by Cindy Dees
“Well?” Brett demanded.
“Jimbo says he doesn’t know anything about Anna’s whereabouts.”
“Is he lying?”
“Unknown. He was evasive with me when I asked if Mona was home so I could talk with her. He claimed she’s out of town.”
Brett shook his head. “Apparently, she and some of her friends have been going into Pittypat’s daily to harass Anna. I find it hard to believe that she would leave town when she’s having so much fun getting revenge.”
“Hmm. Maybe I’ll park one of my guys down the street and wait to see if Mona comes home. I’d like to have a chat with her, too. Gauge her reactions.”
Stymied, Brett was tempted to punch something. “There has to be something we can do. I can feel it. She’s in trouble, Joe.”
* * *
Anna’s head felt like it had been split in two. She reached for it—or she tried to reach for it—but her hands wouldn’t move. Her wrists hurt, too—her left one in the cast aching, the right one stinging like it had been burned. She felt stiff and sore all over. She tried to move, to stretch. But her feet wouldn’t move either.
She opened her eyes and got the shock of her life. She was tied to a chair, which explained why she couldn’t move. But more shocking were the rough stone walls arching up overhead. An oil lantern cast dim light on the damp granite walls. How on earth had she ended up in what looked like a cave? She had no recollection of getting here...
She cast back in her mind for the last thing she did remember...
...Dancing with Brett. And making love with him. She winced as memory came back to her of kissing him goodbye one last time and slipping out of bed. She’d cleaned up the kitchen from their romantic dinner and read the mail she hadn’t opened last night.
A letter came with a court date in two weeks’ time for some sort of legal hearing. She had to enter a plea, apparently. She might as well plead guilty to whatever they were charging her with. It would save everyone a lot of time and trouble. She remembered thinking that it was time to put her affairs in order.
Anna frowned, trying to remember what came next. But frowning made her head throb so bad she had to pause and wait for the jackhammers in her skull to subside before she tried again to piece together what had happened.
She had put on her coat...
Had headed outside... Where had she been going?
Oh. Right. She was going to go to the diner to warn Petunia and Patricia that when her trial happened, they were going to have to hire a new waitress/bookkeeper. The two women were very particular about who worked for them, and it might take the pair some weeks to get just the person they both wanted.
Did she ever reach the diner?
As hard as she tried, she couldn’t remember talking to the twin owners of Pittypat’s. Walking out the front door of her little house was the last thing she could recall, and no matter how she tried, nothing between that moment and now was coming back to her.
She looked around the cave as best she could from her chair. A tunnel opened up behind her, presumably leading outside. No light came in from the opening, though. She was alone in the cave. Which was a mixed blessing, she supposed. No one was here to kill her, but no one was here to feed her or untie her, either. She must have been knocked out, or maybe drugged. Goodness knew, her brain was fuzzy enough for her to have been drugged.
She probably ought to feel some sort of panic, but at the moment, matter-of-fact detachment was about all she could summon. Was she in shock, perhaps? Or maybe still under the influence of drugs.
She tested the ropes holding her. Someone had trussed her up tightly. From what she could see of the knots tying her wrists down to the chair arms and tying her ankles to the chair legs, someone had done a thorough job. She tried to wriggle within the bonds, to stretch her aching muscles and relieve a little of the discomfort, but there was only so much she could do tied to a chair.
Over the next half hour or so, her mind gradually cleared, and with clarity came terror. Who had done this to her? Why? What did they want with her? Was this the work of some random psychopath, or was this a specific attack aimed at her?
And the all-important question occurred to her: Was she going to die?
Ironically, death was what she’d wanted for a long time. And now she might just get her wish. She probably ought to be grateful to her kidnapper for hastening the inevitable and saving her the trouble of having to find a way to destroy what remained of her life that didn’t involve actually committing suicide.
She tried to settle into a state of calm acceptance of whatever was going to come. Her entire life had been pointing at this moment. And now the end was here.
But without warning, Brett’s face flashed in her mind’s eye. His impassioned plea for her to value her own life rolled through her mind. Was he right? Should she trust his judgment and accept that a man like him wouldn’t fall for her if she didn’t have something of value to offer? Over and over, his speech rolled through her mind.
At first, she discounted it as the talk of a man in bed with a woman. Of course he was going to say nice things to get her to have sex with him. But as the last of whatever she’d been drugged with cleared from her mind, logical thought also returned. Brett didn’t have to butter her up to get her to sleep with him.
Okay, so maybe he’d actually believed what he said. She replayed his exhortation to trust him and to value herself over a few more times. Was there some truth to what he said? Should she believe him?
One thing about being tied to a chair. It gave a girl plenty of time to think about her life. To pass the time and keep her from freaking out in the oppressive silence, she replayed the events from when she’d been an insecure, lonely teen and Eddie Billingham first noticed her.
In retrospect and with the wisdom of age, she could see now how he’d targeted her as a naive and vulnerable victim. He needed complete control, and she’d been too unsure and shy to fight him on anything. They’d been a match made in hell. She’d enabled his aggression and control issues, and he’d enabled her weakness and inability to stand up for herself.
She walked back through the memories of their years in Hollywood, trying to honestly tally up her mistakes and Eddie’s. Maybe it took knowing Brett to get her there, but she was finally able to take a hard, honest look at her disastrous marriage.
At the end of the day, Eddie’s list of failures was miles longer than hers. She hadn’t been perfect, but if she were to be brutally honest, she’d been a much better wife than Eddie deserved for a lot longer than he’d deserved to have her.
Huh.
She wasn’t quite sure what to do with that realization. Instead, she forced herself to move on to examining the night that Eddie died. Most of the time she did everything in her power not to think about it. But now, with death looming near, she opened that drawer in her mind and let the memories flow.
He’d been passed out drunk on the couch when she’d come home. It had been their anniversary, and she was going to cook him a nice dinner. A roast was ready to go into the oven, and she was chopping potatoes and carrots and onions to go with it. The onions made her cry, and tears were running down her face when she heard him wake up. He’d shouted at her to bring him a beer, but she was in a hurry to get the roast in the oven before it got too late.
He’d come into the kitchen swearing at her. He’d called her a whore, which only made her tired anymore. He’d called her a slut and a bitch and worse for so long she was numb to the insults. His eyes had been cold and flat, the way they got when he was about to use his fists on her. Except tonight he reached for his belt.
That was new. The ominous slither of leather from around his waist got her attention in a big way and terror shivered through her. And then he’d charged at her, lunging forward to grab her. He’d always been fast, even though he’d gotten paunchy the past few years.
She whipped around to face him and that stupid butcher knife had been in her fist. He’d raised his arm, belt in hand, bellowing about how he was going to kill her this time—
Her mind had gone blank. Certainty that this time he was going to do it broke over her like a bucket of ice water. The shock and relief were so great she couldn’t even draw breath.
That had been when he hit the knife. He’d been staring into her eyes and hadn’t looked down. Hadn’t realized that foot-long blade was sticking out in her hand. He’d run right onto it. The tip plunged into his belly so fast she didn’t have any chance to pull it out before it was seated to the hilt in his gut. He’d stopped. Looked down in surprise. And she’d done the same.
Her fist was still wrapped around the handle, and the rest of the knife wasn’t visible. The whole thing was buried in the soft flesh of his belly. Blood started to pour out, soaking his T-shirt in an instant and soaking his pants in a few seconds more.
He staggered back. Dropped the belt. He yanked the knife out of his gut, and then the blood really came, gushing through the cut in his T-shirt. He looked up at her and said without emotion, “You fucking bitch.” And then he’d fallen to his knees. Pitched over on his side. And died in a spreading pool of his own blood.
It had happened so damned fast. He’d been dead in a matter of seconds.
The coroner said the knife had severed the abdominal aorta. Eddie’s heart had pumped most of the blood in his body out of the cut in a matter of a few heartbeats. The coroner also said that even if a skilled surgeon had been standing over Eddie the exact second he was stabbed, he still couldn’t have been saved. That was how fast he’d bled to death.
Sitting in that chair facing death had a way of stripping everything down to the essential truths. For perhaps the first time ever, she was totally, brutally honest with herself. Guilt aside, and suicidal urges aside, could she have moved that knife in time to stop Eddie from impaling himself on it? The thing was, she’d been looking at that belt coming at her, and she’d been scared to death. She really had frozen in panic.
Yes, there had probably been a millisecond to yank the knife aside. But she’d been in no condition to do it. She’d been paralyzed with terror.
Huh. Maybe the police had been right when they’d absolved her of blame for his death.
For the first time since that horrible night, she was willing to entertain the idea that maybe Eddie had been responsible for his own death. Maybe it was staring down her own death that finally led her to see that, or maybe it was Brett’s influence that brought her to the moment. But either way, she was glad she got there before she died.
Although if she wasn’t directly responsible for Eddie’s death, maybe she didn’t deserve to die after all.
The idea broke over her like a tidal wave, stopping in its tracks every other thought passing through her head. Utter stillness of mind, body, and soul came over her. Was Brett right? Did she really deserve to live?
She waited, listening to her soul. At length, a tiny, hesitant voice in the back of her head whispered that maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t a bad person.
That tiny voice’s message slammed into her with the force of a religious revelation. It rocked her to her core.
And that was when fear exploded in her gut. Finally, at long last, she didn’t want to die. Yet, here she was, alone, tied up, at the mercy of an unknown attacker. She had to get out of here!
* * *
“I can’t just sit around doing nothing, Joe!” Brett exploded. “There has to be something we can do. Someone we can interview.”
“You tell me who. Name me anyone else who has some beef with her, and I’m all over pulling them in and interrogating them.”
“Vinny Benson.”
“The guy with the junk shop in Hillsdale?” Joe blurted, surprised.
“He has the hots for her. She said he’s been coming on to her. Calls her all the time.”
“When’s the last time you know that he spoke to her?” Joe asked.
“Anna said he called her the morning after her front window got broken. Said he had a matching piece of glass for her. Offered to bring it to her in Sunny Creek.” He snapped his fingers in recollection. “Oh, and he called her again to invite her to dinner that evening. I was with her when the call came in. She seemed a little creeped out.”
Joe frowned. “How the hell did he know her window got broken only a few hours after it got busted?”
Brett and Joe traded grim looks, and as one, headed for Joe’s SUV.
They were on their way out the door when one of the deputies called out, waving a handful of papers he snatched out of a printer, “Hey, I just got Anna Larkin’s call log from the phone company.”
Joe snagged the papers on the way past, but kept going with Brett right on his heels. They climbed in the SUV and Joe shoved the phone records at Brett. “Look through these while I drive.”
Brett started with the last calls first. “Here’s a phone call from Hillsdale the day Anna disappeared. She didn’t answer it. And...” He swore. “There are about six calls from Benson the day before that, all in the evening. She didn’t answer any of them.”
“Maybe he was stalking her,” Joe commented. “The frequent, unanswered calls fit the pattern.”
“Drive faster, buddy,” Brett ground out.
* * *
Anna rocked back and forth until her chair tipped over backward. Unlike the movies, the damned chair didn’t break, and she managed to hit the back of her head, hard, on the stone floor. As if her head didn’t already hurt enough, now it throbbed so badly that her vision was a little fuzzy.
She managed to roll onto her right side, but the ropes dug into her flesh even worse now. And she had to pee. This was going to get very unpleasant very soon if someone didn’t come untie her.
Her mouth was parched, her lips cracking from dehydration. Her stomach growled with hunger, too. But none of that mattered. If she didn’t find a way out of here, she was dead.
Brett would never forgive her if she died on him. He said he wanted a future with her. And if he would have her, she wanted a future with him, too.
Think, Anna. There has to be something you can do.
She looked around the cave for something, anything to help her. There was only rock and more rock. And that lantern hanging on a high hook. Steel tracks crossed the floor like a mini-railroad used to pass through here. This must be an old mine. This area was historically known for sapphire deposits.
Where there were mines, there were tools. And there were shards of chiseled rock. She squinted, trying to focus her eyes on the ground in the corners. Over there. Some scree was piled up beside the wall. How to get to it, though?
She experimented, and with great effort was able to roll onto her knees and face. It was terribly uncomfortable and she scraped her face all to heck but was able to inchworm her way across the cave, literally a few inches at a time.
It was laborious in the extreme and now her face was killing her along with her head. But she was determined to get out of here. The man she loved was waiting for her.
I’m coming, Brett. Just hang in there. Have faith in me. I didn’t run away this time.
* * *
Joe parked the SUV in front of the junk shop and Brett said warningly, “Don’t tell me to sit in the car. Anna has been missing for twenty-four hours and I’m not sitting anywhere.”
Joe rolled his eyes. “Then promise me you’ll let me do the talking. This is a legal matter, and if you mess it up a criminal could walk free.”
Brett nodded tersely and climbed out. They stepped inside the junk shop and a voice yelled from the back of the store, “Be with you in a sec.”
“That’s Vinny,” Brett murmured.
Joe nodded, then moved quickly and quietly past the front counter toward the storeroom in the back. Brett recognized his cousin’s i
ntent to take a look around the nonpublic portion of the store and fell in behind Joe, rolling silently from heel to toe with each step, moving fast and catlike.
Every sense on high alert, he moved into the jungle of antiques and assorted junk stacked high in the storeroom. He was alert for any unexpected movements, and his hands itched to hold a weapon to be ready to take out any threats.
He cast his awareness outward. Was Anna here somewhere? Tied up maybe? Unable to let him know she was nearby? He didn’t know if he would instinctively sense her or not, but he tried anyway. He was a desperate man.
If she was here, he didn’t feel her presence.
Joe hand signaled him to fan out and work his way down the right side of the room. Joe would take the middle. Brett nodded and moved into the far aisle between piles of junk. Staying low, he moved fast, peering between stacks of crap, clearing every possible nook and cranny where a human being could be stashed.
“Hey! You’re not allowed back here!” That was Vinny, ahead and to the left.
“Mr. Benson, I’m Sheriff Westlake.”
“I know who you are. What can I do for you today?”
Joe spoke casually, much more so than Brett would have been able to manage, “I’m trying to find Anna Larkin. I need to speak with her about a legal matter. I hear you two are friends, and I was wondering if you by any chance know how I can get a hold of her.”
His search of the right side of the storeroom complete, Brett sprinted silently back to the front of the big space. Crouching, he peeked out from behind a bulky rolltop desk and saw that Joe blocked Vinny’s line of sight back this way. Perfect. Brett darted across the open space, and this time worked his way up the far left aisle in search of Anna.
“Have you called her cell phone? I’ve got her number if you need it.”