First Crush

by Ashley Ludwig

  He stepped before her and tipped her chin toward him with a rugged hand. He shone a light into her eyes, making them burn with searing agony. Natalie blinked through the afterimage of dark shapes and white halos. The phantom images looked like a battle between heaven and hell.

  “It’s amazing.” He shook his head, his voice a low, resonant growl as he observed her in the chair. “I’ve found you. You finally came back to me.”

  So she hadn’t been stalked at random. There was purpose behind the man’s insanity.

  “Please let me go.” A sob accompanied by hot, fast tears cut her whisper. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course you do.”

  His hair was salt and pepper, his face shadowed in the dim light. His muscled neck and forearms showed no amount of struggling would help Natalie escape his clutches. This man was solid, purposeful. Strong. “Your lawyer’s receptionist told me everything.”

  “There’s nothing to tell!”

  “You’re as foolish as you are stupid.”

  Find a weakness. Find his weakness.

  His mouth curled into a gruesome smile. “I’m talking about Amanda Valence. Your mother.”

  Sickened at the intimacy, his knowledge of her life, Natalie fired back. “My mother is on a rescue mission in Guatemala.”

  “Not the woman who raised you.” His eyes flashed bright with fury, hands shaking as they closed on her neck. Air squeezed through her throat like she was breathing through a stirrer straw. Black motes spun across her vision.

  His bitter breath was hot and foul in her nose as he released her from his tight grasp.

  “I’m talking about the woman who gave birth to you. Amanda never told me she had a daughter, but DNA doesn’t lie.”

  Terror was a fire roaring in her heart as she looked away—looked anywhere but at his face—trying to figure out where she was. Rows of cobweb-covered barrels, stacks of moldering boxes, shelves of round bottles covered in dust …

  He leaned close enough for his stubbled jaw to rake against her cheek, for her to see the pulse at his neck, for her to taste the rankness of his breath as he inhaled her scent. She recoiled, duct tape bindings biting into her wrists where they were bound against the chair arms.

  “You have Amanda’s sense of self-preservation. Didn’t go so well for her.”

  Natalie blinked through tears as her mind worked furiously to find a way out of this.

  Keep him talking.

  She swallowed hard icicles of fear and forced out the words. “W-what happened to her?”

  His eyes went distant. Grief washed his features. There was still a man behind the monster.

  “I didn’t want her to die. Just to suffer, to watch me, and know she was responsible for destroying my life. She was a whore. She never loved me! She got what she deserved!”

  He was crazy. She had to buy time. Maybe Nick would find her.

  Please, God, let Nick find me.

  “Amanda isn’t my mother,” Natalie began, her stalling words building in speed. “My mom is alive. On a hospital ship. She’s a nurse. My dad’s a doctor. They’re good people. This would devastate them. Please. Let me go.”

  Catlike, he gripped her hands with his nails.

  “Your mother was a liar. An adulteress.” He tilted the chair she was bound to toward him, their faces inches apart.

  Natalie recoiled and stifled her cry as he continued.

  “Amanda left me in ruins. She destroyed every promise we’d made when she ran away from me. She thought she could fix it when she came back, but I showed her. I showed her.”

  He let go of the chair, and she rocked, neck snapping backwards. Natalie’s jaws clacked, and coppery blood filled her mouth as she bit her tongue with the force of the chair hitting the ground.

  He continued with an unmistakable cadence of regret. “I was the only one, she said. The only one. But she left me, and then she had you.”

  “You … you must have been devastated. Heartbroken.”

  “What do you know about anything?”

  He backed away, turned, and disappeared into the depths of cobwebby shadows.

  In his absence, she had to face reality. Nick might not be coming, and she was alone with a madman. Fear’s icy clutches gripped tight as she took in a worktable spread with implements of torture. What would he do? Would he leave her by the lake too?

  A candle in the center of the worktable set an array of silver and glass tools alight. The gleam mesmerized her with all the possible torments. Unable to hold it in any longer, a whimper of panic escaped her throat.

  God, please, no. Not me. Nick couldn’t take it. Not again.

  Natalie worked her shoulders, tugged her forearms. She leaned forward to reach the sticky tape wrapped around her wrists with her teeth.

  She could just angle her arms enough to reach a thin edge of the tape and then rip a string off with her bared teeth, animal-like. It was agony if she moved wrong.

  Keep going.

  Keep trying.

  At every slash of pain, she pictured Nick’s face. His arms. Their future. With a snap, her hand was free.

  She heard footsteps as her captor approached, and she went still, hands together in the loosened bindings. He mustn’t know.

  He carried a dusty bottle. Rolling it from hand to hand, he wiped the label. The curling script read “Kastleheimer.”

  Kastleheimer. The family Mr. Valence all but stole the land from, according to Nick.

  She was in the wine cave! Was it under the foundation of the burned-out barn? She was still so close to home. Hope wound its sweet fragrance through her fear.

  If Nick went looking, he just might find her.

  She stared at the narrow tunnel leading out of the cave. It seemed to angle up toward daylight. Would Nick notice the small entrance to the cave?

  This man had been killing women for years, and no one had been able to find him or stop him. Did she dare dream this time would be any different?

  Father, please take care of my sister. Don’t let her die …

  Now, focus.

  She looked around for something to distract him.

  Her eyes hooked on the barrels. There were so many of them, lined up in rows and stacked three deep.

  Her captor stood at the table, his back to her, sorting through strange glass tubes, metal tongs, and sharp pointed tools.

  “Where are we?”

  Silence.

  She had to make him think of her as a person. Someone who wasn’t Amanda Valence.

  He selected a curling silver corkscrew, angled it to the light, and walked back to her. Face waxen in the darkness, he popped open the cork.

  “He was one of the first winemakers out here. Straight from Germany, right?” she asked, nodding at the Kastleheimer bottle in his hand.

  He removed a narrow-mouthed glass from the table top and splashed ruby wine into the glimmering crystal. Re-corking the bottle, he gingerly set it down.

  “After the war, my parents left a hundred years of family tradition to start a life in this country. We came with nothing but my father’s knowledge of grapes and farming. And he managed to build all of this. And then your family stole it.”

  “Amanda’s family. Not mine.”

  He swirled the wine, inhaled deep, a low growl in his throat.

  “My father gambled everything. Lost everything. He should have put all of his time and love into the grapes. Like he did with the first harvest.” He set his foot on the bottom rung of her chair and leaned close. Breath smelling of wine he said, “This is from the first crush. It’s worth over one thousand dollars a bottle now.”

  His statement swirled like the wine in his glass.

  “We lost our land and our fortune to the Valences.” With his free hand, he swiped back his thinning hair. “But Mr. Valence was a real gentleman, you see. He let us stay in the house that used to be up there.” He thumbed toward the rock roof. “Let us stay within sight of my father’s dream. It killed
him—working and watching the land that should have been his.”

  He threw his glass and it smashed into shards against the wall, drips of red running down the side of the cave into a puddle on the floor.

  He snatched her wrists. Wait, her mind whispered. She forced herself to remain calm, to keep still despite her thundering heart and the blood raging like a waterfall in her ears.

  The Slayer’s hand raked up her now-free arm, traced the hollow of her throat, and clamped tight.

  Choking, gasping like a fish out of water, Natalie clung to the threads of her life. She tried to suck breath through her restricted airway, but her vision dimmed until it was spotted with bright flashes. Fireworks. Like Nick’s eyes. She fought to see him with her mind. She reached out for Nick, for hope.

  But the voice in her ear wasn’t Nick’s. It was harsh. Cold. Alcohol-drenched.

  “Your family took everything from him. His land, his grapes … and then they worked him like a dog until he died, the treasure of his wine just within reach. He sold his soul, you see, to Amanda’s father.”

  He kept squeezing. Her fear escalated; her heart ricocheted until she thought it might just explode. Then, he let go of her throat and walked back to the table.

  She gulped in air, vision returning to normal.

  “I-I swear, they aren’t my family. I never knew them.”

  He put his attention back on the bottle. “You’re lucky.”

  Natalie’s eyes followed his. The year on the bottle said 1963. Focusing on that, she pulled him back to safe territory.

  “That was the comet year, wasn’t it?”

  At that, he looked up, sharp. “What do you know about the comet?”

  Encouraged, she swallowed. “It was in the book. Your father’s book.”

  Shaking, he collapsed to his knees. “You’ve seen it?”

  She nodded, speaking quickly as she watched him veer from his murderous course of action to uncharted waters. “I’ve got it. I’ve read it.”

  “My father was a genius. Weak, but a genius. He wrote everything down. What worked and what didn’t. It’s all in that book. It got left behind in the house … We never saw it again.” He dragged his hands through his hair, wild and feral. “I thought—I thought it burned with everything else.”

  Natalie shook her head. “I have it. It’s at the Valence house. I’ll give it to you. If you let me go, you can have it. I swear.”

  He blinked and his madness settled back over him like a mask. “Lies. You’re just like her. A pretty, pathetic liar.”

  “No! Listen. It’s leatherbound. With ruby ribbons to mark the pages. He wrote only in German. It’s full of recipes or formulas.”

  His breath spewed out in a whoosh of alcohol and tobacco. “You do have it.”

  “I can get it. I’ll trade you the book for my life.”

  He gazed at the bottle, weighing her words with its contents.

  Heart pounding out of her chest, her trump card laid, she waited. Her fate was in his hands.

  Natalie prayed that whatever he decided would be over with. Fast.

  Chapter 34

  Nick paced across the concrete slab floor of the original barn building, the place where Mr. Valence made his wine and stored his barrels. The structure had burned to the ground the night the old man died. All that remained was charred timbers and a smoke-stained fireplace now covered with vines. He knew from the stories that this was where they’d found the charred corpse of Mr. Valence.

  Gooseflesh rippled over his skin.

  Nick paced the border, studying the ground for anything resembling an entrance, but he found nothing except old bricks and rubble.

  Time was running out.

  One foot set to the dirt, he surveyed the windmill and the curve of the creek. At the edges of the creek, caves ate into the limestone. They were more like hollows, really. In earthquake country, it was dangerous to go inside them. When he was a kid, his dad had warned him not to play in them because just being in the wrong place at the wrong time could cause the whole roof to collapse.

  And now Natalie was down there.

  He skidded down the slope toward the windmill. The beast that used to power houses and outbuildings still turned. It should be out of commission. Shouldn’t it?

  At the windmill’s base, a curl of old, frayed wire cable lay alongside a black line of cord. Someone had kicked dirt and rocks over it to obscure it, but the black cord was new. Someone was drawing power from the windmill.

  Nick knelt and swept his hands across the dust and rocks, further revealing the black power cord. He followed it from the windmill, down the hill, and into the ground.

  He would have missed the entrance entirely. A rock outcropping hid the carved door from sight unless you scooted around the edge.

  Drawing the small pistol from his back—every breath a prayer for safety, for steady hands, and for Natalie’s life—he pushed inside. He wriggled his way through the gap and into the mouth of a cave. It was the fabled wine cave his father had spoken of. The one that might hold a million or more dollars in the form of liquid treasure—and that now held something more valuable than any prize: Natalie.

  Voices echoed in the chamber. With his back pressed against the chipped stone wall so as not to reveal his presence, Nick inched along with careful steps.

  It took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the light, but then there she was in the center of the dimly lit room.

  The Slayer knelt in front of Natalie, breathing hard and holding an open bottle. In his other hand, he held a flickering lighter.

  “Amanda said she burned the book. She said so many awful things about why she left me. Why she didn’t return. All lies.”

  “What … what year did she leave you?”

  At his answer, Natalie did the math, heart plummeting. Twenty-five years ago.

  At twenty-four years old, it was possible, if not probable that he was her biological father. Could this get worse? Could her birth family be any more wrapped in bitterness and blood?

  “You were lovers before she left you?”

  His throat strangled with a nod. “Her family didn’t want her with me. They sent her away. To college. To start life over away from me.”

  She had to know for certain. With a drag of ragged breath, she said, “When was the last time you were with her?”

  “New Year’s Eve.” The bottle rolled. “Then she told me she never wanted to see me again.”

  It all made sick, horrible sense.

  “They didn’t send her to school—at least not at first. They sent her away because she was pregnant.”

  He stumbled backward into the wall. “What?”

  “She was pregnant. With me.” Natalie dipped her gaze as she voiced the horrific possibility. “You could be my father.”

  The words were oil in her mouth. She spat them out as if voicing them would remove the foul taste, but nothing ever would.

  “She came back five years later,” he whispered. “Wanted to talk with me.”

  Natalie listened, horrified, as he unveiled his secrets.

  “She came to tell me something, but I just wanted to make her suffer the way I did when she abandoned me.”

  He passed the lighter over the label, setting it alight. The word “Kastleheimer” curled in smoke and then vanished with a poof of burnt paper and glue.

  “There’s nothing left of our family but dust. This wine and dust.”

  “We can change that. We can fix it.”

  He shook his head and looked up, hand cupping her cheek as if seeing her for the first time. “I have a daughter. That’s why she came back. To tell me.”

  With the horror of his touch, the truth sagged against her soul.

  She watched his expression change from bittersweet to devastated. “Your car … I cut the brake lines.”

  “It’s totaled.”

  “You should have died on that hill. Why aren’t you dead?”

  “God works in mysterious ways. Maybe I’m al
ive because you needed to know the truth.” She glanced to her seemingly bound hands and feet. “Can you untie me now?”

  He started to remove the bindings and then paused. “No. It’s too late for that. Too late for us both.”

  “But we can make it right. We’ll just tell them the truth … we’ll …”

  Uncorking the bottle, he splashed its contents around her feet and across his chest. He held up the lighter, gaze washing with apology.

  “You would have loved Amanda. She was an angel on earth. And I got to watch her leave it.” He sobbed, splashing more of the acrid alcohol over them both. “I watched her die, enter the gates of paradise … and there’s a difference. I’ve watched hell come as well. It’s not hot and fiery, but cold. So very cold.”

  “Please don’t do this. You can change. You can be forgiven!”

  “It’s death for me either way.” Tears mixed with the rivulets of red wine on his face. “I’ll be watching from the gates of hell when your mother meets you at heaven’s door.”

  Let me live! she pleaded with her eyes. Natalie begged with her soul, prayed for words to break through his torment, his insanity.

  Speak through me, Father. I don’t know what to say …

  “There were two murderers at the cross with Jesus,” she began. “One knew he was guilty, that he deserved death, and that Jesus was innocent. He understood in that final moment—”

  “I’m as bad as they come, Natalie.” A lifetime of regret and pain showed in his forced smile. “God doesn’t want me.”

  With a flick of his thumb, the lighter ignited a sparking flame.

  Bindings falling, she reached out and grabbed at nothing but air as her biological father bloomed with blue flame. Screams of pain filled the cave as the fire smothered him. The bottle dropped in an explosion of green glass.

  She watched in horror as he dropped to his knees, fully aflame.

  Then, like an avenging angel, Nick—her Nick—sprinted down the long hall, sunlight blinding at his back. He rushed to where the man knelt, pushed him to the ground and rolled him along the stone floor, smothering the fire. “You don’t get to die that easy.”

  The two fell to the floor in a heap of limbs as Natalie watched with a mix of horror, relief, and devastation.