You Can't Escape (9781420134650)

by Bush, Nancy

  Someone had said how attractive the Benchleys were . . . Virginia Fowler? Well, that was certainly true in Emily’s case. And something had switched inside her mentally toward the end. She’d become promiscuous, and she never had been before, as far as Jordanna knew. Was that a function of the disease? And would Nate Calverson, Mr. All That, have decided to take advantage of her? Maybe helping her onto the righteous path of the Lord, something Emily might have needed to hear at that point in her life?

  Jordanna headed back into town. It was noon and the skies were threatening rain. Would Nate be at the ranch now, or would he be at lunch? She supposed she could call Rusty and get his number, but she liked the idea of surprising him.

  She drove past Green Pastures Church and then under the arch to the Calverson property. The driveway curved around, flanked by magenta rhododendrons on either side, their blooms just past their zenith. Several dogs began baying at her arrival—beagles, she saw, as they darted out of the main ranch house, both brown and white splotched, their tails wagging rapidly in eager greeting.

  Pru came to the door. “Down,” she ordered, snapping her fingers at the dogs, who wanted to put their muddy paws on Jordanna’s jeans. They sniffed her and sniffed her, and then suddenly tore around the outside of the house, baying madly some more. “Well, hi, there,” Pru said. “What a surprise. Come on in.”

  “Is Nate here?” Jordanna asked tensely.

  “Well . . . nooooo . . . he’s down at the barns with some of the workers.” She looked slightly alarmed that Jordanna wanted her husband.

  Jordanna didn’t plan on telling her about Todd Douglas and Kara. She wanted to see Nate’s reaction firsthand. “I need to ask him some questions. I won’t stay long.”

  “What kind of questions?” Now she was fully alarmed, either for some reason she wasn’t saying, or just because she was so afraid of any woman getting near him.

  “I see the barns,” she said, looking into the fields. “Why don’t I just hike over there?”

  “They could be out a ways away branding cattle,” Pru tried to discourage her.

  “I’ll find him.” Jordanna picked up her pace, practically race-walking away. She didn’t want to give Pru too much time to think about it, and she didn’t want her accompanying her, either.

  The barns were a little farther away than she’d initially thought, the distance deceptive. By the time Jordanna reached them, she was out of breath from hurrying.

  Nate was right inside the doors, leaning against a stall door, looking lazily at a young man who was cleaning the straw and horse dung from another stall. “Put your back into it,” he said. “There are ten more of these, and if you don’t get going, it’ll be midnight before we’re done.”

  He spied Jordanna and straightened up, looking surprised to be caught idle while the young man was working hard. “Well, how do you do, Ms. Winters.”

  “I’ve been up at Summit Ridge. Todd Douglas is dead. His car went over the cliff, right where my sister did years ago.”

  “Holy shit,” he said. He came out of the barn, grabbed Jordanna’s arm, and walked her out of earshot of the younger man. “Douglas is dead?”

  “Rusty called me. He thought I might have talked to Todd, but I didn’t. Todd’s truck is at the lookout at the top of the falls, but he was found behind the wheel of the car my sister, Kara, rented. We haven’t heard from Kara since Saturday.”

  Nate was blown away. “Wow . . . that’s terrible.”

  “Kara supposedly left Rock Springs and went to Portland. She left a text to that effect. But she saw someone in town the last time I talked to her. Someone she thought was familiar, and she acted like it was Emily’s boyfriend from her last year of high school.”

  “Emily dated a lot of guys,” he said carefully.

  “I know.” Jordanna didn’t have time for pussyfooting. “That’s the last time I talked to Kara, when she met up with this guy. No one’s seen her since, and now her car’s been found.”

  “But she texted you that she was leaving?”

  “Someone texted Jennie,” Jordanna corrected. “I’m not sure it was Kara.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I wondered if it was you she saw in town. I thought Kara might not really remember you from high school. Maybe she saw you, and you looked familiar.”

  “Oh, Kara knows me. Rock Springs had the best basketball team in its history when I was a senior, and I was the captain. Of course she knows me.” He sounded affronted that Jordanna could suggest otherwise. “And I remember her. Kinda cute. She was a freshman or maybe sophomore?”

  “You didn’t run into her in town the other day?”

  “No.”

  “Did you take Emily to the old homestead cemetery in high school? I remember you talking about some girl you’d taken there.”

  “Now, wait a minute. I mighta taken somebody, maybe Emily, to the cemetery across the road, but I never went to that one. A lot of people did, but not me. I was here.” He was positive. “What are you really getting at?”

  “I want to know who Emily was seeing at the end of her senior year. Her boyfriend. Because that’s who I think Kara ran into on Saturday, and now she’s missing.”

  He stared at her a long moment, then his mouth turned down at the corners. “I don’t know how to say this much plainer, but Emily was kind of a slut. She’d make out with anybody. Hell, she was with Lourde. Did you ever meet his wife? She was as homely as a mule, and even she divorced him.”

  Jordanna held her temper with an effort. “Emily was with someone after Martin. She broke up with him around Christmas.”

  “You’d have to go through the yearbook. It’d be easier to know the ones she didn’t sleep with.”

  “You’re a real peach.” She had to work herself out of her anger. “It was someone religious, who got her on the path to righteousness. Give me a few names. I’ll take it from there.”

  He glowered at her. “Most of the real Bible thumpers stayed away from you Treadwells, no offense.”

  “Who told you there was a Treadwell Curse?” she asked.

  “What’s that got to do with . . .” He stopped himself and answered flatly, “Everybody told me.”

  “Think back. Try to remember who was adamant that the Treadwells were genetically doomed.” Nate held up his hands and shook his head, as if he thought she’d really gone around the bend. “It’s all a lie,” she told him. “A falsehood. Somebody made it up, and we all believed it.”

  “Maybe you ought to talk to Reverend Miles,” he suggested.

  “Why? Would he know?”

  “I’m thinking that you’re pretty upset. Say what you will about Green Pastures, there’s a lot of good that comes out of talking things over in church.” Then he hurried back to the barn just as the rain began to fall in fat drops.

  “Thanks,” Jordanna said drily. He was no help at all.

  She left him standing outside the barn and hurried back to her car. She had no plans to talk to Reverend Miles. What could he help her with?

  Her wipers were going like mad by the time she reached the road, and then shortly thereafter she came to the entrance to the church. What the hell, she thought, turning in. Nate wanted her to see Reverend Miles because he thought she needed help, and it was true the man knew all the people in town that she did. And church was a good place to find someone who was deep into their religion.

  A sheet of rain was pouring as she turned into the long drive that led to the church. She pulled around to the back parking lot and parked next to a battered truck, the only other vehicle in the lot.

  While the rain pounded onto her windshield, she sent another text to Dance: Want to know who kara saw in town. Emilys boyfriend?? At gree

  She jumped when someone tapped on her window, sending the text too early. “Damn,” she muttered. He made motions for her to roll down the window and she cracked it open a teeny bit, mindful of the rain splashing inside. A man in a cowboy hat was standing beside her car. He’d
apparently come from the other vehicle

  “Fancy meeting you here,” he said.

  “Do I know you?”

  “Don’t you?” He smiled.

  He looked somewhat familiar, but she wasn’t placing him. “Not really,” she said. He was good-looking with a lean, hard build, and when he tilted the hat back, she saw he had penetrating blue eyes. “It’s raining hard,” she said, wanting to roll the window back up.

  “You going to church? Get out and make a run for it.”

  She rolled up the window, tossed her cell in her purse, then slid out of the car, ducking her head. She was going to look like a wet dog. “I’m looking for Reverend Miles,” she said, glancing toward the church. The entrance was toward the front. “Do you know if—”

  Suddenly he was on her, grabbing her, slamming her body against her car. She squeaked in surprise and slipped against the wet fender. She had no time to react before he was shoving something between her teeth—a vial?—and squeezing something down the back of her throat.

  “Uh—uh,” she gasped. What the hell was that?

  When he suddenly shifted to pull her away from the car, she doubled over and shoved her fingers down her throat, throwing up bile and coffee into the rivulets of water running across the lot.

  Before she knew what was happening, he smacked her hard across the face, hard enough that she saw stars. Then he hit her again, a demon in a cowboy hat with rain pouring off the brim.

  That was the last thing she remembered.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Jordanna woke slowly, mouth dry, feeling as if her limbs were weighted down. There was a god-awful smell of rotting flesh that brought up her gag reflex again, and she coughed twice. She was in a barn, seated on the wood floor, wisps of straw here and there. Across the way was a fireplace of sorts with a branding iron sticking out of its depths. There was a faint orange glow within, like dying embers.

  Somewhere, almost out of earshot, there was shouting going on. Angry tones that faded in and out.

  A woman was yelling. “. . . shouldn’t have . . . able . . . and Bernadette was clean . . . happens when they foreclose? . . . you dumb bunny, you . . . the law down on all of us!”

  A man interrupted. “. . . know what I’m doing . . . not listening to you anymore, you filthy, fucking . . .”

  She started screaming back, words Jordanna couldn’t make out.

  He said clearly, “Boo was right about you.”

  More shrieking from her. “The Treadwell girls! That’s all you were supposed to do! The Treadwells!”

  Smack.

  Jordanna shivered, recoiling, squeezing her eyes closed. He’d hit her, too, if it was the same man, and who else would it be? Her head hurt and she felt dizzy, but maybe that was from whatever he’d given her, too.

  Smack. Smack.

  The woman was sobbing. “. . . God will never forgive . . .”

  Then the sudden report of a rifle.

  Jordanna’s eyes bolted open. Oh, God. Oh, no. Oh, my God. Tears seeped down her cheeks, from fear, from the rank smell that was something dead, something large....

  He came striding into the barn, his blue eyes so bright in the slanting afternoon light that they looked lit from within. “Sometimes God sends us exactly what we’re looking for,” he said.

  Jordanna had closed her eyes again, but her breathing was rapid. He’d probably seen that she was awake. He came over and she sensed that he’d squatted down in front of her.

  “You just stay quiet,” he whispered. “Let the juice do what it’s supposed to.”

  The juice? What he’d given her?

  Then he walked away and she heard something being dragged. She squinted her eyes open just a thread and saw that he was hauling a body from beneath a tan tarp. Gray-haired, lined face, eyes open and staring, a spread of red across the front of his shirt. Was this his victim, then? She’d heard a woman’s voice.

  He hauled up the body and threw it over his shoulders, fireman-carry style. She heard what sounded like a body thrown into a metal container and realized he’d probably tossed it into the back of his truck.

  He was out of earshot for a time, but then she heard him again, approaching. She shut her eyes again, waiting, and after a minute he snorted in derision and moved away. Once again she barely lifted her lids and saw that he had a woman’s body over his shoulders. Someone with tight, curly dark hair. Middle-aged.

  Her head flopped back and Jordanna jerked as if stung. Margaret Bicknell! What the hell had happened?

  He strode out of view again and she heard him grunt as he must’ve tossed her body in the truck as well. Then the engine fired up and it rumbled away.

  As soon as she was certain she was alone, she tried to struggle to her feet. Her hands were caught and she realized they were tied behind her back with twine. A short piece of rope extended from a post and was tied to the twine. She wrenched herself around to see the rope was pulled through a hole in the post and back to her hands. The only way to untie herself was at the point where her hands were held together, and her captor had secured her tight enough that her hands were numb from restricted blood flow.

  Shit. Who was he? Was he the one Kara had seen? He must be. The Treadwell girls, the woman—Margaret?—had screamed. That’s all you were supposed to do! The Treadwell girls.

  She moaned with fear. What had he done?

  And then her cell phone started ringing from inside her purse. It was sitting on a bale near a door shut with a wooden bar. Dance, she thought, struggling against her bonds. Dance!

  Dance listened to his cell phone ring on and on. He’d really wanted to hear Jordanna’s voice, but she wasn’t picking up. As soon as he’d been free of the federal agents and police, he’d grabbed up his phone to call, but the phone had hesitated. Swearing, he’d jumped into the Highlander and plugged in the car charger. He switched on the engine, but the phone had remained dark and stayed that way until he was about an hour from Rock Springs, when it suddenly flashed on. Immediately, he’d put through the call, but now she wasn’t answering.

  He saw there were several texts. Three times she’d written: Cops found my sisters car at the bottom of a cliff. Todd Douglas died in the drivers seat Kara’s not answering texts or calls. Don’t think she ever left for Portland

  And the other one read: Want to know who kara saw in town. Emilys boyfriend?? At gree

  “Jesus.” He called her number again. It rang about four times, and when her voice mail came on, inviting him to leave a message, he hit speakerphone and yelled, “Jordanna. Pick up! Todd Douglas is the missing friend of Rusty? The one he and Calverson were waiting to play pool with? Are the police sure it was Kara’s car? Call me.” He clicked off, his nerves on edge. Jordanna had said Kara texted Jennie . . . but how had she gotten to Portland if her car was in Rock Springs?

  A lot of questions, none with any answers. He settled in to drive, one eye on the rearview mirror because he didn’t give a damn about the speed limit.

  He was gone a long time and Jordanna tried everything in her power to get her hands free. She looked around the barn wildly, searching for a tool to aid in her escape, and though she could see a pitchfork, a scythe, and a rifle, none of them were close enough to reach. The scythe was nearest, and it was the tool she wanted most, but it was still out of range.

  Who was he? Where was this barn? Oh, God. Why had he killed Margaret and that other man?

  Her gaze traveled to the branding iron heating in the fire and she felt ill. She would bet it was a cross, one he could turn upside down.

  And then she heard the truck’s engine and the splash of water as the tires bumped through rain puddles. Could she feign more sleep? He seemed to think the juice would help her relax. She felt foggy, but she was fighting it for all she was worth.

  He strode into the barn, and she watched him through the haze of her lashes. His denim shirt was damp and mud-spattered now. She shut her eyes completely as he came her way. She could hear the stretch of fabric
and his own close breathing, and she was pretty sure he’d crouched in front of her again.

  “You’re awake,” he said, sounding a little excited about it. “You hawked it up, you bitch. And now you’re awake.” She gasped when he grabbed her head and dug his thumbs in her eyes. “Open up,” he sang.

  “Stop . . . please . . . stop! I’m awake.”

  He pulled his thumbs away and Jordanna opened her eyes. They ached but apart from renewed tears, she could see fine. She stared at him. His blue eyes were bright and vacant. She’d always worried she’d lose her mind, but this was what real crazy looked like.

  He seemed to be content to watch her.

  She licked her lips. “I don’t know who you are,” she said.

  “You should. Your sister did.”

  “Which sister?” Jordanna asked with dread.

  He came even closer, to look her directly in the eye. “Both,” he said, confirming her worst fears. “But I only loved Emily.”

  Her cell phone started ringing again and his head whipped around. No, she thought, sick with fear. He went over to her purse and dug around for her phone, pulling it out to look at the screen.

  “This your crippled boyfriend?” he asked, turning the phone around so she could see it, walking back her way.

  “No,” she lied, reading Dance’s name.

  “Another one of your studs?”

  “I think you have the wrong impression of me.”

  He threw the cell on the floor, stomping it with the heel of his boot with a fury that frightened her. “I know you Treadwell girls,” he declared breathing heavily. “She told me.” He threw a dark look back toward the barn door. “You’re all filthy whores.”

  She must be Margaret Bicknell. But she asked, “She?”

  “She’s dead now, which means I can do whatever I want now. God sent you to me.”

  Jordanna’s heart thudded so hard she could see it. She was in real peril. Keep him talking. Keep him talking. The only weapon she had was time. If Dance couldn’t reach her, he would find someone who could. She had to believe that.

  “If you loved Emily, how can you call her a whore?”