Threat of Danger

by Dana Marton

  Zak was on his phone already. “They’ll do anything for Kaylee,” he said while he waited for the other end to pick up. “On account of Chuck. Kaylee is like family. She was even offered to be the Sasquatch Princess in the spring club parade.”

  He made one call, then another, explaining everything twice, then hung up. “Now they’ll call the others. We have a call tree. We can have every member alerted under eight minutes. We run timed drills bimonthly.”

  “Do they all have radios?” Cell reception was spotty out in the middle of the sugar bush.

  Zak scoffed. “Do sasquatch shit in the woods?”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  THE ONLY THING anyone needed to know about walking through the Vermont woods in March in their underwear was: Don’t do it.

  Jess shivered as she stumbled forward in front of the masked man on the narrow ATV trail. As soon as she’d stepped into the woods, he’d had a gun pointed at her and commanded her to strip. She’d been freezing her ass off since.

  She didn’t care about the cold, though. All she cared about was finding Kaylee.

  The man followed her at a smart distance, around twenty feet or so. Too far for her to turn and lunge at him, but not so far that she could dart into the trees and get away from him before he could squeeze off a shot.

  “It’s nice to see you again,” he said, his black ski mask distorting his voice, the mouth hole sewn shut as before.

  “Can’t say the same,” Jess told him. “I have no weapon. I wasn’t hiding anything. You could have let me keep my clothes on.”

  “You know I prefer you naked.”

  Creepy.

  The key was to think creepy, not frightening. She needed to think that she was weirded out, not panicked. On the job, she never allowed herself to be afraid of a stunt. Instead of thinking, That’s too scary, she’d trained herself to think, That looks difficult, but I can do it, and it’ll be fun because I love a challenge.

  Restate and reframe. She plodded forward. This is difficult, but I can do it.

  At least the . . . Loser had let her put her boots back on after she’d undressed, if only so she wouldn’t slow him down, stumbling over frozen roots barefooted. Loser. She was determined to stop thinking of him as the kidnapper or the killer, or even the masked man. She wouldn’t give him power.

  “Where is Kaylee?” she asked, not for the first time.

  This time, he responded. “You’ll see her soon.”

  “You need to let her go when we get there. Having to pay attention to both of us just complicates things.” Had he not learned that the last time?

  She didn’t bring up how she and Derek had escaped before. She didn’t want to anger the guy. She didn’t want to bring things to a head until Kaylee was free.

  Since part of the reason the man wanted her naked was to humiliate her, to destroy her spirit by making her remember the three days of torture at his hands, she simply refused to give him that. She pretended that she was on a movie set. She’d spent the last decade in Hollywood. If the man behind her thought showing her skin would shake her up, he’d better think again.

  “Kaylee is a sweet girl,” he said.

  You’re a sweet girl.

  Oh God. He’d said that over and over in that horrid little camper. Nausea rolled through Jess, but after a moment, anger washed it away. The red-hot fury that filled her left room for nothing else.

  Jess wanted to scratch the bastard’s eyes out. Kaylee had better be all right. She’s probably OK for now. She hadn’t been gone long enough for the Loser to do anything truly evil.

  “How many have you taken?” More than the six Derek suspected? Any information could and would be used against him once this was over. Jess wanted to get as much out of him as she could.

  “Seven. I thought about stopping there. Seven is my favorite prime number. Hannah Wilson died well. She would have been a fitting capstone on a decade of adventure.” Even his pleased sigh sounded sick.

  “Then I saw that video of yours online,” he said. “I think it’s better this way. Kaylee will be number eight. And then you, number nine. You were number one too. There’s a nice symmetry to it: the first and the last. Nine is a good number. A group of nine of anything is called an ennead, did you know that? Three times three. Three is a prime number.”

  The man sounded seriously loopy. Who was he? If she could see his face, would she know him?

  She couldn’t look back to see if she’d recognize him by shape or movement. She had to pay attention to the path. Walking into bushes and branches naked was inadvisable. She wanted to have some skin left when this was all over.

  “The Chinese think nine is a lucky number.” His muffled voice was no help whatsoever with identification. “The way they pronounce it, nine sounds like their word for long lasting. The memories I’ve made with all of you girls will last me a long time. I like that.”

  “Or you could stick with seven,” she recommended. “As you said, it’s your favorite prime.”

  He chuckled behind the mask, as if appreciating her sense of humor. And Jess suddenly remembered that he’d been like that ten years ago too. He didn’t shout. Every threat had been softly spoken. He was almost . . . fatherly in his treatment of her in between assaults. The gentleman rapist/killer. Right.

  “So where is the camper this time?”

  “We’re going to Silver Cave.”

  Of course they were. A cursed cave that was unstable and deadly dangerous. Jess shuddered at the idea of Kaylee locked up in there, alone. God, she must be scared out of her mind.

  “If you let Kaylee go,” Jess told the man holding his gun on her, “I won’t fight you. I’ll let you do whatever you want to me. She hasn’t seen your face. She can’t tell anyone who you are.”

  “Without her, I wouldn’t have my ennead. I want that nine.”

  “Without her, you have your seven. Your favorite prime number. I’m one person. I only count once.”

  He followed her in silence. Jess hung on to the slim hope that he was thinking about letting Kaylee go. She marched forward on the ATV trail, as she’d been told, giving the man time to consider.

  She paid attention to her surroundings. This time, she wasn’t lost in the woods. She knew exactly where she was and where they were going.

  He thought he was forcing her to the cave.

  She couldn’t think that. The situation is what you think of it. Reframe your thoughts and you reframe the situation.

  The Loser wasn’t forcing her to the cave. Jess was getting the Loser to take her to the cave so she could save Kaylee, while allowing the Loser to think that he was in control.

  About half a mile into the woods, he had an ATV waiting at a junction of the many paths the sap harvesters used.

  “Stop.”

  She did.

  He pulled a plastic tie from his pocket. “Hands behind your back.”

  She obeyed, standing still while he tied her wrists.

  “On the ATV.”

  He got on behind her.

  As they flew down the trail, the crows followed them above. Jess had to hold on with her thighs since she couldn’t use her hands for support. Good thing she’d done plenty of horseback riding for various roles in the past. She had all the muscles she needed.

  She wasn’t worried about falling off. Her biggest problem was the cold and the bone-deep shivers that racked her body. If she’d been cold before, now, with the wind hitting her much harder, she was freezing.

  He rode hard on the maze of trails, then past Taylor land to Silver Cave’s main entrance at the backside of the cliffs.

  The iron gate was padlocked, the same as it’d been the last time she’d been back this way years ago. Worry sliced through Jess that he’d lied, that Kaylee wasn’t here, after all. But before Jess could ask, he pulled a key from his pocket. “Get off.”

  He opened the lock, shoved her inside, and pushed the ATV in. Then he looped the chain again and reached through the bars. In another second, he h
ad the padlock locked behind him.

  “Hands.”

  When she turned, he cut off the restraints and pocketed the remains.

  “Start pushing.”

  He had her push the heavy machine about fifty feet, past the first turn in the tunnel. She struggled to make the tires turn on the uneven rock floor, but at least the hard work warmed her up. She was no longer shivering.

  “Leave it. Hands.”

  She held out her hands in the front instead of to the back, hoping she’d get away with it.

  She did. He snapped another plastic tie around her wrists. “Keep walking.”

  He held his gun in his right hand, a flashlight in his left, showing Jess the way.

  Every once in a while, the flashlight illuminated suspicious dark stains on the stone—could be blood, could be anything. Had he killed any of his victims here? Goose bumps covered Jess’s skin all over again, and this time, they had nothing to do with the cold.

  “You are special to me, you know,” he said. “I can see I’ve taught you to be stronger. But I’ve learned from you too. The camper was a mistake. I barely sneaked it out of the woods without being seen. I was careful buying it, but still, what if the police found it and traced it back to me? But I’ve solved that problem.” He gave a pleased chuckle. “You can’t trace a cave.”

  Jess stumbled and sent some loose rocks rolling. The sound echoed through the passageway.

  “Help!” The cry came from deeper in.

  Jess’s heart lurched. “Kaylee?”

  “Jess? Oh God, Jess. Help, please! I’m in here.”

  Then they turned another corner, and the flashlight’s beam hit Kaylee, huddled on the stone floor, chained to a circle of iron in the cave wall. She squinted against the light, tears streaming down her smudged face. She scrambled forward on her hands and knees as far as the chain allowed.

  “Another thing I’ve learned from you,” the man told Jess. “I no longer use rope.”

  Kaylee shrank back at his voice, then cried harder when the man stepped away from Jess, and Kaylee could see past the flashlight, see that Jess too had been captured and was bound.

  For now.

  At that moment, Jess couldn’t even care. She was too busy giving thanks that Kaylee was still fully dressed. Thank God nothing bad happened to her. Thank God nothing bad happened.

  A dozen or so feet behind Kaylee, a plastic barrel stood next to the wall, maybe dark blue, difficult to tell in the dark. As the man moved around, the flashlight bobbed along. Jess couldn’t see much, but she could see that the barrel’s side was stained. It certainly stank, with a coppery, rotting, sweet odor that made her gag.

  Then the light bobbed again, and for a second Jess could see past the barrel. Her stomach heaved so hard she thought she was going to throw up on the spot. For a long moment, she couldn’t look away from the wood chipper, not even when the light moved on and the machine faded to a dark blob.

  The man nudged her toward the chains, but didn’t rush her. Instead, he panned the light around again and let her look her fill. He wanted to see her scared. He got off on his victims’ fear.

  Jess had been scared out of her mind ten years ago. She had screamed and begged. She’d given him a good show, everything he’d wanted. But he wasn’t going to get that from her again.

  She schooled her features as she turned back to him.

  He shoved her harder. “Over there.”

  At first Jess wasn’t sure what he meant to do with her; then she saw the second circle of iron and the attached chain.

  “I’m going to tie you up nice and tight this time. This time, you’ll be the watcher.” He chuckled, the sound oily and evil. “At first.”

  “No,” Jess said, calm and in control as she stepped between Kaylee and the man.

  Jess only wished she could see the surprise on the Loser’s face, but she couldn’t see past the flashlight. To remedy that, as the first order of business, she kicked the damn thing from his hand.

  The metal hit the rock a dozen feet away, the light pointing at them and illuminating them. He had the gun trained back on Jess, some kind of a snub-nosed revolver, a big step down in size from the hunting rifle he’d used the first time around.

  She sneered at him. “A woman’s weapon, huh? I thought about getting one for my mom for her purse.”

  “To the wall!”

  “The mask muffles your voice,” she said. “It kind of ruins the effect.”

  He shot at her.

  The sound was deafening in the cave. The bullet grazed her arm before it ricocheted off the rock behind her, not hitting him in the face, unfortunately.

  “Jess!” Kaylee screamed, not with pain, thank God, but only with fear. She didn’t sound like she was hit.

  “I’m fine.” The wound burned, but Jess had been burned on set before. She’d lost skin on set before. Lost blood. Had her shoulder dislocated, twice. More often than not, she’d continued her stunt so they didn’t have to retake the scene.

  “When you have bad aim,” she told the man, “it’s better to use a shotgun. Especially at this range.” And then she charged him, because she didn’t want him to squeeze off another shot and hit Kaylee by accident.

  Shoulder to the solar plexus, and the guy plowed into the rock behind him with a satisfyingly pained grunt. Jess’s head had been down, but now she brought it up, skull to the tip of his chin, snapping his head up. The back of his head bounced off the cave’s wall, and he slumped, sliding down to the ground.

  Jess kicked the gun away, then reached into his pocket, tossed the keys at Kaylee. “See if you can unlock yourself.”

  Where was his knife?

  In the other pocket. But he was recovering and shoved Jess back hard. Still, she had the knife in hand.

  She danced away as she opened it. She was shivering so hard, she fumbled with cutting the damn plastic tie around her wrists.

  He lunged after her.

  She dropped the knife. Dammit. Her fingers were stiff from the cold.

  He kept coming, and as she jumped back, he picked up the knife. “You get back here.”

  “I’d rather not.” She backed away fast, swooped down for the flashlight, then ran farther into the cave.

  The tunnel narrowed rapidly—no good place to stop and fight. She couldn’t swing her arms right since she was tied. The man had a knife. And she couldn’t even attempt another good roundhouse kick. She needed to get to a place where the passage widened again and she had room for maneuvering.

  Except, no matter how far she ran, the passage stayed tight, to the point of being claustrophobic. She hadn’t been here for so long, she hadn’t remembered this part.

  Even having the light was a double-edged sword. She wouldn’t trip on the rocks or fall into a crevice, but the man could easily follow her. Yet her having the light was better than him having it.

  Jess’s mind raced. Get ahead of him. Find a spot where the tunnel splits. Turn the light off.

  If he couldn’t see her, having the knife might not be that big of an advantage to him. And she wasn’t completely unarmed. The flashlight was one of the weighted metal ones, heavy enough to be used for a weapon.

  Her biggest problem was the damn plastic tie. Without the use of her hands, balancing her body was more difficult, slowing her down. Yet how many stunts had she done tied up? At least restraints didn’t scare her, didn’t make her panic.

  Nor was she overly concerned that the man would stop chasing her and go back to Kaylee. Jess was the primary target. Kaylee had been just bait.

  Up, up, up Jess went, following the tunnel’s slow climb. The passageway forked from time to time, twisting and narrowing even farther. Some of the branches were supposed to be unstable. The ceiling could come down from vibrations as minor as her shoes slapping on the ground. Relentlessly she shut out all thoughts of falling ceilings. She had to keep pushing forward. Even when, at times, the passage turned so steep she had to climb on her hands and knees.

  Then
she finally came to a wide fork she recognized. One of the passages led to the top of Short Stack, the other to Tall Stack. She had no idea which was which. She’d only been this deep inside once, with friends, on a dare, and they’d turned around right here.

  Tall Stack was the one with the long chimney, a straight vertical opening to the top of the cliff, so probably the more difficult passage out. Maybe she could get farther ahead of the man there. She was a good climber.

  Left or right?

  She had no idea.

  Jess ran right and hoped she hadn’t made a mistake.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  THE WOODS WERE growing dark as Derek ran through them, receiving regular updates on the radio from Zak. His bad leg was killing him. The change of weather got to him like nothing else. The warm spell the day before, followed by the cold snap today, had activated the demons of hell in his nerve endings.

  “Thirty-nine of the hundred and six cameras have reported in,” Zak said. “No images that could be interpreted as either Kaylee, Jess, or the kidnapper. Over.”

  “Thanks, Zak. Over.”

  Derek was trying to follow a deer trail he’d picked up in the woods, not far from Chuck’s place. Confirming that he was on the right track hadn’t taken long, even if visibility was less than optimal. Jess had left marks at regular intervals. She must have pretended to trip to kick over rocks. Here and there she slipped, dislodging the small branches and half-composted leaves that covered the ground.

  Her hints ended at an ATV trail used to gather maple sap. Here the tracking became more difficult. In the middle of maple season, the trails were heavily used. Some help from the squatch-cams would have been great.

  The trails bisected each other, looped, moved in psychedelic squiggles. The one good thing about them was that they weren’t made for speed, but for convenience to the trees. So even on an ATV, the kidnapper couldn’t be too far. Running at a good clip, Derek thought he was probably keeping pace.

  The radio crackled. “Fifty-one of one hundred and six cameras have reported in. No sign of them. Over.”

  “Thanks, Zak. Over.”

  Derek ran. He picked direction by instinct each time he turned down a new trail. The signs were there, even if not pronounced enough. His subconscious mind saw them and put them together—a broken branch here, a fresh indent in the frozen mud there. He let his instincts guide him.