“He is. As far as I know. I haven’t talked to Bennett lately.” Not since the last time they went out to Laurel Heights together. Did Halsey know about that?
“I wanna know how it leaked to the press.”
What had Gray done? Josh was as confused as Halsey. “I don’t know where he is. He didn’t trust me enough to tell me. Have you asked Tori Downing?”
“Oh, that’s priceless. When I asked her about him, she blew up at me. Crazy woman. I knew better than to hire her. I was warned about her. But you…you kept pushing me to hire someone. Someone to cover for your lazy—”
“I’m not lazy. We needed another crime scene specialist. A county our size needs more than one on day shift and Barney was never coming back.” Josh would have smiled if the situation hadn’t been so serious. He had gotten his way about that.
“One or the other of you has been on administrative leave ever since I hired her.”
That wasn’t Josh’s fault.
“Apparently, Grayson and Downing—who have been in some sort of romantic relationship—had a major argument, and she said and I quote, ‘I never want to see that son-of-a-bitch again as long as I live.’” Halsey had said the word romantic as if it was acid on his tongue. His imitation of Tori was an interesting combination of sarcasm and squeaky girl voice.
Josh imagined the sheriff’s face turning multiple shades of red and purple. Halsey didn’t like being left in the dark.
“I can’t help you. I’m not in Gray’s confidence anymore. And right at the moment, I have a personal emergency to deal with.”
“You drunk again?” Halsey obviously wasn’t in the mood to be kind.
Hadn’t he just denied drinking? It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t had a drink in over a week. A record for him since he turned sixteen.
Josh stepped on the accelerator a little harder. He’d let the truck lag a little while he let Halsey vent.
“Do I sound drunk to you?” He was growing tired of the accusation.
“What’s so important that you have to go south to take care of it?”
He hesitated. He could tell Halsey of his suspicions concerning Terrance Phelps, but Halsey was dealing with his own hell. It wasn’t hard for Josh to figure out what Grayson had done. He’d effectively set Halsey and Haskins against each other. Halsey would have no choice but to make a public display of discovering Gray’s connection to Haskins. His investigation would have to be acknowledged, dissected, and reviewed by the court of public opinion in order to prove he wasn’t covering anything up for Haskins.
When Gray had recorded his conversation with Fred Haskins, the man had strongly implied he had Halsey in his back pocket. Did Haskins know about Zach Halsey’s involvement in Cherish Duncan’s disappearance? That would be enough to keep Halsey playing on Haskins team.
Josh didn’t have time to deal with Halsey or his apoplectic fit. Ashley might be in trouble and Josh had no one to turn to for help. Halsey was useless. He couldn’t trust anyone else in the Sheriff’s Department to have his back. No one but Gray, and Gray had poked a rattlesnake with a short stick.
“Call Shaw Bennett. Maybe he knows where to find Gray. I gotta go.” He disconnected before the sheriff could object.
The intersection with Baxter Road was just ahead.
****
Terrance nudged Ashley in the middle of her back with the barrel of the gun. Despite the threat, she descended the stairs as slowly as she could, buying time, hoping Josh would figure out where they’d gone and follow them.
Josh would come to the clinic when she didn’t show up at Gray’s house after the end of her shift, and he’d panic when he found her car still on the lot. He might ask the staff where she’d gone. Brady Thompson might mention seeing her with Terrance in the parking lot out back. Her rescue by Josh depended on a lot of iffy variables, on Josh asking the right questions and on her co-workers giving him the right answers.
Her hope faltered a bit. In the end, she would probably have to rescue herself. The thought made her insides tremble. How long had it been since she’d eaten? She suddenly felt dizzy and weak.
Terrance had brought a flashlight with him, but the beam barely penetrated the dark in front of her. If he would only allow her to hold the light… But he wouldn’t. He’d held onto it, stating that he had no intention of letting her use it as a weapon against him.
He was wicked smart. She would have done just that.
She fought the urge to cry. Refused to show him her fear. Her relationship with him had finally come down to a battle of wills. She’d finally gotten enough backbone to show him how much he disgusted her. How much his touch made her nauseous. She displayed her disdain for him with every glance, every word she spoke.
What did she have to lose? She was tired of being a victim.
The further she descended, the colder and darker the stairwell became. She shivered once, wishing she’d been able to grab her jacket from the back of her car. Terrance had surprised her in the parking lot. Her hand had been on the door handle. She had only been seconds away from escaping him. Without a doubt, he’d been watching and waiting for her to come out of the clinic, unworried about leaving the other doctors at the clinic to absorb his patient load. He’d finally gone off the deep end, caring more about torturing her than his reputation or his work.
She stumbled when her foot found the bottom of the stairs, tripping over a step that wasn’t there.
When she stalled to regain her balance, he pushed her. “Keep moving.”
She reached her hands out and felt her way down the slimy tunnel. Memories of the last time she traveled that way pressed on her mind. The air became heavier. The atmosphere oppressive. She gasped for her next breath.
“What did you say?” Terrance’s voice was a hoarse rasp.
“Nothing.”
“You said something. I heard you.”
She trembled a bit but kept moving. “I’m not speaking to you.”
“Yeah, we’ll see about that. Before I’m done with you, you’ll be screaming for mercy.”
She flinched. “Go to hell.”
He smacked her with the flashlight. Pain shot through her head. She bent double and bumped her forehead on the rock wall of the tunnel. With supreme effort, she righted herself, shook off the desire to fall to the ground in a heap, and took another couple of steps into the thickening darkness. “Bastard.”
“Shut up, slut.”
No one had called her that since the night Jeremy Haskins had died. Hate energized her. She would do Terrance some damage before this was over, even if she died in the process.
The flashlight was failing. Couldn’t Terrance see how it was growing dimmer? Was something or someone draining the flashlight’s batteries? A supernatural energy suck? With stunning clarity, she sensed Jeremy’s presence. “He’s here.” She had spoken before she thought twice about uttering the thought aloud.
Terrance grabbed her shoulder and halted her forward movement. “Be quiet.” After a moment he pushed her to move again. “I don’t hear anything. Just your imagination, darling. Josh McCord isn’t coming to your rescue. He has no idea where you are.”
Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he did. “Not Josh. There’s someone else here.”
“There’s no one but me and you and the ghosts of all the other women I’ve brought here.” He made the phony ghost noise, clearly mocking her belief in the supernatural.
She laughed, and she didn’t know where the impulse came from. “I don’t feel them. I feel another presence. Jeremy’s here.”
Terrance roared with laughter. “Oh my God, are you gonna pull that crazy ghost crap on me? Don’t even try.”
Ashley tugged on her bottom lip with her upper teeth, trying hard not to express just how terrified she really was. If Jeremy was with them, her troubles were only going to explode exponentially. Terrance would terrorize her body and Jeremy would terrorize her mind.
****
Every mile Josh drove up Baxter Road
toward Phelps’s cabin made him a little more anxious. What if he had misunderstood? What if Phelps was taking her somewhere else? He sensed the danger she was in. The tension between Ashley and Phelps had been winding tighter and tighter for days and weeks. She had intended to tell Phelps that their relationship was over as soon as she could. Had the conversation gone horribly wrong?
Josh wanted to injure himself for his stupidity. He should have never let her talk him out of dropping her off at work.
When he approached the cabin, he drove past it, just as Ashley had the day she’d discovered the underground room. He picked up his cell out of the cupholder and tapped Tori Downing’s number in his contact list. Someone should know what he was doing tonight and why. The phone died after two rings. He flung the useless device onto the seat and yanked the door open.
After another five minutes, he was hiking down the dirt road. He allowed a shuddery breath to escape him when the cabin finally came into view and he spotted Phelps’s car in back.
He fingered the gun he’d stuffed in the back waistband of his jeans. Small comfort. If Ashley got between his gun and Phelps, the weapon would be useless. He couldn’t fire the gun below ground for fear of a ricochet accidentally hitting Ashley. Phelps would probably use her as a human shield.
Josh jiggled the front doorknob and found it locked. He pressed the sides of his hands against the glass and peered through the front window. The small living area appeared empty. He circled the building, checking all the windows and the back door. If Phelps was on the topside, he was hiding in plain sight. Where they had gone wasn’t hard to figure out. Phelps was forcing Ashley down the stairs and through the tunnel.
The way she had described the atmosphere of the place had given Josh the creeps. Was she in a panic? Was she keeping her cool? Had Phelps already injured her?
A cold wind blew up the back of his shirt and chilled his hot skin. He wished he’d thought of bringing a jacket.
He tested every window again on his way around the cabin, hoping one of them was miraculously unlocked so that he could sneak into the place. When he finally came all the way around to the front again, he didn’t give it a second thought. He shot the lock off the front door. It swung open. He stepped aside, waiting for Phelps to show himself.
After a few more nerve-wracking moments, Josh entered the cabin gun first. He scanned the front room, then the bedroom and bath, and finally the small kitchen. When he was satisfied the cabin was clear and Phelps and Ashley were not above ground, he turned his attention to the door that led to the hidden stairway. He nudged it with his knuckles and the door swung open with ease.
****
When Ashley passed out of the tunnel into the underground room, she was relieved to find a stream of sunlight filtering in from the natural opening on the side of the cliff. When she had been there before, it was already night. The opening faced the west so the remains of the day shot fingers of light around the edge of the waterfall. She stepped into the brightness and allowed the warmth to heat her face, taking a moment to get her bearings.
“Get in there.” Terrance motioned toward the cage with the business end of the gun.
Refusing was stupid. No one won an argument with a bullet. She stalled anyway. He shoved her hard in the middle of her back and she tripped. With a grunt she hit her knees. His laughter rang around the hollowed out dome of rock.
“You are so pathetic.” He grabbed her by her upper arm and dragged her across the room.
Just outside the gate, she found her footing and walked into the enclosure with as much dignity as she could manage in the situation. The man was surely destined for a one-way ticket to hell, and if she could send him on his trip there a little quicker, she’d do it.
She shook her head. Where were the hard thoughts coming from? She wanted him out of her life, yes, but did she really want him dead? Well, actually his life or death made no difference to her. But to kill him? She didn’t want to be responsible for another person’s death. Once in a lifetime was more than enough.
As soon as her feet crossed the threshold of the cage, Terrance slammed the gate closed behind her. The click of the padlock followed before she could turn around to face him. She hocked back a wad of spit and let it fly toward his face. The glob missed and landed at his feet.
He smiled and the essence of evil erupted all over him.
“There’s a special place in hell for men like you, Terrance.”
He laughed raucously, a horrifying noise that drove stabbing needles of pain into her head, vibrating her eardrums until she put her hands over her ears, crying for relief. When she dared look at him again, his eyes bored into hers, drilling down into her soul. Despair crept up from the bottom of her heart. She didn’t want to give up hope. It might be all she had left.
“Are you gonna cry, Ashley?” He came within inches of the fencing. “Are you gonna beg for mercy?”
She lifted her chin, refused to let him see her suffer.
“There were six of them. The women I brought here. You wanna know what I did to them?”
She stepped away from the fence, pressed her back against the rock wall of the enclosure. “Your perversions don’t interest me.”
“No? Really? They all want to know about the woman who was before them. Every single one of them. Why is it that a woman isn’t content to let the past be the past? Why do they have to know about every woman a man has ever been with?” He chuckled as if women had been put on earth for the sole purpose of his pleasure and amusement.
“It’s a man’s right to take what he wants from a woman. It’s our privilege as the stronger sex. You should feel lucky to have been with me. They all wanted me. I’m the best they ever had. I’m the best you’ve ever had.”
What was he going on about? It wasn’t like any of those women had been with him willingly.
His arrogance reminded her of Jeremy on the night he died.
She let Terrance talk. What could she say anyway? He was ranting. Was this what all psychopaths did when they became desperate? Terrance had to know it was only a matter of time before his crimes were revealed. Josh was on to him, and Ashley had clued Terrance in to his fate by asking him about the women he’d kidnapped. The man’s mind was breaking. He was devolving into the lowest form of himself.
Why hadn’t she kept her mouth shut? Maybe he would have come after her and left Josh alone. Maybe Josh could have prepared for a confrontation with Terrance and been ready for him if her death had given him plenty of warning.
“Those women…they owed it to me. And deep down, I think they all wanted to owe me. They had to know what I could give them just by looking at me. I mean, look at me Ashley. I gave them the best they’ve ever had.”
Bile rose up from her stomach. “You’re a sick bastard.”
“I’m sick? You’re the one who murdered your lover.”
What Jeremy had done to her wasn’t love. “He wasn’t my lover,” she whispered.
“When they find his body, you’re DNA will be all over him.”
The horror hit her. He meant Josh, not Jeremy.
A clang and a thump came from above them. Terrance stared at the entrance to the tunnel for a long moment. He backed into the shadows. “Warn him, Ashley, and I’ll put a bullet straight through his heart and make you drink the blood.”
Her hand flew to her mouth. The vomit rose up from her gut. She turned toward the corner of her prison and dry heaved, since she hadn’t had anything to eat all day.
****
Josh slowed his pace when he came to the end of the tunnel. He could have sworn he heard a male’s voice. He approached the growing light and stared into the large cavernous space beyond it. When his eyes finally readjusted to the new level of lighting, relief flooded him. Ashley was all the way cross the room inside a fenced-in area with her back to him. He waited a few moments before venturing into the room, hoping she would see him and he wouldn’t have to call out to her. With Terrance Phelps somewhere on the premises, h
e couldn’t be too careful.
As soon as Ashley turned around and their eyes met, she gasped. He saw no one else in the room but them, so he rushed forward to release her from the cage. Too late, he realized his mistake. He turned just in time to see the butt of Phelps’s gun come down on his head. Pain erupted in his temple.
“Josh,” Ashley called from inside the fence.
He caught just a glimpse of the maniacal gleam of victory reflected in Terrance Phelps’s eyes before his knees hit the hard stone floor.
He’d been here before. The recollection of the night he’d been clobbered on the head at the Jepson farm came back to him, clear and stunning in its revelation. The unmistakable odor of Phelps’s breath hit him in the face.
He fell face down on the floor and pretended to be out. Oh yeah, he wanted to disappear into oblivion, because that might ease the pain in his head, but he couldn’t. He had a greater purpose. If Phelps thought he was out cold, then Josh had a better chance of getting the drop on him when he wasn’t expecting it.
He kept his eyes closed. Ashley’s cries echoed around the dome-shaped room, calling his name over and over until Phelps screamed at her to shut up. Suddenly, Josh’s side hurt worse than it had all week. Phelps had kicked him, sending a spasm of pure pain throbbing through ribs that were still recovering from the last time Phelps had attacked him.
The steady clomp of hard-soled shoes traveled away from him. He slit his eyes open. Phelps headed toward Ashley. Josh resisted the urge to rush the man. He had to pick the right moment.
An eerie laugh erupted from Terrance Phelps. “Poor Josh McCord. He thought he was going to save you again. Not this time Ashley. This time I don’t feel like sharing. This time you’re all mine. When he wakes up, I’m gonna make him watch.”
Ashley Ridge (Haunted Hearts Series Book 3) Page 22