“Your mother was beautiful?”
“When I was little, I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. I just wanted to sit and look at her, watch her get dressed, put on her makeup. She thought I was in the way, though. She locked me in my room when she went out.”
“Where was your father?” Vicki asked, trying one more time to free her hands. The rope was painfully tight and there was no slack in the knot.
“He was away—on business, he said. I guess he was. He didn’t seem to care that much.”
Pushing back her fear, Vicki kept searching for things to say. “You think your father didn’t care about you?”
“He didn’t. Me or Mother.”
“Do you think she cared about you?”
“She cared about being beautiful. At first. Then she cared about her bottles, her lovely bottles, she’d say.”
“She drank? That kind of bottles? She was an alcoholic?”
“She was a drunk.” He laughed. “Drunks aren’t beautiful, Vicki. Did you know that?”
“Yes, I’m sure you’re right.”
“Okay, I’m ready. Sorry we don’t have a dress for you yet, but I’ll go into the city and get you one, green if you insist. I cut some pine boughs in the yard. Don’t you love the smell? You’re going to be Miss December, my funny valentine.” He smiled, started to hum again, and focused the camera on Vicki.
She couldn’t believe he was going to take her picture all tied up as she was. “I don’t look good tied up like this, David.” She’d try a different approach. “If you untied me, I could pose. The pictures would come out better.”
“I’m not dumb, Vicki Valentine.” He stared at her until she felt the beginning of terror start up her throat, the kind of terror that ended in screaming.
Control, she must stay in control. She stared at the bright flames in the fireplace. Took deep breaths of the air in the room, now scented with wood smoke. It was hot, too hot. Beads of sweat trickled down her face, down her sides and her back.
She started to feel sleepy, so tired. She wanted to lie down, to lie down and never get up. Getting away, escaping from this madman, no longer seemed worth the effort.
“Ah, you’re getting tired, aren’t you, Miss Valentine? Maybe we should take a break. I don’t have to hurry, you know. You’re going to stay here with me for as long as I like. And I’m neglecting Davita, lovely girl. She does love having her photo taken.”
Picking up the tripod and camera, Altman left the room. Slumped in her chair, Vicki could only be glad for a few minutes alone. A few minutes to sleep. To sleep.
It took a few minutes to get someone to come to the door at Elsie’s. Going to her house was all Scott and Mrs. Valentine could think of to do, the only place where they might find a small thread of information about where Vicki might have gone.
“Who is it?” Elsie’s voice penetrated the door. No light had come on inside the house. “I’ve got a gun and I’m not afraid to use it.”
“It’s me, Elsie. Darcy Valentine. I know it’s late, but can we talk to you? I need your help.”
One light came on, then another. Then the door cracked open. “Well, fer heaven’s sake, Mrs. Valentine.” Elsie opened the door wider, shotgun lowered, but still in hand. “Come in. What are you doing up here so late at night? I’m fine. I don’t reckon the baby is coming for another week or so.”
“I’m not worried about you, Elsie.” Darcy Valentine explained as she, Scott, Berk, and Sheriff Jenkins entered the small house. “My daughter, Vicki, has disappeared. We’re desperate to find out where she is.”
“You think she’s up here?”
“We don’t know. All we have to go on is that she saw something this morning that she wanted Scott to see. She had to have seen it up here.”
“She went off to the old Padgett house,” said a voice in the dim light by the window. “I seed her walk away through the woods.”
Elsie’s mother sat in a rocker where she could look outside the biggest window in the living room. She was wrapped in a shawl, and an old quilt covered her legs.
“Ma don’t sleep so well anymore. She sits there all night sometimes. I guess she might have seen Vicki when she went outside this morning.”
“What’s the Padgett house, Elsie?” Scott couldn’t wait for any discussion of Elsie’s mother’s sleeping habits. “Where is it?”
The murderer, Altman if that was the case, had to have someplace he was hiding the girls from the time he took them to the time they returned dead. Some old house in the mountains would be great.
“It’s been abandoned for years, I reckon,” said Mrs. Clower. “Old man Padgett died in a nursing home in Little Rock. People don’t take care of their own anymore. I don’t understand that.”
“Elsie.” Mrs. Valentine took her arm. “Where is this place your mother is talking about? Is it near here?”
“Sure. You kin walk there pretty quick.” She pointed north and west out the window where Mrs. Clower sat. “Or go back up to the road and turn at the next fork. It’ll hardly look like a road by now, I’m sure, since no one has used it for a long time.”
Scott dashed out the door and down the steps. “I’m going through the woods. You with me, Berk?”
“We’ll need a light.” Berk ran to his jeep. He and Scott had followed the sheriff and Mrs. Valentine to Elsie’s.
Scott was crashing and stumbling through the sodden woods when Berk caught up with him. “Hey, Lawrence, no sense breaking a leg. That’s not going to help Vicki.” He sent a huge beam of light into the brush until they located a narrow path.
“There!” It was all Scott could do to keep from running.
In a short time, he stopped to sniff the air. “Wood smoke. Someone is burning a fireplace or a wood stove. Come on, Berk. He won’t know he doesn’t have a month this time. We’ve got to find Vicki before it’s too late.”
Chapter 21
Vicki came to with a jerk. How long had she slept? Not long, she hoped. While Altman was gone was her only chance to get out of this mess she’d walked into.
First she had to free her hands. The room she was in was across and down the hall from where Altman held Davita prisoner. She wouldn’t worry about noise. She rocked back and forth on the spindly chair she was tied to. It didn’t take long for a leg to break and send her sprawling onto the floor with a thud.
The fall broke the chair back, and it was no effort to slide her arms and hands loose from the pieces. But she was still tied. She looked at the candles flickering all around her. Could she burn the rope in half? Her fingers told her it was more cord than rope, so it shouldn’t take long if she could stand the heat and possible burns on her wrists. Was there any choice?
Steeling herself to the pain, she rolled to the table where two candles flamed hot. She struggled to her feet, backed up, and held her arms over the fire, letting the heat guide her to center the flame on the knotted cords.
Not anticipating the intensity of the searing pain, she gritted her teeth to withstand it. In seconds, she gasped and had to pull away, but the pain continued. Her whole arm seemed to be on fire. So she centered the cords again, pulling at the same time.
It seemed to take forever, but the knots weakened. When the cords fell away, she brought her wrists to her mouth, blowing, spitting on the burns. Nothing helped, and there was the added pain of the circulation in her arms coming back.
She concentrated on her escape, willing her mind to ignore any other feeling. She could just run, go into the hall and run. But she couldn’t forget Davita saying, “I want to go home, Vicki, take me home.” If there was any chance to get her out, Vicki wanted to do so.
Glancing around, one idea came to her—the flames, all around the room. Quickly she moved the candles into the pine boughs, hearing the first crackle and pop as fresh sap on the limbs caught fire. With a chair rung she pulled coals and burning logs from the fireplace onto the floor, piled some of the chair pieces onto the blaze, building it higher.
She carried another candle to the window, holding the flame to an old lace curtain until it flashed and blazed upward. It was so old, so dry, it was almost like paper. Fire leapt upward, eagerly.
In the hall, she first decided on a hiding place. She would crouch on the first few steps of the circular staircase. The shadows would hide her.
Wait! She would do this right. She mourned the old mansion, even as she stepped back into the room, amazed at how fast it was burning. She grabbed a candle and, cupping her hand around its flame, tiptoed to the other rooms. First SueAnne’s.
“Good-bye, lovely friend.” She tried to ignite the bed. The fire retardant material wouldn’t burn. But the lace curtains would. They were left from years past. They practically exploded with fire.
The blue room responded in the same way, Vicki running directly to the curtains. Next Goldie’s room. Flames attacked the lace greedily.
Then, out in the hall, closer to the front stairs, she screamed. “David, help, fire, help me!”
Scrambling to the steps, grabbing a banister, she huddled, shaking almost out of control. Her first surge of adrenaline had been used up in setting the fires and running. The minute she sat down, lethargy swept over her. If she let herself go, she could go back to sleep, rest, forget the pain.
It was the pain that brought her back. And hearing David Altman’s footsteps, running toward the blaze in the Christmas room. She forced herself to get up, run for the room where Davita was stretched on the bed.
First she grabbed a candle there and sent flames leaping up the brittle old lace over the windows. Then she hurried to Davita’s side.
“Davita, Davita, get up! I can’t lift you. You have to help me. This is our only chance.” She pulled and tugged, but Davita was heavy, a dead weight.
Her head rolled back and forth. “Leave me alone, you hear, let me sleep.”
“You can sleep when you get home. Come on, you have to help me.” Vicki wanted to give up, to leave and run. Saving Davita seemed hopeless.
With one superhuman effort she pulled her onto the floor and dragged her toward the hall. She stopped for seconds to kick over the tripod that held the camera. Whatever its power, it must be destroyed. Even if Altman got out, even if he was able to escape, he mustn’t have this camera.
The camera crashed and skidded under Davita’s bed, and Vicki tugged the limp girl out of the room. She stopped in the hall to catch her breath, then started down the stairs. This was easier, except that she had to keep Davita’s weight from unbalancing and tumbling both of them to the bottom.
Continuing the momentum, Vicki kept her hands hooked into Davita’s armpits and slid her across the front hall. At least the dress was slippery, creating a slick surface under the body.
Altman’s voice from the top of the stairs reached them. “Stop, you little fool. What have you done?” He started after them.
She spoke after thinking frantically about some way to stop him. “Your camera, David. Your camera is still in Davita’s room.”
Even in the dim light, she saw his shadow hesitate, turn, start back. She stumbled up the stairs after him. When he disappeared into Davita’s room, she closed the door behind him. The key? Yes, in the lock, ready to turn and keep her prisoner, but he hadn’t bothered carrying each room key with him.
She clicked it, tested the knob, then slipped the long, solid key into her jeans pocket.
For a second she thought she was going to faint. You can’t, you can’t give up now. She demanded one more surge of strength from deep inside her. Just one.
Downstairs, she grabbed Davita again and, with strength drawn from desperation, tugged her through the front door, kicking the door closed.
She had nothing left, no ounce of strength. The camera, whatever its power, had robbed her of so much in so little time. Stumbling, she fell to her knees on the porch, burying her face in Davita’s hair. There was a faint scent of the girl’s exotic gardenia perfume, the smell of her unwashed body from so many days captivity, the odor of burning wood. She could hear the roar of fire behind her.
She cried, sobbed, hysterically. She couldn’t stop. She must get into the woods, she had to get away from the house. Pull Davita away.
“Vicki!” someone called. “Thank God, Vicki!”
The voice was familiar, someone—someone—
“Scott?” She looked up, then collapsed in his arms.
He lifted her gently, her body nothing in his arms.
“Berk, get Davita, hurry.”
They carried the two girls across the yard and to the end of the driveway where the sheriff’s car was just pulling in.
“Vicki!” Mrs. Valentine leapt from the car and dashed to them. “Is she hurt? Is she all right, Scott?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” He cradled her to his chest as he knelt on the grass beside the drive. Tears slid down his cheeks as he buried his face in her hair, kissed her forehead. He kept his fingers on her neck, feeling the pulse there, saying over and over to himself that she was alive. That was all that counted. She was alive.
Mrs. Valentine knelt beside Vicki, pushed Scott’s fingers aside. “There’s a pulse. It’s faint, but—Oh, the house, look.” She pointed. “It’s an inferno. Oh, thank God you got her out of there, Scott. If you hadn’t cut through the woods—if you hadn’t gotten here before us—I can’t think about it.” She stroked Vicki’s hair, but stared at the mansion.
The old house, despite the autumn rains, was dry, a wick to the flames that leapt out from every window.
“Is that?—there’s a man in there.” Berk had put Davita alongside Vicki. He stood, staring.
A face appeared at one of the windows just for a few seconds. Then it disappeared.
“It must be David Altman.” Mrs. Valentine covered her mouth. Her eyes reflected the horror of seeing him trapped in the fire.
“If it is, we can’t help him.” The sheriff stood watching, making no move to do anything.
“Vicki will tell us what happened,” Scott said. “Mrs. Valentine, Berk and I didn’t get them out. Vicki had pulled Davita to the front porch. She saved Davita and herself. We can’t take any credit for that.”
The fresh air aroused Vicki a little. She stared at Scott for a minute before she said anything. He leaned down and kissed her gently. A smile started, widened across her whole face.
“Scott, how did you get here? How did I get outside?”
“I don’t know, Vicki. But I think you may have worked a miracle.”
She rolled to face the fire. “Oh, it was awful, just awful.”
“You can tell us later, Vicki.” Mrs. Valentine looked at Vicki’s wrists. “You’re burned, Vicki. Sheriff, do you have a first-aid kit in the car?” She went to get it.
Scott couldn’t help it, he started to laugh, partly with relief, partly at Vickd’s T-shirt message. I’M NOT OPINIONATED, I’M JUST ALWAYS RIGHT.
“What’s so funny, Scott?” Vicki whispered, starting to drift again.
“Your shirt, Vicki, that’s what.”
She glanced down. “I was right, wasn’t I? I knew I was. It was Altman, and the camera, the camera, Scott.”
“You can tell me later, Vicki, but yes, you were right. I don’t even mind admitting it. You’re always right.”
“I even chose the right guy to fall in love with.”
She passed out again, but not before Scott heard what she said.
Two days later, when Mrs. Valentine called him and said Vicki was conscious and asking for him, he headed to the hospital with a light heart and a package under his arm, a present for Vicki. It was a new T-shirt that he would dare her to wear her first day back to school. It would remind both of them of her close call, if they needed a reminder.
He laughed, thinking of the message, and how much he had come to believe in it these last few days.
LIFE’S TOO SHORT NOT TO BE IN LOVE.
At the same time, deep in the woods, from a hidden crevice shadowy from the rocks arou
nd him, he sat staring at piles of smoldering ashes, a blackened chimney, bricks already starting to crumble.
It was lost, all lost. His work, his lovely work. He had never done such beautiful portraits.
His anger had helped him escape—anger for her, to have been thwarted by a wisp of a girl who wasn’t even photogenic. And fear. She had almost destroyed his camera.
Looking at it now, held between his blackened and blistered hands, he hoped he could repair it.
He wavered between staying, seeking her out, punishing her, and escaping, making sure he was free. Perhaps his mission was more important.
Without looking back, he staggered to his feet, ignoring the pain in his arms and legs, ignoring the tightness in his chest from the smoke he had inhaled. Slowly, carefully, he slipped through the darkening shadows of the dense pine woods and headed north.
About the Author
Barbara Steiner (1934–2014) was an acclaimed author known for her books for children and young adults. Steiner authored over seventy titles, including picture books, early chapter books, mysteries, young adult thrillers, historical novels, and romances. In her lifetime, Steiner visited more than ninety-four countries and all seven continents, and many of her books were inspired by her travels. She lived in Boulder with her family until her death in January 2014.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1993 by Barbara Steiner
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