by Dana Marton
He was almost off Taylor land by the time the radio crackled again.
“Ninety-seven cameras have reported.” Zak’s frustration came through in the tightness of his voice. “No sign of Kaylee or Jess. Over.”
Cold spread through Derek’s veins, despite the fact that he was sweating from his run. “Copy. Over.”
Derek reached another intersection of trails and stopped. He let his head drop back, stared up at the sky. Why hadn’t the cameras recorded their passage? Someone with a good eye could have picked up on a couple of the cameras and avoided them. Derek had seen a handful of them around during his walks. But no way in hell could anyone notice every single one, and avoid them all.
Unless . . .
Unless the kidnapper knew exactly where the cameras were because he was a Versquatcher.
He radioed Zak. “This is Derek. Did all the Versquatchers go to check their cameras? Over.”
“Almost. All but three. Marie is home with sick kids. Marjorie is visiting her mother out of state. Nobody could reach Principal Crane. But the rest of us are covering those cameras. Everybody has a camera buddy, for emergency situations. Over.”
Principal Crane.
Derek’s brain gave a loud ping. “Thanks. Over.”
Derek walked around in a tight circle. What did he know about Principal Crane? He knew that before Crane became principal, he used to be a teacher. He taught math and history. What else?
There’d been an amateur archaeology club in Taylorville years ago. Principal Crane had been its president. They got permits from the state and went around digging for early-settlement artifacts. Nearly everything in Taylorville’s minuscule town museum came from the club. Derek had written an article about them during his high school journalist days.
The archaeology club disbanded when the Park Service had shut down Silver Cave. The club had done most of their digging in there. Derek had suspected at the time that they had secret hopes for finding the silver.
He broke into a run, calling Zak on the radio at the same time. “It’s Derek. Get your people out of the woods. When you reach cell phone coverage, tell the sheriff that Principal Crane kidnapped Kaylee and Jess, and he’s holding them in Silver Cave. Out.”
Silver Cave couldn’t be more than a mile from where he was. He ran faster than he’d ever run in his life, ignoring the pain that shot up his leg with every step.
He found the cave’s door chained and padlocked. He shot that sucker off without hesitation.
After that shot, stealth wasn’t an option, so he shouted right in. “Kaylee? Jess?”
Nothing but the faint echo of his own voice came back to him. Derek pressed forward.
They are alive. They had to be alive. He knew firsthand that the bastard liked to play. Derek could only pray that the man hadn’t suddenly developed a taste for a quick kill.
“Jess? Kaylee?”
Nothing.
Derek’s dread grew as thick as the silence.
As he reached the first turn off, he saw the ATV. He pocketed the keys, then hurried forward. His boots slapped on the stones, and the circle of light from his flashlight bobbed around as he ran.
When he spotted a still shape on the ground a hundred feet ahead, his heart stopped. His breath stopped too when he recognized Kaylee’s high school hoodie and saw a dark stain on the ground under her head.
He wouldn’t allow himself to think that he was too late.
He swore out loud as he lurched forward, his fury filling the cave, his heart beating bam, bam, bam, punching against his sternum as if a professional boxing match was going on inside his chest.
Not Kaylee, dammit. Not this sweet kid. He fell to his knees next to her.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, honey.” He should have never written the book. He never should have tried to draw out the killer. For what? So he could play the Navy SEAL tough guy one last time? So he could atone for the past?
His heart broke right then and there.
He gathered her limp body in his arms. “Kaylee.”
She was still warm. Then her body stiffened, and she stirred.
Thank God. Derek gulped his first full breath since he’d spotted her. “What happened? Is Jess here?”
Kaylee blinked at him, confusion blurring her eyes.
He brushed her hair out of her face and rubbed some of the blood off her forehead, stared at the nasty gash that still seeped red.
“I tried to get out,” she mumbled.
“I think you ran into the rock wall in the dark and knocked yourself senseless.” He kept his gun hand free. “Where’s Jess? Where was she when you last saw her? Where’s Crane?”
Kaylee blinked in confusion? “What crane?”
He could explain later. “The guy. Is he with Jess? Where are they?”
Kaylee turned toward the depths of the cave. “She ran in. He went after her.”
“Can you stand?” Derek stood first, and then he helped her. “Are you OK?”
“Woozy.” She braced herself on his arm.
“Want to sit back down?”
She pulled away. “I’m fine.” But her face crumpled. “It’s my fault. If I hadn’t run out like a stupid little kid—he grabbed me on the loading dock. He put his hand over my mouth, and I couldn’t fight him off.”
“Not your fault.” Was she shaking? He couldn’t tell, dammit, with the flashlight. He reached for her. “I’m not going to leave you.”
“Go.” She pushed him, then blurted, as if she’d just now remembered, “He had a gun. Jess kicked it away from him.”
He panned the light around. “I don’t see it.”
The thought that Crane might have found the weapon before he ran after Jess left Derek sick with worry. Every instinct in his body pulled him forward.
“If you find it, can I have it?” Kaylee asked. “In case he somehow circles back.”
“It’s not here.” He hugged her tightly. He hated leaving Kaylee, but he had to go. Kaylee would be fine for another couple of minutes until the police got here. Jess might be fighting for her life right now. “Want me to leave my flashlight?”
She scoffed. “What am I? A baby? I’m not afraid of the dark. You need it more than I do. Go.”
Bravest damn kid he’d ever seen. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a Bic lighter. As basic emergency preparedness, he always had at least a lighter and a pocketknife on him.
“Here. I’ll be back for you,” he promised her. “Police are coming too. I had Zak call in the location.”
“I’ll be fine. Chill.”
Who was this cool under pressure at her age? The kid was going to be an FBI agent or an international superspy. God help the world. He squeezed her shoulder one last time before he turned to go after Jess. But then he paused to give the kid his best I-mean-this-shit look.
“Never, ever, not in a million years will you go to strangers, no matter what we have to do. You hear? I have the best lawyer coming tomorrow morning from New York. So on top of everything, don’t you be sitting here worrying about that.”
He hurried forward. This time, Jess didn’t leave a trail. Or did she?
He spotted blood on the cave wall.
“Was she hurt?” he shouted back. He was only in about another fifty feet. He panned the light. She couldn’t be too bad. No blood had dripped to the ground. But Derek’s heart pounded harder anyway.
“He shot at her. I didn’t think he got her,” Kaylee called after him.
He panned the light around once again, spotted a stained rain barrel first, then a rusty wood chipper.
The stark sight brought the thought home that Jess was up ahead somewhere with a killer.
Derek ran.
About two hundred feet in, he spotted a smudge of blood on the wall, as if Jess had braced herself for a second. Did Crane shoot Jess in the hand? She could be shot anywhere. She might press her hand against the wound. Then, for support or to catch herself from tripping on the loose rocks underfoot, she’d rea
ched out to the wall.
He watched for more dark spots but didn’t see any. He would have loved a sign when he reached the next Y in the path. Which way had she gone?
Derek picked left, the taller, more difficult chimney. With her stunt background, she would have an advantage there. Until she hit the metal grate on top. Because, let’s face it, either way she went, eventually she’d be trapped.
And Crane evidently still had his gun, damn the bastard.
Chapter Twenty-Four
THE GRATE THAT had looked rusted from the top a week ago appeared sturdy from below. And about a foot too high to reach. Jess had hoped to reach Tall Stack. She’d reached Short Stack instead. Didn’t matter. She was here now. She was going to have to make the best of it.
She shut off the flashlight that helped nothing at this stage except letting the man behind her know exactly where she was.
“I’m going to get you,” he said in a singsong voice in the dark, about a hundred feet behind her.
“No.” She let her voice ring loud and clear. “This time, I’m going to get you, you freaking loser.”
She shoved the flashlight into her underwear at her hip, then jumped for the grate and hung on, letting her body weight do the work.
Come on, you rusty piece of shit. Give!
Her body weight wasn’t enough.
She hung on with one hand and grabbed the flashlight with the other to beat at the single hinge. Come on. Come on. Come on. But the way the hinge was positioned, she couldn’t get in a straight hit, not with full force.
Her elbow burned and pulled where the bullet had skinned her. No doubt the open wound was filling with rust as it sifted down from above. She would worry about that later.
She shoved the long handle of the flashlight between the bars of the grate and used it as a lever. Pop. She pushed harder. Pop. The muscles burned in her arms. She pushed harder yet. Work, dammit!
Her breath grew more ragged. Blood pounded in her ears. She breathed in slower to keep herself calm, as she would on a stunt. She needed a clear head. And she needed to hear the man who was coming after her, so she’d know how close he was getting.
He was shuffling forward carefully, probably didn’t want to fall on his face.
After a few seconds, his footsteps stopped.
She couldn’t see him in the dark tunnel, but since a wedge of moonlight came in through the opening above, even with the flashlight off, he would be able to see where she was and what she was doing.
She jerked her body around to shake the bars.
The middle bar gave with a terrible, metallic creak. If she could pry it out, she might be able to squeeze through. She pulled back the flashlight and banged as hard as she could on that loose bar.
The banging wasn’t enough.
Then, out of nowhere, arms grabbed on to her waist.
In all the banging, she hadn’t heard him take the last few steps toward her.
He yanked hard, and she lost the flashlight. She needed both hands to hang on anyway. She tried to pull up her knees enough to kick him, but he was wrapped around her now, jerking hard to dislodge her, to bring her down. He was like a freaking octopus. Her underwear was ripping—the least of her worries under the circumstances.
With the last of her strength, Jess did a chin-up to the bars, pulling his entire body off the ground. They crashed to the ground the next second, the grate coming down on top of them, nearly knocking her out. Their combined weight had been enough to break the rusted hinge.
God, the damn hinge. The edge cut along her stomach, down to her waist. She pressed her hand against the sharp pain as she scrambled back from the man. OK, no gushing blood. She’d been hurt, but not disemboweled, as the throbbing agony suggested.
Her opponent maneuvered to roll her under him as she fought to get away in the narrow space. She swiped out to claw him and managed to rip off the mask, but she was between the moonlight and him and couldn’t make out enough of his face.
She pushed up and away. She couldn’t get back into the tunnel because he was blocking it, trying to push to his feet. So she leaped onto his shoulder, placed one foot there, another on the wall; then she propelled herself up and caught the opening, pulled herself up, and was free.
The cold wind hit her. She ran. She wanted to put some distance between them to give herself time to think. Because he would follow. He was tall and strong, and if she could pull herself up, so could he.
Snow clouds were drifting in, the moon disappearing, then appearing again. She glanced toward the throbbing pain at her waist. An eight-inch cut seeped blood onto her tattered, once-white panties.
Could be worse. She kept going. She’d worry about the cut later.
Jess got maybe sixty feet away when the man’s head popped out of the hole. Climbing out took him longer than it’d taken her. She stopped as he bent over to catch his breath. Then he straightened, and the moonlight hit his face.
Principal Crane?
Her mother’s boyfriend?
Disbelief hit Jess first, then a wave of fury. All these years she’d always thought the masked man had been a stranger. Because how could someone who knew her do what he had done to her? How could a man who’d been put in charge of kids be this evil? His entire job was to protect them!
The creepy fatherly attitude made sense suddenly. At school, he’d been forever going on about how he considered the students his kids. Gag.
Even as Jess’s mind raced to catch up, he lurched into a run on the uneven rocks to catch her. He knew she’d seen his face, knew he could not her let get away now.
She ran toward the far edge of the cliff. In the daylight, with safety equipment, she could have gone down without much trouble. In the dark . . . unlikely. With her hands tied? No chance at all.
Her heart pounding, she stopped again.
So did he, still catching his breath. They stared at each other, only thirty feet or so between them now.
“How could you?” she shouted at him. “You were supposed to be protecting your students. You are the high school principal.”
“And I was always better than the job. I’ve wasted my life at Taylorville High.”
She stared at him.
“I should be running VPA, but they wouldn’t take me. I wasn’t good enough.”
Vermont Preparatory Academy, a fancy prep school, as exclusive as you could get in the state.
Jess caught her breath. She’d gotten in on scholarship, her name and grades submitted by a supportive teacher, but she’d refused to go. If Derek wasn’t going, she wasn’t going, and that had been that. Crane would have known about it. Was that the connection? Was that why he’d picked her as his first victim?
“They thought I wasn’t smart enough?” He sneered. “I’m smarter than any of their stupid board members. I’m smart enough to get away with murder.”
He killed six women to prove himself?
They both stood about five feet from the cliff’s edge, thirty feet apart. But only one of them had a gun.
Jess’s heart raced as she ran through her options. She was not trapped on top of the cliff with an armed lunatic. She was not defenseless. Restate and reframe. Not an easy task. This wasn’t a movie shoot. Nothing had been carefully choreographed, measured, and tested. No wires. No safety harness.
Past the edge, the abyss waited. At the bottom of the abyss, rocks at the foot of the cliff, then the river, a darkly glinting ribbon.
If Jess jumped and fell on the rocks, she would die.
If she arched out far enough to fall in the river, she would drown. The rocks narrowed the river here, so the current was strong—no chance of her swimming out with her hands tied.
Even if, somehow, miraculously, she floated downriver toward the bend where she might wash ashore, she still wouldn’t make it. With all the snowmelt coming down from the mountains, the water had to be freezing. Hypothermia was a quick and efficient killer, and she was so chilled through already that she couldn’t stop shaking.
/>
Crane stood there watching her, unhurried. He knew he’d won. He pulled his gun from his waistband. “Now come back to me like a good girl.”
Restate and reframe.
Derek stood under the hundred-foot chimney, feeling like he was standing at the bottom of a well. The light from the flashlight barely reached to the iron grate on top, just enough to show that the grate was in place.
Jess had run to get out of the cave, but she hadn’t run this way. Jess and Crane had gone to the other chimney. Derek swore.
No time to go back.
He shoved his flashlight into his belt, next to his gun, and climbed. The chimney was four feet in diameter at its widest, about three feet in places where it narrowed. Any tighter and Derek’s shoulders wouldn’t fit through. As it was, the rocks scraped the shit out of him.
His left leg being stiff and weak didn’t help either. But he kept climbing, because not reaching Jess in time wasn’t an option.
When he reached the grate, he shook it. The metal bars held. So he moved back down the chimney a few feet and pulled out his gun, aimed at the lock.
Two shots and the grate crashed in. The weight of it broke the hinges. Damn thing had to be at least fifty pounds. The iron grate crashed on top of Derek sideways and knocked him down. He had to let go of the gun to grab for a handhold so he wouldn’t plummet. Shit.
He caught himself after a dozen feet or so of mad scrambling, dizzy from the hit on his head. His weapon was somewhere on the bottom of the hundred-foot shaft. He couldn’t climb back down for it, not when every second counted.
He climbed up instead. Then he climbed out, taking care not to slice himself on the sharp edge of metal at the opening. He saw them at once, on top of Short Stack—two dark shapes outlined in the moonlight. The two cliffs were an impossible thirty-foot jump away from each other.
Jess was nearly naked, utterly vulnerable. He couldn’t see if she was shivering, but she had to be close to hypothermic.