There was a crackle of static.
“Where are you now? Over.”
“We’re on Oak Lane — I think — some dirt road just east of Liberty Hill’s geographic center. There’s a… a small house here not far from where we’re parked. It’s the only one we’ve seen for miles, and it’s pretty damn close to Chase’s car. Over.”
More static before Terrence replied.
“Okay, hang tight. I’ll be there in 10. Under no circumstances are you to approach the house. Just lay low, observed the place. Over.”
“Understood,” Jordan replied. “Over.”
Jordan pulled his sedan off the dirt road and nestled it beneath a canopy of trees. Then he switched off his headlights.
Stitts finally managed to light his cigarette, took a few hauls, then ditched the smoke.
“Ten minutes, and then we’ll go in,” Jordan said, repeating Terrence’s orders.
Stitts removed his service pistol from the holster on his hip and then opened the car door.
“To hell with that,” he said as he stepped out into the early morning dawn. “I’m not waiting for anybody.”
Chapter 59
The man pulled off his jeans and tossed them into the corner of the room. Stitts’s boxers jutted unnaturally and the smile on his face grew when he saw Chase notice his arousal.
“It’s been a while since we’ve had anybody new,” he said, moving toward her. Chase relaxed, allowing her hands to fall to her sides.
Stitts was at the foot of the bed in a second, and a moment after that, his hands were working their way roughly up her calves.
He pinched her inner thigh, and Chase twisted away from the pain. As she did, something sharp bit into her stomach, just to the left of her belly button. Confused, she reached down and investigated the area.
There seem to be something in her underwear, something sharp tucked into her waistband.
Chase looked down at the crown of the Stitts’s head; he was too busy working his way up her thighs to have noticed anything out of the ordinary.
What is that? she wondered. What is that in my waistband?
She didn’t remember putting anything in there, but something told Chase that it shouldn’t be there when Stitts removed her underwear.
That he wouldn’t be happy if he found it — whatever it was.
Chase placed her left hand on the man’s head and gently lifted it.
“I’ll do it,” she said with a smile.
Stitts nodded, and Chase started to pull down her underwear. When the black lace was visible from beneath the hem of her dress that had been hiked up, she teased him a little bit. Confident that Stitts’s focus was solely on her underwear, Chase quickly reached down and grabbed the sharp object that was now resting on her stomach, while at the same time flinging her lace panties with her foot.
The object was longer than her hand, but Chase found that if she closed her palm around it, it would barely be visible.
Not that any of this mattered. After all, Stitts wasn’t interested in her hands.
A shadow suddenly passed by the still open door behind Stitts.
He looked around just as his brother poked his head in.
“That was quick,” Tim said.
“Do you want to join us?” Chase asked.
Both men looked at her then, their smiles replaced by confusion.
Chase nodded eagerly.
“Join us,” she repeated.
She didn’t have to ask a third time.
Chapter 60
Stitts heard Jordan hiss something but he couldn’t make out the words. Not that they mattered; nothing was going to stop him now.
Not after he’d seen Chase’s car and her cell phone with the Sim card removed.
Crouching low, Stitts forced his exhausted limbs to propel him forward, sticking to the line of trees that surrounded the small house.
He was still doubtful that they were all in there given how small it was, but he wasn’t going to wait for Terrence to show up to find out.
As Stitts moved, fueled solely by caffeine and nicotine at this point, he kept his eyes trained on the windows, looking for a flicker of light, a shadow, anything to indicate that there might be someone inside.
But he saw nothing.
Still, his hopes weren’t dashed completely. It was closing to five in the morning and if someone was in there — the sick bastards who took those girls — they might very well be sleeping.
Using only the moonlight as a guide, he went around the side of the house first, staying below the line of windows
Breathing heavily, Stitts pressed his back against the clap board exterior and then glanced back the way he’d come.
He was surprised to see Jordan crouched in the trees not fifty paces from him, his eyes wide. When he noticed Stitts, Jordan nodded and then moved his wrist so that the moonlight flickered off the barrel of his pistol.
This is good, Stitts thought. I might need backup if there are two of them in there.
Stitts took a deep breath and then quickly poked his head up to look in the window before dropping back down again.
He hadn’t seen much; just some faded wallpaper with flowers on it, and a bed in the middle of the room.
Stitts moved to the next window and repeated the process.
This time he saw even less; just an archaic-looking wooden vanity.
Stitts cursed under his breath. He’d only looked in two rooms, and although his perspective was skewed due to the poor lighting, he figured that those rooms comprised roughly a third of the entire interior of the house.
If the girls were here, the likelihood that they were still alive was getting smaller with each empty room Stitts observed.
He made up his mind.
The missing girls had been gone for too long, and every second he wasted being safe was a second that they got closer to death.
If they weren’t dead already.
It wasn’t like Stitts to throw caution to the wind, but he felt he had no other option. He couldn’t wait for Terrence, and he couldn’t routinely check the entire place to deem it safe before entering.
No, he had to get in there.
Standing up tall, Stitts hurried back to the front of the house, not even bothering to cast a look over at Jordan as he did.
He went directly to the front door, braced himself, and then delivered a firm kick directly beside the brass door handle.
Stitts lunged inside even before the sound of splintering wood had faded in his ears.
Chapter 61
Stitts was ravenous, biting and scratching at Chase’s thighs, her stomach, her breasts.
Tim was off to one side, but even before he’d had a chance to remove his jeans, Stitts was on top of Chase, trying desperately to get inside her.
It was far from the romantic endeavor that she expected or hoped for, but that didn’t matter.
What mattered was that Georgina was safe. What mattered was that Stitts would look after her.
That Stitts and his brother would make sure that she didn’t hurt anymore.
Stitts gruffly spread her legs and grunted as he forced himself inside her.
“We’re glad to have you back, Chase,” the man said, his breath hot on her ear.
Chase closed her eyes as the man started to thrust, and when she opened them again, she found herself somewhere else entirely.
Chapter 62
It was empty. The interior of the goddamn house was empty.
Stitts whipped his gun around quickly, hoping that the shadows came alive and attacked him.
Hoping that one of the Jalston brothers lay in wait.
But there was no one there.
The front entrance led to a small kitchenette and a worn dining table.
There was little place to hide here, Stitts immediately realized.
To his right were three doors and he clicked on his flashlight before opening the first.
It was a bathroom, one that looked like it had been
renovated back in the 1960s.
The second door led to the room with the vanity that he’d seen from the window, while the third was a bedroom. Stitts entered this room and shone his light around the interior.
There were a half dozen faded photographs on the walls, which drew his attention.
The first was of a woman in a white dress that he didn’t recognize, but when Stitts focused on the second, his breath caught in his throat.
“What in the actual fuck?”
The same woman was also in this photograph, but this time two boys were hugging her legs. And he was damned if they weren’t the two missing boys — if they weren’t Bobby Jenson and Tyler Woodcroft.
Stitts swallowed hard, trying to take this all in.
As he moved from one image to the next, Stitts realized that the women were always wearing the same long, white dresses.
When he came across a photo of all four of them standing with their arms around each other’s waists, he froze again.
The woman from the grocery store was there, the one Chase claimed to be Kim Bernard was the second woman from the left.
“What is going on?”
Frustrated, Stitts drove his fist into the photograph, smashing the glass and cutting his knuckles in the process.
And that’s when the floor creaked behind him.
Stitts whipped around, leading with the gun, but his arm was blocked before he could aim directly at Jordan’s chest.
“There’s nothing here,” Jordan said, his eyes wide.
Stitts lowered the gun.
“But they were here,” he whispered. Silence fell over the two of them then, and all Stitts could hear was the sound of blood rushing in his ears.
He had a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach that Chase smashing him over the head with a whiskey glass was the last time that he would see her alive.
“You hear that?” Jordan asked.
Stitts turned his tired eyes to the man and shook his head. Jordan raised a finger in the air and Stitts tried to concentrate, but he could only hear his own blood.
He shook his head again and was about to say something when Jordan hushed him.
And then Stitts thought he did hear something. Something that sounded like a muffled shout.
“Yeah, I heard—”
It came again, louder this time.
And this time Stitts recognized it for what it was.
It was a little girl, and she was screaming.
Chapter 63
“You sure you don’t want a ride? It’s awfully hot out there, and the AC is great,” the man with the aviator glasses teased.
Chase draped an arm protectively over her sister’s chest and shoulder.
“Sorry mister, but I think we’ll walk.”
Chase decided to do just that, guiding Georgie away from the van and onto the sidewalk. But as they walked, Chase was disheartened to discover that the man was driving his car slowly beside them, his hairy arm still hanging out the window.
“Why can’t we just take the ride?” Georgie pleaded, looking up at Chase with her big blue eyes. “He seems nice. And it’s so hot.”
Chase shook her head and tightened her grip on her sister’s shoulder.
“Just keep walking,” she instructed out of the corner of her mouth.
“You sure? It’s pretty hot out there. I wouldn’t want you to get heat stroke.”
“No thanks, mister,” Chase repeated, picking up the pace.
She wished they hadn’t wandered so far from the fair and looked back in the direction they’d come.
A balloon suddenly popped somewhere in the distance and before Chase knew what was happening, Georgia sprang from her hands.
“Georgie!” Chase shouted.
But Georgie just giggled as she hurried toward the van.
Chase lunged for her sister, but she was too late. The man in the sunglasses had already put the van in park and had gotten out.
And now it was he who was draping an arm, a much thicker and hairier than Chase’s, over Georgie’s shoulders.
“That’s a good girl,” he said. “It’s nice and cool in the van.”
At first, Georgie seemed pleased with this. But when she tried to reach for Chase, the man’s grip tightened, and her eyes widened.
“Now its your turn,” he said, with a sinister grin. “Get in the van with your sister. If you scream or run, you’ll never see her again.”
Chase’s heart started thudding away in her tiny chest, as she struggled with what to do next. Her first thought was that she would just reach out and grab Georgie and pull her away, but she knew that wouldn’t work; the man was just too big.
Her next thought was to go with Georgie, and hope that the man was nice after all.
Georgie reached for her again, her tiny outstretched hand coming within three feet of Chase’s. Her eyes were wide with terror now and her mouth formed a single word: Please.
The man yanked Georgie back and shoved her into the van.
“I’m warning you: if you run or scream, you’ll never—”
Chase made up her mind. She didn’t want to leave Georgie, but she knew that if she could just find her mom or dad, that this would be all over.
Chase swiveled on her worn runners and started to sprint. As she ran, she opened her mouth and let out the most bloodcurdling scream that she’d ever heard.
At first, she thought she could hear the man’s heavy breathing as he raced after her, but Chase didn’t dare turn around.
The ground was rocky and uneven, and she knew that if she looked away even for a second, she might.
Chase wasn’t sure where she was going, she just kept on running.
Where is everyone? she wondered. Where is the fair? And why is nobody coming to help me?
These questions raced through Chase’s mind at the same speed as the blood in her veins.
“Mommy!” She managed to shout between unintelligible screams. “Mommy! Daddy! He’s got Georgie! He’s got Georgieeeeeeeeee!”
Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a single orange balloon floating to the heavens.
There! The fair is over there!
Chase made a sharp right and headed towards the balloon, somehow picking up speed even though her lungs and heart and limbs were burning.
And then she recognized something else: the back of Mr. Robin-Graff’s snow cone truck.
“Mr. Robin-Graff!” she shouted between gasps for air.
At that moment, the back door opened and a man in a red flannel shirt stepped out.
“Mr. Robin-Graff! He’s got my sister! Someone’s got Georgie!”
Chase jumped at the man, wrapping her arms around his thin waist.
“Please, you need to help me find my mom. Somebody has my sister!”
A hand gripped her chin and gently lifted it.
“Who’s guy her sister, sweetheart,” the man asked.
Chase’s eyes went wide.
“No,” she moaned.
It wasn’t Mr. Robin-Graff; it was the creepy man who had given them their snow cones earlier.
Chase tried to shove him away, to run back toward the fair, to go anywhere but here, but she couldn’t.
The man had grabbed her wrist and was squeezing it tightly. Before she realized what was happening, Chase was hoisted up onto his shoulder.
“No!” Chase screamed as she pounded on his back.
She raised her head and saw that she’d been so close to the fair. She saw the teacups that she didn’t want to go on with Georgie and the carnival game that she spent her entire allowance on and hadn’t won anything.
And just as she heard the sound of a van door opening behind her, she thought she saw her mother.
Kerry Adams was adjusting her skirt as she walked briskly across the fairgrounds. Behind her, the mayor was adjusting his tie as he headed in the opposite direction.
“See,” the man with the aviator sunglasses said. “I told you I’d find your sister.”
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