Beneath the Ashes

by Sue Henry

  “Where?”

  “Oh, shit. She made me promise not to tell. Okay?”

  “Nope. Not okay. It’s important, Billy, and won’t go any farther. I’ll tell her that I made you tell. Now, where in the truck?”

  Billy looked down and kicked at the wooden floor with one boot, clearly unhappy with the situation.

  “Aw-w—she’s got a secret compartment in the back of the dog box. She keeps it there, so no one will steal it—her camera, too, and other stuff she doesn’t want people to find.”

  “She never leaves it lying around?”

  “No—never. She’s really careful with stuff like that.”

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  “Well, the truck’s gone, so I can’t check to be sure it’s safe. She probably has it with her. When she comes back, you tell her I was here, okay? And to call me right away.”

  “Yeah—okay.”

  There was nothing else that amounted to anything that could tell MacDonald when Jessie had left or where she had gone. There was no sign that she had made coffee or eaten breakfast, but she might have cleaned up afterward. He didn’t see the cut in the tent wall that was covered by the easy chair. Nothing seemed out of place or suspicious. She just wasn’t where she had said she would be. He left Billy frowning and unhappy at breaking his promise to Jessie about the compartment in her missing truck.

  Phil Becker was next on his list of people to contact.

  Maybe Phil had made a mistake about the time and place. It wouldn’t hurt to ask. Aside from that, Mac knew he had a full day ahead of him and could afford to wait until Jessie Arnold found her way home, as he assumed she eventually would.

  20

  Q

  THERE WERE NO LINES OF LIGHT WHEN JESSIE WOKE

  again—nothing but dark—but there were voices. At first she thought it was her imagination playing tricks with the wind she could hear murmuring to the trees outside the cabin. But slowly, the sound of people talking grew louder, came closer, until she knew it was no fantasy. Someone—and more than one someone—was

  returning to the cabin.

  Before she could hear the voices well enough to

  identify them or hear what they were saying, they stopped talking, and there was only the sound of approaching feet crunching on crusted snow. Someone stomped on the step outside to clear the ice from their boots, the door opened, and two figures stepped in, one aiming a flashlight beam directly into her eyes, resulting in a swift stab of pain that made her wince and close them tightly. For a long minute, she could see red behind her lids, as the light shone on her face.

  When it finally slid away to one side, she carefully opened her eyes just a little, but the bright beam came 234

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  immediately back, blinding her. This time it re-

  mained.

  A whisper—a thump—and someone she could not

  see because of the light walked across the room and knelt beside her. With a quick, rough gesture, the tape was ripped away from her face, pulling the fabric gag in her mouth with it. All she saw were anonymous hands, mostly in silhouette, bare of mittens or gloves, with no identifying marks. But there was a scent that caught her attention, something familiar and pleasant.

  Before she could remember what it was or speak, there was a soft gurgle of liquid being poured from a bottle, and the flowery scent was overpowered as a cloth with the sharp smell she remembered from the night before came down over her face. Again Jessie struggled, unable to move her arms but shaking her head back and forth, trying to avoid what she knew was happening, but everything—her captors, the cabin, even the flashlight beam—swam dizzily and faded into black again.

  When she came slowly back to consciousness it was still dark. She lay very still on her back as her awareness slowly sharpened; she licked her lips and found the gag had not been replaced and she could breathe without fear of choking. Her head ached with a sickening intensity. She felt nauseous and cold—so cold.

  Had they taken away the sleeping bag that had kept her warm and left her to freeze after all?

  Abruptly she realized that the tape that had constricted her shoulders, waist, and thighs was gone, and her arms and legs were free of restraints. She could move.

  Weak, head pulsing pain, she sat up, knowing she

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  was about to be sick. Assuming she was still on the floor, she rolled over to get up and fell off the edge of whatever she had been lying on to a wood surface below, bumping her head, bruising a shoulder, and hitting a knee in the process. For a stunned moment, she lay still and groaned. Where was she?

  At the crash and thump of her fall something moved outside and unexpectedly, abruptly there was light through canvas walls that allowed her to see her surroundings. Shocked and confused, despite her aching head, she sat up, astounded. She was back in the tent—

  had fallen from her own bed onto the floor and felt her warm quilt which must have slid off sometime earlier—the reason she’d been cold.

  A dog barked. Tank, who almost never barked.

  Something was wrong.

  A quick glance around the dimly lit canvas room

  told her she was alone. She scrambled to her feet and staggered across to a dishpan, into which she retched.

  Gasping and clinging to a shelf, it seemed that her whole being was one huge ache. She was still dressed in the socks, overlarge T-shirt, and leggings that she had worn to bed. Everything looked the same around her, as it had when she had gone to sleep.

  Knocking several things off the shelf onto the floor, she located a bottle of aspirin, gulped down three, and rinsed her mouth with water from a bottle found in one of the ice chests Hank had left her, then splashed some on her face and rubbed her eyes.

  Trying to concentrate was hard with the pain in her head, but she knew she had to check on her dogs, so she returned to the bed and took her .44 from under it

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  before walking carefully to the door. It was locked, as she had left it. Stepping into her boots that stood there ready, she released the lock, opened it, and went out onto the welcome mat, into the familiar glow of the yard light.

  Most of the dogs were where they should be, curled up and sleeping in their boxes. A few were awake and outside, but they looked normal and okay. Pete woofed softly to her from where he lay, looking out the door of his box. Tank was standing at the end of his tether, as close to the tent as he could get. At the sight of her, his tail began to wag and he strained against the tether.

  “Hey, you okay, buddy?”

  Jessie knelt beside him, her knees in a patch of cold snow, and wrapped her arms around his neck.

  “Did I dream all that? Am I sick with something?”

  Laying the handgun on the ground, she clung for a moment to his warmth and felt him lick her ear.

  “I don’t understand. Did you see anyone? It doesn’t make sense.”

  It didn’t. Could she have had a fever in her sleep—

  nightmare hallucinations? No, dammit. Everything told her it had been real—that someone had taken her from her own bed and out to the cabin in the Little Peters Hills. Who? Why? And, most confusing and un-nerving, why had they put her back in her tent, as if she had never been away? Maybe she was mistaken and

  had dreamed it all.

  The ache in her head had lessened slightly, but still she felt wobbly and befuddled, unable to remember much but shadows and darkness, or sort it out.

  Getting back to her feet, she released Tank and took

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  him with her back into the tent, locking the door behind them and turning on the lights. Carefully, she looked around again. It all looked familiar and untouched. She gave up and sank into a chair, elbows on knees, holding her head in her hands. Tank sat down next to her, as if on guard.

  Emptied, her stomach had settled and sh
e was hungry, starving—as if she hadn’t eaten in days. She wanted badly to go back to bed, curl up where it would be warm, and let sleep cure her ills, but knew that hunger was contributing to the ache in her head and would keep her awake. Finding a box of crackers, she ate five or six and washed them down with milk. It wasn’t enough.

  She tore several slices of bacon from a pound in the ice chest, tossed them into a frying pan on the stove, and heard them start to sizzle as she located three eggs.

  As soon as the bacon was done, she broke the eggs in as well and scrambled them as they cooked. The smell of the food made her stomach lurch and growl in anticipation, but she forced herself to get out a plate and fork before sitting down at the table to eat what she had cooked, along with some buttered bread she had no patience to toast. Straight from the frying pan, the food was so hot the first bite burned her mouth, but she ignored it and wolfed the meal, sharing one piece of bacon with Tank, who took it politely. He had never left her side and sat watching her closely as she satisfied her hunger.

  As soon as she was finished, she put her .44 back under the bed, turned out the lights, crawled in under the quilt, which she pulled up tight around her. She

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  would figure it all out in the morning. It was too much for the middle of this night.

  She was almost instantly asleep.

  Tank came and lay down by the bed and his sleeping mistress, but, though he rested, muzzle on paws, it was a long time before he slept, and then lightly, aware of all that moved and breathed in the dark of the tent and yard.

  Billy arrived next morning, to find Jessie back at home and engaged in the normal process of feeding and caring for her kennel but doing it more slowly than usual, with an air of distraction.

  “Hi,” he said. Then more hesitantly, “Where’ve you been?”

  “Been?”

  “All day yesterday. Lucky I came by to feed the

  mutts.”

  Jessie grew very still and turned to look at him questioningly, her face pale, sweat breaking out on her upper lip.

  “What day is it?”

  He told her.

  She didn’t answer, but walked off across the yard to slump down on the bench by the tent door so quickly that it looked as if her knees had given out.

  Billy followed, concerned at her unusual behavior.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  She was gasping for air. Without warning, she

  leaned over and threw up on the ground by the bench.

  “Are you sick, Jessie? Shall I call somebody?”

  She muttered something he couldn’t hear.

  “What?”

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  “Thought I dreamed it,” she repeated and paused before going on, trying to catch her breath. “Thought I was sick in the night. But it was real, wasn’t it?”

  “What was real? Did something bad happen? What

  can I do?”

  “Call Becker,” she gasped. “Need to call Phil.”

  “You want me to?”

  “No—I will—can you bring me the phone?”

  The color was gradually coming back to her face, but she sat as if she’d been struck—limp and drained.

  Billy, half afraid to leave her, did as he had been asked, and retrieved the phone from inside the tent.

  Jessie held it for a minute or two, waiting until she was steadier and could speak without panting. She had just begun to dial the trooper’s number when they heard the sound of a vehicle on the drive and she hesitated, waiting to see who was coming, apprehension narrowing her eyes and tightening her mouth.

  The now-familiar Jeep Cherokee pulled up beside the tent and MacDonald stepped out, along with Becker. They walked across to her truck, examined the tires and talked for a moment, then, unsmiling, came toward the bench.

  Jessie could see from their expressions that, whatever the reason for their visit, it wasn’t going to be pleasant.

  “I was just calling you,” she said to Phil Becker, holding up the phone.

  “Where the hell have you been, Jessie?” he asked, frowning. “We were about to put out an APB.”

  “What’s wrong? Something’s happened, hasn’t it?

  Tell me.”

  “Inside,” MacDonald suggested. “We’ll talk in the tent.

  You take care of what needs to be done out here, Billy.”

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  “Sure.”

  But he stood and waited till the other three had disappeared through the door before he reluctantly went back to where Jessie had been portioning out food to her dogs.

  “What is it?” Jessie asked, the minute they were inside.

  MacDonald swung a folding chair up to the table

  and waved her into it. She sat on the edge and watched as he crossed the room to her bed, looked under it, and, carefully, with an evidence bag folded back over his hand like a mitten, removed her Smith & Wesson .44, examining it closely before pulling the bag down, seal-ing it, and holding it out toward her.

  “This gun been used recently?”

  “Not for almost a month.”

  “I’d say it’s been fired in the last day or two.”

  “Not by me.”

  He pulled the other folding chair up to the table and sat opposite her, laying his notebook on the flat surface, along with the gun he had just retrieved.

  “You want to tell us where you’ve been, Jessie?”

  She hesitated, already beginning to see just how the story of her abduction would sound. “I don’t know if I do.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s going to seem . . . really strange.”

  “Try us.”

  “Will you tell me why you want to know?”

  He shook his head. “Let’s do it my way. Where were you?”

  Jessie stared at him, trying to get some hint of what

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  was going on from the intent, waiting look of the faces of these two men. If she refused to tell them what had happened, they would probably assume the worst,

  whatever that was. Something serious had clearly brought them here and, for some reason she didn’t understand, they thought she was involved. Another fire?

  A death? What? Had Anne, or Tatum, done something new and horrible now?

  So far, she had trusted them—the only people she had felt weren’t lying to her in one way or another.

  Was that still true? It would seem that she had little choice but to follow her usual inclination to speak the truth, however it might appear to someone else. Deciding she had nothing to lose by giving them the facts, she took a deep breath and looked down at her hands in her lap for a moment before beginning her story.

  They felt like ice and, even by twisting them together, she couldn’t stop their shaking.

  Slowly, carefully, in a low, level voice that trembled a time or two, she related everything she could remember of the events of the last two nights. She described the dogs waking her, going back to bed, the ineffective struggle with whomever had drugged her, the terror of waking in the dark and her confinement, the dark and the light through the boarded-up window of the cabin, being drugged again, and, finally, waking to find herself back in the tent, cold, sick, and confused.

  “I tried to make myself believe it was nothing but a nightmare, but Billy showed up and wanted to know where I’d been all day yesterday. Then I had to admit it wasn’t my imagination. I was just calling you. Ask him. How did you know something had happened?”

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  MacDonald ignored her question and exchanged a

  long look with Becker, who had stopped pacing during her narrative to listen, and now dragged up an ice chest and sat down. There was a long silence, during which Jessie could hear Billy in the yard, talking to the dogs as he finished feeding and watering them.

  “Here, Smut, you slack
er, you. Move over, Bliss.

  Get your foot out of the water pan.”

  Becker moved restlessly and, finally, with a worried look, joined the conversation.

  “Jessie, do you realize how unbelievable that all sounds? You say someone got in here with the door locked but didn’t break in—caught you off guard, with a yard full of dogs to wake you up—hauled you seventy miles up the Parks Highway when there’re much closer places—held you captive but didn’t hurt you—

  kept you for part of two nights for no evident reason—

  brought you back and left you where they found you with the door locked again from the inside. And you haven’t a clue who or why?”

  “All I can tell you is what happened, Phil. I don’t know why. You think I don’t want to know that? I thought they meant to leave me out there. It still gives me the shakes.”

  She held out her hands so he could see.

  He shrugged, shook his head in frustration, and

  frowned at her as MacDonald broke in.

  “Look, Jessie. Work with us here. Let’s go over a few things. You—or somebody—must have driven

  somewhere. Your truck was gone while you were.”

  “I didn’t drive anywhere, Mac.”

  The narrowing of his eyes and the way he glanced at

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  Becker gave away his skepticism. “New tracks were found that seem to match the tread on your tires. We’ll have to let the lab work on that, but I can assure you that they weren’t found anywhere near the Trapper Creek area.”

  “Where then?”

  “In some mud out near the Mulligan trailer that

  burned.”

  “I told you—I’ve never been there, wherever it is. Is this some more of Tatum’s evidence to set me up?”

  “That’s pretty thin—and cold,” Becker told her, a hard tone in his voice. “We found Tatum there, too—

  shot in the head.”

  “Oh, God. Who would—”

  “You tell us. We think you just might know who.”

  She stared at him, astonished, pale as the canvas walls of the tent.

  “Phil, you can’t believe that I—”

  “Dammit, Jessie. I trusted you and—”

  “Hey,” MacDonald broke in sharply. “Simmer