. The next days would bring the payoff.
He walked to the only area of the shelter he’d changed, walling off two small rooms, lining them with extra insulation. They were three feet underground with concrete walls twelve inches thick, but cops had sophisticated equipment these days. He didn’t want to risk that anyone searching above might pick up a heat signature. They were to hold his stepfather and Daphne, once he had them both. But at the moment someone else inhabited one of the rooms.
Kimberly MacGregor looked up when he unlocked her door, hate in her dark eyes. He’d tied and gagged her, so she couldn’t speak, not with her mouth anyway. Her eyes expressed everything she couldn’t say. She hated his guts. Which he could live with.
She was sitting on the cot, back against the wall, shivering even though she was wrapped in a blanket.
‘Hi, Kimberly. Just wanted to see if you’re still alive.’ He removed the gag, then stepped back. He’d had to stab her thigh to keep her from running to her car the night before, but she’d got in a couple good kicks with the other leg. ‘Let it all out,’ he said.
‘Where is my sister?’
‘Safe. For now. But close enough that I could get to her before my temper dies down. So don’t make me angry, Kim.’
She glared, but toned it down. ‘You said you were going to talk to Ford, only talk!’
‘You wanted to believe it, because it made it easier for you to justify betraying him.’
She swallowed hard. ‘Is he alive?’
‘Last I checked.’ He studied her carefully. ‘Who was the cop?’
‘I don’t know.’ But she looked away briefly as she said it.
She’s lying. ‘You saw what I did to that cop last night. If you want to save your little sister from a similar fate, you’ll tell me what I want to know. Who was he?’
‘I don’t know his name, but I don’t think he was a cop. I think he was a bodyguard.’
‘Ford hired a bodyguard?’
‘His mother did. She was afraid for him. He didn’t know about the bodyguard.’
‘But you did?’ he asked silkily. ‘And you didn’t tell me?’
‘I didn’t know about him,’ she insisted, ‘until all of a sudden he was there and you tased him. His mother must have hired him without telling Ford.’
‘You gave me away,’ he said quietly. If he’d been a second slower, if he hadn’t been so well prepared, things would have ended very differently.
‘I didn’t mean to. I was surprised. Look, I got Ford to the alley when you told me to.’
‘Only because I took your sister. You got cold feet and nearly ruined my plans. I’m surprised and disappointed. I didn’t take you for a coward.’ He studied Kim’s face. ‘Or maybe it wasn’t fear. Maybe you’ve developed feelings for Ford Elkhart?’
Kim’s cheeks flushed a dull red. ‘No. Not like that. He’s . . . just a nice kid. I didn’t want him hurt.’
‘Better Ford than Pamela. You’re lucky I wasn’t caught. Then nobody would know where I stashed your sister and before long she’d run out of air. That would be bad.’
She glanced up at him, fear in her eyes. Now that’s what I’m talking about.
‘I did what you said. Let Pamela go. She’s just a kid. She didn’t do anything wrong.’
He re-tied the gag. ‘When did age or innocence ever matter? Technically, Ford didn’t do anything wrong, except trust you. If you’re nice and behave, I’ll let you see your sister later. If you cross me again, I’ll gut her and make you watch.’
He locked her door and checked the empty room that would soon belong to Daphne Montgomery. He hadn’t realized she was Daphne Elkhart until her son won some stupid horse jumping contest and they got written up in the paper.
Daphne wouldn’t like her new home. She didn’t like being underground. Can’t say that I blame her. He’d mounted a CD player on the wall. The CD was mostly a mix of white noise, but every so often a voice would say, ‘I’m back! Did you miss me?’
Thanks to his stepfather’s painstakingly kept records, Mitch knew exactly what those words meant to her. When he’d read her story, Mitch’s first inclination was to feel pity for the poor little mountain girl, kidnapped and terrorized. But then he remembered cleaning his mother’s blood and brains from this little room. He remembered his little brother’s nightmares, and all Mitch’s pity vaporized as if it had never been.
Daphne had a hard time as a kid. So damn what? So did I. So did Cole. The judge hadn’t cared about Mitch’s sad story when he’d gone on trial. As Daphne’s judge and jury, Mitch didn’t care either.
Chapter Four
Marston, West Virginia, Tuesday, December 3, 11.05 A.M.
Ford’s hands sprang free, his lungs heaving. Thank God. The box cutter had been damn dull. Rubbing his wrists over the blade had taken forever, but it was done. He pulled the box cutter from the logs where he’d wedged it. He sawed at the ropes around his ankles, rubbing his legs to get his blood circulating again, then ran a hand over his hair, unsurprised to find a bald spot where his scalp burned. What the hell? Gingerly he touched the sore spot on his head. At least it had stopped bleeding.
Call for help. But of course his cell phone was gone.
Thump. Thump.
Ford stilled. The sound came from close enough to rattle the window above his head. He rose, standing to one side of the glass so that he couldn’t be seen.
It was an old man, splitting logs. From the way he swung his axe, he looked to be in damn good shape. He was about sixty-five, maybe seventy.
He gathered up the wood he’d split and carried it into his house, a cabin with a front porch, complete with a rocking chair. Just when Ford had started to wonder if he had anything to do with his kidnapping, the old guy reappeared, a rifle over his shoulder.
Coming this way. He’ll have to come through that door. You’ll have one chance to overpower him. If you fail, you’re dead. So don’t fuck it up, Ford.
Ford searched the shed, looking for a weapon. The box cutter might work, but he’d have to get too close and the man had a gun. He needed something with more reach. The logs in the corner. He tested one, then another, until he found one that was longer than the rest. It was nowhere near Baseball bat length, but it would have to do.
Standing at one side of the door, he heard the creak of the rusty hinges. Wait . . . wait for it . . . Ford swung the log, smacking the man upside the head. The guy teetered, then went down on his knees. Don’t wuss out now. Finish it.
Ford hauled back and smacked him again. The man fell forward, his rifle sliding out of his grip. The old man pushed himself up on his hands and knees, reaching for his weapon. Ford hit him in the head a third time. This time the man didn’t get up.
Ford stood there, panting, staring down at the old man. Oh my God, I killed him.
So? He’s a sick fuck who would have killed you.
No, wait, he’s breathing. I didn’t kill him. Now what? Run. Ford grabbed the rifle and burst through the doorway, gasping at the cold air outside. Need a coat. You could die out here without a coat. He ran around the shed, toward the cabin. There was an old truck parked out front. Keys. Dammit. I should have taken his keys.
He ran into the cabin. There was a phone on the wall, but it was an old rotary style. ‘No way,’ he murmured. Would it even work anymore? He lifted the receiver – but heard nothing. The line was dead.
Turning slowly, he looked for the keys to the truck. His heart was pounding so hard it was all he could hear. No keys. Not okay. For a ridiculous moment he wished he’d run with a rougher crowd in high school. Then I might know how to hotwire an engine.
Gran would know. His mother’s mother knew how to do lots of things that would be useful in this situation. Wish I’d paid more attention during all those hiking trips. She’d tried to teach him survival skills, but he’d been too addicted to his GameBoy to listen.
He opened drawers, looking for keys, a kni
fe, anything. Hello. Boxes of ammo. This could come in handy. He pulled one out and frowned. Empty. They were all empty.
His back was to the open front door when he felt the floor tremble under his feet. He wheeled around to see the old man stagger through the doorway, an axe clutched in both hands. For a second they stared at each other before Ford remembered he still held the guy’s rifle. Not breaking eye contact, Ford lifted it to his shoulder.
Luckily I did pay attention to all Gran’s target shooting lessons. They’d given him the edge over all his friends, making him a living legend at Xbox Medal of Honor.
‘Where’s the girl?’ Ford asked quietly.
The old man hesitated, then shook his head. ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’ But there was a flicker of unease in his eyes.
Liar. ‘The girl who was with me last night. What have you done with her?’
Unease flashed to relief before settling into feigned confusion. ‘There wasn’t any girl. Just you.’
‘There was a girl. Where is she?’
‘You’re crazy,’ the old man said. He took a tentative step forward, then another.
Ford took one step back, then stopped himself. ‘No more. I will kill you if I have to.’
‘No you won’t.’ He took a third step, his confidence growing. ‘Give me the—’
The man was a yard away from grabbing the barrel of the rifle. Do it. Shoot him now. Ford prepared for the recoil and the ear-splitting blast, and squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened. No recoil. No blast. Ford cocked the lever, fired again. Nothing.
The gun wasn’t loaded. Ford wasn’t sure who was more surprised, himself or the old man. But the old man recovered quickly and charged, swinging the axe up as he’d done with the logs outside.