by Rebecca York
“Yeah.”
She raised one shoulder. “We all do.”
“And what about now?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
Instead of focusing on a personal relationship, he asked, “What if you decide to trust me? Don’t you think we have a better chance of solving Angela’s murder if you do?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re still uncomfortable with that?”
“This place makes me uncomfortable,” she answered. “Ask me when we get safely out of here.”
“Safely?”
“A figure of speech.”
***
As the road made a sharp turn into the woods, Olivia felt the temperature drop and foliage close in around them. She could hear birds chirping, but the highway noises had become only a vague rumble in the background. She felt totally cut off from the real world. Up ahead she saw a structure through the leaves and tree trunks.
On the drive here, she’d been hoping that a bulldozer had come and mowed it down, but there it was, about the way she remembered it. She struggled for objectivity as they got closer, trying to see the place from Max’s point of view. The place was like a small house or cabin with weathered siding. It could have been something from a hundred years ago, except for the attached carport sticking out from the right side.
The exterior siding was made of boards, running vertically along the walls and held down by narrower strips of wood—a construction style that she knew was called board and batten.
There were two windows and a door in front, all of them with boards nailed across to keep them closed. Probably the building had once been painted dark brown, which she could see in a couple of protected places, like under the window frames, but most of the paint had faded and flaked off, giving the exterior a desolate look.
“This is it?” Max asked, his voice startling her.
“Yes,” she answered, hearing the tightness in her own voice.
Was that why he gave her a studied look? Did he realize that coming here was the worst thing she could imagine? Or was he just sorry he had to put her through something unpleasant?
She struggled to pretend that coming here was no big deal, but of course it was. Things had happened at this isolated cabin in the woods, things she had pushed out of her mind like a soldier slamming the door of a bomb shelter. Only now she felt like she was trapped inside.
Drawing in a deep breath, she let it out slowly.
“What?” Max asked.
“This place is disgusting,” she managed to say.
“Yeah.” He looked around at the trash scattered on the ground. There were beer bottles and soda cans, wrappers from candy and junk food, and…
Olivia followed his gaze, spotted a presumably used condom lying in the weeds at the edge of the carport and felt nausea rising in her throat
“I guess people are still coming up here to party,” Max said. He glanced around at the woods. “This is about how the area looked when you used to come here?”
Struggling for a response, she whispered, “Well, maybe the underbrush is a little thicker.”
He gestured toward the building. “Did you go inside?”
He had pitched his voice low, and she wondered if the place was getting to him, too. Did some evil magic cling to the atmosphere?
She wanted to wrap her arms around her shoulders, but she forced herself to keep her hands at her sides. She glanced at Max. His face was grim. Maybe he was reacting to the way the place looked now. She was reacting to memories she wasn’t going to share. Or was he picturing wild parties up here? Drunk kids doing God knows what because there were no adults around to stop them.
“We went in,” she said in a thin voice, thinking about turning and fleeing down the path. But if she did that, he’d question her, and she didn’t want to talk about what had happened here.
“You’ve seen it. Can we leave?” she whispered.
“Soon. You haven’t been back in ten years?”
“No. And I wouldn’t be here now if you hadn’t dragged me,” she said.
“Sorry.”
“Are you?” she couldn’t stop herself from saying.
“I’m trying to figure out who murdered Angela. And if something bad happened to her up here, then I want to understand as best I can.”
When she didn’t answer, he turned back to the building, looking at the closed-up windows and doors. “How did you get in? The guys took the boards off the door or a window to get inside?”
She sighed. “No. Around back, there was a place where the siding was loose. There’s no insulation, and we could just climb through.”
“Show me.”
She gave him a pleading look. “I want to leave.”
“I know. But I want to understand what happened here.”
“You can’t understand!” she almost shouted, before resignation settled in. “I suppose the sooner I show you, the sooner we can split.”
She stomped away toward the back of the house. Max caught up and was right behind her as she stepped to the rear of the cabin, glad to have an excuse to turn away from Max so that he couldn’t see her face. She wasn’t sure if she looked scared. Or would it be angry? But she didn’t want him to ask her what she was feeling. She wanted him to think that she was just reacting to someone else’s trauma, because her own trauma was something she had never really faced.
Once again as she knelt by the back corner of the cabin, she was hoping that everything had changed. What if someone had come along and repaired the break in the siding, and they wouldn’t be able to get in? But when she pulled on the section of the exterior wood, it lifted up from the side of the little building, and she could see darkness beyond.
Crouching, Max joined her at the opening. “What’s inside?”
She sighed, resigned to his plans. “It used to be a big open room, then somebody had the bright idea of tunneling into the ground at the back.”
“You mean making extra room inside?”
“Yes.”
“Did you go down there?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know about it?”
She had kept her responses to a minimum. Now she was forced to explain. “I saw the entrance. And Angela told me about it. There’s a room at the end of the tunnel—maybe like a bomb shelter. It was damp and dirty.”
“I’d like to see.”
She grabbed his arm. “No. Stay out of there.”
“Why?”
She gulped. “That’s where Angela woke up—after, you know.”
“Okay.”
“Please, can’t we leave? You’re not going to find anything after ten years.”
***
Max could see the tension in Olivia’s features and knew she wanted to get out of this place, but now that they were here, he needed to spend a few more minutes checking it out. “Maybe not.”
Or should he just give it up? He was torn. He wanted to see the scene of the crime for himself, but he could tell that Olivia loathed the idea of going inside, particularly into an underground space. And he couldn’t leave her out here, not in this isolated location where he wouldn’t be able to get to her quickly if something happened.
He decided on a compromise.
“We’ll go inside, and you can wait for me in the main room.”
“Max, please.”
“I need to understand this place to understand the dynamics of what happened back then.”
“Coming here scares me.”
“Why?”
“Okay, maybe it’s just a reaction to the past.”
“Then let’s get this over with and get out of here.”
He held the piece of siding up, and she got down on her knees and crawled inside. He switched on the small but powerful flashlight he carried with him and followed her in. She had moved to one wall, pressing her back against the rough siding as he shone his light around the room, which was about fourteen by fourteen. The floor was made of rough planks, and as he shone the light ove
r it, he saw where a section of the wood had been cut. Striding over, he lifted it up and saw a ladder leading down and a passageway leading away from the house.
“Satisfied?” she asked.
“Not until I go down.”
She put a hand on his arm. “Don’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s an old tunnel. It could collapse.”
“If I think so, I’ll get out. And I’ll be quick.”
He climbed down the ladder and found himself in a passage with a dirt floor and walls—probably not safe. But at least he could stand up if he bent over slightly. He felt like the walls were closing in around him, but now that he was down here, he wasn’t going back without seeing what there was to see.
He shined his light down the passageway and saw an open space. Following the light, he stepped into a small room, no bigger than six by eight, he estimated. Someone had floored it with strips of plywood and also laid the same material over the presumably dirt walls. The ceiling was just dirt, and the room exuded a moldy smell, since it was underground and lacked ventilation. In one corner was a bare mattress with a blanket. There were no other furnishings and no sign that anyone had been here recently.
He picked up the mattress and looked under, seeing nothing but the plywood floor. But when he moved it away from the wall, he found a wrapper from a package of peanut butter and cheese crackers. Was it ten years old, or had someone been down here more recently? The place gave him the creeps. You could use it for a cell, if you put something heavy over the trapdoor. Or maybe there was a way to block off this end of the tunnel. And then what? You’d have to give your captive a portable potty and some food. He was thinking about that when the sound of his name reached him from above.
“Max! Are you okay?”
“Yes,” he answered.
“Come up.”
Olivia was calling him in a voice that bordered on panic, which gave him an excuse to get out of a confined space he didn’t much like. He turned and made his way back down the tunnel, then up the ladder.
Olivia was standing as she had outside, her body rigid and her arms folded across her chest, her hands gripping her shoulders—a statue carved in misery.
Hoping to jar her out of it, he said, “Let’s go get a pizza.”
“What?”
“After taking me up here, you deserve a treat.”
She snorted, then asked, “What did you find?”
“Not much. I’ll tell you when we get outside.”
He stepped through the opening into the sunshine, then turned to help Olivia out. When he straightened and turned again, he went stock-still.
A man had apparently been waiting for them to come out of the cabin. As he stepped from behind a tree, Max saw that he was holding a gun pointed at them.
Chapter 13
“Hands in the air,” the man ordered in a “got ya” voice.
As Max raised his hands, it registered with him that the guy was wearing a dark green uniform.
He wasn’t some low-life who had sneaked up on them. He must be a security guard who patrolled the grounds around the dam, and they’d shown up at the wrong time.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, his gaze swinging between them and settling on Olivia.
Instead of answering, she straightened, and her persona seemed to change. She had been upset about coming here, but now her posture subtly shifted into the public image that he’d studied when he’d first considered this assignment.
The guard’s focus was entirely on her now. “You’re… someone… Where have I seen you before?” he asked.
“On television. Or maybe in a magazine. I’m Olivia Winters.”
He continued to study her. “Yeah, the model. That’s right. What are you doing here?” he asked with considerably less hostility than he’d exhibited at first.
She kept her head up and her shoulders squared, as though she were wearing a designer gown and getting ready to step on the runway. And somehow she was exuding a charm she hadn’t bothered to use on Max or her former classmates. But apparently when she needed to, she could call on some learned behavior that she found useful.
“Did you read about the murder of Angela Dawson a couple of weeks ago?”
“Yeah. What about it?” the guard asked.
“She was my best friend in high school. Because the police weren’t making any progress on finding out who did it, I hired a private detective to help me figure out what happened to her.”
The guard said nothing, forcing Olivia to keep speaking. “The kids in my class used to hang out up here.” She stopped and swallowed. “Actually, Angela was raped up here when we were in high school.” She stopped and inclined her shoulder toward Max. “Detective Lyon wanted to see where it happened because it could be relevant.”
“She was raped here? Seriously?”
“Yes,” Olivia answered. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.”
Max joined the conversation. “I’m digging into the motivation of the killer. I think it has something to do with the relationships between the class members ten or eleven years ago.”
Olivia added, “So I brought him up here. I’m sorry. I know I should have gotten permission, but we thought we’d be in and out of here before anybody noticed.”
“What did you think you were going to find after so long?” the guard asked Max.
He thought about the underground room but said only, “There probably isn’t any physical evidence, but I wanted to get a handle on this hangout. It looks like the kids had free rein up here back in the day. It’s good that you’re patrolling the area now.”
“Yeah,” the guy said, and Max wondered what that meant, exactly. But he didn’t ask for clarification. Beside him, Olivia was also silent.
After long moments, the guy finally said, “Go on, before I change my mind about pressing charges.”
“Thanks,” Max said. Actually he wanted to ask a bunch of questions—starting with, how often did he patrol this area? How many guards worked here? What was the patrol route, and whom did the guy work for, exactly? But he decided not to press his luck by making the guy think twice about letting them go.
“And I hope you find out who killed your friend,” the guard said to Olivia.
“Thanks so much,” she answered.
“Yes, thanks,” Max added, thinking that being discovered could have gotten them into a hell of a mess.
They both turned and started back the way they’d come.
“Don’t run,” Max murmured.
“I’m not.”
Until they made the turn in the gravel road, Max could feel the man’s gaze on the back of his neck.
When they were out of sight, he whispered, “It was like pulling teeth to get you to say anything about this place. But then when a complete stranger confronts you, you blurt out the rape.”
She turned to him, a plea for understanding on her face. “I knew he wasn’t going to just let us go unless he knew we were on a serious mission.”
“Murder is serious.”
“I could tell from his face that it wasn’t serious enough.”
“You read people that well?”
“Sometimes.”
He couldn’t stop himself from saying, “And can you always get guys to respond like that when you turn on the charm?”
She turned to him, a challenging look in her eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That if you weren’t Olivia Winters, top New York model, we’d be on our way to the police station.”
“Do you see that as an advantage—or is it a criticism?” she asked in an even voice.
“In that case, it was definitely an advantage.”
“Thanks.” She kept her gaze fixed on the trail ahead, and he was sure she wanted to cut the conversation short, but he wasn’t able to drop it.
“You didn’t use that technique at the reunion meeting,” he observed.
“I already felt like enough of an outsider. I wasn’t going to
emphasize the fact.” She waited a beat before adding, “And I like having the chance to be a normal person.”
“But in a case like this, celebrity can be useful.”
“Let’s not focus on that.”
They were both silent as they kept heading down the gravel road toward the car. When they got to the No Trespassing sign, Olivia cut Max a glance.
“You still think it was a good idea going up there?”
“Yes,” he answered, then shook his head. “Sorry. I didn’t like that encounter any better than you did. Maybe less, because I didn’t like getting you into trouble.”
“It worked out.”
“Actually, judging from the amount of trash lying around on the ground up there, it looks like we ran into bad luck getting caught.” He paused and couldn’t stop himself from adding, “And the guy might not have known we were up there if you’d shared the information about parking farther away and coming through the woods.”
She gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Oh, now it’s my fault?”
“No.” He didn’t like the tenor of the conversation and made an effort to get his emotions under control. Obviously this place was affecting both of them. “It was my idea. And I don’t think it was a bad judgment call. We did learn something valuable.”
“What?” she shot back.
“That there was ample privacy up there for a girl to be raped.”
Her expression turned guarded. “Now what are you saying? That you thought I was making it up?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“I wanted to see for myself.” He thought for a moment. “A security guard could have interrupted a rape, but not if she and the guy were inside. Especially if they were underground.”
She shuddered. “What did you find down there?”
“Not much. A small room. A mattress. A good place to get a girl by herself.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“And you were never down there?”
“No,” she answered in a barely audible voice. “You asked me that before. Are you trying to see if I’ll change my story?”
He considered his answer and settled on, “No.” He was thinking again that she was holding something back. But he wasn’t going to interrogate her. This little jaunt hadn’t helped their working relationship, and he was thinking that if he was too rough on her, she might shut him out—or fire him. That last thought sent a chill through him. He hadn’t wanted this job, but now he wanted to see it through. Because he’d gotten invested in solving the murders? Or because he couldn’t stand the idea of someone coming after Olivia?