by Alice Sharpe
“Hello,” Sophie whispered, taking her sister’s hand.
“It’s true,” Sabrina gasped softly as she examined Sophie’s face. Her voice was hoarse as though she’d screamed for days. Of course she’d screamed for days. Five days to be exact. “He told me he saw me. Not here but somewhere else. I thought he was crazy. I—I didn’t believe him.”
“Who is he?” Sophie asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, her words slow in coming and because of the split lip, hard to understand. “Sometimes he says the word darkroom. I don’t know if he means himself or this...this place.”
She started trembling then and her grip on Sophie’s hand tightened.
“We’re going to get out of here,” Sophie said.
“I tried to escape—a day or two ago, I tried. But he shot me and dragged me back here... Oh, I’m so sorry you’re here, too. How is this possible?”
“Jack Travers and I have been looking for you.”
“Jack?”
“Yes. We met because of you, and we fell in love because of you. Buzz is on his way home—”
“Buzz!” Sabrina cried as tears welled in her eyes. She raised a shaky hand to wipe them away. “My Buzz?”
My Buzz. The hope in those two words flooded Sophie’s heart and in that instant she faced the fact that rescuing Sabrina and herself was the only way she would ever see Jack again. Her Jack.
“Buzz is coming,” she repeated. “And you know what Jack is like. He’ll never give up looking for us. But we have to do our part. Can you sit up?”
With Sophie’s help, Sabrina struggled into a sitting position where at last Sophie could drape her with some of the discarded clothes to ward off the cold. “How did you escape before?” she asked.
“I jumped him.” She licked her lips and frowned. “He comes with a rifle now and locks the door.”
“What’s on the other side of that door?”
“A small room...a horrible room...then another one filled with old appliances and junk. The exit leads into a forest.” She touched Sophie’s hair. “What’s your name?”
“Sophia. I go by Sophie.”
“We’re identical twins?”
“Yes.”
“My mother told me she heard a rumor after she adopted me that there were two babies but she was told the records had been destroyed. She tried but she could never find out anything else.”
“The rumor was true.”
Sabrina reached up and touched Sophie’s hair. “I dye mine to get it as dark as yours.”
“I dye mine, too,” Sophie said.
Sabrina smiled. “You couldn’t stand the mousy brown either?”
“I did for years but suddenly, I just couldn’t.”
Sabrina’s free hand fell to her lap. “I always wanted a twin. I used to think what fun it would be to trick my parents into mistaking one of us for the other.”
“We’ll make up for lost time after we escape,” Sophie said, her voice distracted, the wheels in her head suddenly turning.
“Escape? How?”
“It’s going to require a lot out of you,” Sophie said slowly as she looked her sister in the eye. Was the poor woman up to it?
“Anything, anything to see Buzz again.”
What other choice did they have? “Good.” Sophie pulled her sweater over her head and then her thermal shirt. She took off her bra and shivered in the cold. “We’re going to trade places,” she said.
“No. No,” Sabrina protested. “You don’t know what he’s like, what he’ll do. I can’t let you—”
“Shh,” Sophie said. “He’ll do all that anyway if we don’t stop him. This is our chance and we’re going to take it.” She tore the clean hospital bandages off her arm and stuffed them out of sight. The cold room got even colder as she pulled off her boots and socks, then jeans...everything. If Sabrina had endured this man stark naked, so would she. It was what he expected to find and she would give it to him.
Dressing Sabrina was tricky. Between the injuries, the fear and the fever from her infection, she hurt everywhere. At last Sophie took off the pearl necklace her father had given her and fastened it around Sabrina’s neck.
“This isn’t going to fool him,” Sabrina whispered. “He’ll never let it happen. He’s excited about having two of us. He has terrible plans.”
“So do I,” Sophie said with as much confidence as she could muster. She took off the silver earrings Danny had given her a lifetime ago.
“My ears aren’t pierced,” Sabrina muttered.
“That’s okay. I need a cut on my face and I can’t think of any other way to get it.” She gripped one of the silver disks and scoured its edge back and forth against a protruding cinder block in the wall.
“You’re making a blade,” Sabrina said through chattering teeth.
“Yeah. But you’re going to have to help me.”
She ground the silver until the edge looked ragged enough to tear skin and then handed it to Sabrina, whose hand shook as she grasped it. Sophie touched her own face from the top of her right cheekbone down to her jaw near the bottom of her ear. “Put some muscle in it and remember you’re saving my life, okay? That’s what you firefighters do, right?”
Sabrina took the earring and held it to Sophie’s cheek. Her hand fell. “I can’t,” she said after a moment.
“Yes, you can. I’ll help you.” She put her stronger hand over Sabrina’s. Together, they managed to cut deep enough to spill warm blood down Sophie’s cheek and throat. The pain was almost unbearable and it took every ounce of courage Sophie had not to tear the makeshift blade away from her skin. When it was done, she scooped up a handful of the mud in the bucket, then rubbed it over her face to approximate Sabrina’s condition and in her hair to disguise the lilac streak. She wrapped a bloody piece of the clothing around her thigh as though she’d bandaged the gunshot wound. Next she added mud to cover the stitches in her arm. She was going to be on antibiotics for a month after this.
If there was an after this...
One of the hardest things she’d ever done was not put on every rag lying at her feet. Instead, she helped Sabrina to stand and slowly walked her to the place she’d woken up minutes before. After helping her sit, she finger-combed Sabrina’s hair. “Keep the cut side of your face against the knee you can bend so he doesn’t see it,” she cautioned. “With any luck he’ll think you’re still out. I’m still out, I mean.”
She went back to the pile of rags and hid her newly made blade. If it tore her skin it would tear his. Then she picked up the bucket to go replace it but at that moment the not-so-distant sound of a banging door and heavy footsteps drove her heart into her throat. She glanced at Sabrina, who sagged against the wall toward the floor.
The footsteps grew closer as Sophie huddled under the heap of rags.
* * *
THE RAINY, MOONLESS night was as dark as the inside of an abandoned well. The only saving grace was the fact that Jack had been here once already today. He kept his headlights off and his foot soft on the accelerator, willing the car to creep up the long driveway without making a sound. While there was no moonlight to expose him as he got to the clearing, there was also no light to help him find his way. Better to be on foot than in a big machine if he crashed into anything. He shut off the interior lights and opened the door to merge into the rainy night like a shadow.
What killed him was the uncertainty that came with taking the word of a delusional sleaze like Paul Rey. He was here at this house on this night with nothing but the word of a convicted man, a man who had tried to kill Sophie multiple times, a man without a conscience or a moral compass. For all he knew, Paul Rey had made up this story to cover his own tracks. He might have already shot Sophie.
He couldn’t think like that. He’d heard on the radio that the guy with the stolen plates was leading half the p
olice on a merry chase into Washington. Now the Washington police were involved, as well. Sabrina or Sophie could be in that car, not with Rey because that loser was still handcuffed to a tree, but maybe with Nash or Cook or even a faceless, nameless fourth man. Jack didn’t want police to drop that ball to chase this one. It all came back as it did every time—how did you trust a guy like Paul Rey to tell you the truth?
You didn’t. You checked it out yourself and called for backup when you had facts. That in this case backup meant “blazing gun” Leroy Donner, well, that was a sobering thought.
The house was as dark and foreboding as the night. He paused as he stood beside the car listening, trying to hear anything but the sound of the rain. Should he break in and search the place?
A light suddenly went on in the distance behind the cover of a few trees. He’d already taken the rifle out of his trunk and grabbed that now before silently closing the driver’s door and starting toward the light.
The first thing he managed to do was trip over an invisible boulder that lined the drive—he’d forgotten they were there. He made his way toward the barn, his eyes on the light in case it was extinguished and he had to go from memory.
The building was open, unlocked, the interior light flooding a small patch of muddy ground outside. Jack took his time approaching the door, making sure no one was waiting for him. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end and he reminded himself it wasn’t just Rey who sent him here, it was his own gut. He’d made a promise to himself after Lisa—he would listen to his instincts.
Once he was pretty sure he wasn’t walking into an ambush, he entered what looked like a twelve-by-twelve room. Three upright freezers were lined up against two of the walls. A table used for butchering, if the floor drain and rusty-looking stains were any indication, sat against a third. A dangling unlit lamp hung over the table.
Gruesome.
And ominous, made more so by the gray-and-black duffel bag sitting atop the table. Louis Nash’s bag, last seen in his office, retrieved from behind a locked door. Jack walked silently to the bag and found it unzipped. Inside he saw a picture that momentarily stunned him. Obviously taken through a window, a bloodied Sophie lay on the sidewalk, Jack hovering over her. And under her picture, he found the head shot of Sabrina and all the other women he’d last seen in Louis Nash’s file cabinet along with the list of names under the heading Cases.
Paul Rey hadn’t been lying. Louis Nash had taken Sophie and Sabrina, too.
He moved the papers and discovered the reason the duffel bag had clanked when Nash dropped it. The bag was filled with tools, including long serrated knives, saws, clamps and what appeared to be surgical implements. Some of it looked like things he remembered from the one and only time he’d helped a friend clean and dress a deer. They all sent chills down his spine.
The sound of a lock opening farther inside the structure caught his attention. He needed to hurry but there was no way he was leaving this room without checking out those freezers. He quickly opened the nearest and found it empty. He opened the one standing next to it and stared at its frozen contents for an interminable moment without breathing.
Shock and repulsion made him slam the door without consideration of noise. Holding the rifle in front of himself, he moved through the doorway toward the sound of the lock and into a dimly lit room dominated by a filthy mattress. Manacles were chained to the walls. Photographs of women in obvious agony loomed over the mattress like tortured souls caught in limbo. A camera sat on the mattress as if ready for use.
There was another door on the far side of the room.
From behind that door, he heard the low grumblings of a man’s voice. He raised the rifle and moved to the door. He could see that it was locked. The only quick way through the lock was with a bullet but he didn’t want that bullet to hit someone on the other side because there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that Sophie was back there and maybe, maybe, Sabrina, too.
The matter was settled when a heart-wrenching scream cut through his heart.
* * *
SOPHIE SAW THE dark shape of two feet as they arrived on the other side of the door. She heard the jangle of the lock and then the creak of the wood as the door swung inward. Too late she wondered if she should have positioned herself right there by the door. No, no, he would have anticipated that. It was probably why it was taking him so long to enter.
What she had hoped was that this might be the one time he wouldn’t lock the door behind him but that was not to be the case.
She heard his limp as he approached, but instead of coming to her, he walked over to Sabrina. She could see him through one eye if she squinted. He stopped before her sister’s sitting form, grabbed her hair and pulled her face up to look at it. Surely he would see the cut on Sabrina’s cheek. Her heart sank down to the depths of hell.
“Wake up,” he said and kicked what Sophie realized was Sabrina’s injured leg. Sabrina didn’t respond. She had to have passed out. He moved toward Sophie. She steeled herself.
“Okay, bitch,” he whispered as he stood over her. “I’ll start with you.”
He leaned down to grab her. She made herself go limp as he pulled her to her feet, a rifle in one hand, his other hand clamped around her arm. She held the makeshift blade so firmly she was pretty sure it was cutting through her own skin. She made a few appropriately weak-sounding noises and sagged as though too hurt to move on her own. He ran his hands over her body like he owned her. Then he leaned down and hoisted her over his shoulder and took a struggled step toward the door.
And that’s when she dug the blade into the side of his neck, aiming for his jugular vein or his carotid artery—she didn’t care just as long as it stopped him.
He flung her away from himself. She hit the floor with a bone-cracking thud. A moment later he was on top of her, blood dripping unheeded down his neck and into his clothes. She fought him but he was unimaginably strong. He pinned her to the floor and sat atop her, the rifle still gripped in his hand, a smile now toying with his lips.
From over his shoulder she saw Sabrina’s face. She’d somehow managed to stand on her own and grab the bucket. She held a length of its attached chain between her hands. Nash seemed hell-bent on dominating Sophie and to keep it that way she spit up into his face. The spit didn’t quite make it but the gesture infuriated him. As he raised a hand to pummel her, Sabrina threw the chain around his neck. In her weakened condition, she was no match for this monster. He rose in one fluid motion to his feet, shaking Sabrina off his back like a piece of lint. She hit the wall with a piercing scream.
Sophie took the second he was distracted by Sabrina to grab the abandoned bucket. She flung the chain over his head again and managed to get it around his neck but he was too tall and the chain too thick for her to tighten it into a stranglehold. He roared as he freed himself, his face crimson as he shook her away. She searched the floor for her makeshift blade but couldn’t see it. A string of oaths filled the room as he grabbed Sophie’s leg and dragged her toward the door. Her muddy foot slipped from his grasp and she crawled back to Sabrina’s side. He was going to kill both of them in this hellhole if she didn’t do something to stop it but she was out of tricks and opportunities...
A shot thundered in the small room and for a second, Sophie thought Louis Nash had fired it. But neither she nor Sabrina had been hit and Nash had frozen in place. As he turned toward the door, she once again grabbed the bucket and found the chain. Another shot boomed. As Nash fell backward, she threw the bucket aside and scuttled to pull Sabrina out of his way.
Footsteps broke the almost deafening silence and Sophie looked up to find Jack framed in the doorway. A sob of relief choked her as he crossed quickly to Louis Nash’s downed body, kicked the rifle away and knelt.
The big man lay as still as stone. Jack stood.
“Sophie,” he whispered as he crossed to her. He fell to his knees, his g
un still trained on Nash. With a glance at Sabrina, he whispered, “How is she?”
“Alive,” Sophie said through the tears rolling down her cheeks. “Alive.”
“Thank goodness.”
He gently touched Sophie’s bloodied cheek before shrugging off his wet but blessedly warm jacket and draping it over her bare shoulders. His arm enfolded her as he pressed her against his chest and for a second, his grip was so tight she couldn’t breathe.
Well, who needed to breathe when they’d been yanked from the yawning pit of the devil’s throat to find themselves magically delivered to heaven? And wrapped in Jack’s arms, that’s exactly where she was.
“Let’s get you both out of here,” he whispered into her hair.
* * *
IT WAS ALMOST dawn and Jack sat in the hospital waiting room talking to Detective Reece. Sheriff Donner had come and gone like a boisterous windstorm, Sabrina was in recovery after surgery, Sophie was being treated and Buzz was stuck on the wrong side of a mudslide in his journey to the coast from the airport.
“Nash is going to make it,” Reece said.
Jack, not trusting his voice or choice of words, just nodded.
“He got chatty. I think Sabrina is alive because of her car. Nash apparently stashed her in his van after he got her to open that hotel room door, drugged her and stuffed her in a trunk. Then he drove her car to a spot where he hid it. Next he drove his van up here with a slight detour to dump the handyman’s body. He hitchhiked back to Seaport. He retrieved her car and drove the back roads to Astoria and that took a while. By then two days had gone by. She tried to escape and he shot her. When he saw Sophie lying on the sidewalk, his warped mind built a lovely little scenario—well, you know what was in those freezers.”