Cold Heart Creek: A nail-biting and gripping mystery suspense thriller (Detective Josie Quinn Book 7)

by Lisa Regan

  Josie sighed and hopped down from her seat on the tree trunk. Looking from side to side, all she could see were varying degrees of darkness. It was a moonless night and the light from the outhouse lamp didn’t reach across the road and into the trees. By feel, she picked her way to a spot several feet away where she relieved herself. Returning to her spot, she shook her thermos, relieved to hear coffee slosh around inside. She sipped the rest of it slowly.

  By three, the temperature had finally dropped slightly, and the breeze she’d longed for so badly earlier ruffled the tops of the trees. Initially, Josie was afraid that the quiet dark of the woods might lull her into sleep, especially since she hadn’t had more than a couple of hours over the last few nights combined, but as the Sanctuary descended into complete stillness, her surroundings reminded her too much of her recent nightmares for her body to rest. Every small noise startled her: the rustle of the wind through the trees, the chirp of crickets, the buzz of cicadas, and the low hoot of an owl. Her sweat cooled on her skin, leaving it clammy. A shiver ran through her.

  Something cold caressed her neck. Her body leaped from the tree trunk and whirled around, staring into the blackness. She pulled her gun from its holster, holding it out in front of her. She swore she saw a shadow pass between two nearby trees. Her legs went weak and she stumbled, her head slamming into a branch behind her. An involuntary gasp escaped her. A noise to her left froze her in place. Footsteps? She remained silent, ears straining to pick up any noise. The gun felt heavier than usual. Her arm trembled holding it up.

  Was her mind playing tricks on her? Blinking, she took a few steps back toward her seat. Suddenly, she had that feeling again. The same one she’d had the first day at the Yates campsite. Every hair on her arms and the nape of her neck stood on end. Her head whipped around. Was that someone breathing? She lowered the gun to her side and sprinted toward the road—or where she thought the road was—but she was disoriented, her heart pounding, and the further she ran, the more lost she became. Stopping to regroup, she pressed herself against a tree and pointed the gun out in front of her once more. Her eyes panned back and forth but nothing moved. She waited, listening for more sounds, but there was nothing. Eventually, the sensation went away. She took one hand from the pistol grip and reached into her jacket pocket for her cell phone, but it wasn’t there. She touched her other pocket. Her GPS unit was gone as well.

  “Shit,” she muttered under her breath. They must have fallen out when she was running. Or had she left them on the tree trunk? Why were her thoughts so muddled?

  She pointed her gun toward the ground and closed her eyes, trying to gather her composure. Eventually, she opened them and blinked, trying to bring the shadows into focus, but it didn’t work. One of her hands fumbled for the handheld radio in her back pocket, but her fingers wouldn’t work. The simple movement sent a wave of dizziness through her.

  From her periphery she swore she saw movement. The shadow again. The thundering in her chest overwhelmed her. Was there someone really there? Or was her exhaustion-addled brain making her crazy? Should she stay or run? She tried to bring her gun up in front of her again, but it was too heavy. Instead, her fingers reached back and tried once more to find the radio. There was another noise.

  Breathing, she thought. The forest was breathing.

  Had she fallen asleep? Was this another one of her nightmares? Would Lila step out from behind a tree, grip her chin, and scare the piss out of her?

  The sound was all around her now. The trees and the leaves were alive. Something wet slid down her cheek.

  A voice beside her said, “You’re here.”

  She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out. Move! Run! A rush of fatigue overcame her so quickly and so completely that she could barely lift her limbs. She was vaguely aware of her gun falling from her limp hands. If this wasn’t a dream, then something was horribly wrong. She felt breath on her cheek. Hands touched her. She wanted to recoil but no part of her body would work. One word appeared in the front of her mind in neon letters: RADIO.

  She thought hard about making her hand move, visualizing it in her head, seeing her fingers find and grip the radio, pull it out of her pocket, and push the buttons. Opening her mouth to tell her team she was in trouble.

  The hands lifted her and her head lolled. The Sanctuary driveway came into view briefly from across the road and then receded. Her radio dropped into the mud.

  The voice came again.

  “You won’t be needing that where you’re going.”

  Forty-Eight

  Josie woke with a start, her body thrashing, pushing up, away from the shadows in her mind. As her eyes searched her surroundings, she saw that she was in a bedroom. It was small with wood paneling, an old rust-colored carpet on the floor, and a thin twin mattress beneath her. Daylight streamed through the gauzy curtains hanging from the single window over the bed. The door, which was on the other side of the room, was closed. Josie stumbled up, out of the bed, her legs like jelly, and staggered to the door. She turned the knob, pushed, and pulled but it didn’t budge. She went back to the mattress, falling to her knees at the head of it and wrenching the curtains open. Trees surrounded her. She was on the second story of some structure, but beyond a small strip of grass below, there was only forest.

  Am I still dreaming? She wondered as scraps of the last few days mingled with slices of her nightmares. Her brain tried to put things in order, to reorient itself, but everything around her was unfamiliar. What the hell had happened?

  Her mouth felt like someone had stuffed it with cotton and a pounding headache finally began to register now that she had been awake for a few minutes. She looked down at her clothes, patted her pockets. Everything was gone. Her gun, her holster, her wallet, her flashlight, radio, phone, keys, GPS unit.

  “Shit,” she muttered.

  A wave of nausea rocked her, and she lay back down, staring at the white, water-stained ceiling until it passed. She thought back to the last thing she remembered. It had been night. She’d been stationed in the woods across the road from the Sanctuary. She’d been finishing her coffee. Then she had felt something touch her neck, freaked out, and ran, becoming increasingly disoriented.

  “Oh no,” she said.

  She’d left her equipment unattended, including her thermos, when she relieved herself. Had someone slipped her something, or had her own extreme fatigue done her in? More likely it was the combination of the two, she thought. How had no one on her team noticed? They had vehicles stationed at both ends of the road, so anyone who drove out would have had to pass one of her unmarked police vehicles, not to mention either Gretchen or Noah. There was only one way, Josie realized. The woods behind her, opposite the Sanctuary. Whoever had taken her would have had to carry her out that way. Had someone carried her miles through the forest? It didn’t matter now. She’d been taken. Here she was—in a strange room in a strange house.

  A shudder worked through her as she thought of the man’s mouth against her cheek, his breath in her ear, his hands on her body. She thought about screaming for help but what were the odds that she was in a place where someone who might help her would hear her?

  Noah, she thought. He and her team would have figured out that something was wrong by now. They would have looked for her, realized she was gone. But they wouldn’t be able to track her using her phone because she had lost it in the forest before she was taken. She couldn’t sit around waiting for a rescue that might or might not arrive.

  Her feet were a little steadier this time as she made her way to the door. She pulled with all her might, even putting her foot up against the wall beside the door to give her more leverage. But after a few minutes she was soaked in sweat, shaking, and no closer to getting out. Panic rose in her chest as she looked around the room once more. All she could think of was that this was just one big closet, just like the one that Lila Jensen had trapped her inside so many times when she was a child. Except it wasn’t pitch black.

&n
bsp; The window.

  Josie wiped her clammy palms on her jeans and walked over to the window again, tearing the curtain down and tossing it aside. The window frame was old and wooden, its locking mechanisms petrified and unmovable, and the place where the window fit into the frame had been painted shut long ago. She swore again and leaned her head against the window, trying to figure out whether she could jump. There was a sizeable tree branch not too far from the window. If she knocked out enough of the glass and perched just right, she could push off the sill and reach it on her way down. It would slow her fall and maybe keep her from breaking a leg. But she’d only have one chance at it.

  There was nothing in the room to break the window with. Nothing to use as a weapon. There was a mattress. That was it. She went back to the door and pressed her ear against it, waiting. No sounds came from the other side. Back at the window, she gathered up the curtains and wrapped them around her right boot. Then she tossed the mattress out of her way, against the door, so she could brace her left foot firmly on the floor and kick with her right.

  She was weak with exhaustion and hunger and whatever drug she’d been given. It took a good half dozen kicks to break the glass. Once she’d kicked a hole in the middle, she unwrapped her boot and then wrapped the curtain around her right hand, using that to punch out the remaining shards. The creak of a floorboard sounded behind her. Then someone grunted. Josie glanced over her shoulder just long enough to see a man struggling to get the mattress clear of the door. She turned back to the window, gripped the frame with one hand on each side, and prepared to jump.

  Rough hands yanked her by the waist, pulling her back into the room. She let her weight fall back on him, sending him off balance. Her left hand grabbed a shard of glass as the two of them fell, landing half-on, half-off the mattress. The moment they hit the floor, Josie turned her body, slicing with the glass, hoping to hit something. When the man sucked in a sharp breath, she was sure she’d gotten him. But strong arms looped around her, over the top of her arms, holding her in place. Her stabs became weaker and weaker until there was no more area to slice.

  “Stop,” the man said. “Drop that.”

  But Josie held tight, even as she felt her own blood seep through her fingers. She wriggled in his grip, pushing her body upward. She whipped her head back, smashing the back of her skull into his face. His grip loosened. Josie used her elbows as daggers in his soft abdomen until he let go of her and she scrambled to her feet, racing toward the door. His hand wrapped around her ankle, pulling her back.

  “Dammit,” he said. “Stop.”

  She shook his hand loose and sprinted through the doorway, down a short hall toward a staircase. Just as she reached the crude wooden bannister, the man tackled her from behind, knocking her to the ground. Her breath left her as his weight crushed her. Blackness encroached on her vision. Then his large hands seized her throat, pressing on her carotid artery, sending her spinning into unconsciousness.

  Forty-Nine

  Josie felt the hardness of the chair beneath her before she even opened her eyes. She tested her limbs, but they were tied down. Her left palm burned, and warm air caressed her face. She thought she heard birds. Was she outside? Her eyes fluttered open, blinking against the light. She was in a different room. This one was obviously a sitting room with its saggy, threadbare couch and well-worn floral-design area rug. On one side of her was a fireplace. On the other was a set of large wooden sliding doors, closed almost completely with only an inch left open. Gauzy curtains billowed over the windows, and her heart sank. She was being held somewhere so remote they felt comfortable keeping the windows open. Where no one would hear her scream for help.

  She wriggled in the chair. Her wrists were bound tightly to the arms of the chair, her ankles to the chair legs. Blood dripped from beneath her left hand where she’d gripped the shard of glass to defend herself. She stilled as she heard the sound of a door creaking open elsewhere in the house. She leaned her head toward the crack in the door. Voices came, muffled and indistinct. It took several moments for her to determine that one was a man and one was a woman.

  The woman’s voice was angry, her words a hiss. “What were you thinking, bringing her here?”

  The man’s voice was so low that Josie couldn’t make out the words.

  “This was a mistake. This is how we got here in the first place. You can’t keep doing this. This is not what we’re about. You know that.”

  The man spoke again.

  The woman replied, “No, absolutely not. I’m going to talk to her.”

  Josie tensed as the door suddenly swung inward, and Charlotte Fadden stepped through it. “Hello, Detective,” she said with her calm smile.

  In her hands she held a small black bag with blocky red writing on it: First Aid Kit. Trailing her through the door was a tall, shaggy-haired man in bare feet, threadbare khaki shorts, and a stained white T-shirt. On his side there was a slice in the shirt and through the opening, Josie could see a bandage. His face was bearded, his eyes vacant, but she recognized him from the photos she had seen. Jack Gresham.

  He stood silent and unmoving by the wall while Charlotte knelt in front of Josie and slowly, gently, began to untie Josie’s left arm. “I’m so sorry that it’s come to this.”

  “What’s that?” Josie asked. “Kidnapping? Assault?”

  Charlotte’s smile didn’t falter. “Jack,” she said. “Go get me some warm water, would you?”

  He left the room. Charlotte continued, “As I told you before, Jack is troubled. I do not and would not ever condone this type of behavior.”

  Charlotte turned Josie’s palm up, revealing a mess of wet and congealed blood in various stages of drying. Josie tried not to make a sound as Charlotte probed it. Jack returned with the water, placing it beside Charlotte and then resuming his position against the wall. Charlotte fished out a piece of gauze from the first aid kit, wet it, and began to clean the blood away from the slice in Josie’s hand.

  Josie said, “You knew where Jack was all along. Why didn’t you just tell me? Why did you hide him?”

  “I was trying to protect him, dear. He needs a safe haven. That’s what the Sanctuary was for him.”

  “A safe haven to act out his deranged fantasies? He was the one hurting Renee Kelly, wasn’t he?”

  “He and Renee had an agreement.”

  “An agreement? What kind of agreement?”

  “That’s not important now, dear.”

  Trying another tactic, Josie said, “I thought you didn’t condone violence.”

  “I don’t. Not generally.”

  “Not generally? What does that mean?”

  Charlotte cleaned away the last of the blood and studied the wound. “I think you’ll be fine without stitches, but you’ll have to be careful. We’ll wrap it up, but it will be up to you to keep it immobile so that it heals.”

  Josie saw that Charlotte wasn’t going to give her any real answers. Not easily. So she changed course again. “Where am I?”

  Charlotte squeezed a glob of bacitracin from a tube and onto Josie’s hand. “You’re in a safe place.”

  Josie looked over her shoulder at Jack. She doubted that. “Where’s Emilia?” she asked, her question directed at him. Something passed over his face, but it was so brief, Josie couldn’t tell what it was. Shock? Dismay? Fear? Regret? Had the hermit been telling the truth about ransacking the campsite after Emilia was gone and the Yateses were already dead? Had they been completely wrong about him? Did that mean that Maya had lied? Josie’s thoughts swirled in a fog. She was too tired, too traumatized to make sense of everything. She couldn’t think clearly. Her mind tried to grab onto one line of thought and stay with it: getting the hell out of here.

  Charlotte pressed a clean gauze pad into Josie’s hand, cut open a fresh roll of sterile gauze and began wrapping the wound. “You ask a lot of questions,” she mused.

  “That’s my job,” Josie said. “To ask questions. But if you’re tired of questions then
how about this: both of you are actively breaking the law right now by keeping me here against my will. The longer you keep me, the more trouble you’re making for yourselves. Let me go now or bring me a phone and I’ll call my team, and I promise to work with the district attorney to get you a reasonable plea deal.”

  Jack’s voice was low and gravelly. “I told you we can’t trust her.”

  “Hush,” Charlotte told him. She taped the rolled gauze in place and put Josie’s hand in her lap. Looking up into Josie’s eyes, her smile widened. “I need you to see past your job for a moment. I need you to see what’s really important. It’s true that I am not happy with what Jack’s done, but don’t you see that by bringing you here he’s given you a gift?”

  “Did you give me something to make me high, or are you just that crazy?” Josie retorted.

  Jack mumbled, “This is a waste of time.”

  Charlotte laughed. “Your walls are so high. Your resistance so fierce! But I promise you, you are exactly where you need to be right at this very moment.”

  “A prisoner?” Josie said.

  “No, my dear. Not a prisoner. Well, no more than you’ve always been. But right now, here with us, you’re on the precipice of true freedom. Freedom like you’ve never known. You’ve been brought here at exactly a time when you need to embrace yourself the most. When you need most to fully become—light and dark, married, together as one.”

  Josie leaned forward as much as her bindings would allow and stared into Charlotte’s eyes. “Let me go right now.”