“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “The patterns are breaking.”
But did that mean anything? Were they just chasing him again down the same rabbit hole? “They die anyway,” she said, the frustration turning her voice harder than she’d intended. “So do we just stay in this never-ending cycle?” The darkness of what was in front of them threatened to consume her. There was no way she’d last much longer.
Sam shook his head. “He’ll make a mistake, kid. They always do. We just have to be in the right place when he does.”
“We never get there in time,” she said, a catch in her throat making the words painful as they crawled up it.
“Yeah, well, this time he was nice enough to give us extra time,” he said. “We better not waste it.”
The countdown clock clicked over in her head. Wasting time. They were wasting time. They should be out there, in the night, in the darkness where he thrived. She was already pushing to her feet when Sam stopped her.
“Kid. Sit your ass back down. You’re not going out there tonight. We have to figure out our next move, and you getting yourself killed is not it. We’ll hit the cabin at first light, then see what the locals can tell us about the missing girl.”
Shit. The urge to get out, to do something, didn’t recede entirely, but she was able to tame it. To not do something stupid. Or, as stupid as that. She still eyed the powder-blue 1950s fridge tucked into the corner of the kitchen. Maybe there was wine in it.
“You know, it could be more than grainy images,” Sam said, his voice tugging at her. It was on purpose. He knew what she was thinking. “He could be setting up his own equipment in advance. To watch you.”
That destroyed any thought of potential numbness in the guise of alcohol. “God, that’s sick.”
She pictured the bastard sitting in front of a computer screen, watching her through a lens that caught her only from unnatural angles. The curve of her cheek, the stretch of shoulder under leather jacket, the baseball cap that, she imagined, frustratingly hid her eyes from his gaze. Whether he was doing it or not, just the thought of it burrowed into the paranoid part of her mind. She would forever feel the prickle of awareness at the nape of her neck now. The feeling that he was always watching her. As if she needed another layer to add to the tapestry of her screwed-up psychology.
“He’s sick,” Sam said. Something everyone could agree on.
She glanced at the ceiling.
“There’s no way there are cameras in here, right?” She turned pleading eyes to Sam, her rational side knowing it was unlikely that Cross would have known the exact rental they were staying in before they got there, but the rest of her still caught in the grasp of the first breath of a panic attack.
He shook his head. “No way, kid. I think it’s safe to say he knows we’re here. He’d be watching out for us, and we’re easy enough to track. But he wouldn’t have been able to get cameras in here.”
Her tension didn’t ease, though, until she searched most of the obvious nooks and crannies she knew could be potential hiding places. Sam watched her without saying anything until she flopped onto the couch next to him.
“Always assume the worst,” he said with a slight smile that completely forgave her paranoid whirlwind. “Be surprised by the best.”
“You know,” she said, the buzz in her ears finally subsiding, “sometimes we sound like complete cynics, you realize that, right?”
“It comes hard-won, kid. Hard-won.”
She tapped a finger against the file he held loosely. “Don’t I know it.”
CHAPTER TEN
BESS
July 7, 2018
Bess didn’t retrace her steps. Instead, she took the circuitous route back through the little quiet neighborhoods with houses that, while they may have seen better days, seemed well loved. Big Wheels and jump ropes lay where they’d fallen, discarded in a moment when the child’s fleeting attention had been caught by the next shiny object.
Her sneakers smudged over chalk drawings of kitties and elephants and a fading hopscotch grid, and she smiled at an elderly couple who sat perched on a white porch swing despite the midday heat.
She continued on when they didn’t wave back, and sipped her water, grateful for Simon’s generosity once again as the cold liquid soothed her raw throat.
She made her way back to the main street, knowing she’d lingered long enough. Jeremy might start to wonder where she’d gone. Bad things tended to happen when he did that.
Her thoughts wandered back to Simon, though she didn’t quite know why she was still thinking about him. It wasn’t like he was outrageously hot or anything. He’d actually been so—her brain searched for the right word—normal.
A little rush of victory swept through her when she tossed her water bottle, and it fell into the trash can without bouncing off the rim.
“Nothing but net,” she murmured. It was silly. She missed just being silly.
Despite the borderline poverty they’d struggled through when she was growing up, her mother had put an emphasis on celebrating the ridiculous, on fun, on lightness. Even when her mom was busy in the shop, Bess would simply create a sister—one of those magical creatures she’d only ever heard about—or some other imaginary friend to keep her company, and she’d turn the back rooms into pirate ships and secret forests. Even as she’d grown out of childhood adventures, the whimsy had remained. She was the girl who painted her bedroom walls with murals of wildflowers and chased the sunrise only to find herself on a random beach hours away as the day broke through the night, the surf lapping at her toes.
It had been gradual, that loss of playfulness. Just like everything else.
With a tap of the finger, she started the time on her Garmin again and took off, back toward reality. Back toward Jeremy.
There had been something familiar about Simon. It was like she’d seen him before. But that was impossible. She would have remembered him. He probably had one of those faces. He was that person who got that all the time. Strangers squinting at him, trying to place him in their cloudy memories. Once she was up close to him, he had features that stood out, but even a few feet away, they started to blend and fade into a nondescript blur.
Her pace was steady, but slower, as she left Main Street for the two-lane road that would take her back to the lake house.
She noticed the Jeep pulled to the side about a quarter mile before she got to it.
Bess was the type to help strangers when they asked for directions, but she rarely stopped for motorists. It left her far too vulnerable, and in this day and age when she often considered taking Mace on her runs, she couldn’t be too careful. But there was no good way to avoid the Jeep owner, who was halfway obscured by the propped-open hood of the car. She could cross the road, but she thought of Simon buying her water. If a person in trouble couldn’t rely on the kindness of strangers, what could they rely on?
She slowed to a walk, stopping her run timer. She stepped into the grass so she wouldn’t be putting herself at risk of being slammed into by a passing car. Not that many had gone by. There had been maybe two in the fifteen minutes she’d been on the road.
Still. Better safe.
Wary of startling the man, she called out softly, not wanting him to bump his head. “Hello? Do you need some assistance?”
Surprise, followed by relief, followed by an emotion she didn’t want to examine crashed through her when the man pulled out from the dark depths of the engine. Simon. She laughed in delight, but then sobered when she realized the difficulty he was in.
He grimaced at her. “Fancy meeting you here,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows, as if he were standing in a bar feeding her a pickup line instead of next to his broken-down car on the side of the road.
She batted her lashes. “Of all the roads, in all the world, you break down on mine.” She knew she was rusty at the flirting business, but she got a little buzz trying. Like the second after taking a shot of tequila when you knew it was too early to really hit you, but y
ou felt it anyway. It made her want to smile bigger, giggle quicker.
“Actually, I’ll count that as the one lucky thing that’s happened all day,” he said. He held up his phone. “This died on me almost immediately after the engine started smoking. Almost as if it knew.”
He pushed away from the front of the car, walking closer to her. He opened the back door on the passenger side and leaned in. “My charger is back here somewhere, but of course it won’t work. And there’s only been one car that’s gone by, and it didn’t stop. If I could use your phone, you’d be my savior.”
He straightened, holding a coiled white phone charger, and gave her the most pitiful look.
“Of course you can use my phone.” She pulled the headphone jack out and held it out to him.
He plucked it out of her hand, looking up and down the road. “No one comes down this way, huh.”
“Yeah.” She turned back toward the stretch she’d just come from. “Seems pretty deserted. I’m glad I stumbled upon you and hadn’t already gone back.”
“Me too, dearest,” he said and something in his soft voice made the tiny hairs on the nape of her neck stand up, even before the oddity of the endearment registered.
“What did you . . .” The question died on her lips as a cloth came down over them. She smelled something sweet. His other hand had wrapped around her waist, holding her against his small, compact body. She flailed and kicked out, landing a solid strike against his vulnerable shin. He grunted, but his grip did not loosen. The world was starting to go gray and blurry at the edges.
“Shhh.” His voice was hot and clammy against her ear. “We’re going to have so much fun.” It was the last thing she heard before everything went black.
Bess blinked against the throbbing pain in her shoulder that brought her to consciousness.
Why was she on the floor? It was hard, concrete. Not cool bathroom tile. So not the lake house. Where was she? What had happened? Had there been a fight?
Something was not right.
Panic clawed at the back of her throat. If she could just breathe, it would be okay. Then she could think. She could figure it out.
When Bess tried to suck in air, though, she couldn’t. Her mouth was duct-taped.
Why was her mouth duct-taped?
Fear coated her tongue and made everything slow and hazy. Was she going to die? She didn’t want to die. Unconsciousness beckoned her, the soothing blackness so inviting that tears of relief gathered in her eyes at the thought of it. But if she gave in, would she wake up again?
She must have shifted because the pain was back. An old friend. It was welcome, that ache of bone and flesh pressed against concrete. It was something she could understand. It helped her fight off the darkness.
There was a general soreness that had settled into her, radiating from the pressure points where her shoulder and hip took the brunt of her weight, but there was no sharpness. Nothing that would suggest she was about to bleed out from any gaping wounds.
When she tried to run her fingers over her skin in an urgent need to check, just to make sure, she realized her arms were pulled tight behind her. The cold, harsh metal of the handcuffs dug into the fragile bones at her wrists.
Her pulse was still pounding in her ears, but the roar of it was receding with each breath she took through strained nostrils.
Simon.
The quiet, kind stranger in the store with the warm eyes who had smiled at her like he’d found a kindred spirit. Then he’d been on the road, and his car had broken down. But, no. No. That wasn’t right. It had been a trap. For her.
God, what did he want from her? The panic was back, barking and nipping at the solid edges of her already-shaky sanity.
Fight it. She had to fight it.
Wherever she was being held was pitch-black. She could see the thinnest sliver of light from a door that looked like it was floating in the sky but was probably just at the top of some kind of staircase. Even as her eyes adjusted, she could make out only large, bulky shapes, inanimate thugs all ready to knock her out if she made one wrong move.
Simon didn’t seem to be with her. To be sure, she stilled completely, listening, straining against the oppressive, thundering silence that pushed into the very crevices of her body. There was nothing.
Bess closed her eyes and thought back to the church basement with the hippie self-defense instructor. They’d run scenarios about what to do if they were approached on the street, what to do if a criminal broke into their apartments, even what to do if they were conscious and stuffed in the trunk of a car. They had not covered what to do if bound and gagged in a basement. Couldn’t get to it all in a three-month class. A desperate giggle she couldn’t contain erupted from behind the tape.
But one thing had run through the whole course. And that was to act. Don’t give in to fear. Go for vulnerable points, like the eyes, the throat, the groin, the kneecap, if the circumstances allowed. And if they didn’t, make it happen. She concentrated all her energy on focusing on the memory of her instructor’s harsh but somehow melodic voice, telling her to strike a Superman pose at the end of class because it would make her feel powerful. Telling her to be big, be strong, use her voice, use her size to her advantage. It played like a loop in her head, and she tucked the mantra underneath her breastbone where it could live until she needed it.
She opened her eyes again.
Get to a sitting position. Assess the surroundings.
She braced herself and then rolled to her back, onto already-abused arms, so that her hands were caught in the arch of her lower back. Using her fingertips, she pressed down and rocked up until she was sitting upright. The change in position let her roll her shoulders, returning blood to at least part of her arms.
It was just as she was trying to ignore the little jagged knives that came with the renewed circulation that she was presented with her next unpleasant obstacle. A deceivingly delicate chain connected the steel band around her ankle to a loop attached to the cement floor.
It was naive to think she would be allowed to roam the room. But she was disappointed anyway. She eyed her leash—it was short.
Bess promptly consigned the kindness-of-strangers philosophy to hell. If she survived—no, when she survived—she would never be nice to another human she didn’t know again. Some people might have prayed, or promised to dedicate their lives to righteous pursuits, if they found themselves in her situation. Not her. She would say screw them all. Starting with Jeremy.
The slight pressure in her bladder gave her an idea. He would have to unchain her to let her pee. Or she hoped he would. She guessed he could let her stew in her own filth, but she didn’t imagine that would fit nicely into whatever fantasy his lunatic mind had concocted. That opened up so many possibilities that her head felt light for a moment considering them. She could attack him, rush him, take him out at the legs. She could try to escape, up and through that mysterious door. She didn’t know what was on the other side, but it had to be better than this dank prison. She could fashion a weapon from bathroom items, or, if she was truly lucky, there would be an easy out from wherever he took her to do the deed. That didn’t seem probable, considering he’d thought enough to have steel loops installed to keep her chained in the basement, but there was always a chance.
Bess felt calmer, now that she had a plan. Or, a rough outline of a plan. Her eyes had even adjusted further, and the looming shadows around her started looking less like monsters out of a child’s nightmare and more like heavy machinery of some sort. Thick, heavy canvas provided dusty covers for whatever was beneath, but some metal stuck out.
Just as she tucked her free right leg under her left thigh in a fruitless effort to get within a spitting distance of comfortable, she heard it.
She froze. It had sounded like a rattle of metal against metal. Like the way her own chain jangled against the silence. But softer.
Was it him? Should she brace herself for a fight? Should she beg? Cry? Would anything get through
to him? Was it worth trying?
Bess didn’t move a muscle during the silence that followed. It felt like an eternity but was probably only five minutes.
And then, when she had just given up, when she had just chalked it up to her overwrought imagination, she heard it again.
She shouted a “Hello?” But the duct tape turned it into a garbled mishmash of vowels and consonants that had no meaning. She paused and then tried again.
“Shhhh.” The reprimand emerged from the deepest shadows of the room. “He’s coming.”
And just as the voice reached Bess’s ears, the door at the top of the stairs swung open.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CLARKE
July 15, 2018
All police stations looked the same on the inside. No matter if they were in Massachusetts or Florida, New Mexico or Montana.
To the left of the front desk—manned, like always, by a young officer just out of the academy—was a coffeepot, its bottom coated with something that probably used to be drinkable at one point but was now primordial sludge. If it was before dawn, the uncomfortable chairs lining the wall of the room would be filled with low-level criminals from the night before, sulking as they waited to be booked and released back on the streets. When the hour turned more respectable, good Samaritans, their bodies shivering with self-righteousness, would flock in to get a pat on the head for reporting some menial misdeed.
The worst, though, was the lighting. And it was in every goddamn precinct. Fluorescent tubes whitewashed cold, stark tiles, the artificial light sucking the soul out of everyone who pushed through the doors into the hellhole. The ambience really amplified the red-streaked eyes and the greasy strands of hair that had gone too long without shampoo. Or at least that was what it did to hers.
Because she was annoyed and sleep deprived, she glared at Sam’s back as he stepped into the entrance of the Staunton Police Station. It was far easier to direct her frustration at him than to think about why she was there in the first place.
It Ends With Her Page 8