Thank You, Lord. The first hurdle was cleared—Chris was safe. Now she only had herself to worry about.
Her phone began to ring in her lap, and she glanced down at the glowing screen. Tommy probably just realized she was gone and was dialing back. She looked at Eugene for direction, but he simply turned away to lower the window. The next instant, he snatched the phone off her lap and tossed it from the car, effectively cutting her off from the rest of the world. Hopelessness washed over her. Even if she could escape, she couldn’t call for help.
She eased to a stop at an intersection outside of town, the scene of Chris’s accident the prior day. An old Chevy was parked on the other side of the road. She didn’t need to see the Georgia plate to know it was Eugene’s.
“Go straight.” He gave the command without the slightest hesitation. Evidently he had a plan.
She didn’t. Hers had ended the moment she left her driveway.
She had been so wrong. It had been easy to blame Dennis. He was right next door, he had access to a key and he was an artist. Blaming him kept her from facing the alternative, that it was Eugene leaving the notes, coming into her house, watching her as she slept.
But how... She shot a glance his direction. “How have you been getting in?”
“Your spare key.”
“Did Dennis—” No, that was impossible. Eugene didn’t know Dennis. But there wasn’t any other explanation. The Tylers had given her two keys. One stayed on her key ring, and the other was on her closet shelf, along with her spare car key. She would have known if someone had broken in and stolen the keys. Yet somehow Eugene had both.
An image flashed across her mind, a gaping hole, surrounded by jagged shards of glass. “You broke my family room window, didn’t you? It wasn’t a branch.”
He turned toward her. The darkness was too deep to see his face, but when he spoke, she would swear there was a smile hidden in the dull tone. “I used a rock, then dragged a branch under the window. I’ve gotten quite clever, you know.”
Still holding the gun in his right hand, he reached around with his left to move her hair back over her shoulder. Midway through an automatic recoil, she froze, then forced herself to sit still while his fingers kneaded the stiff muscles of her neck.
“You’re tense,” he observed. “Why are you tense?” He continued after the briefest pause, still massaging her neck. “You know, there’s nothing to be afraid of. I love you and only want what’s best for you.”
Maybe she could appeal to that love, however warped it was. “If you really love me, let me go home.”
“No!”
She flinched at the anger in his tone, desperately wishing she could take back the words she had just spoken. When he continued, some of the sharpness was gone, but what he said put a solid knot of fear in her stomach. “You can never go home. You belong to me now. Tonight will seal it. I’ve won you, and no one is going to come between us ever again.”
He fell silent, and she shifted uncomfortably in the seat. Her legs, stomach, chest—the whole front of her was on fire, throbbing from several deep scratches left by Smudge during his frantic escape from the car. Hopefully he didn’t go far. Maybe Chris had already recaptured him and put him safely inside.
She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. The soothing strains of her praise and worship CD filled the car, and she tried to draw strength from its message. How had she gotten it so wrong? He had fooled her. And finding the sketch pad had only thrown her further off track. Dennis was the artist. Not Eugene. In all the weeks of knowing Eugene, there was nothing to indicate he knew how to draw.
Her eyes widened as another image flashed into her mind. Eugene and his ever-present notebook. She never saw him without it. Now she knew what was inside. He was an artist. The final piece of the puzzle fell into place. The only thing she didn’t know was where he was taking her...and what he planned to do with her once they got there. He probably wouldn’t tell her, but she would ask.
“Where are we going?”
His answer was an icy northern wind, penetrating so deep it chilled her soul.
“Paradise. We’re going to paradise.”
* * *
Chris paced the family room, trying to do more praying than worrying, but he wasn’t successful. When he stepped from the house twenty minutes earlier, he felt as if he had just been beamed into the twilight zone. He had only been inside for a minute or two. But when he opened the door, Smudge flew past him into the house, a white streak, and Missy was gone.
For several moments, he stood on the porch in stunned disbelief. Then he kicked his befuddled brain into gear and dialed nine-one-one. He got Tommy, who promised to issue an APB and head right out. Then he set out to find BethAnn’s number, no easy task since he didn’t know Kevin’s last name. The number would be in Missy’s phone, but she had it with her. Fortunately, it was also in an address book he found in a kitchen drawer. He should have known she would have numbers stored somewhere besides her phone. Missy always had a backup plan.
He strode to the living room and flipped the switch. Soft light chased the shadows from the room. Missy’s blazer lay over the end of the couch, evidently deposited there after work and forgotten. He picked it up and buried his face in the soft fabric, breathing in the spicy-sweet aroma of her perfume.
What happened to her? She wouldn’t have left willingly. Someone forced his way into the car and gave her no other choice. And it wasn’t Dennis. He was in custody. The only other possibility sent a cold blade of fear slicing through him. He had worked too many cases like this. And they rarely ended well. How could he have let it happen? Please, God, he pleaded. She couldn’t end up just being another statistic.
He sank to his knees in front of the couch, her jacket clutched tightly in his fists. They had just found each other again. A bright, happy future was within their grasp. Adrianne robbed them of five years. Was Eugene going to rob them of the rest of their lives? Dear God, please bring her back to me.
White light flashed brightly through the living room window, and he sprang to his feet. Two vehicles moved up the driveway. One belonged to BethAnn and Kevin. But the other...no, that wasn’t Missy’s Honda. He could hear it now, some kind of a souped-up sports car. He opened the door as Alan jumped from a ’68 fastback Mustang, complete with chrome headers and jacked-up rear end.
“Is Melissa here?” Concern laced the young officer’s tone.
BethAnn and Kevin piled out of Kevin’s pickup truck, and the three of them hurried up the front walk.
“No, she’s disappeared.” Chris studied Alan for a moment. The officer knew something, something that upgraded the concern of a few moments ago to outright panic. “What’s going on? Why are you here?”
“I’m not even on duty,” Alan began. “I stopped by the station to talk to Tommy for a few minutes, and he had just gotten a match back on the prints. He called Melissa, and the call got dropped. When he called back, it went to voice mail. So I left him at the station and headed straight here.”
“What did you find out about the prints?” BethAnn asked.
“It wasn’t Dennis. The prints belong to a Eugene Holloman, aka Eugene Hornsby, aka Eugene Hopkins and a couple other aliases.”
The blood drained from BethAnn’s face. “Eugene Holmes?”
“That’s not one we know about, but that doesn’t mean anything. This guy changes names like you and I change socks.”
BethAnn began to wring her hands, which certainly didn’t do anything to calm his own frayed nerves. “It’s the same Eugene. I just know it.”
Chris sucked in a slow breath and tamped down the panic that had mounted with every word out of Alan’s mouth. The frantic former fiancé wanted to bury his head in the sand and not hear about the danger she was in. But the detective needed to learn every detail, anything that might help them solve
the case. He leveled a steady gaze on Alan and spoke with a calmness he didn’t feel. “Tell me what you know about this guy.”
“He’s got a long history of mental illness. He served in Iraq for four years, saw several of his buddies get blown away, started acting irrationally and eventually had to be discharged. He’s been on military disability ever since, which has been about six years now. Roughly six months after coming stateside, he started following this girl. The story is just about identical to Melissa’s, except he managed to get himself arrested a couple of times.”
“And what happened to the girl?”
“She left. Packed up and moved to another state. Anyway, about a year later he changed his name and did it again. When it happened a third time, the V.A. actually hospitalized him, treated him with psychotherapy and drugs. Once he seemed stable, they let him out, and he did all right for a few months. Then reports started coming in again from a lady who worked at a coffee shop, saying that one of her customers followed her home and wouldn’t leave her alone. Even though he had given a fictitious name, the prints matched this Eugene Holloman. Before they could pick him up, the girl disappeared.”
He leaned back against the closed front door, dread settling over him. “Did they ever find her?”
Alan’s gaze traveled to his feet, and he stuffed both hands into his pockets.
“Come on, man,” Chris prodded. “Tell me what you know.”
“They found her a couple days later. Some fishermen snagged her. But Eugene had an alibi, and they didn’t have enough evidence to convict him. His next victim also drowned. But it was ruled an accident. She lived on a lake, couldn’t swim, and a neighbor had seen her standing alone on the dock earlier that evening. Once again, Eugene had an alibi. And that’s the last anyone’s heard from him. Until now.”
Chris closed his eyes and clutched the doorjamb, one image forefront in his mind. The last sketch. Missy and her mystery man in waist-deep water.
“I’m going to the station to get my car,” Alan announced. “I’m putting myself on duty.”
He opened his eyes to see Alan already halfway down the walk, moving toward his Mustang at a half jog. “Start by checking the lakes.”
A sense of hopelessness washed over him. Eugene had Missy. There was no doubt. And just as surely as he knew who had taken her, he knew what he intended to do.
He planned to drown her.
EIGHTEEN
As Melissa neared Bartow, she racked her brain for a plan of escape. Calling nine-one-one was out of the question. Her phone lay discarded in some vacant field several miles back. And stopping at a red light in town and jumping from the car was a bad idea. Traffic was sparse, and she wasn’t likely to outrun a bullet.
That left only one option. It was risky, but it could work. Once she left Bartow, she would accelerate, then veer off the road and slam into a tree. Eugene hadn’t fastened his seat belt. Actually, she hadn’t, either. But she, at least, had the steering wheel.
“Turn up here.” Eugene’s command jarred her from her thoughts. A traffic light lay ahead, with a convenience store at the corner.
“Here?” The optimism she had been grasping for finally kicked in. He was taking her into a neighborhood. Compared to the miles of cow pastures and phosphate mines that lay past town, it almost felt safe. Thank You, Lord.
Several turns later, he instructed her to stop near the end of a loop. Upper-middle-class houses with well-manicured lawns lined the street. Two young boys played basketball in one of the driveways, their game illuminated by the glow of a floodlight mounted a few feet from the hoop.
“Do you think those boys will try to interfere with our plans?” He slowly rotated the gun.
Her heart fell with a sickening thud. Dear Lord, no, not the children.
He tucked the barrel of the pistol into the waistband of his pants and pulled his shirt down over it. “We’re going to get out of the car now, but I won’t let them interfere.”
The boys stopped their game to watch as she and Eugene stepped from the car and walked down the property line a few feet from where they stood. She held her breath, every muscle stiff with apprehension. Then the thud of the basketball against the concrete driveway and the thunk of hard rubber meeting the wooden backboard announced that the game had begun anew, and relief washed over her.
At the back of the two yards, a chain-link fence halted their progress. Eugene led her along its length until he found an opening large enough to push her through. After he scrambled over the top and dropped to the ground beside her, he held out his hand, palm up. She pretended not to notice.
“Melissa.” It wasn’t just her name; it was a reprimand. She was a disobedient child being scolded by an unhappy parent.
She ignored the rebuke. “What?”
“You know what.” The stern tone continued. “You’re mine now. I’ve won you, and I want to hold your hand.”
Meaty fingers intertwined with hers, sending the desire to jerk free screaming through her body. She tackled the urge, but the shudder that shook her shoulders ripped past that wall of control.
Eugene didn’t seem to notice. He began to stroll, holding her hand firmly in his. A canal hugged the edge of the grassy field where they walked, disappearing into a lake at each end. In the distance, lights sporadically dotted the landscape, solitary beacons too far away to be comforting. When Eugene led her toward a concrete bridge that spanned the narrow stream, she recognized their surroundings. They had entered Mary Holland Park from the back side.
“I’ve scoured the area the past couple of weeks, looking for the perfect place for our union. This is where fate led me. I hope you’re happy with it. My family has a long history here.”
Her gaze darted to his face. Had he been to the park before? It was possible. He had spent a summer in Fort Meade, only fifteen minutes away. A small flicker of hope glimmered in the darkness. A memory from his childhood might help connect him with reality.
“Have you been here before?”
“I came here several times the summer I stayed with my cousin.”
She searched for a common thread. “I didn’t come here as a child, but I had a picnic here with my friend BethAnn last weekend.”
He continued without acknowledging that she had spoken. “My uncle ruled this kingdom.”
Her heart fell. Distorted childhood memories were worthless. Whatever connections he once had with reality had long been severed. He motioned skyward. “A full moon makes hearts turn to love.”
And brings out the loonies. She lifted her gaze. He was right. The moon was full, a perfect sphere glowing bright white in a deep, rich sky. She had already noticed it. She just hadn’t decided whether it was going to be her friend or her foe.
Still looking heavenward, he moved away from the lake and stepped onto a narrow road. What was once asphalt had deteriorated to a crumbly mixture of sand and gravel.
“I told you we would be together someday. This is our night, Melissa. And it’s all taking place under the light of a full moon.” Warmth filled his tone. Delight laced with anticipation. He smiled down at her, but there was nothing comforting in the gesture. His upper lip curled back, and his teeth gleamed white in the moonlight. “I’m taking you to my castle now.”
“Castle?” She swallowed hard. He was caught in some fantasy world and had sucked her in with him. Whatever her role, she would play along. Eventually he would let down his guard, and she would be ready. “Where is your castle?”
“Right up there.”
Straight ahead, the road disappeared under a metal gate, beyond which lay the soccer field. Inside the gate, he stopped.
“We need to catch our breath. We don’t want to be winded for the procession.”
“Procession?”
He looked at her with raised eyebrows. “Surely someone of yo
ur station has walked in dozens of processions.”
She nodded slowly.
“Just follow my lead. You will walk with me up the path until we reach the top. There the people will witness our vows.”
“What path?” she asked, and immediately regretted it.
Eugene grabbed her roughly by the shoulders and leaned over, his face inches from her own. Cold fury ran just beneath the surface, reflected in his steel-gray eyes. “The path leading up the hill to my castle. You see it, so don’t try to tell me it’s not there.” His voice wasn’t raised, but the tightness of his grip silenced her. So did the hardness in his tone, like steel striking flint. He released her shoulders and wrapped one meaty hand around her upper arm. “Now, are you going to cooperate?”
She didn’t immediately respond. Her brain was stuck in neutral, and everything around her had an otherworldly feel. If this is a nightmare, please wake me up. How could he look at a flat, grassy field and see a hill with a path and a castle on top?
BethAnn’s fort. A favorite play place bulldozed to make way for the soccer fields. For BethAnn, it held fond memories of playing make-believe with her childhood friends. Eugene had memories, too. But his spilled into the present, blurring the line between fantasy and reality.
His hand tightened painfully. Throbbing, needlelike sensations zinged down her arm and into her fingers, reminding her that she had been asked a question. She nodded vigorously.
“Good. It’s time. Are you ready?”
Without waiting for an answer, he flexed his arm and lifted her hand to rest in the crook of his elbow. Then he took a step forward and stopped, another step and stopped. When they reached the center of the field, he turned to face her and grasped her hands. “Now we say our vows.”
Midnight Shadows (Love Inspired Suspense) Page 18