“No one, really. Just their strings matter. I found some interesting girls who have no strings. They’re hard to see.”
“Interesting girls?” Chris’s mouth felt like she’d licked her own UGG boots: More victims already?
“They’re the same, all three of them,” he informed her, sounding as if he were looking at them as he would specimens in a jar. Chris felt the world start spinning around her—suddenly she knew exactly which girls he was talking about.
“Let me talk to one of them.”
“Oh, they’re not here with me. Not right now, but if you check, you’ll find that an Amber Alert has gone out for these sisters that you know very well, and if you want them to live, you will meet me. I like the cabin you chose. It’s very nice.”
“And then what? You’ll kill them anyway.”
“Why would I kill them?” He sounded genuinely puzzled. “I can’t see their strings.” He hung up.
The phone rang again; this time it was Ryan.
Chris hesitated, but the girls were more important than her hurt feelings.
“What?” she snapped at him.
“Where are you?” He sounded calmer, at least.
“I was on my way back into town, but the fucking creep called me.”
“He has your number?”
“Wouldn’t be that hard to get. It’s listed because I’m on the board of directors for Once Was Lost, plus it’s listed on my yoga studio site.”
“Great.”
“You know that he’s taken Tira, Sandra, and Ro?”
There was a brief pause and then he said, very carefully, “Yes, I just found out a little while ago. It looks like he took them yesterday afternoon, right around when you found the dog.”
“He still wants me to meet him at the location I sent him. Your agents probably already found it; I left the coordinates on my desk.”
“They just texted it to me.”
“Okay, good. I’m headed there.”
“No, I don’t want you anywhere near this.”
Chris shook her head, frustrated that he didn’t understand or just refused to. “Ryan, I might be a woman, and a regular person, but I’m the only one this guy wants—that makes me valuable, does it not? It gives you leverage. I’ll be damned if I sit by when I can help three girls I care a great deal about.”
“We’re meeting you there.”
“I hope fucking so,” Chris muttered, and hung up again.
CHRIS HAD DRIVEN on the land around Tavey’s house so many times that she paid little attention to the roads. Not many people knew about it, but there was a back road that headed north out of Fate and then wound through the mountains to the west. The entrance to the long drive that led to Tavey’s cabin was difficult to spot.
The cabin had been built by Tavey’s grandfather in the fifties. Tavey had refurbished the old cabin and upgraded it to include modern conveniences like a satellite dish and central AC and heat, though to Chris’s knowledge she’d never actually had anyone stay there.
She, Tavey, Raquel, and Summer had played in the cabin when they were kids, pretending it was their magic cottage. Chris hadn’t been back to it since, though she knew Tavey made sure that it didn’t fall into disrepair.
The back road ended abruptly at a gully where the hills rose sharply, covered in the bare gray-brown branches of tall, thin trees, the deeper black of oaks, and the reddish brown and green of pines. Thick wet yellow-orange and brown leaves covered the rising hillside in a thick, slippery blanket.
She called Ryan. “I’m at the end of the line. You guys close?”
“We should be there in ten.”
“Okay, I’ll head up to where I can see the cabin.”
“Just stay where you are.”
“What?” She pretended she’d lost the signal. “Hello?” And she hung up abruptly.
She’d chosen her clothing so that she would blend in: brown camouflage pants, a deep green shirt, and a camouflage jacket. Tavey’s grandfather would have chastised her for not wearing her orange reflective vest, but Chris wasn’t as worried about a stray hunter as she was about the man who said he wanted to have her strings. She didn’t know what that meant, but she knew it couldn’t be a good thing.
She was going to get the girls back.
Pulling her backpack from the car, she started climbing. The hill rose for a little ways and then curved back down. A path that was really more of a deer trail led to the cabin. It didn’t take her long, maybe twenty minutes, before the building was in sight. The walls had been built with river stone from north Georgia and stained rough board; the cabin blended perfectly with the landscape.
She paused at the edge of the woods, staying hidden, and pulled a pair of binoculars from her bag. Where, oh where is the crazy motherfucker? she hummed to herself to the tune of “Where, Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone?” She didn’t see any sign of the girls, but someone was moving around in the cabin.
Her phone, which she’d set to vibrate, buzzed insistently in her pocket.
“Where are you?”
Ryan.
“Head up the trail northeast. The path will curve back down and the cabin will be in sight. Someone is inside, but I don’t see any sign of the girls.”
“Okay, I’ll be right there.”
True to his word, Ryan did join her fifteen minutes later, as did various other agents and deputies. They fanned out through the woods, circling the cabin.
“Do you have a negotiator with you?” Chris whispered.
“Yes.” Ryan pointed to a gray-haired man standing next to Agent Midaugh.
“Great. How are we going to find out if the unsub has the girls in there?”
“We’re going to get eyes and ears inside.” He pointed to several TAC guys who were making their silent way up to the cabin, gear in hand.
“This doesn’t feel right,” Chris whispered. “He hasn’t called me. This just seems way too easy.”
“Most unsubs aren’t brilliant. They make mistakes like everyone else.”
“Yeah . . .” Chris knew that, but something still left her feeling unsettled.
“We’ll find out where he’s keeping the hostages and then we’ll negotiate.”
“Okay.” Chris settled back and prepared to wait, checking her phone periodically to see if the Boyfriend had called.
An hour later, it was all Chris could do not to stand and stretch. Her back and thighs were sore from crouching without moving. Ryan seemed cool and unperturbed next to her, even as time seemed to draw out.
“We’ve got eyes inside,” he whispered to her, and then turned back to watching the scene.
“Okay.” Chris had to stand, had to move; she couldn’t take another minute sitting perfectly still, wondering if the girls were alive or dead. “I’m going to move back and stand for a minute.”
“Stay out of sight,” he ordered, but when she started to pull away, he caught her hand.
She looked up at him, and he met her eyes briefly, poignantly, and she knew he was sorry for being an ass earlier.
“I’ll be just behind you,” she whispered to him, and pointed to a tree a few feet away.
He nodded. She would stay within earshot of what was happening.
But she should have known that being within earshot didn’t mean she was safe. It didn’t even mean that anyone would notice when she disappeared.
So when she moved behind the tree, it wasn’t hard for Joe to knock her unconscious with a rock he clutched in his hand, nor was it difficult for him to step back into the trees, carrying her with his hands under her arms and dragging her body quietly along on the slippery leaves.
37
CHRIS AWOKE SLOWLY, feeling kind of like she did after taking too many of those test tube shots filled with sugary alcohol. She was cold and damp, like she’d passed out on t
he front lawn, but the ground beneath her felt like concrete.
“Miss Pascal,” a young voice whispered, and Chris blinked, struggling to open her eyes. The room was spinning. She blinked and shook her head, trying to clear her vision; it looked like she was in some kind of old building. She could see leaves overhead through a hole in the roof. The sky looked dim, as if it were getting dark.
“Miss Pascal?” the voice said again, and Chris managed to focus and struggled to sit up, a difficult task when she realized that her hands and feet were bound. She also realized that the voice she’d heard belonged to Yarrow. The Triplets were lined up in a row across from her, hands tied in front of them, as were their feet, which were bare and white with cold. Their faces were tear-streaked, and they seemed tired and disoriented.
“You okay?” she asked them, looking at their bound hands and feet. “Can you move?”
Yarrow shook her head. “We tried earlier, but she caught us, drugged us. Now we’re numb.”
Chris flexed her wrists, trying to loosen the ropes that tied her hands together behind her. She was also barefoot and sitting next to some kind of rusted-out engine.
She wasn’t positive about where she was, but she thought it might be the Cherokee Paper Mill about twenty-five miles from town. Abandoned since the late nineties, it had a creepy serial-killer vibe even without the serial killer. The only reason she knew it existed was because her father’s real estate mishap was located nearby. He’d actually planned to purchase the mill at one point or another.
It was isolated, nearly impossible to find because of the invading brush, and forgotten about by all but a few. Chris swallowed, wishing she could manage a flippant comment for the girls’ sake, but she had nothing. Fear coated the roof of her mouth and made it difficult to breathe. She couldn’t speak out loud, so she prayed silently and fervently, to God, to Fate, to herself: Please don’t let them die. Please. Please. Please.
She sat frozen, staring at the three girls whose only crime was being involved with her. She was in the woods, in the cold and the dark, only this time it wasn’t just Summer’s life in danger, it was all of theirs—and they were looking at her like she could help, like she could do something.
Chris nodded as if they’d spoken out loud. “All right, then. Do you happen to have your cell phones on you?”
“She took them,” Yarrow answered. “Yours, too. While you were unconscious.”
“She, who?” Chris hadn’t seen a woman.
“There’s a woman with him, but it’s not her fault.”
Chris snorted.
“He tortured her,” Yarrow explained quietly, and Chris shut her mouth. She’d like to think she would hold strong in the face of torture, but she knew that shit wasn’t reality. Still, it was hard to pity anyone who would help kidnap three teenagers.
“Fine,” Chris muttered. “Where is she now?”
“We don’t know,” the three of them whispered together, which was creepy enough to raise all the hairs on Chris’s body.
“Jesus, girls, don’t go all weird on me. Hang in there, okay?” Chris thought about the girls, how they always seemed to know what was going to happen.
“I don’t suppose you have any super-telepathy powers that can get us out of here?” she ventured, figuring it was worth the question, if only to distract the kids.
Yarrow smiled wanly. “No, Miss Pascal.”
“So . . .” Chris grunted as she worked her wrists, feeling the skin scrape as she twisted and flexed. “Why didn’t you see these two coming?”
Yarrow looked at her sisters, who shrugged, as if they didn’t care what Ro told Chris, at least not at the moment. “They’re hidden from us; they have no strings.”
“Strings.” Chris stopped for a moment, gasping a little from the pain. “So he’s not crazy? Or you’re all crazy?”
Yarrow smiled. “Probably both.”
“Well, that’s good. So humor me. Let’s just say that, hypothetically, these strings that he sees are real and both you and he can see them. What does that mean to us, exactly? How can that help us?”
Frowns gathered between the girls’ eyes, but it was Yarrow who explained, “The strings connect people together. We’re born with strings that tie us to our family, to the people in our towns, our neighborhoods. Only our family and sometimes people who’ve been hurt, or struck by lightning, can see the strings. There are other strings, though, so faint they are barely whispers. These are the strings of Fate, the strings of what may happen, the people we may know. These strings change as we choose one path or another.”
“Okay. So why does he want them? Even if he could see these strings, why does he think he can take them? What does it do?”
“We’re not sure, but there is a story.”
“Of the string-makers,” Chris cut her off. “I know. Summer told me.”
She was already shaking her head. “That’s the story of the ones who weave the strings, but there is another story, a story about people who take them.”
“Take them?”
“They are the cutters. They tear a hole in the fabric of the world.”
“Doesn’t any killer do that?” Chris hoped she didn’t sound as impatient as she felt.
“Yes,” they said, nodding, “but these people are different. They take the strings for themselves.”
“But why?” Chris enunciated; she wasn’t sure it mattered, but anything was better than freaking out.
Yarrow’s eyes narrowed. “We don’t know, but I think he feels what his victims feel. He takes the love they had for others; he takes it and it feeds him for a time. He doesn’t know he can’t keep it.”
“Ughh.” Chris couldn’t help a shudder of disgust at the image, at the idea of that kind of violation. “Okay, give me a few minutes while I try to figure out a way out of here.”
“Okay,” they agreed, and Chris made a mental note to coach them about their habit of taking everything so literally.
Rather than continuing to try to work her hands free with them tied behind her, Chris moved so that she could work her butt and legs through her arms so she had them in front of her. She’d done it plenty of times before in class, but her wrists were screaming and her head still hurt.
“Okay.” She took slow, deep breaths and brought her shoulder blades together, stretching her arms down and back. Once that was done, she breathed deeply for a moment, letting her shoulders relax. Then, arching her back and spreading her elbows outward, she began working her hips through her tied wrists. It hurt like hell as the cord that had been used to tie her hands dug into the already raw skin on her wrists.
She stayed silent, breathing heavily in and out through her nose as she slowly, incrementally, worked her body so that her wrists were in front of her. When she finally broke free, she exhaled on a quiet sob of relief, her body shaking.
“Good job, Miss Pascal,” Ro whispered, and Chris couldn’t help but laugh. She sounded like Chris did during class, encouraging them to stretch just a little bit more.
“Thanks,” Chris whispered back, because the encouragement did help.
She stood, wobbling a little because her ankles were still tied, and looked around. “Okay, you girls see anything sharp around here? I’m going to cut us free.”
There were all kinds of rusted bits of metal, big screws, and rollers that looked like giant rusted metal rolling pins, but nothing looked particularly helpful except some glass from a broken window with a rusty metal grate covering it.
“Shit.” Chris looked at the glass; it was going to cut the hell out of her hands, never mind what was going to happen to her feet if she tried to make it over there.
But she didn’t have any other options, and she needed to act before the Boyfriend returned. She grimaced and hopped toward what looked like a bare space among the junk, hoping she didn’t misjudge and fall on anything. Would
n’t that be awesome—get kidnapped by a serial killer and end up dying while trying to escape? Come to think of it, though, that would be better than giving him the satisfaction of ending her life.
She landed safely enough. She felt a splinter of something stab into her heel, but her feet were so numb she barely felt it. She hopped again, this time knowing she’d cut herself a little more deeply, and sure enough, when she looked down, blood was seeping between her toes. If she lost too much blood, she wouldn’t be able to help anyone. She was already dizzy and so cold that her body felt cramped and awkward, almost disconnected from her will. Her breath fogged the air, reminding her of her nightmare. Panic fluttered in her mind, panic and sorrow, and the thought that she was going to fail. They would die here, or, worse, be tortured. For God knew how long. Those young girls, girls whose lives were wide open, would lose the chance to become the people they were meant to be.
She swallowed, trying to judge if she was close enough to the window. It kept reeling out of focus, but she thought she was close enough. She knelt down awkwardly, glad that yoga had trained her to balance with her hands pressed in front of her, and located a piece of glass that looked like it had been the bottom half of one of the small square windowpanes. It was smooth and thickened with age on one side, sharp where it had broken diagonally. She held it, but couldn’t get the angle right to free her wrists; they were tied too tightly.
She looked around for something else to cut the rope that bound her wrists, listening as her breath rasped in and out. The girls were quiet, but the faint echo of water dripping somewhere was an eerie reminder that time was running out—they would be returning soon, the Boyfriend and the woman with him.
All she saw were rusty metal parts that looked like gears or cranks littering the floor in front of her. About three yards to her right, tarnished rollers that had once held the paper as it came off the line were lined up in a tidy row, and, next to them, what looked like a blade—orange-brown with rust, but still wicked-looking. She thought that she could maybe cut the rope around her wrists with it and then use the glass to release the girls. Careful not to fall, or drop the glass, Chris bent her knees and jumped, landing awkwardly, falling to her side with a crash that resonated in the cavernous space.
Strings of Fate (Mistresses of Fate) Page 22