by Mandy Magro
‘Oh thank God it’s you.’ She held the scarf up in front of her as she peered through the window. ‘Look at this. I’ve found Scarlet’s scarf, the one that I told you she would have been wearing when she went missing. You won’t believe who had it.’
CHAPTER
21
The first thing Renee felt as she tried to blink open her lead-heavy eyes was the intense throbbing in her head. A piercing pain was shooting behind her eyes and almost to the point of making her want to throw up. She was enveloped in darkness, unable to see even an inch in front of her. The world felt as though it was spinning around her, the wooziness adding to her nausea, and her thoughts tumbled around in her mind like objects being tossed about in a cyclone, the combination of everything making it impossible to think at all.
Trying to lick her dry lips, she instinctively went to place her hand on her head but something stopped her. Her wrists were bound. And then her state of unconsciousness gave way and her reality came crashing down upon her. He’d invited her into the car and then once he’d locked the doors he’d hit her so hard she must have blacked out. Where had he taken her? What was he going to do to her? Never in her wildest dreams would she have thought he was capable of this.
Renee pictured his face, his evil eyes leering at her seconds after he’d pressed the central locking and then grabbed her by the throat. Terror gripping her once more, she started to hyperventilate as she tried to forcefully yank her arms free from her restraints. Chains jangled and clinked as she fruitlessly struggled, the agony she was inflicting upon herself as she tried to free her wrists from whatever was wrapped around them bordering on unbearable.
Along with her innate instinct for survival, every one of her senses snapped to attention, sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch. She was extremely relieved to still feel the press of her clothes against her skin. She couldn’t see past whatever was over her head but she could hear water dripping and smell strong chemicals. She was sitting up and her back was pressed up against a wall that was icy cold. Utilising the little give she had from the chains around her wrists and ankles, she clambered onto her knees and used her hands to feel around the floor. It was cold and felt like tiles. Something scurried past her and she froze, her breath catching in her throat. A barrage of questions engulfed her, making fear consume her even more as she rolled herself into a ball on the floor and wept. Was he going to rape her? Kill her? Was this the place where Scarlet had taken her last breath? That thought chilled her to the very core.
A new sound made her stop crying and instead hold her breath. She heard a key sliding into a lock, and then a door squeaking open before being slammed closed again, followed by heavy footfalls coming down a flight of creaky steps. At least now she knew she was underneath something—not that it helped with the state she was in right now, but if she somehow broke free…
Shaking with fear, she silently counted each chilling step. There were nine—nine steps between her imminent death and possible life. As he got closer, her skin grew colder. She could hear his laboured breath now, his sheer presence weighing so heavily down upon her that she felt as though she was going to suffocate. Then she heard the most heart-wrenching sound—the whimper of a child. A flicking sound was followed by light blazing through the bag over her head. She strained to see through the fabric but all she could make out was a moving form.
‘I’ve brought you some company. Being the extremely considerate man I am I thought you might like some. From what I’ve heard, you two know each other quite well already.’ The sardonic laughter at the end of his proclamation was spine-chilling.
Chains jangled as the child began to weep. ‘Please don’t tie me up. I want to go home to my daddy.’ The child’s sobs grew louder. ‘Please don’t hurt me.’
Renee’s heart froze. Oh dear Lord, please no, it can’t be.
‘Shut up with your whining, you annoying little shit! Or I’ll give you something worthwhile to whine about.’ The man spat vehemently. ‘And it’s your daddy’s fault you’re here, so have a hard think about that before you go saying you want to go home to him. If I were you, I’d hate his guts!’ He sniggered. ‘Come to think of it, I do hate his guts, have ever since he stole her from me… He always gets everything he wants.’
Not caring about her own wellbeing anymore, Renee blindly turned towards where the voices were coming from as she tried to reach out. ‘Annie, is that you, sweetheart? It’s me, Renee.’
‘Renee?’ Annie’s voice was trembling, and sounded so tiny. ‘I’m so scared.’
A forceful smack across the face slammed Renee’s entire body into the wall behind her, sending Annie into a screaming fit beside her.
‘I’ll tell you when you can speak, you bitch,’ his voice boomed. ‘And if I were you, Annie, I’d stop your bloody screaming. This is your last warning. Shut the fuck up or I’ll gladly make you.’
Annie’s screams became stifled whimpers before she broke into a bout of chesty coughing. Footsteps moved away from Renee and she heard a tap being turned on.
Using the small reprieve without him, Renee snuck her hand along the floor as far as the chains around her wrists would allow her to, trying to feel for Annie’s. A tiny hand finally found hers and they entwined their fingers tightly. Annie’s hand was so cold. She was desperate to take her into her arms, but frozen with fear she remained huddled against the wall, her inability to see what was going on rendering her motionless. She didn’t want to do anything to piss the bastard off even more.
The heavy footsteps were heading back towards them. ‘Here, Annie, drink this,’ the voice demanded. ‘I hate coughing, it drives me up the fucking wall.’
Annie must have disobeyed.
‘Now!’ His voice was thunderous. ‘Don’t make me hurt you.’
Renee could hear Annie taking glugs of water in between her coughing. ‘Please, she has nothing to do with this. Let her go. Please, I’m begging you.’
His hands went around Renee’s throat, the pressure increasing as he crouched down and pressed himself up against her. ‘Oh, trust me, she has everything to do with this. What better way to hurt him than to take away the one person he loves most in this world.’ Dropping his hands from around her throat, he grabbed both her breasts through her top and squeezed them forcefully, making Renee cry out in pain as he laughed. ‘Your tits feel just like your sister’s did all those years ago. It was a bloody shame I had to kill her, but when she told me she was pregnant, what was I meant to do?’
Renee’s jaw dropped. Her beautiful sister was pregnant? ‘You sadistic bastard. It’s horrific enough you killed my sister, but you killed her unborn child too… Your unborn child?’
‘I had no choice. It would have ruined me if she’d kept it. I wasn’t going to let her keep a child that she could hold over me for the rest of my life.’ He sniggered. ‘And how ironic is it that the whole time, she thought I was in love with her, when it was actually you I was infatuated with, Renee. But you never showed any interest in me, whereas Scarlet did. So handy for me with you being twins, I could just imagine it was you when I was touching her.’
Renee’s stomach heaved as Scarlet’s beautiful face swam to her mind’s eye—her poor darling sister, and her unborn child—her niece or nephew—had died at the hands of this evil man. What she must have gone through was unbearable to even think about. ‘Fuck you, you sick son of a bitch. I hope you rot in hell,’ she snarled through gritted teeth. ‘You’ll be going to hell because karma’s going to make you pay for what you’ve done. And if karma doesn’t, I fucking will.’
He laughed menacingly once again. ‘Oh, you will, will you? Well, we’ll see about that, won’t we.’ He tutted. ‘I was going to let the fact you’d found the diary go, seeing as there was nothing concrete in there pointing to me. But it’s such a shame you found the scarf really. Otherwise I might have left you to get on with your pathetic life with your equally pathetic boyfriend.’
How in the hell does he know I have a boyfriend?
There was a pause as he mumbled something to himself and then chuckled.
‘Actually, who am I kidding, no I wouldn’t have. I’ve had my eyes on you since you were ten years old, and I was patiently waiting until you turned sixteen, so you were legal.’ He chuckled cynically. ‘I know what they do to child molesters in prison. But when you were sixteen I couldn’t have been charged with anything if you blabbed.’ He huffed. ‘I’d waited six long years…but then Dylan got to you first and ruined my chances, the selfish bastard. The only reason you’ve lived this long is because you fucked off outta town after I put that note telling you that you were next on my list under your windscreen wiper…but now I got ya.’ He grunted, as if pleased with himself. ‘I can’t wait to have my way with you. I’ve fantasised about this for close to sixteen years now.’
Annie was sobbing beside her as the bag was ripped from Renee’s head. It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness before they finally came to meet with the sadistic eyes of her sister’s killer once again.
She would never have believed for a second that the man standing before her was capable of murder.
Jumping from the shower, Dylan grabbed his mobile phone that was now ringing for the second time in a row. He was going to wait until he was finished and ring whoever it was back once he was done but it was clearly important, especially seeing it was almost ten o’clock and most people would be in bed by now. He checked to see what the number was but it was a private.
‘Hello.’
‘Dylan, it’s Stanley. Are you with Renee at all?’
Stanley’s voice was uneasy, almost desperate.
‘Oh, hi Stan. Nope, I’m at home. Why? Is everything okay?’
‘I’ve been trying to call her mobile for the past half an hour and I can’t get a hold of her. She was supposed to pick me and Pearl up from Shirley and Tom’s place. She was meant to be at Hayley Gregory’s tonight, and I’ve tried ringing there too but it keeps giving me the engaged signal. I just thought there might have been a chance that she’d finished at Hayley’s and headed out to your place.’
An extremely bad feeling settled in the pit of Dylan’s stomach. ‘No, she’s not here, Stan. Have you tried Hayley’s mobile number?’ He tried to keep his voice casual, not wanting to alarm Stanley any more than he already sounded.
‘I don’t have it. Do you?’ Worry laced Stanley’s every word.
‘Yup, I’ve got it. How about I give her a quick ring and see what’s going on?’
‘I’d appreciate it, Dylan. Thanks.’
‘Righto, I’ll call you back as soon as I’ve spoken to her.’
‘Please be quick, Dylan. Pearl and I are getting extremely worried.’
Hurriedly, Dylan searched for Hayley’s number in his contacts list. Finding it he pressed call, his hands clammy. Something wasn’t right. It rang out and he called it again. After several rings he was diverted to her message bank. A sense of desperation washed over him. Fuck it. He was going to keep ringing until Hayley answered. It went to message bank yet again. He left a message.
‘Hayley, it’s Dylan. I want to know where Renee is. Answer your goddamn phone or I’m driving over there.’
He tried Greg’s mobile number, but it, too, went to message bank.
Dylan tugged a pair of jeans and a t-shirt on, readying himself to drive over to Hayley’s. He was going to have to ask his mum to come over and watch Annie. But in less than a minute, Hayley was calling him back, bawling uncontrollably. Dread filled him. ‘Hayley, what’s happened? Where’s Renee?’
‘I don’t… She ran off…after she…found…the scarf.’ Hayley was hysterical, her words fractured between her sobs.
‘What scarf? Ran off where?’
Hayley was crying so hard she couldn’t speak.
Dylan fought to control his own panic as he tried desperately to calm her. ‘Hayley, take a deep breath. You have to calm down so you can talk to me. I can’t help you, or Renee, if you don’t tell me what happened.’ He could hear Hayley trying to breathe at the other end of the phone.
After a few moments, Hayley began explaining, her voice trembling. ‘He told me not to tell anyone until he’d sorted it out, but if I don’t tell someone I’m going to lose my fucking mind. He went looking for her, but it was hours ago and I haven’t heard from him since, and now his mobile is switched off. I don’t know what to do.’
‘Who told you not to tell anyone, and about what? Who’s gone looking for her?’ Dylan demanded, his patience wearing thin as he began to seriously worry about Renee’s safety.
Hayley began rambling hysterically. ‘I had a Maroons scarf in the box upstairs. When Renee saw it she flew into a panic and went running out my front door like I was a murderer or something.’
‘I don’t understand. Whose scarf was it?’
‘Craig Campbell’s. It was out of the boot of his car.’
Dylan fought to keep his voice calm, needing Hayley to try to do the same. ‘I’m really confused. Hayley, what in the fuck is going on?’
‘Craig and I slept together years ago, when he and Louise broke up once for a few weeks. I’d had too much to drink one night and one thing led to another, and it shouldn’t have. It makes me so bloody sick just thinking about it. I took the scarf at the time to remind me of the night we spent together, but apparently it wasn’t his and by the look on Renee’s face it might have belonged to her…or someone she knows very well.’ Hayley gasped as though she’d been drowning and just resurfaced. ‘Oh my God, Dylan. It’s just come to me. I think that scarf must have been Scarlet’s. That’s why she was so terrified when she found it here.’
Ignoring the million questions in his head, Dylan asked the most important one, everything dangerously making sense now. ‘Is Craig the one out looking for her?’
‘Yes, I rang him as soon as Renee ran off. I wanted to find out why the scarf had upset her so much. Craig told me he had no idea, but to leave it to him to sort it out. He told me not to say anything. Oh my God, Dylan, what have I done?’
‘Hayley, lock all your doors and don’t let Craig anywhere near you. Okay? I’ll call Jake at the cop station in town and let them know what’s going on.’
‘Okay, Dylan, please let me know as soon as you know anything. I’m so sorry—’
But Dylan was already hanging up and dialling the local police station. As he spoke to Jake, he instinctively dashed down the hallway to check on Annie. Halfway through explaining the dire situation, the phone dropped from his hands and crashed to the floor. Annie’s bedroom window was wide open, and his little girl was gone, her favourite teddy bear the only thing left lying in her ruffled bed.
His entire world caved in on him. Wherever Craig had taken Renee, he intuitively knew Annie was there too. Everything was adding up now, all the things going wrong around his place and Craig so conveniently unable to find out who was responsible. Dylan had found it a bit odd that Craig hadn’t wanted to watch the video footage when he’d turned up at the station earlier today, instead saying he’d rather watch it without distraction and then he’d let him know his findings. He’d put it down to it just being the way Craig liked to work…but it was because it had been him all along. He obviously had it in for him, for fuck knows what reason, not that it mattered right now. Bossy would never have let a stranger near the house, especially near Annie’s window, Craig only got away with it because Bossy trusted him, like they all did. He was a cop. You were supposed to trust him.
Falling to his knees, Dylan pulled the teddy bear to his lips and cried out Annie’s name, over and over, the tinny voice calling out to him from the phone not registering with him at all. And in that moment of utter despair and horror he remembered Craig’s words at the dam only days ago: You just do your job, Dylan, and let me do mine, and it’ll all pan out just the way I expect it to.
His blood ran cold as he snapped out of his shell-shocked daze, fortitude now storming to the forefront. Craig was the one man the Opals
Ridge township should be able to trust, the person responsible for upholding the law and catching the bad guys, and somehow he had fooled them all. Everything now pointed to the fact that he was behind Scarlet’s disappearance, because why else would her scarf be in the boot of his very own car?
It made Dylan sick to the core to think that he now had Renee and Annie holed up somewhere, doing God knows what to them. Was he planning on making them disappear, like Scarlet? A flood of pure rage engulfed him. He felt like killing him with his bare hands, but he wouldn’t let the bastard get off that easy. Dylan was going to find his two girls, now, before it was too late, and make sure Craig went to prison for life for what he had done.
Grabbing his mobile phone from where he’d dropped it, Dylan raised it to his ear and hurriedly explained to the copper the situation as he raced to his desk to grab the keys to his gun cabinet. Jake told him he was calling for backup from the neighbouring town and then heading straight over to the Campbell property. Knowing that would take at least twenty minutes, Dylan said he was heading out to start searching now, and hung up before the copper could oppose his decision to take matters into his own hands.
Where the hell would Craig have taken them? And then his phone vibrated—a text notifying him that Annie had pressed the alert button on her locator watch. He opened the GPS locator’s map application, and a beeping red dot on the map showed that Annie, and hopefully Renee, were only a short distance away—somewhere on Craig’s property to be exact.
Her puffer… Dylan took off to Annie’s bedroom to grab it from her bedside table, his heart wrenching out of his chest as he imagined her having an asthma attack without her medication—it would kill her. ‘Hang in there—I’m coming…’ he whispered. Lord, I beg you, please keep my little angel safe.
Swallowing the lump in his throat and blinking back tears, Dylan reprimanded himself for wanting to crumble. He had to keep it together. He’d be no good to either Annie or Renee if he fell in an emotional heap right now.