LURING

by Blake Pierce

  After all, he knew from plenty of experience that even good theories sometimes turned out to be wrong. Maybe this was a good opportunity for Riley to learn that valuable lesson.

  Besides, he felt sure that he still needed her help—maybe now more than ever.

  We’ll talk it over in the diner, he thought, getting out of the car.

  As Jake walked back toward the restaurant, a gray pickup truck roared away from the front entrance, narrowly missing him as it sped on down the street.

  Jake felt rattled and irritated.

  That guy needs to watch where he’s going, he thought.

  Jake walked on inside the diner and was mildly surprised to see that Riley wasn’t sitting at their table. For a moment, he guessed that she’d probably just gone to the restroom. Her purse was still there in the booth.

  But as he sat down again, he felt a tingle of worry.

  He called out to the bored-looking waitress, “Did you happen to notice where the young woman who was with me went?”

  The waitress squinted as she said, “Funny you should ask. She tore out of the diner in a hurry just a couple of minutes ago. I don’t know what it was about.”

  Jake felt a rising panic.

  He said, “Did you see where she went after she got outside?”

  “Sorry, I didn’t see anything,” the waitress said. “I had to go back to the kitchen.”

  Jake threw enough money onto the table to more than pay for their meals, then grabbed Riley’s purse and rushed outside. Now he saw something lying there on the ground. It was a notepad and pen that he’d seen Riley using.

  She’d gone away in that truck.

  And not voluntarily.

  Jake raced to the car, then sent gravel flying as he roared out of the parking lot, taking the direction he’d seen truck go.

  Before long the truck came into view up ahead. Jake had a quick decision to make. The borrowed car was equipped with a siren and a flashing light he could snap onto the roof.

  But did he dare use them?

  Jake’s imagination ran wild as he tried to guess Riley’s immediate danger.

  Did the driver have her unconscious or immobilized? Was he holding a weapon on her?

  Giving chase might result in a hostage situation.

  Or it might simply get Riley killed.

  Twilight had fallen. Jake switched off his headlights and dropped a fair distance behind the truck, hoping he could follow it unnoticed. He soon realized it would be no easy task. The road wound and curved through local farmlands up into higher mountain areas.

  *

  Riley found herself engulfed by darkness. She realized she was bound hand and foot, and lying on a hard vibrating surface. She was lying in a tangle of something metallic and painfully sharp.

  Barbed wire, she realized.

  Her mental fog began to lift, and she remembered being grabbed from behind and subdued with chloroform. By controlling her breathing, she guessed that she hadn’t inhaled enough to be out for very long. She was surely coming back to her senses much faster than his earlier victims.

  Her assailant probably had no idea that she was regaining consciousness.

  She felt a sharp bump, which sent her bouncing painfully among the spiky coils. She knew right then that she was in the shallow covered bed of the pickup truck. Her hands were bound behind her with what felt like duct tape.

  She twisted her hands about and realized that she was bound loosely and carelessly. Her assailant must have been in a hurry, which was hardly any surprise, given that he’d grabbed her right outside of a small town diner.

  It was fairly easy to twist her hands loose from the tape, then to bend over and undo the bindings on her feet. Meanwhile, the truck was bounding and lurching over an increasingly rough road.

  As the truck began to slow, Riley realized …

  I’ve got to get out of here.

  Now.

  She pounded against the hard covering above her, but it didn’t budge.

  Then she gave a sharp kick outward and felt a metallic surface rattle and budge and give just a little. It was the tailgate, and it didn’t seem to be shut quite tight. She kicked at it again and again, and the tailgate flew open just as the truck came to a complete stop. Then she rolled out of the truck bed and fell into a heap onto a hard surface.

  Dazed by the fall and still dizzy from the chloroform, Riley looked around. In the deepening twilight, she saw that she was lying on unpaved ground. All she could see nearby was a thicket of trees.

  Then she heard the truck door open.

  Without another moment’s thought, she scrambled unsteadily to her feet and began to run for her life.

  *

  As the sky grew darker, Jake found it harder to drive along the rough and increasingly narrow mountain road with his headlights off. But he still didn’t want to give himself away to whoever was driving the truck ahead of him …

  If he is still ahead of me.

  Jake felt a growing worry that the driver had made some turnoff that he had missed.

  He finally turned his lights on and drove faster, trying to catch up with the truck.

  Soon he was sure of it …

  He lost me.

  Jake stopped the car and managed to turn the vehicle around in the narrow road. Still keeping his lights on, he drove back the way he’d come.

  After about a quarter of a mile, he came across a turnoff he’d missed earlier—an unpaved length of road not unlike the drive that had led to the cabin where Riley’s father lived. The truck must have turned in there, and he thought it couldn’t be much farther ahead.

  Jake turned off his car lights again and drove more slowly along the overgrown road. When the parked truck finally came into view, Jake stopped his vehicle and jumped out.

  The bed of the truck was covered, but that the tailgate was hanging open. The driver’s door hung open, but he saw no sign of either Riley or the driver. Off to one side was a peculiar, ramshackle farmhouse. The main part of the house was built from logs, and Jake guessed that it was maybe a century old. Other rooms seem to have been carelessly added to the place over the years. Jake wondered whether the house was abandoned. He could see no lights on inside.

  He could see nothing but trees on the other side of the parking area. He still saw no sign of any person, but he knew that a killer could be watching or even aiming a gun at him from either direction.

  Leaving his own gun holstered, Jake peered into the open tailgate of the truck.

  He was alarmed to see coils of barbed lying in the truck bed, and a couple of patches of torn clothing clinging to the barbs.

  Riley was here, Jake realized.

  But where was she now?

  And how could he possibly find her?

  *

  Riley staggered along a path through the woods, moving away from the truck as fast as she could. Branches whipped at her as she charged on, heedless of the stinging pain they caused her.

  I’ve got to get away, she kept thinking.

  But where was she going?

  Where did this path lead? The light was very dim now and the area was completely unfamiliar to her.

  Could she possibly make her way to a highway or a house, and safety?

  She pulled up short when she nearly ran into a large object that seemed to be suspended in midair right in front of her. Whatever the bulky thing was, it was draped in thick layers of kudzu.

  As she tried to make her way around it, she saw that the thing was actually hanging from a tree branch. Weathered chains showed through the twining kudzu.

  This was no natural object. Somebody had put it here.

  She stood very still, but couldn’t hear the sound of anyone following her.

  She tugged at the kudzu, peeling away wide leaves until she felt a something sharp cutting her fingertips.

  Barbed wire, she realized.

  Her curiosity mounting now, she pulled away another handful of kudzu.

  She could see something whi
te beneath the stubborn vegetation.

  A clump of kudzu fell away into her hands.

  Inches from her own face, a human skull leered mockingly at her from among the clusters of barbed wire.

  Riley let out a scream of terror as she stumbled clumsily backwards.

  Then she felt a hard blow behind her knees, and she collapsed onto her back on the ground.

  She looked up and saw her captor’s scarred face staring down at her.

  His horrible grin resembled that of the skull.

  “I see you’ve discovered Father,” he said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  Jake pulled out his flashlight and searched around the parked truck. He saw no clue to which direction Riley or the man who had taken her might have gone. He was on the verge of heading for the silent ramshackle farmhouse to see if anybody was inside when he heard a blood-curdling scream from some distance away.

  The scream had come from the woods. He whirled and ran in that direction.

  “Riley!” he yelled aloud, but there was no answer.

  With his flashlight, Jake quickly found a beaten-down path. She must have gone this way. He charged down the path himself until his flashlight fell upon two struggling figures about 20 feet or so ahead.

  He saw that Riley and a man were wrestling together on the ground. As Jake rushed toward them, he saw Riley pull loose from the man, draw back her fist, and strike a powerful blow to his stomach.

  The man let out a sharp, groaning gasp and rolled away from her. Then he saw Jake, and scrambled to his feet. He whirled and disappeared into the pathless brush.

  Then Riley was also on her feet, and seemed about to follow him.

  Jake yelled, “Riley, wait!”

  Riley turned and stared into the flashlight beam.

  “Jake?” she asked, looking as if she didn’t know whether to fight or flee.

  “Yeah,” he replied, reaching the spot where she stood. He thought she looked shaky on her feet, but at least she seemed to be unharmed.

  Jake raised his flashlight, and the beam fell upon a grotesque shape hanging from a tree branch. In it was bundled a human skeleton, its bones long ago stripped clean of flesh, its skull staring straight at him. The ghastly specter stopped Jake in his tracks for a split second.

  But he knew he didn’t have time to make sense of this new horror.

  He drew his weapon.

  “I’m going after him,” Jake cried.

  Riley nodded.

  Gripping his gun in one hand and his flashlight in the other, Jake rushed headlong into the brush, freshly trampled down by the man who had just fled this way.

  *

  Riley tore along just a few feet behind Jake until they emerged into a clearing facing a hillside. She watched as the flashlight beam searched around until it fell upon something—a wood-framed doorway cut into the side of the hill, with a rough wooden door standing wide open.

  Remembering scenes from her own rural childhood, Riley realized what the place was …

  A root cellar.

  “He must be in there,” Jake whispered, glancing back at Riley.

  Riley moved up and stood beside him.

  “This is probably the only entrance,” she said. “We might have him trapped in there.”

  Jake tried to probe the interior with his flashlight beam, but at this distance, the light failed to cut through the darkness inside.

  Jake called out …

  “Come out of there with your hands up.”

  Jake’s voice was answered by a bright flash and a deafening blast from inside the root cellar. Riley heard the air whistle nearby as the gunshot barely missed them. Reflexively, Jake and Riley both ducked back among some trees.

  “Damn,” Jake growled under his breath. “He’s got us at a disadvantage.”

  Riley realized that Jake was right. If they came out into the open, the man would be able to see them in the rising moonlight. But he could stay invisible to them.

  As she and Jake crouched in momentary decision, the sound of the gunshot echoed in Riley’s mind.

  She recognized the sound well from her own days hunting with her father.

  It was the blast of a shotgun—possibly the same sort of stacked-barrel shotgun her father owned.

  If she was right, the man had just one shot left.

  She looked around until she spotted a dead, fallen tree branch.

  She picked it up and threw it out into the open, where she and Jake had been standing just a moment before.

  It fell to the ground with a noisy crunch, and sure enough, another shotgun blast instantly broke through the air, shattering the surface of the tree branch.

  Grabbing Crivaro by the arm, Riley barked at him …

  “Let’s go. Now.”

  Crivaro nodded. Still gripping his flashlight in one hand and his gun in the other, he rushed ahead of her toward the open doorway.

  Riley followed him inside, but at first the root cellar seemed dark and empty.

  The jittery beam of Crivaro’s flashlight searched around the small room. Then, in a sudden violent movement, the man emerged from a shadow and struck Crivaro’s gun hand with a loose board.

  The gun flew out of Crivaro’s hand.

  Riley heard a sharp, familiar, metallic click.

  Crivaro’s flashlight beam swung in that direction and landed on the man again. Riley realized he had reloaded and cocked his shotgun, which was now pointed directly at Crivaro.

  Adrenalin rushed through Riley’s body.

  She remembered again her father’s Krav Maga lesson …

  Grab the first object in reach.

  She clawed blindly at a shelf next to her and grabbed at the first thing her fingers touched—the smooth surface of a glass bottle. Without further thought she hurled it at the killer, striking him in the forehead.

  The man shrieked and staggered, and the bottle shattered on the floor.

  A pungently sweet odor filled the air.

  Crivaro grabbed Riley by the arm and said …

  “Chloroform!”

  Riley understood instantly. She and Crivaro had to get out of there.

  As they rushed out of the root cellar into the open air, Riley glanced back and saw their attacker collapsing.

  *

  The man clung to the dirt floor, which seemed to rock and tilt wildly underneath him. He remembered his experience making the chloroform, how he’d almost passed out from the fumes. And now the syrupy stuff was all over his face, clinging to him, stinging his eyes, its sickeningly sweet taste and odor getting into his nose and mouth.

  Despite his struggle stay conscious, he knew he was succumbing to the drug’s powerful effect.

  Then his surroundings became hazy and blurry and …

  He was 10 years old again, and he was struggling to free a pathetically mooing calf from the barbed wire that entangled her legs. The poor creature had stumbled into a cluster of the wire that had come loose from the fencepost.

  His father was standing nearby shouting in that hard, crackling voice of his …

  “This is your damn fault, Phineas. I told you to keep that fence in better repair.”

  Phineas was crying now as he struggled to release one of the calf’s ankles from the wire.

  “Father, help me, please,” he wept.

  “You’re on your own,” his father said. “I’m going to the house to get some bandages.”

  Phineas got the animal free just as his father returned from the house, a first aid kit in one hand and a roll of barbed wire in the other.

  Phineas wondered …

  What is he going to do with the barbed wire?

  His father disinfected and bandaged the calf’s legs, then took Phineas forcibly by the arm and dragged him across the meadow to the root cellar. He pushed Phineas through the door and onto the dirt floor and yelled …

  “Stay put while I teach you how it feels.”

  Phineas was still a skinny boy, not nearly strong enough to fight his fathe
r, who wrapped the wire around his body, twisting it in all directions, pulling it so that it tore into his flesh. Phineas tried to struggle, but had to give it up, because it only caused him more pain.

  “See how it feels,” his father kept saying again and again.

  At last his father had him bound and unable to move, his face and arms pierced by countless agonizing barbs.

  “See how it feels,” his father said again.

  Then he went outside and shut the door, leaving Phineas in total darkness.

  Helpless and bleeding, Phineas murmured through his tears …

  “Someday, Father. Someday …”

  The darkness gripped him like a huge, malevolent hand, and soon he felt and thought nothing at all.

  Riley and Crivaro stood a safe distance from the open door that led into the root cellar. Crivaro kept his flashlight beam on the man lying unconscious on the floor. Riley could smell the chloroform fumes even from where they stood.

  “Let’s stay put until the air clears in there,” Crivaro said. “At least he’s not going anywhere.”

  About ten minutes passed. The man began writhing and groaning, and the air smelled fresher.

  “It must be safe now,” Crivaro said. “But put a handkerchief over your nose and mouth.”

  Riley did as she was told and followed Crivaro into the root cellar. The man seemed to be regaining consciousness as Crivaro put him into handcuffs, and he kept murmuring …

  “Now you’ll see how it feels, Father. Now you’ll see how it feels …”

  Riley locked gazes with Crivaro, and she knew that they were both thinking the same thing.

  That bundled-up skeleton at the end of the path was the man’s father …

  His first victim.

  Judging from the nakedness of those bones, it must have happened many years ago.

  Crivaro had set his flashlight on the floor in order to cuff the man. Riley picked up the light and looked around at the damp, gloomy room with its cinderblock walls, wooden shelves, and heavy beams to support the wooden ceiling.