by Tracy Sharp
“This is a lovely house. I love the kitchen,” I told her.
“Thanks. I spend most of my time in this room.” She placed a large mug in front of me, and cream and sugar on the table between us. She down at the table and smiled at me.
I blinked, suddenly remembering that there should be another girl here that was supposed to tell me about what she remembered about Alexia. Had she told me the girl’s name? Gina. That was it.
“Where is your friend?” I asked her, sipping the coffee. It was delicious, rich and strong. “Wow. This is delicious.”
“Thank you. I love coffee too, so I get the good stuff and grind the beans myself. This is one hundred percent Columbian.” She took a long sip of her own coffee.
She hadn’t answered my question. Hadn’t she said that her friend was here? I couldn’t quite recall. I frowned, sipping more coffee to give her a little time. “Is she on her way?”
She looked momentarily confused. “Oh, yeah. She was running a little late. She’ll be here any minute.”
I nodded slowly. “Okay. I hope she won’t be late for her shift.”
“She’ll just call in. She’s always late.” She rolled her eyes.
“Yeah?” Weird. I knew I heard her say that she only had a little time to talk and then needed to get to work. Didn’t sound like somebody who was always late. “What’s her name?”
She paused, looking at me, something passing over her eyes. “Beth.”
Fingers of dread clutched my stomach. I knew she’d said the friend’s name was Gina. “Beth. That’s a name you don’t hear anymore.” I kept my breathing steady and sipped more coffee. “Is she an Elizabeth? Or was she born just Beth?”
Rina stared at me for a moment. Shrugged. “I don’t know. She never said.”
I looked at the windows, draped with lace curtains. They looked out over a large yard. “Is this a family home? Passed on to you?”
“Yeah. On my mother’s side. She’s in her room, resting.”
I had an image of an elderly woman confined to her bed. With rope. Or electrical tape. I had a major case of the creeps. “Oh, you care for your mother?”
“Yeah. Somebody has to.” She eyed my belly. “How far along are you now?”
“Thirty-eight weeks.” I’d remembered a friend of mine being thirty-eight weeks when she gave birth early, so that number popped into my head. I moved a hand over the bump and patted it. “Getting tired.”
“I bet. But thirty-eight weeks is pretty far along. The baby would survive if something happened.”
If something happened. I frowned at her. Kept my voice even. “Like what?”
“Well, like if he or she happened to be premature. The baby would survive. The lungs are developed enough now that the baby wouldn’t need an incubator or anything to help it breathe.”
I said nothing, feeling more alarmed by the second. I should’ve called Jack. Even if he’d just stayed in the car, I should’ve called him. “I need to make a phone call.”
“Do you know what you’re having yet? Or do you want it to be a surprise?” She acted like she hadn’t heard my question.
“We want it to be a surprise. We just buy a lot of yellow and green.” I smiled at her.
“Where is your husband now?” She asked me.
I didn’t like the look in her eyes. They didn’t seem warm or friendly anymore. Instead, they seemed narrow and cagey.
“He’s working.” My eyes felt heavy and my head swam. I needed to call Jack. I reached for my bag. Rina pulled it back from me, out of my reach.
“I need to go.” I tried to turn around to reach for my jacket but couldn’t get my body to listen.
“No. You’re fine,” Rina said.
My head suddenly seemed to drop back. I brought it forward, blinking my eyes hard a few times. Rina watched me, a strange little smile on her face.
A dark realization crept over me. I looked down at my coffee mug. It was almost empty. “Drugged,” I managed, squinting at her, trying to make her out among the warping shapes. I felt drool slide over my chin. Drugged. Again. Fuck.
“Yes,” she said, her smile wide.
The world tilted.
***
I awoke in the dark. My head pounded and my mouth was cotton dry. I felt sick, and dry heaved over the side of the bed I was lying on. I sat slowly up, feeling my belly. The belly pad was still in place. I was wearing the thick, cable knit sweater over it, so it would be hard to tell if it moved. Rina had to have dragged me in here. No easy task. I lift weights, so I’m not a light woman. Good thing. If I were too light for her to believe that I was pregnant I might be dead instead of stowed away in a dark room in an old farmhouse by a fucking lunatic.
I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been. It was the second time I’d been drugged in less than a month by a maniac. Evidently, I was a slow learner. I listened for any movement, but heard nothing. I looked around, trying to make out the shapes in the room. There didn’t appear to be any windows down here. It was too dark.
She’d said her mother was resting. Was she keeping her drugged too and stealing her social security checks? I was willing to bet she was. I was also willing to bet that my bag and all its contents, including my wallet and my gun, were upstairs.
Wonderful. If Rina hadn’t had an adequate weapon before, she had a dandy one now.
I tried to steady my breathing. There had to be a light in here somewhere. I slowly got off the bed, still feeling nauseous. What the hell had she given me? My legs felt weak and my entire body trembled. I put my hands out in front of me, moving my feet a little at a time. I felt nothing but dead air space. Panic was threatening to overtake me, sending screams up into my throat that I didn’t release. I swallowed them down.
I did a slow circle, squinting my eyes try to make out anything in the room. It was pitch black. I breathed in through my nose. The air was damp and musty.
Oh Christ. Don’t let me be in the cellar, please, God.
No, the floor was carpeted. Couldn’t be the cellar. I crept along with my arms forward. My fingers touched a cold surface. A wall. I moved them in and up, then down, and in a side to side motion, looking for a light switch. It seemed to take forever. I could almost hear the seconds ticking by. Every second bringing me closer to the moment I would hear the footfalls of a psycho on the stairs.
Come on, come on. She’d be coming back down at some point. I continued my slow walk around the room, moving my hands along the wall. I felt cobwebs, and something skittered over my fingers. I almost screamed, pulling my hands back. I took several deep breaths and continued. My fingers moved over a switch. I flipped it and the room flooded with light.
I blinked my eyes several times, trying to get them adjusted to the sudden brightness. I was in a basement room of some sort; the light came from a single light bulb in the ceiling. The carpet I’d felt under my feet was a huge area rug. An old, wide plank floor lay beneath it. The bed I’d been lying on sat on the other side of the room. The covers looked clean enough. There was a side table with drawers. On the other end of the room was an old sink jutting out of the wall and a toilet, on the back of which sat a roll of toilet paper.
I’d been right. There were no windows. There was a door, which I already knew would be locked, but I went over and tried it anyway. Nothing. My former life as a car thief had taught me about picking locks, so I could pick locks with the right tools. But this door was likely dead bolted from the outside.
Still, I needed to find something I could use to pry the door open with. I went over to the bedside table and opened the drawers. Nothing. Completely empty.
Fear and adrenaline made my limbs move a little better as I walked back to the door. I pushed on it as hard as I could before it started to creak. It was definitely locked from the outside. I pushed my way down the door. More than one lock, it felt like. Bar locks on the other side. Two, maybe three. The door was thick and heavy. I could probably kick against it all day long and it wouldn’t budge.
> I moved my hands over my face, slid my back down the door and sat on the floor.
Oh, Jack. I am in so much trouble.
And I never told him where I was going. I didn’t tell a soul. Nobody knew where I was.
Like the missing pregnant women, I had simply vanished.
***
I listened with my ear to the crack in the door, closing my eyes to sharpen my sense of hearing. Nothing. Was Rina gone? I wondered if her mother was bedridden. If I screamed out, would she be able to call the police? I knew that the other missing pregnant women had been here. They must’ve screamed. Cried out. Banged on the walls. None of which helped them. It wouldn’t help me, either.
Images of Colleen’s frozen body lying on the frozen lake flashed in my mind. Other women were still missing. Part of me didn’t want to think about it. The other part, desperate for hope that they were somehow okay, grasped on to that thought. Once Rina discovered that I wasn’t really pregnant, she’d definitely try to kill me. Now that she had my gun she’d be harder to fight. She was far more dangerous than she had been before.
Right, like she hadn’t been dangerous before. I thought of Colleen’s abdomen, once full with a baby, cut open. Empty.
I placed a shaking hand over my mouth to stifle a sob. Took several deep breaths.
Don’t panic. Just don’t panic.
I pushed myself up and began walking the room, starting from the outermost edges, looking at the floor for anything I could find. Anything that would tell me something about this nutcase who had locked me in a basement room.
My mind was still foggy, but getting a little clearer. I focused on the carpet and the bit of floor between the carpet and the wall. Slowly moving, I took a couple of steps and looked at the space about three feet from where I stood. Doing something productive kept me from going into a blind panic and screaming my lungs out. I kept walking, stopping, looking. Walking, stopping, looking.
Something caught my attention. Something reddish in color. I moved toward it, squatting down for a closer look. My heart thudded, realization dawning on me. My mouth dropped open. Slowly reached out and picked it up.
A thin lock of long, wavy hair. Strawberry blonde. Still attached to one end, a tiny piece of dried, bloody skin.
Colleen’s.
Chapter Eighteen
I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. A rush of adrenaline moved through me. Now or never. I covered the few steps to the light switch on the balls of my feet and flipped it off, then moved silently to one side of the door. Light shone through the crack between the door and the jamb, lending me enough light to be able to tell where the door was. I moved back, pressing my back against the wall.
The steps stopped outside the door. Silence. She was listening.
I slowed my breathing. The frantic beat of my heart sounded in my ears.
A sliding sound, then a click. Another sliding sound and click lower on the door. One more, lower. She turned a lock under the knob.
I braced myself.
The door slowly opened.
The light from the hallway shone on the empty bed. I could actually feel her momentary confusion, and then alarm.
I stepped out in front of her, swinging my arm as I went, and hit her in the throat.
She raised the gun as she stumbled back. Instinctively I moved back, behind the wall, anticipating that she’d pull the trigger. She did, hitting the wall across the room. The gunfire sounded like a bomb in the silence of the house.
I moved toward the door again, realizing that if I didn’t get through that door right now she’d shut me in again.
But she’d righted herself quickly and came straight for me. I didn’t step back, refused to move further into that room.
She pressed the barrel of the gun to my forehead. I looked into her eyes. They were pools of nothingness. Killing me meant nothing. She was going to kill me anyway. But she wanted my baby first.
We stood like that for what seemed like a full minute, only the ragged sound of her breathing in the room with us. She watched me with those dead eyes, wanting more than anything to put a bullet in my head.
A drop of sweat moved from my hairline dribbled down my forehead and over my eyelid. I blinked it away.
Without speaking, she pushed me back into the room. Keeping the gun trained on me, she stepped back out, pulling the door shut tight behind her.
I listened, my heart sinking, as each lock slid back into place.
***
I stood staring at the door for a long time. The thought that I might not get out of there kept repeating itself in my mind. I admonished myself for not having overtaken her while I had the chance. I should’ve gone right for her when she stumbled back. But I wasn’t thinking clearly yet. My brain still foggy from the drug she’d slipped into my coffee.
She wasn’t going to fall for that stunt again. I’d have to get more creative. I turned and stared at the carpet, my stomach clenching. Flipping the light switch again, I scanned the pattern on the carpet, wanting to take it all in at once, desperate to find something, anything that would help me somehow.
It wasn’t until I looked at the carpet as a whole that I saw them. Dark stains here and there. Different sizes, different patterns. I went over to one, squatted down. A reddish brown stain that had been washed to fade it was still visible. The carpet was a dark taupe multi-colored design. The stains were not easy to spot. But I saw them hyper clearly now. They were all over the carpet. It was too much blood loss for one person to sustain for very long. But the horror of the truth was setting in.
This wasn’t the blood of just one person.
I started to get a picture of what had happened down there. I’d read about women like Rina, and had seen stories of women like her on the news. Women who abducted pregnant women for their unborn babies. What had Lucas called it? Abduction by cesarean section. I wondered if Rina was the woman Lucas had told us about. The woman who had attempted to abduct the infant from the arms of her mother in the hospital parking lot. If this were the same woman, she’d decided that it would be easier to abduct a pregnant woman than try to steal a baby from a new mother. Was Rina the one who had placed the ad on Craig’s List for baby clothes?
How many women had Rina lured and abducted for their babies? From the amount of blood on the carpet, it looked like she’d botched the job more than once. Clearly, she would continue until she was caught. Was it the fantasy of giving birth that she kept going back to? Or was it really that she wanted a newborn baby? If it were simply the fantasy, more pregnant woman would disappear until Rina was caught.
I couldn’t think about it anymore. I refused to let the implications of it reach my heart.
I started my slow walk again. Walking, stopping, looking. Walking, stopping, looking.
Sometime, hours later I was sure, I looked at my watch.
The second hand no longer moved around the face. The minute and hour hand read ten-thirty a.m. I’d reached Rina’s house at about that time. The batteries had died. My watch was dead.
***
Cold. I was slowly waking up, feeling so cold. I’d have to turn the heat up. I wondered if there was something wrong with the furnace. Light outside my lids made my eyes hurt. That meant it was morning. I’d slept in and Pango would have to go outside. I reached out my hand to feel her beside me. Her side of the bed was empty. I felt myself frown. Opened my eyes.
I was in the same basement room with the blood stains on the carpet. Still locked in, waiting for a maniac to come back downstairs. Maybe deciding that I was too much trouble, that my baby was thirty-eight weeks along and would be fine if delivered prematurely.
The lock of hair with the skin and dried blood attached hadn’t been the only thing I’d found. A front top tooth had been laying at the edge of the carpet, just under the bed, spotted in dried blood. The depth of my terror for the women who had been there before and for myself, was complete. I was one tough bitch, but if I couldn’t fight this lunatic, I’d die down t
here in that basement.
Chilled, I sat up, pulling the blanket from the bed and wrapping it around me. It smelled of mildew. I pulled it off me and let it drop back down to the bed. Something caught my eye about the pale yellow fitted bed sheet. I squinted down at it. The coloration of the mattress beneath the sheet was uneven. Some of the mattress was dark.
I jumped back, away from the bed.
“Jesus,” I breathed. “Jesus.”
Slowly, I peeled fitted sheet off the bed.
An enormous, dark bloodstain covered the top mattress.
I turned away, squeezing my eyes shut and placing both hands over my eyes.
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”
Get it together, Leah. Get it together or you will die down here.
I started pacing again. This basement was a place of death. It was a killing room.
I moved my hands over my face, rubbing them up and down over my cheeks, trying to get some sensation on my skin. Anything to distract me from the rising panic.
A muffled cry sounded from the other side of a wall.
I stopped breathing. Listened.
Another cry. Somebody was moaning. In pain.
In labor?
I followed the sound to the wall on the far left side of the room. I hit the wall several times with the palm of my hand. “Hello?”
A voice cried from the other side of the wall, “Oh, God. Help me, please.”
“Shhhh. Don’t be too loud. She’ll come back down,” I said to her, my voice close to the wall. “Are you all right?”
“I’m in labor. Please help me,” she whimpered.
“I’m going to help you,” I said, the irony of that sentence making me pause. I couldn’t even help myself. How the hell was I going to help this woman? “What’s your name?”
“Susan Wilson,” she said.
“Susan. We’ve been looking for you. I’m going to try to get you out of there. I need to get out of here, first.” Excitement made me giddy. A glimmer of hope. Suddenly I felt like I could get out of this alive.