by Dana Marton
Something heavy sat on his chest, on his whole body. Seconds passed before he understood that he’d been packed into some cold, tight space—then another second before he realized he was buried.
If there’d been anything in his clenched stomach, he might have thrown up and choked himself to death. As it was, he only heaved as disjointed memories floated back, vignettes from hell—the worst torture man could devise, and no food or water, no clothes.
His head swam. Buried alive and too weak to do anything about it. He was going to pass out again.
No.
He was a tough bastard cop, dammit. He willed himself to live.
He heard whispers—probably hallucinating. But then fingers touched his face. He wheezed for air, and then he could finally see at last. It was night, or nearly so. He had no idea what day. His eyes burned as he tried to make out the shadow that loomed over him.
Blackwell.
Fear gripped him now harder than the cold. The pain would begin again.
He couldn’t take more torture. When his hands popped free, he fought back with what little strength he had, trying to blink the dirt and blood away. The sharp smell of paint thinner hit his nose as he grabbed an arm and held it tight, twisted it, pulled the bastard down to the ground.
Wrong shape. Whoever he held felt slighter than Blackwell. This one couldn’t have gotten him the way Blackwell had. Jack held the man from behind, seeing only the back of his head and his stringy hair, some of which was stuck between them.
“Let me go!” she screamed.
What the hell?
He wouldn’t have figured Blackwell for having a partner, let alone a woman. But it all made some sick sense to his fevered mind. Some women nurtured serious obsessions for criminals. Some women struck up correspondence with murderers in prison and married them. Not impossible that Blackwell could use his sick mind to tie a woman like that to him.
He spat dirt and held on tight as she flailed. She looked a few years younger than him, dirty and ready to run, fighting him wide-eyed.
“Who are you?” He sat up, not letting her go, not giving an inch. He could barely feel his body, just enough to know that he’d been bound. No, not bound. He shrugged off the plastic, then struggled to standing, bringing her up with him.
He had no clothes on but could barely feel the cold. “How—” He cleared his raw throat. “How did you get here?”
“Car.” The single word squeaked out in a panicked whisper as she tried in vain to tug herself away. “I can’t breathe.”
And he could? In the grave?
“I couldn’t care less.” He spat again. “Which way?” He’d been blindfolded on the way here, and before, during the days of torture. He shook her as she struggled. “Stop it.”
She stilled, trembling, and reluctantly gestured with her head. He dragged her forward. In a few hundred yards, they burst out of the woods and he could see the older model Chevy Blazer, blue. Still no sign of Blackwell.
“Where is he?”
She didn’t respond, just gave a long whimper.
He dragged her along, ignoring the pained and pleading noises she made, ignoring the blackness that hovered at the edges of his vision. He was too weak to carry himself let alone somebody else, but he made it to the vehicle on sheer will. The keys dangled from the ignition.
He opened the passenger-side door and shoved the woman in, pushed her over before getting in after her. “Drive,” he growled. “Up the road, toward Broslin. You try anything, I swear to God, I’m going to kill you.”
Wishful thinking on his part. He probably couldn’t kill a fly at this stage. Hell, he wasn’t in good enough shape to drive. But by some miracle, the woman looked suitably terrified. Good. She must have seen a thing or two from Blackwell.
Her hand shook so hard, for a moment it looked chancy whether she could start the car. Since he knew his hand would shake harder, he didn’t even try.
“Go!” he shouted, not sure how long he had before Blackwell returned.
She managed at last, did a three-point turn in about a dozen jerky moves. But as darkness narrowed his peripheral vision, Jack realized he’d made a mistake. He was too far gone. He wouldn’t make it to Broslin. “Give me your phone.”
She kept her terrified gaze on the road. “I don’t have it with me.”
A quick look around netted no purse, nothing usable in the glove box either, just a sketchbook and a couple of sticks of graphite. He reached over and patted down her coat, ignoring when she shrieked and nearly landed them in the ditch.
He searched the falling night around them, desperate for help, and caught sight of a farmhouse with lights in the windows in the distance. He could call for backup from there.
“The house.” He gestured with his head, then regretted it when everything before him went swimming. “Take me there.”
Tears rolled down her face. “Please.”
“Do as I say.”
She drove to the house, shivering, and pulled up the driveway. He dragged her up the two steps and held her in front of him as he knocked on the front door. If someone looked out the window next to it, they might not open up for a naked man covered in blood and grime.
But nobody answered the door, not even on the second try. Maybe they were out. His body awash in pain, he rammed the wood with his shoulder. When the door didn’t budge, he rammed it again.
“Wait.” She drew him toward the car, and he went because he no longer had the strength to stop her.
She was too scared to notice, too terrified to realize that if she knocked him down, he wouldn’t be able to rise. She grabbed the keys from the car, hobbled back to the door with him as he did his best to keep his hold on her arm.
She unlocked the door, and he pushed her in, went after her. He was about to ask why she had a key when it all clicked into place in some distant recess of his pain-fogged brain.
She lived here. Which meant Blackwell probably lived here, was probably in the house. Jack swore under his breath at the irony. He’d escaped death just to fall back, defenseless, into the hands of his worst enemy.
He let her go and turned, his vision swimming. Get back to the car. Keys first. He grabbed after her, but she was running away.
He blinked against the darkness that closed in on him. By the time he hit the floor, he was too far gone to feel a thing.
* * *
A naked, possibly dead man lay in her foyer.
Now what?
Ashley peeked from the kitchen, shivering against the cold that poured in the open front door. When she’d rushed off to save him, she hadn’t thought this far ahead, what she would do once she found him. She hadn’t thought he would attack her.
Maybe she hadn’t been supposed to save him. Maybe he was the same kind of man as whoever had put him into that shallow grave, one criminal taking out another, eliminating competition.
She held on to the broom she’d grabbed as the first possible weapon she could think of and inched toward him. When she reached close enough, she poked him in the side. He didn’t move.
Whoever he was, he was well built, had seen either plenty of physical labor or regular exercise. He had a well-proportioned body she might have been tempted to paint another time and place, under different circumstances. He hardly looked ready to be painted just now.
His face was swollen and bloody, like the rest of him. An arrangement of open cuts formed patterns on his skin, accented with burn marks, blue-black spots, and welts. Three of his fingernails had been ripped off; the rest were packed with blood and dirt.
A gust of wind hurled snow through the front door. When he didn’t stir even from that, she lifted the broom a few inches and pushed the door closed behind him.
“Who are you?” She didn’t expect an answer, and he didn’t give any, just lay where he’d fallen—skin and muscles and dirt and blood.
No, he shouldn’t be painted, she thought then. He was a completed work of art already—a human canvas painted with violence. S
ome people equated art with beauty. She knew, better than most, that wasn’t always true.
His chest rose slightly.
Oh. She didn’t know if she should be scared or relieved.
She had to call the police. Her lungs shrank. If she called, she would have to explain finding him.
At least he was still alive. Explaining a corpse in her house would be even more difficult. She stared at the slow rise and fall of his chest, backed up a few steps to grab her tartan wool throw from the couch, and draped it over him. “Here.”
His lips were grayish blue where they weren’t too dirty to see the color. She had no idea how long he’d been out there, but long enough for hypothermia, apparently.
She backed away again, still holding the broom, all the way to the kitchen phone. But once she got there, she hesitated.
The cops didn’t like her. They hadn’t forgiven her for Dylan; nobody in Broslin had. But if she didn’t call, the man would die, and she couldn’t handle another lost life on her tally sheet. Dylan’s death had about broken her.
Don’t think about Dylan now.
She leaned the broom against the wall but kept it within reach, and grabbed the phone to dial 911.
“My name is Ashley Price. I need an ambulance and the police.” She gave her address. “I found an injured man on my property. I’m an artist. I was out looking for a place to paint.” She’d told the captain that. She needed to keep her story consistent.
“How bad is he hurt?” the dispatcher asked.
“He lost blood. Unconscious. I think hypothermia too.”
“Are you keeping him warm?”
She could hear the keyboard clicking on the other end. “Yes.”
“Do you know his name?”
“No.”
“He doesn’t have any identification on him?”
“He was— He’s naked.”
A small pause from the dispatcher, then, “All right, ma’am. Help is on the way. Please stay on the line.”
But as Ashley glanced around, she caught sight of the easel up in the loft and her painting still on it. “I can’t. I need to put more blankets on him.” She hung up and ran for her last dreaded creation.
She wrapped up the damn thing, then dragged it out to the garage, and hid it behind the others. Was that good enough? Would the police look there?
She stood staring at the pile for a moment, unsure what to do, unable to think of a better hiding place. Panic rose in her throat. She swallowed it. They had no reason to search her home, no reason to think she was involved in any of this. She hadn’t done anything.
But she would have to destroy that painting. She had to get rid of all of them. Just not at this moment. She didn’t have the time. She couldn’t allow the cops to catch her in the process.
So she locked up the garage, then rushed back into the house and piled more blankets on the man, and could hear the sirens by the time she finished. She lived only a few miles outside Broslin.
She skirted the man to open the door, happened to glance at her feet as she stepped carefully around him. Streaks of mud covered her legs, and blood where the frozen brush had scratched her skin. How was she going to explain why she’d been out there barefooted?
She dashed into the laundry room, grabbed the first pair of knee-high socks she could find in the basket, and was yanking them on as cars pulled up her driveway outside.
Act normal. She hurried back to the door to open it. Just act normal.
“Miss Price.” Captain Bing hiked up the steps first.
Tall, trim, and somber, he was married to his job, from what she’d heard. Local gossip had it he’d lost his wife to murder a few years back, a murder he hadn’t been able to solve. That had to grate on a man like him.
And he grated on others in return, which didn’t bode well for her.
“Captain.” She stepped back to let him in, her heart slamming against her rib cage so hard it hurt.
Two younger officers came up the stairs behind him, a couple of EMTs in the back. He didn’t pay them any attention, his gaze snapping to the body.
He squatted next to the unconscious man and swore, reaching for his radio. “Officer down. I repeat, officer down. It’s Jack.” Then he glared at her, black thunder on his face. “What the hell happened here?”
A cop? She stared. She didn’t know this one. He hadn’t come around with the rest last year.
She scrambled for something to say, but the paramedics shuffled her out of the way before she could answer.
Captain Bing herded her toward the kitchen. “Where did you find him?”
“At the back of the property, not far from where we talked.”
One of the other policemen, Joe, she seemed to remember the name, loped over. He had the lean body of an athlete, different from Bing’s more built strength. He didn’t have any shadows in his eyes yet, hadn’t been on the force for long. He’d just started back when they’d lost Dylan.
“Joe, you go out with Miss Price,” Bing ordered.” She’ll show you where she found Jack. I’m staying with him.”
She didn’t dare leave the cops alone in her house.
“You won’t need me.” She swallowed as nerves shot through her. “Turn right at the corner, a hundred feet maybe before you get to the next intersection, you’ll see my tracks in the snow. The spot is by the creek a few hundred yards in, next to a six-foot rock. It’s the only boulder on the property. Can’t really miss it.” She held her breath.
Bing narrowed his eyes as he looked at her but then nodded, and Joe took off.
“Seen anyone else nearby?” The captain pulled out a notebook and a pen. He had a thing about taking meticulous notes. She remembered that.
“No.”
“When did you find him?”
“Fifteen minutes ago. Maybe twenty.”
“Why didn’t you call sooner?”
“I didn’t have my cell phone with me.”
He flashed her a look full of suspicion. He’d probably be happy if he could make her pay at last, for anything, since she hadn’t had to pay for little Dylan. He’d made it clear how he felt about that. He was fourth-generation local, his family deeply connected to farming.
He didn’t like outsiders coming in, buying up land, then letting it go to seed. He’d let her know that as well. He had a bleak opinion of city folks, all of whom he viewed as having come here specifically to give the locals grief and cause trouble.
When she’d been involved in the death of the child of one of his friends, Ashley had shot straight to the top of the captain’s shit list. She did her best to stay out of his way, give no excuse for as much as a speeding ticket. And she’d managed until now.
He looked at her dirty, bloody fingers. “How did you find him, exactly?”
She crossed her arms to hide her hands. “Saw some disturbed ground. Saw the corner of the shower curtain.” She swallowed. “I thought maybe someone was burying garbage on my land. When I tugged on the plastic, a hand came out.”
“What were you doing out there?”
“I was looking for a good spot to paint. I painted the creek before.”
Her response stopped him for a second. He seemed unsure how to ask an insinuating question about that. Then he found his footing. “Do you know Jack Sullivan?”
She glanced at the unconscious man by her front door. The paramedics were loading him onto a gurney, an IV bag hooked to each arm.
“No.”
“You still live alone?”
“Yes.”
“Any visitors in the last couple of days?” He was taking notes.
On what? She hadn’t given him anything. “My father and my daughter.”
“Seen anyone around, back in the woods?”
“No.”
“Have you seen or heard anything suspicious at all earlier, anything out of place?”
She shook her head.
“And you just went out there to look at trees?” He seemed to have a problem with that part of
the story.
“It’s like—” She grasped for an artsy explanation that would discourage further inquisition. “Paul Klee said that when he was drawing, he was just taking a line for a walk. Works the other way around too. Sometimes my lines take me for a walk.” A walk straight to hell.
He wrote the name Paul Klee in capital letters, then tapped pen to paper.
She opened her mouth to tell him he didn’t need to worry about Klee, but then changed her mind. If Bing wanted to run the Dutch artist who’d been gone for almost seventy years through the system, let him.
“Anything else you want to tell me at this point?”
“I already told you everything.”
He huffed, watched her for a long moment, his eyes, the color of burned sienna, narrowing. “All right. I’m going to see what Joe found out there. I’ll be back in a while. You stay right here.”
She knew that tone. The captain blamed her for all this. She couldn’t bear the thought of more interrogations to come. If her father found out…
The thought about stopped her heart.
Her father couldn’t find out. Whatever she had to do, she had to keep her new batch of troubles secret. She had to find a way to clear her name and make this all go away, and she had to do it in a hurry.
* * *
Jack Sullivan saw the bright light again. This time, he wasn’t about to march blindly ahead. Screw the light. With superhuman effort, he willed himself awake. His eyelids going up felt as if someone was dragging sandpaper over his eyeballs. It hurt to breathe.
“Welcome back, Jack.”
Bing’s face swam into focus.
“Captain.” He cleared his throat, then tried for something better than the weak whisper. “What happened?”
“Do you know how much paperwork I have to fill out every time one of my men gets injured?”
He blinked at the hospital room around him—white walls, green sheets, strange-looking medical equipment—and wrinkled his nose at the smell of iodine. “I’ll try not to make a habit of it. I’m fine.”
“You might think differently when the painkillers wear off,” the man said in a voice that leaned toward gentle. Not something Jack had heard from Bing before. He had to be dying.
He tried to sit up. Couldn’t. What the hell?