by Rita Herron
He checked the caller ID and found Vanessa’s cell number, then called it.
Still, he couldn’t rule out a family dispute here. If the boyfriend was beating the mother and Prissy had interfered with his plans or his life with Prissy’s mother, he might have done something to get rid of Prissy.
Beth sized up Prissy’s mother and boyfriend within seconds of entering the trailer. Sadly, the mother was an alcoholic and desperate enough for male attention to allow him to smack her around.
Where Prissy fit into the picture was anybody’s guess. The boyfriend might be abusing her or pressuring her for sex when the mother was passed out. If so, the mother was either oblivious or in deep denial.
The family needed help.
While she was empathetic to the cycle of abuse, her job was to protect the child.
Every second counted.
“Ms. Carson, does your daughter have a computer?” Beth asked.
“Course she does. When her head ain’t in her phone, it’s on that laptop.”
“May I see it?” Beth asked, directing her attention to the mother.
“If you think it’ll help find her.” Ms. Carson’s voice cracked, and Beth squeezed her shoulder.
“It might. Kids are all over social media these days. If she decided to go to a party or meet up with friends, she might have posted it online.” Or if a predator had found her through her Facebook page or an online group, they could track him down.
The rock star posters on the wall in Prissy’s room contrasted with the pink-and-white gingham curtains that must have been there since she was born. Stuffed animals sat on a faded white wicker bookshelf, mingling with a collection of ceramic frogs, a reminder that Prissy was still a kid.
Beth opened the closet, surprised at the sight of the neatly hung T-shirts and sweaters. Jeans were stacked with precision on a shelf. Perhaps her attempt at order amongst the chaos in her life.
Beth’s stomach clenched. She kept her closet neat and organized as well. Her wardrobe consisted of boring suits, plain jackets, jeans, basic black boots, and flats. Her only concession was her underwear—a little wild child beneath the stoic, controlled exterior she displayed to the world.
No one got inside her place. Her head.
Her bed.
God, she was a case for the books.
Ms. Carson cleared her throat. “Prissy’s a damn neatnik. Makes hospital corners on her bed. Sweeps her room every night.”
Her neatness clashed with her mother’s lackadaisical style and probably drove Ms. Carson nuts.
And vice versa.
Beth scanned the room again. A photograph of a skinny teenager with freckles sat on the desk, her big square glasses occupying most of her face.
And probably earning her teasing from classmates. Kids could be so cruel.
“You will find her, won’t you?” Ms. Carson asked.
Beth bit back a blunt statement about statistics. “We will.”
She just prayed Prissy was alive when they did.
Ian mentally crossed his fingers that Peyton could track Prissy Carson’s phone. He had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Grateful that the mother had joined Beth in the bedroom and he had a moment alone with the boyfriend, Ian stepped onto the back porch. The man was chugging a PBR as he puffed on a Camel.
“Mr. Hendricks, where is Prissy’s birth father?” The girl could have run off to be with him.
“Dead. Idiot was drag racing.”
So much for that.
“I understand it’s difficult to talk candidly in front of Prissy’s mother, but I sensed you think Prissy is trouble. Do you have any idea where she might be?”
The beefy man leveled him with a cold look. “That girl is fucking weird. One minute she’s cleaning like some damn fanatic, then obsessing on that computer, the next crying ’cause she doesn’t have friends.”
“So she is awkward socially?”
He shrugged. “Listen, I don’t mean to be a hard-ass, but she ain’t much of a looker. The girl has no tits, wears clunky glasses, and she stutters when she gets nervous.”
Ian rolled his hand into a fist to keep from slamming it into the man’s jaw.
That wouldn’t get him answers. Testing the man might. “Sounds like she’s desperate for male attention. Has she ever come on to you?”
The man’s eyes flared with surprise, then suspicion, as if he realized Ian’s train of thought. “Hell no. I’m not one of those pervs that’s into kids.”
“I see. Beating up grown women is more your style, huh?”
The man tossed his cigarette on the porch floor and stomped on it. “What I do in my house is my fucking business.”
Ian crossed his arms and took an intimidating step toward the man. “Not if it involves abuse or hurting a child. Prissy is a minor.”
“Get out of my damn house.”
Ian gave him a menacing look. “Prissy’s mother called me, mister. I won’t give up until I find her daughter.” He poked the man in his beefy arm. “And if you touched one hair on her head, I’ll lock you in a cell and throw away the key.”
Beth studied Prissy’s computer, analyzing the sites she’d recently visited—one was a teen magazine that offered advice on makeovers and how to attract boys.
Her Facebook page was sad. She had very few friends. She belonged to a science club and a math club, and she liked paranormal fiction, especially zombie stories.
She searched Prissy’s posts but couldn’t pinpoint whether or not the girl was considering running away.
Her email box was practically empty. Then again, teens didn’t email; they texted.
Beth searched further and discovered Prissy had spent hours playing a video game called Deathscape.
She clicked on the icon and scanned the contents. The game enticed the player into a dark world of dragons and monsters, offering various paths to choose from.
Depending on the choice the player made, he or she battled through simulations of real-life dangers and obstacles.
The paths—Road to Temptation, Path to Destruction, Sin Valley, Fun City, Friendship Avenue, the Easy Route, the Loving Hut, Money Mountain, Party Town, Freedom Ride, Weed Walk, Flying High . . . the list went on and on.
The game’s premise—you couldn’t escape death, but each path you chose determined your ultimate destiny. Heaven or hell. Religious undertones were strong, the graphics vivid and frightening. White candles burned like torches. Crosses were everywhere.
Déjà vu struck Beth—some of these scenes seemed hauntingly similar to the cave she’d dreamed about.
She clicked on an icon and found herself plunging into a cavern. It was dark, yet a hot springs pool shimmered at one end. A baptismal pool holding a candle. “Time to cleanse your sins,” the voice said in a deep tone. “Repent and wash away the evil.”
The ping of dripping water launched her back to the time when she was abducted.
A cold sweat broke out over Beth.
May . . . May was there.
Dead. Her wrists cut. Blood on the floor.
The dripping sound . . . water inside the cave?
Or . . . no. Blood. Blood dripping down Sunny’s arms, pinging into the vial.
Sunny’s scream as she watched her die.
Then he was coming toward JJ. She cowered against the cold rock, struggling to see his face. Praying she had the strength to fight him.
She crawled sideways, searching for a weapon on the ground. Her hand brushed dirt. Rock. Then something thin. Sharp. Brittle.
A bone.
She jerked back. A skeleton was staring at her. Eyes bulged in the sockets.
JJ tried to scream, but terror choked her voice. Then he yanked her by the hair and dragged her across the floor.
Bones, more bones . . . the sharp, brittle edges jabbed her hands as she clawed for a weapon.
God . . .
Sunny was dead now, and she was next.
No one would ever find their bodies here
in this cave. No one cared enough to look for them.
Tradition meant everything to his family. His father had passed down the family rules, the values, the job they were destined to do.
To be a humble servant.
He’d been groomed for his role since he was a boy.
Find the bad girls and weed them out. Save them from the path to hell they’d already embarked on.
He loved them anyway.
He truly valued his role as the Saver. But things were different from past centuries. Past decades.
Each generation perfected his own technique and style. He had a better way to do things than his father, and his father before him.
His son didn’t yet know about the Calling. But one day soon he would.
And he would find his own way to light the girls’ way into heaven.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Sheriff, I think you’d better check on that agent. She doesn’t look so good.”
Ian jerked his head toward the door where Ms. Carson stood. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. She was looking at Prissy’s computer, and then she grabbed the desk like she was going to pass out.”
Ian hurried to the teenager’s bedroom. Beth was ashen-faced. He quickly scanned the room, noting the teenage posters, neatly made bed, and closet—nothing in the room that looked suspicious. He’d been half-afraid she’d found Prissy’s battered body under the bed or stuffed in the closet.
“Beth?” he said in a hushed voice. “What’s wrong?”
She startled, then looked up at him with a glazed blankness.
“Did you find something?” he asked softly.
She shivered. “I felt bones on the ground in the cave.”
“Could have been animal bones,” Ian suggested.
“I guess that’s possible. But I think someone else died there, someone he didn’t bury.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Although if burying them in the holler was part of his ritual, whose bones were those and why did he leave them?”
“Good question.” He stroked her arm to warm her. “Don’t worry, Beth. We’ll find that cave and get to the bottom of this.”
“Peyton said that some of the bodies might have been frozen, which would affect the timeline. This cave could be underground or connect to a basement or old building that had a freezer. Or the cave itself could act as a freezer.”
“My deputies are on this,” Ian said. “If anyone can find that cave, it’s them. They know these hills inside and out.”
She blinked as if to shake off the shock of what she’d remembered, then nodded. His chest squeezed. Her trust meant more than she could ever imagine.
“There’s something else.” She gestured to Prissy’s computer. “This game,” Beth murmured. “It’s called Deathscape.”
Ian wrinkled his brow. What did a game have to do with finding Prissy Carson?
“Go on.”
“Judging from Prissy’s social media, she didn’t have many friends. But she spent hours playing this game. It takes players down dangerous paths where they have to make choices that lead them either to redemption or to purgatory. The paths include Road to Redemption, Sinners and Salvation, the Poisonous Apple, Pleasures of the Flesh, Riding Out the Flood, the Parting of the Sea, the Serpent Strikes. It goes on and on.”
“A lot of the teen games are violent,” Ian said.
“I know, but the religious undertones bother me. I haven’t gone through all the levels, but I’ve looked at the overviews.” She paused. “One takes players into a dark world, one with the punishments laid out in the Bible. There’s a cave with a hot springs pool where the players participate in a ceremony similar to a baptism. It reminded me of the cave where I was held.”
Ian stiffened. “Is there anything on the game to indicate the cave’s location?”
“Not that I’ve found so far.” She straightened. “I remember being there, though. My hands and feet were tied. Sunny was begging for her life. Then I heard what I thought was water dripping, but it wasn’t water. It was blood dripping into a vial.”
“He saves the blood,” Ian said. “Have you figured out what he does with it?”
Silence filled the air, mingling with the sound of Beth’s labored breathing. “No, but it’s his trophy. I’m working the element of the blood collection into the profile.”
Ian wanted to haul her in his arms and comfort her, but he kept his hands by his side.
“What if there are more bodies, Ian? He could have buried some of them in Hemlock Holler, then left others in that cave. Or in a freezer.”
Ian considered her statement. If that was true, they had more victims than they thought. Which would complicate the investigation even more.
Beth lapsed into a pained silence, the remnants of her memory lingering in her troubled eyes.
They confiscated Prissy’s computer to take to the lab. Ian phoned Deputy Whitehorse as they left the Carson house.
“I know you’ve been searching the hills, but have the team hunt for caves near the site of the bones and other remote areas in the mountains near Hemlock Holler.” He explained about the freezer and the possibility of an old building that might have one.
Whitehorse grunted. “So that big Fed wants us working on this?”
“I don’t care what he wants,” Ian said. “You’re an expert tracker and have worked these mountains for years with search and rescue. You grew up here—you know where to look.”
Whitehorse had always been quiet and kept his thoughts to himself. Some folks had been reluctant to trust him, but the man was honorable and had been dubbed a hero for rescuing a youth group stranded during a freak blizzard last year.
After the recent flood, he’d worked day and night searching for missing locals and reconnecting them with family.
Ian turned onto a narrow road that led to a low-income housing development near the high school. Most of the apartments were run-down, weathered, and in need of repairs. Some had suffered from the tornado with missing shutters and tarps on the roofs while another row stood untouched by the damage.
Like the mystery of why this unsub who seemed merciless had allowed Beth to live.
“This is Cocoa’s apartment,” Ian said as he parked in front of a unit on the end that had escaped the storm.
Beth vaulted from the vehicle and hurried to the door on a mission. He understood her impatience.
Time meant the difference in saving a life.
He jumped from the seat and followed her. Beth had already knocked, and an older man with gray hair and a beard stood in the doorway.
Ian knew the family, but Beth didn’t, so she introduced herself. The man waved them in. “I’m Vanessa’s granddaddy, Deon,” the man said. “That child’s been tore up all afternoon.”
“Why does she think something happened to Prissy?” Beth asked.
“Something about a boy, but she didn’t get into it.” He fiddled with the collar of his plaid shirt as he yelled for Vanessa.
A second later, a dark-haired girl with red-rimmed eyes appeared.
Beth explained that they’d just come from the Carson’s house, then squeezed the young girl’s hand. “Vanessa, tell us what happened today. Why do you think something bad happened to your friend?”
Vanessa’s eyes welled with tears. “I wasn’t supposed to tell. She’s gonna be mad at me if she comes back.”
“Do you think she’s going to come back?” Ian asked.
Vanessa’s lower lip quivered. “I don’t know. The kids were laughing at her at school and she ran. I tried to call her all afternoon and tonight, and she won’t answer.”
“Why were the kids laughing at her?” Beth asked.
Vanessa’s grandfather patted her shoulder. “If she’s okay, she can be mad. But if she’s not, you’ll be glad you talked, honey.”
Vanessa wiped at her eyes. “’Cause she was going to, um, you know, meet up with this boy Blaine after school. Blaine’s one of the popular kids. She thought it
would make her popular.”
“You mean if she had sex with him?” Beth asked gently.
Vanessa nodded. Her grandfather’s face was grim.
“Then what?” Beth asked.
“He ditched Prissy in front of all his friends. That’s why the kids laughed at her.” She gulped. “They called her Pissy Prissy. She started crying and ran off.”
“What’s this boy’s full name?” Ian asked in a voice tight with anger.
Vanessa dropped her head forward. “Blaine Emerson.”
Beth’s phone beeped with a text. She checked it, then gave Ian a troubled look and handed it to him.
A text from Peyton:
Tracked Prissy Carson’s cell phone. Somewhere off Route 9. Sending general coordinates.
Route 9 was in the middle of nowhere. And not a good sign. There was no way Prissy could have gotten that far on foot. She had to have caught a ride.
Fear crawled through him.
He had a bad feeling that ride was with the killer.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Please find her,” Vanessa cried.
Beth patted the girl’s shoulder. “We’ll do our best. You can help by making a list of the students you think we should talk to at school.”
Vanessa pulled out a school notebook and scribbled down some names.
Ian cleared his throat. “We should go, Beth.”
She gave him a quick nod. “Just one more question, Vanessa. Do you know anything about that video game Prissy was playing?”
Vanessa tapped her pencil on the paper. “You mean Deathscape?”
“Yes, do you play it?” Beth asked.
Vanessa shook her head. “Granddaddy won’t let me. He says video games are bad. Why?”
“All those paths—the choices. None of them lead to anywhere good.”
“Because you can’t escape death,” Vanessa said matter-of-factly. “That’s the game. Some kids like to travel the dangerous paths just like in real life. They say it’s a rush to see how close to the edge you can get and come back.”
Beth texted Peyton to have her check into the game and its maker.
That cave in the video disturbed her—what if it was modeled after the cave where she’d been held? Although that was a stretch. It would mean the game inventor had something to do with the murders. But fifteen years ago, the game hadn’t existed.