by Lexie Ray
However, Hunter couldn’t say any of that. Ash would probably understand if she did, but she just couldn’t. To speak the words out loud would make them real, too real. At least bottled up inside her, she could pretend during the lighter moments that everything really would be ok eventually. So, Hunter simply nodded. It was a gesture of agreement, a sign she trusted him and that they were on the same page, fighting the same battle.
She glanced down at the cell and was about to flip to the one contact number in the phone, when her finger pressed the call log instead. Hunter paused, not believing her eyes. There had been an outgoing call—not long ago, too. And it wasn’t to Sarah’s number.
“Did you make a call on the disposable?” asked Hunter.
“Only to Sarah about a million times,” said Ash. “Why?”
“Look at this number,” said Hunter, angling the phone towards him so he could see that a call was placed about an hour ago to a 603 number.
“603, that’s a New Hampshire area code, but I don’t recognize the number. It looks like the call was placed at 11:05 p.m.” Ash shook his head, wracking his brain. “You’ve had the phone almost all night.”
That’s when Hunter remembered. “I left it in the laundry room for a split second when I got Blair a glass of water.”
“She called someone.”
“Who? Who the fuck would she call?”
Suddenly, Hunter and Ash looked at each other, as waves of confusion and doubt crashed over the only real possibility.
“I don’t believe it,” said Hunter. “I thought I had gotten through to her.”
“We don’t know who she called, not for sure,” said Ash trying to calm her down.
“Of course we do, don’t be naïve,” she said.
Ash wasn’t being naïve. He was being hopeful. Hopeful that they hadn’t been betrayed by the one girl they had fought so hard to save.
“Should I call it?” she asked, excited and fearful all at once.
“We should do it with Sarah and see if she can trace the call. We have to be calculated about this. All we want is to know where Grizzly is. We can’t jeopardize that.”
“But he likes to play games,” she said almost under her breath, to herself, thinking out loud. “He might want me to know.”
“No,” said Ash. “Let’s accidentally leave the phone with Blair again. Let’s trust her, give her freedom. She might be able to lead us right to him.”
“It’s a long shot,” said Hunter.
“Is it? She’s hell bent on helping him. Wouldn’t she want to be back with him, by his side?”
Hunter’s heart sank. “I need more time with her. I won’t give up on her.”
“Just because she’s like this now doesn’t mean she’ll always be like this, Hunter. She’ll come around. But in the meantime we could use her to our advantage.”
“She’s been used enough!” Hunter didn’t mean to snap at him. Her anger would be better directed at the monster who had caused all this.
Without further hesitation, Hunter hit the send button, putting the call through to the mystery number.
“Hunter, don’t,” said Ash.
She put the phone to her ear.
“Hang up, this is premature. It’s going to backfire,” he said.
However, she didn’t waver. She kept the cell pressed to her ear.
“We need to get to Sarah and talk to her,” said Ash more insistently.
The line seemed to ring on and on, vibrating in her ear. He wasn’t picking up. And yet the call hadn’t turned over to voice mail. Though the hope quickly drained from Hunter, she knew she wouldn’t hang up. She would listen to it ring for as long as it would. As far as she was concerned, she had all night.
“Hunter,” said a man’s voice on the other end, cutting in, abruptly interrupting the predictable pulse of the ringing line.
Hunter stepped back from Ash, claiming distance from his outstretched hand that threatened to undo her progress by ending the call.
“I have Blair. We found Mom. You’re going down,” said Hunter. Her gaze locked on Ash, who stood staring at her wide eyed, his breath baited.
“You killed Rick with expert precision, Hunter. I’m proud of you. I knew you would kill if you had to. Now, it’s just a matter of making sure you’ll also kill when you want to—and when I want you to,” he said, his voice a raspy growl.
“You were there?” she asked, surprised that he had been anywhere near the farmhouse during their takeover of it.
“Ash didn’t tell you?”
Hunter’s expression shifted, turning dark as it fell upon Ash.
“Ash tells me everything,” she lied, furious that once again he had kept something from her. Her glare turned icy, her face stone-like.
“Yes, I was recording your little performance,” he went on. “The camera loves you.”
“Blair is cooperating with us. All the brainwashing you’ve done to her won’t last forever. It’s already fading.”
“Is it?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Sweetheart, the fact that you’re making this call right now feeds into my best laid plans.”
“No, Dad, the fact that I had Blair call you feeds into mine,” she said, before quickly flipping the phone shut, hanging up in an instant. “He thinks he’s fucking with us,” she said to Ash.
The way she was looking at him didn’t give Ash much encouragement.
“Did you see him when you were at the farmhouse?” she asked, point blank.
“We should get in touch with Sarah,” he said.
“Did you?”
“No.”
Hunter glared at him, hoping to penetrate his poker face and see the truth.
“Give me the phone,” he said.
“No.”
“Why?”
“He’s going to call back,” she said.
“How do you know that?”
“I hung up on him,” she said matter-of-factly. “But I need to know before he does, did you see him that night?”
“Why don’t you believe me?”
Hunter raised her eyebrows, as though her answer would be as blatant as his question.
“That’s what I like about you, Ash. If I trusted you any more, I’d be blind,” she said.
The cell vibrated in her hand. She stared down at it then looked up at Ash.
“It’s not him.”
Chapter Eleven
The diner was empty by the time Hunter and Ash stepped inside, except for a bored looking waitress who couldn’t have been a day older than eighteen.
“Have a seat anywhere you like,” she said without making eye contact with either of them, “I’ll be over with a couple menus.”
Sarah wasn’t there yet. Ash proceeded to the far end of the diner and claimed a booth next to the window. Hunter sat across from him, and they both stared out at the parking lot, beyond their own reflections in the window, until the waitress caught up to them with two giant laminated menus.
“Coffee,” Hunter said without taking the menu.
“Same,” said Ash.
The waitress glared at them for a beat, no doubt irritated that she had taken time out of her busy thumb twiddling evening to fetch menus that neither of them needed. “Be right back with your coffee,” she said through a smile that was more a baring of the teeth than a gesture of sincerity.
“Do you think the police have found the farmhouse yet? Do you think Sarah would tip them off to that?” Hunter asked as soon as the waitress was back behind the counter.
“Let’s let her do all the talking and get us up to speed on things from her end before we give her the blow-by-blow of our night,” suggested Ash. It was as good a suggestion as any.
“There she is,” said Hunter nodding in the direction of the entrance.
After a moment, Sarah was seated in the booth opposite Hunter, as Ash lowered down beside Hunter having changed sides.
“We tried you countless times,” he said, diving in immed
iately.
“I got the messages,” said Sarah. “I was tied up at the police station.”
“Did you end up heading over to the farmhouse?” he asked, hitting in with his question even before she had finished.
“Yes,” she said, looking between Ash and Hunter. He was being awfully pushy. It gave away his level of distrust. In Sarah’s opinion, it was always a mistake to do that, a rookie mistake. “I encountered him.”
It took Hunter’s breath away. Her heart pounded in her chest harder and faster the longer Sarah withheld any further information.
“And?” Ash demanded.
“And I couldn’t do anything,” she said flatly.
The waitress appeared all of a sudden, setting two mugs of coffee in front of them. “Can I get you anything?” she asked Sarah, having given up on the concept of a menu.
“Nothing thanks,” said Sarah.
Thrilled would not describe the waitress’s reaction, but she returned to her magazines and boredom behind the counter in no time.
“What do you mean you couldn’t do anything?” asked Hunter.
“I mean I had a gun on him, and he had a gun on me. I couldn’t over take him. I had to tread carefully. We had words, and he left,” she said, directing the answer exclusively to Hunter.
“He just left? Where’d he leave to? Did he get in a car?” she asked, rapid fire.
“He left off towards the woods, on foot, but not before making sure I was half way back to my car.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” said Hunter.
“I could’ve shot at him and been shot, would that have made more sense?” she asked.
“What did you say to each other? You said you had words,” asked Ash.
“Nothing helpful,” said Sarah. “Just psychological crap, like trying to get in my head, trying to imply that he’s some kind of mastermind, smarter than everyone, trying to instill worry and fear in me.”
“You should’ve come when we called you. This whole thing would be over by now,” said Hunter, accusingly.
Ash could tell that Hunter was hitting in a little too hard. It was starting to sound like an attack. The last thing they needed was to make an enemy out of the one woman who stood between them and life in prison.
“We got all the girls out safely,” said Ash.
Sarah seemed highly interested in this fact.
“But I’m sure you knew that since you were there,” he added.
“I didn’t go inside. I didn’t know any of that,” said Sarah. “That’s fantastic, where are they?”
“At my place. I have a cabin,” he was saying when suddenly Hunter pinched his thigh under the table. She didn’t want him giving away the location.
“What are you going to do with them?” asked Hunter. “Can you get them to the police, accounted for, and returned to their families?”
“I have a place for them, yes,” said Sarah. “But I’m not sure it’s best for all of us that the girls speak to the police. Not yet. Not until we’ve accomplished what we set out to do.”
It was an odd thing for a cop to say, but Hunter agreed. She wanted the police involved as little as possible until she could get her hands on Grizzly.
“Blair made a call on the burner,” said Hunter. “It was to Grizzly. It’s our best bet for finding out where he is. We need to use Blair.”
“How is she?” asked Sarah, her eyes suddenly wide with concern. It was as human as she had looked the entire conversation, thought Hunter. Concern humanized a person. It let the light shine through a person’s eyes. For the first time since sitting down, Hunter felt like she was with her mother.
Hunter began shaking her head, searching for the right words to explain Blair’s horrible condition. “She’s brainwashed, but not too far gone. She’s starting to manipulate. She led me to believe she had reached some clarity knowing that Grizzly was evil, then she called him the second I left her alone with the cell. But she’s not too far gone, like I said. She just needs time. His hold over her will loosen. She’ll get her life back.” Hunter was no longer speaking for Sarah’s benefit, but rather to convince herself that what she was saying was true.
Ash took her hand in his under the table. She naturally fell silent as a result.
“We need to find him and finish this,” Hunter reiterated. “We have an idea,” she went on, as she leaned in across the table and began sharing a plan that just might work.
Sarah’s face seemed to drop. She was not on board. And for the life of her, Hunter couldn’t understand why.
* * *
Blair listened to the fluttering voices of the girls through the laundry room wall, as she attempted to wriggle her wrists through the plastic ties that tethered her to the cot legs. She was getting nowhere, except to cut her wrists on the sharp plastic edges.
“I have to go to the bathroom!” Blair called out through the wall. “Hello? Guys? I have to go pee!”
She waited a second. The giggling voices through the wall quieted into hushed whispers, but no one answered her. No one came to the laundry room.
“Please? I really have to go! Badly!”
“Hunter will be back soon,” said one of the girls. “She’ll take you then.”
Blair calmed her frustration. If she ever got out of these ties she’d kill those bitches, but until then...
“Please don’t make me go here. You’d be as bad as he is if you make me pee on my bed,” said Blair. She listened. The other side of the wall was absolute silence.
Then, the door opened.
“I’ll take you,” said Margot.
Chapter Twelve
The sun was just beginning to rise when Linden stepped out of his Buick into a thick blanket of fog that covered the land, the long dirt driveway, the farmhouse, and its rolling hills out back. It was quiet except for the distant grumble of a train of squad cars heading in his direction. No sirens, no flashing lights, only the purr of engines, a lowly chorus of machinery.
There was a body on the front porch. He could see it from where he was standing. It looked stiff, though it slumped sideways at an ungodly angle. Whoever had done this wasn’t concerned with being caught or cleaning up after themselves. It made Linden wonder how many more were left dead inside.
By the time he reached the porch steps, the scent of rancid flesh stinking in the sunlight was palpable. The squad cars rolled to a stop, surrounding his vehicle in the driveway, not that Linden turned around. He remained staring at the dead man’s forehead.
It was no different than that little girl back in Brooklyn, whose body had slumped in the bathtub and whose forehead was carved across. The dead man before Linden had the same name, “Hunter” engraved on his skin. It was just plain creepy. That settled it, he thought, an unequivocal tie to the Brooklyn murders. The Feds would be involved instantly.
He needed an answer on Sarah Voss. He needed his report back, the background check, and the confirmation that Sarah had more to do with this than her shoddy effort at detective work. However, Linden had received no word from the Brooklyn P.D. He was sick of waiting.
Linden turned back and watched the local police—under a Sheriff’s directive—stalk through the property systematically, while he held his ringing cell phone to his ear.
“Hi, good morning, Linden here,” he said, speaking quietly into the receiver. Sarah had received word that the warrant had gone through, and she would arrive any moment. He kept a look out. The last thing he needed was to be surprised. The woman was quieter than a ninja. “Calling about the background check I had requested.” He exhaled while he waited for the specialist on the other end to pull up their findings and progress reports. “Yeah, I’m still here,” he said before listening, growing more and more excited. “Are you sure she was married to him?” he asked, even though he knew the specialist was sure. “Two daughters that went missing, really? What were their names?” Linden couldn’t even blink for fear of missing a piece of this game-changing break in the case. Then, he heard the word,
the word he had hoped he might, the word that would forever change who Sarah Voss was in his mind and in this case. “Arrested?”
“Yes, sir,” said the specialist. “It was expunged from her record and wouldn’t have come up on a basic background check that the police academy tends to do. This was about twenty-five years ago, by the way, in New Hampshire.”
“And what was the arrest for?” asked Linden, salivating. The answer he got was mind blowing.
“Got something over here!” Called out one of the uniform officers from the far side of the property. Linden watched as a number of officers along with the Sheriff jogged around the far side of the house.
“Thanks, I’ll be in touch,” said Linden, after which he flipped his phone shut and followed the trail of officers to a small wooden shed at the tree line.
Inside the woodshed, the officers cleared back allowing Linden entry. He discovered that the shed was completely empty, other than a small, tightly-packed bale of hay that sat in the center of the shed like a table. Beside it, an officer was kneeling and held in his gloved hand a shiny DVD.
“Step aside,” said Linden, requiring even more space to squeeze inside. He gloved his hands as he did so, leaning over the DVD. When he took it in his hands, he could see written on its face with a black Sharpie was the note: “For Sarah Voss”.
Linden got the distinct feeling that whatever was on that DVD would tie into Sarah’s sordid New Hampshire past. He needed to see it before she did.
One of the forensic analysts took the DVD at the Sheriff’s instructions and inserted it into a laptop computer just outside the woodshed. Everyone gathered around, though the Sheriff soon ordered half the officers to go through the farmhouse and the other half through the barn.