by Webb, Debra
They’d had this conversation a couple hours ago. Actually, what they’d had was a shouting match inside the old dilapidated house. It was a miracle the thing hadn’t fallen in on them.
“We have to be certain.” He looked straight ahead now. “If we tip our hand too quickly we could be making a mistake.”
His reasoning made no more sense now than it had two hours ago. “If even one of the children is in there, how can a rescue be a mistake?”
Unless he wasn’t so sure about what he’d seen. She hated herself for thinking about Tom that way. As much as she still resented what he’d done when he’d committed her to that damned clinic, she’d never lost her respect for him or his ability as an investigator.
The uncertainty plaguing her felt like a betrayal. Maybe because the idea of others questioning her ability was so damned painful. She knew how it felt to have her every move scrutinized. The last thing she wanted was to make him feel that sharp criticism of his work, too.
“Let’s do what we came here to do so we can get back to our post.”
He was out of the SUV before she could respond. She climbed out as well. At the store’s entrance she put her hand on his arm. The shock of touching him made her flinch. “When we get back, I’ll take the first watch. You’re getting some sleep.”
Anger tightened the grim features of his face. “I’m fine, Sarah.”
How many times had she said that at a moment like this? “No one is fine without sleep, Tom. No arguments. We have to be able to count on each other. I can’t count on you if you’re running on empty. Are we clear?”
He heaved a heavy breath. “We are.”
He didn’t meet her gaze as he ground out the words, but she felt confident she’d made her point.
Inside, the smell of logs on the fire permeated the country atmosphere of the store. The crackling sound reminded her just how cold it was outside. The wood and beamed ceilings brought to mind images of grand old barns. The store was larger than it looked. The old wood floors creaked here and there as Sarah moved down the toiletries aisle. Tom had chosen a different aisle. Suited Sarah. A few minutes away from him would hopefully help give her some perspective.
As she’d gathered the store was a multi-purpose one with a bit of everything. She needed a few personal items. A toothbrush and toothpaste as well as deodorant. She picked up some for Tom as well. Spotting ladies’ underwear, she breathed a sigh of relief. They were the plain white cotton brief style, but that worked. She grabbed a three-pack in her size. Maybe some lotion, hand sanitizer, and toilet paper. Using the woods for taking care of business was, unfortunately, the only option for the duration. On second thought, she also grabbed a package of pre-moistened towelettes. Without running water, this was as good as it was going to get where bathing was concerned.
The prospect that both she and Tom had lost their minds was feeling more and more like a viable possibility. Then again, she reminded herself that some people went to a lot of trouble for a rustic vacation getaway in the woods.
By the time she made her way to the counter, Tom was already paying for his purchases. Extra bottled water, ready-to-eat food, and a battery operated lantern with additional batteries. Sarah refused his offer to pay for her items. He held the door for her as they exited.
“I need to find a change of clothes.” She scanned the available options lining the block. A second-hand shop appeared to be the only one.
Tom loaded their purchases into the backseat of his SUV. “Hang on and I’ll go with you.”
“Keep an eye on the GPS. I’ll only be a minute.” She didn’t need him tagging along while she searched for jeans and sweaters.
“Don’t take too long,” he reminded her. “I’ll be right here.”
Watching, he didn’t have to add. Was he really afraid she would take off on him or that she’d called Larson? She flashed him a smile and crossed the street to the second-hand shop. Pushing open the door set the bells overhead to jangling.
“Afternoon. Welcome to Mia’s.”
The woman who greeted Sarah looked to be in her late twenties. Untamed red hair and a porcelain complexion. Her vivid blue eyes lit up when she smiled. She reminded Sarah of the women she’d seen in vintage flower child posters from the 60’s and 70’s her mother had kept. From the headband and the big peace symbol on the necklace she wore to the tattered bellbottoms the shopkeeper was getting in touch with her inner hippie.
“Nice place.” Sarah produced a smile for the young woman as she perused the rack of jeans.
“You look like a size two.” The young lady parted the jeans at the other end of the rack and motioned for Sarah to join her. “I’m Mia, by the way.”
“Sarah.” She picked through the size two’s.
“At Mia’s we believe in reusing and repurposing. Waste is such an ugly thing.” She smiled. “New is immensely overrated and way too expensive.”
“New is definitely overrated.” Sarah’s lips stretched into the real McCoy this time. “Have you lived in Willow Creek long?”
Mia shrugged. “Only my whole life.”
Sarah selected two pairs of jeans. “These will work.”
“You can wear these right away.” Mia took the jeans from her. “I don’t sell anything I haven’t washed. Everything here is ready to wear.”
That was definitely good to hear. “Sweaters? Sweatshirts?” Something that would keep her warm and comfortable.
Mia laid the jeans on the counter. “Over here.”
Sarah followed her to another rack. After a few moments of watching Mia shuffle hangers, Sarah asked, “What’s the deal with the compound just outside town? Looks like a prison or something with that iron fence all around it.”
Mia laid several selections across the top of the rack for Sarah’s consideration. “When I was a kid we used to sneak over there and go through the rooms of the old sanatorium. It’s haunted, you know.” She gave Sarah a knowing nod. “They say some of the people who died there just won’t leave.”
“What kind of sanatorium was it?” The question was a way to prod the woman to talk while Sarah tested the fabric and considered the thickness of the second hand sweaters.
“One of those old tuberculosis sanatoriums.” Mia leaned closer as if she feared someone might overhear her. “My grandmother told me they kept crazy people there, too. They performed all sorts of experiments on them. Lots of people went in, only a few came out. She swore there was a secret cemetery around there somewhere, but I never found it.”
“What happened to the ones who never left the sanatorium?” Sarah rounded her eyes in order to look properly horrified.
“The official word was that they cremated the bodies to prevent the spread of disease, but my grandmother insisted that was a lie. She thinks they did something terrible to those people. You know, Frankenstein experiments, and then buried them.”
“Wouldn’t the police have stopped them if that were true?”
Mia laughed. “Are you kidding? That old place kept this town alive back in the day. It was the only source of work for most of the folks around here who weren’t farmers. No one was going to rat them out. Not that it would have mattered. The cops were on the payroll as the story goes.” She sighed. “I guess every town has its skeletons.”
“And legends.” Sarah selected three of the sweaters. “What’s in the old sanatorium now?”
“Word is it’s some kind of medical research place, but if it is no one around here works there.” Mia shrugged. “Who knows? It’s all hush-hush. Even the cops don’t seem to know what’s going on behind that ominous gate.”
“How strange.” Sarah frowned. “A little creepy even. Could be terrorists.” She made her eyes go wide again.
“Nah.” Mia took the sweaters from her. “It’s the same family who owned it back when it was a sanatorium. My grandmother said the son runs the place now.”
“Sounds like your grandmother knows a lot of the town’s history. I’d love to speak with her.”
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Mia’s face fell. “She died last spring.”
“I’m sorry.” Sarah followed her to the counter. “I lost my parents and my grandparents before I finished college.”
“That had to be tough.” Mia folded Sarah’s purchases. “I still have my momma, but she moved to Pittsburg with her second husband three years ago. It’s just me and my little girl now.”
Sarah’s chest tightened. “How old is your little girl?”
“She’s four.” Mia grinned and turned a framed photo toward Sarah. “She’s my world.”
“She’s beautiful.” The child was a miniature version of her mother.
“You just passing through?” Mia hit the total on her vintage cash register.
“I’m doing a book on the history of Pennsylvania. I’m traveling all over the state.”
“Sounds interesting.” Mia took the cash Sarah offered.
“Is there another way into the sanatorium besides that one gate?” Sarah dared to ask. At Mia’s look of suspicion, she added, “I haven’t found another road to the property. I was just curious.”
“The gate and that one road is the only way in or out.” She shrugged. “Nothing else but woods.”
Sarah smiled. “Thanks. I appreciate the info.”
“Fair warning.”
Sarah met the other woman’s intent gaze.
“They don’t like folks poking around at the old sanatorium.” Mia bagged Sarah’s purchases. “My momma used to yell at me for going over there after they started the remodel. She said it was dangerous and the man who inherited the place was as evil as the devil himself. She said he might do anything. His family was real Nazis, you know.” Mia glanced around as if just saying the words out loud made her nervous. “That was a long time ago, but she was so insistent that I haven’t ever forgotten her warning.”
“You’ve been far more helpful than you know.”
Sarah couldn’t wait to tell Tom.
Maybe his wild story about what happened in Paradise, Tennessee, and the brothers who escaped post war Germany wasn’t so farfetched after all.
8:00 p.m.
Sarah couldn’t sit down if her life depended on it. She’d told Tom what the shop owner had said and he’d acted as if the news was irrelevant. The town gossip more or less confirmed his suspicions about the sanatorium. Why wasn’t he glad to hear it?
Keeping her temper in check, she braced her arms over her chest and stared out the dirty broken window. It was dark outside so she couldn’t see a damned thing, but beyond those trees, inside that compound, something was going on.
Meltzer was there, no question. Tom had set up a motion sensor near the gate—as near as he’d dared to go anyway. According to Mia, there was no other way in or out.
If someone left the compound, she and Tom would know it.
He’d refused to sleep when they’d returned to the house. Instead, they had spent the hours before dark becoming familiar with the tree line along the fence. They had walked all the way around the compound without seeing a damned thing useful to the investigation. Then he’d organized the part of the house they would use. Sarah had spent that time pacing. For once it had nothing to do with walking off a panic attack. She wanted to do something besides prepare. She wanted to go back out there and watch until something happened.
No. What she really wanted to do was get past that gate.
She looked around what had once been a bedroom in the old house. It was the only room where the roof and floor seemed stable. He’d set up the water and food supply on an abandoned dresser. Then he’d dragged an old bench from another room and stacked his surveillance equipment there. He’d even rounded up a couple of chairs and a small table with one bad leg. The legs of the chairs were uneven and there were holes in the seats, but they worked.
As much as she appreciated his efforts at making the place more comfortable her frustration mounted. He had totally blown off the news from the shopkeeper. He ignored her warnings that he needed sleep. He’d rounded up the sleeping bag from his SUV and spread it on the cleanest spot on the floor, but that was the only time he’d gone near it.
Thankfully, he kept extra blankets in his SUV because it was as cold as hell. Sarah shivered and started walking again. Maybe if she kept moving she would walk off some of her irritation with him. She checked her cell. Service wasn’t nonexistent out here, but it was sketchy at best. The urge to call Larson nudged her again.
What was waiting accomplishing?
“Calling in backup at this point would be pointless.”
The sound of Tom’s voice in the dimly lit space had goose bumps tumbling over her skin. How could he still read her so well after all this time? “You argued that point already.”
“But you don’t agree.”
She turned to glare at him. “Does what I think matter at all? You should be sleeping right now. Then later, I could sleep. You won’t be able to do a damned thing when the time comes if you’re completely exhausted.”
He stopped tinkering with one of the pieces of equipment and moved closer to her. More of those goose bumps raised on her skin. It wasn’t fair that he still possessed the power to make her heart pound with nothing more than a look or a move.
“I’ll sleep when I need to sleep.”
“So you’re super human now? You don’t require sleep to function?” How was that rational? Sarah recognized the futility of debating him. He wouldn’t change his mind any more than she had when he’d insisted she wasn’t sleeping or eating. How could he not see he was doing the same thing? Even she recognized it and denial was her middle name.
How could they possibly hope to do this on their own?
“I’m not talking to you about this anymore, Sarah.”
She’d heard that before. “The way you stopped talking to me about Sophie?” Sarah snapped her mouth shut. She hadn’t meant to say that. Her heart sank and then rocketed into her throat with a burst of agony. How had she let that slip out?
He stared at her. Even in the low light she could see the injury she’d wielded on his face, in his eyes. Sophie’s eyes.
“I didn’t stop talking about Sophie.”
Hurt and anger chased away the emotion choking off her airway. “Yes, you did. Whenever I would bring up the search—”
“I stopped,” he cut her off, “talking about the search.” His entire being tensed as he spoke. “I never stopped thinking about or talking about our daughter.”
Sarah reminded herself to breathe and to stay calm, but that wasn’t happening this side of the grave. “Our daughter was missing. Choosing not to talk about the search was the same thing. Tell the truth, Tom, you gave up on finding her.”
Anger flared in his eyes. “It had been three and a half years, for Christ’s sake. She was gone, Sarah. There was no bringing her back. It was time to let go and grieve. It was time to try to start living again.”
“Stop. Just stop.” Her body trembled with the emotions racing through her.
“You were determined to throw us away because we suffered the most unthinkable tragedy any parent can.”
Apparently, she had tripped some sort of trigger because he wasn’t letting it go.
“You didn’t want us if you couldn’t have Sophie, too,” he accused. “You left me long before we started living apart.”
“It’s true.” Sarah raised her chin in defiance of the emotions whirling inside her. “I couldn’t go on pretending.”
He said nothing.
“For the love of God,” she demanded, “just admit how you really feel—how you felt then. You didn’t want to talk about our daughter because you couldn’t look at me and have that discussion.”
He turned away then.
She shook her head. “See. You can’t even talk about her and look at me now.”
He whipped around and grabbed her by the shoulders. “That’s not true. I stopped talking about her because I wanted you to come back to me. You left me, Sarah. When we lost our daughter I lost you
, too. I was desperate to hang on, but you just kept pushing me away.”
“I told you.” She wasn’t sure how she got the words out. His fingers were curled around her arms… his face so close she could scarcely breathe much less think. “I couldn’t look at you without seeing Sophie—without seeing the truth.”
“Enough,” he growled. “I won’t allow you to keep punishing yourself. You didn’t do this, Sarah.”
“Who are you protecting, Tom? Me or you? Are you that afraid your hatred for me will finally come out if you confess what you know in your heart? I let Sophie down. We lost our daughter because I made the wrong choice.” Her lips trembled with the agony pulsing inside her. She had done this…
His mouth came down on hers so fast and so hard she lost her breath. His lips were hot and insistent, yet somehow soft despite the desperation in his kiss. His arms went around her, pulled her into him. She wanted to tear away… to run. She couldn’t. She could only melt against him as his mouth devoured hers, making her knees weak and her heart stumble.
When he drew away just enough to draw in a harsh breath, he whispered, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
Somehow, she managed to pull a little farther away. “You’re exhausted. You need to sleep now. I’ll keep watch.”
“All right,” he relented. “Keep your Beretta on you at all times.”
“Count on it.”
Sarah stood at the window and stared out into the darkness as he settled in on the sleeping bag. Her body hummed with need so powerful she could hardly hold herself still. She hadn’t felt anything like this since… in more than five years. She had thought that part of her was dead.
As confused and uncertain as she felt, now wasn’t the time to examine those unexpected feelings. Focus was essential. Whatever happened they both needed to be on their toes.
Minutes later when he had finally given up the fight and fallen asleep, she headed outside to check for any movement around the compound. The moon was bright tonight. The lack of cloud cover made it even colder. Didn’t matter. She needed to clear her head. The way her body still shook she didn’t trust herself to be in the same room with him. Incredibly, no signs of a looming panic attack had appeared. Yet.