A Dark Lure

by Loreth Anne White

  She saw him looking up at the sky, too. He seemed worried.

  When he found a path up a section of low bank, he led her up, then into the trees, where it was dark and cold. Snow was coming down solidly now. Darkness was encroaching. With it came a wave of despair. She tripped again and hit the ground with the right side of her body. She had no control of the scream that sparked out of her at the crush of pain. Her eyes watered. Blood leaked afresh from her ear. She wormed her way into a sitting position, panted, trying to catch her breath.

  “How far?” she managed to say.

  He didn’t reply. He was regarding her intently, as if measuring something.

  “You never did go hunting for our baby, did you, Sarah?”

  She held his gaze, swallowed.

  “I thought you would. Someone like you. I was so certain you would. I put out my lines, and I waited.”

  She challenged him with her eyes, her chest filling with a mix of guilt and regret and the kind of pain only a mother who’d lost a child could know.

  “I wanted her to be free of you,” she whispered. “I could never be. The least I could do was save her.” She spat out more blood that was coming from the back of her nose. “Seems I did the right thing.”

  His lips curved into a wry smile. He angled his head.

  “Ah, but the cop—the staff sergeant—the man I now believe I met on the banks of the Stina River one cold November day, he read me better than I read you. He knew I was out there, and that I’d keep looking. He cast out Internet bait of his own. He brought me to you, Sarah.” His smile deepened. He bent over, bringing his face close to hers again. She continued to hold his eyes, refusing to back down.

  Never again would she back down for him.

  He reached for the rope around her neck, jerked it tight. She gasped for air. None came down her windpipe. Her eyes watered. He held her like that until her vision began to fade into tiny white pinpricks. Then he dropped the rope, and she fell suddenly back into a heap on the ground. She wheezed in great big gulps of air.

  “Get up,” he ordered, his voice suddenly flat and cold. “Walk. We need to find a place to spend the night and have a little fun.”

  As he tugged her forward into deepening forest, Olivia scrabbled furiously with the fingers of her right hand to undo the watch on her left wrist. She let it drop silently to the soft loam behind her. She dragged her feet, trying to leave as much trace as she could in soil and pine needles without alerting him, praying that the coming snow wouldn’t obliterate all her effort.

  CHAPTER 25

  Snowflakes were settling like confetti on the wreck. Cole moved carefully inside, so as not to rock and tumble the rig down into the water.

  There was no one inside the truck cab, nor in the camper on back. Blood soaked the mattress. He found strands of Olivia’s hair. If there was any consolation at all, it was that she had to have been alive and mobile in order to have left here—her assailant would not have been able to clear out so fast lugging a body.

  Ace suddenly started barking, whining outside the wreck. Cole tensed as he heard Burton yell.

  He stuck his head out of the camper.

  “Here! Ace is on to something! I think it’s her scent.”

  The dog was whimpering and lunging against his line to scramble up the bank.

  Cole jumped down, hurried over, and dropped to his haunches to see what had fired Ace up. Pinkish red blood and . . . it looked like spittle. More drops of blood spotted the rocks nearby. His jaw tightened, and he glanced up.

  “You take him.” Burton was struggling to hold on to Ace. His complexion was still sheet white, his cheeks gaunt. He was ill. Worsening.

  Cole took the line from Burton, wrapping it around his hand for purchase as he braced against Ace’s pull. The dog yanked and yipped in desperation to hit the trail he’d found.

  “Ready?” he said to Burton.

  The ex-cop nodded.

  “Find her, boy,” he said. “Go!”

  Ace scrabbled up the bank, sniffing left then right, then bam, his nose went down, and he was off, heading downriver, below a cliff. Cole stumbled over rocks and talus, scree clattering out from under his boots as he tried to keep up. Snow fell heavier, making rocks slippery.

  Burton lagged behind, breathing hard, using his hands to grab bits of scrub for purchase.

  Ace stopped suddenly, raised his head, looking confused. He started snuffling in circles. His tail started to wag. He gave a little whine and lunged into the rope again as he relocated Olivia’s scent.

  By the time Ace led them up a low section of riverbank and into dense forest, they’d traveled almost a klick downriver. It was dark under the trees. They had no flashlights. From here they’d basically be navigating blind, led only by the dog’s nose and a line attached to him.

  Cole waited for Burton to catch up, but Ace suddenly burst against his leash, almost jerking his arm from his socket. He winced as pain from his shoulder sparked across his neck. Ace moved forward a few feet and suddenly lay down.

  “What’s the matter, boy?”

  Burton caught up to them. “He’s alerting.” He bent over, bracing his hands on thighs, wheezing gulps of air in. Once he’d recovered a little, he said, “Had two Police Dog Service guys on my watch at Watt Lake. One a narcotics K-9. He was trained to alert like that when he hit scent. Lie down.”

  Cole crouched down and examined the loam between Ace’s paws. And there he saw a watch. Olivia’s. His chest crunched with a surge of emotion as he picked it up.

  “Good boy, Ace,” he whispered, stroking the dog’s head. “You’re such a good boy. You think you can do it again, huh? Find her—find Olivia.”

  The German shepherd surged to his feet, snuffled like a truffle pig through the loam, and was off through a gap in the trees. Cole and Gage took off in hot pursuit, leaping over fallen logs, ducking under low branches, tearing through brush, and tripping through tangled roots into the gloam of the snowy forest.

  Ace abruptly lay down again. Cole crouched, feeling with his fingers in the gathering darkness between the dog’s paws. He touched something hard, picked it up. Tensed. Olivia’s truck keys. She must have had them in her jeans pocket.

  “Can you search some more, boy? Find.” The dog was amped, but clearly physically tiring. Behind him, Burton kept tripping, falling, and scrambling back to his feet.

  “You gonna make it?” he said to the ex-cop.

  Burton wiped his brow, breathing hard. “I’m going to make it. This is what I came to do.” His voice was breathy.

  Cole studied the sergeant in the dim light. “I need you,” he said quietly. “We both need you.”

  He nodded. “I’m fine. Go.”

  Cole let Ace have free rein again, and once more they took off after the dog. Ace slowed a little, snuffling more carefully now as the snow was accumulating and wind moved through the forest. Cole guessed this might be messing with the scent, blowing it into different places. Ace led them up a ridge. They stopped along the tree line at the crest. Below lay a clearing. And although it was fully dark now, there was a little more visibility outside of the forest canopy. The settling snow also reflected more light, giving an almost eerie glow to the little valley. Silence was heavy, apart from drips and plops as snow and water fell from branches. At the far end of the clearing a grove of leafless alders clustered around what appeared to be a decaying and deserted log cabin and a scattering of rotting outbuildings.

  A faint flicker of yellow light came from between the slats of one of the cabin walls.

  Cole waited until Burton caught up and crouched down beside him.

  “Looks like an abandoned homestead,” Cole said softly.

  “Or an old trapper’s outfit.”

  Ace whined.

  “Shhh.” Cole hushed him, stroked him, and spoke softly. Sound carried in this kind of
snowy weather in remote forest. But the dog was restless, making little moans in his throat as his nostrils waffled the breeze blowing their way from the cabin.

  “They’re in there,” Cole whispered. “Ace can scent her.”

  “He’s most likely armed,” Burton said. “We don’t know how badly either of them are hurt, but they made it this far in decent time, so I’m guessing they’re both fairly mobile.”

  “And Olivia’s clearly still thinking on her feet, leaving Hansel and Gretel clues like that for someone to find.”

  Which meant she had hope. Cole let this fuel him. But they had to do this carefully, not rush anything.

  “Any ideas?” he asked the ex-cop.

  “What have we got between us? Your shotgun, my Smith and Wesson, and a Taurus .22.” He glanced at Ace. “And her dog.”

  “No,” Cole said, squinting at the dilapidated hut, his heart racing. “The dog doesn’t get hurt. He stays out of this.”

  Burton maneuvered himself into a more comfortable crouch. His right arm hung oddly limp at his side.

  “What’s with the arm?” Cole said.

  “Gone a bit lame.”

  He frowned, trying to see into Burton’s eyes in the dark. “Is it the illness?”

  “I think so.”

  “What’s it doing—the tumor?”

  “The lesion in my brain is growing rapidly. It could manifest in motor coordination problems if it presses on certain neural paths.”

  Cole cursed softly to himself. Burton was failing in front of his eyes—he might not last physically through a takedown. He glanced at Ace. If he left Ace tied to a tree up here in the forest, the instant he and Burton headed down into the valley, the dog was going to start yapping, and any hope of cover would be blown.

  Then it hit him.

  “I have an idea,” he whispered to Burton. “We do it like this.”

  The decaying building was powerfully reminiscent of the old shed in which Olivia had been chained for a winter—wet, cold. It stank of mold and moss. Her pulse raced so fast she thought she’d faint. She struggled to hold on to a shred of sanity.

  Focus. Do it for Tori. Play his game, but do it better than him . . .

  He shoved her into a corner.

  “Like old times, huh, Sarah?” he whispered.

  “What’s your name?” she said, teeth chattering. She was trying to stay present. Trying to keep him human as long as possible. “If you’re not Sebastian, you must have another name.”

  “Eugene,” he said.

  “Eugene George?”

  He glanced into her eyes. A shiver shot down her spine.

  “Yes,” he said, holding her gaze as he tied the end of her neck rope to a heavy iron bar in the corner.

  “So you’re a twin? An identical twin?”

  He snorted. “Sebastian was a genetic echo, an offshoot of myself. Expendable. He was born onto this earth to support me. My mother made me aware of this from a very young age.”

  “How come I never saw him?”

  “You did. He helped butcher the bodies. Perhaps you thought he was me? He lived in another shed, far from the house. It was his business to stay on the periphery of my life. Like my parents, in the end.”

  “Is that why he said in court he couldn’t read? Only you were taught?”

  “Get down,” he said once the rope had been secured.

  She stood her ground, hands bound behind her back, blood leaking from her ear again. “Why did you never tell me your name before?”

  He looked into her eyes, then said, low, slow, “A name is immaterial. Sebastian and Eugene, Romulus and Remus, Castor and Pollux, Sam and Eric from Lord of the Flies, my mother used any and all these from time to time. Names are just a symbol that have become a way of bureaucratic control. See, Sarah-Olivia? We are not bound by a name. We can become whomever we want. Like chameleons we can blend into new people, assume their identities. Like I long ago assumed the identity of a dead bush dweller living off-grid up north. I used his identity to enter the States twelve years ago, after they arrested Sebastian. I did time in prison in that dead man’s name when I shot and killed an Arizona State Park Ranger two years later. It was finally ruled involuntary manslaughter. Little did they know I killed him because he witnessed what I was doing with a dear, sweet little victim with blonde hair and round breasts.” He smiled. “I guess they never did find her body in the end, deep as it was down the ravine, where wildlife was plentiful and hungry.”

  Bile surged into her throat. Hatred, pure, thrummed her veins.

  “Where,” she said through clenched teeth, “is the real Algor Sorenson?”

  “Ah. They might find him yet. Left in remote desert he was. Birds picking his bones, I’m sure. The lovely Mary—we know they found her, don’t we, Sarah-Olivia? The Sorensons were perfect, of course. I selected them after we got talking in an Arizona campsite shortly after my release, and I learned he had a NEXUS card and traveled often to Canada to hunt. He had the right build, coloring. Equipment.”

  A shudder racked her body. Nausea swirled.

  “Get down,” he ordered again, voice flat, cold. Eyes unreadable.

  Slowly she lowered herself to her knees. The floor was rotted wood. He unsheathed the knife he’d taken from her, and he sliced through the rope securing her wrists. She winced as her left arm fell free. Eugene reached for the jacket zipper at her neck. With a ripping sound he yanked it down and pushed open her jacket. He slid it off her shoulders. Her jacket fell to the ground. He punched her lightly on the sternum, forcing her to fall backward onto her butt on top of the jacket. Her pulse jackhammered. She scooted farther back into the corner, the rope grating around the scars at her neck.

  His face split into a smile, teeth glinting in the light of the small fire he’d made in a circle of stones in the center of the hut. Smoke was being sucked up through a hole in the rafters above. Snowflakes came down through the hole, hissing and sizzling on the flames.

  “We have a whole, long night ahead, Sarah-Olivia,” he said, going down onto his knees in front of her. He brought the knife blade up close to her face. He feathered the cold tip down the bridge of her swollen nose, along her lips, her chin, down to her neck. She held her breath, trying not to swallow as he traced the sharp tip—she knew just how sharp, she’d sharpened it herself—down the column of her throat. With a jerk he grabbed and slit her sweater open down the front.

  She gasped, scrunching her eyes tight as her sweater flayed open, exposing her bra.

  He hooked the blade into the fabric between her breasts, lifted it sharply, and her bra split open. Her breasts fell free. She needed to go to the bathroom. Her bladder, her stomach had turned to water. Her nipples pinched tight and hard from cold.

  “Oh, now look at that,” he whispered, tracing a nipple with the blade. She began to shake. She knew what he could do. He lowered his face to her breasts, licked each nipple in turn. She braced for a bite, anticipating his teeth sinking in, puncturing skin, him sucking blood as he tore out a piece of flesh. It didn’t come. The tip of his tongue traced the curve of her old bite scar, dipping, laving into the crater he’d left there. He resheathed her knife at his own hip, and placed a hand on each side of her naked waist. He ran his hands down to her hips, to the waistband of her jeans.

  Olivia moved her head to the side, looking away, desperation rising like a suffocating tide in her. She knew he’d freed her hands because he liked it when she fought and hit and tore at his hair. It drove him wild, made him harder, made him hurt her more. Her heart stumbled as she caught sight of her knife hilt at his left hip. While he was sucking on her breast, she slowly fingered her right hand toward the hilt. His hands were undoing the button of her jeans, her zip. He pulled the front of her panties aside, and forced a finger up inside her.

  She held her breath, gritting her teeth as she curled her fingers a
round the hilt. She yanked it out, and with a heavy grunt, she plunged it through his jacket into the side of his waist. He shocked still, his finger remaining inside her. She forced the blade in deeper, twisting it, her vision blurring as the rope pulled at her neck.

  His left hand clamped down like a vise over her wrist. He pulled his finger out of her. She froze, chest heaving, sweat drenching her naked torso. And he fucking smiled, then licked his finger. Her heart dropped like a cold, heavy stone to her bowels. He raised his hand and cracked it across her face. The force flung her backward against the wood siding. She lay there, watching, blood leaking down her split cheek.

  He extracted the knife from his torso. The blade came out red and glistening, and he clamped his left hand hard over the wound. Blood oozed through his fingers. He glanced at her again, and she braced for another impact. But he sheathed the blade. Lifting his jacket and the hem of his shirt, he examined the wound. Blood rushed down into his jeans. He reached for the sweater he’d cut off her, and balled part of it, plugging it tightly against the wound. He tied the sleeves firmly around his waist.

  Then he turned to her, and the look in his eyes was death. He crawled closer. She edged backward, trapped by the rope in the corner, but a sound stopped him. His head jerked sideways, listening.

  It was an animal—a wolf. No, a dog, yapping, barking, howling.

  Eugene glanced at her, yanked on her rope to make sure she was properly tied, then lurched up for the shotgun he’d propped against the far wall next to a rifle. In a crouch, he moved toward the door of the cabin. He peered out into the darkness.

  The animal howled again, the sound dying off into a series of whines. Olivia turned cold. She knew that sound. It sounded like . . . It wasn’t possible. She closed her eyes a moment, dizziness and blackness swirling.

  Eugene stayed crouched like an animal at the gap in the door for what seemed an eternity, watching, listening. Then slowly, he creaked the rotted door open wider and crawled out into the snowy night.