Snared

by Jennifer Estep

  “I’m okay with that plan,” Owen murmured.

  Bria nodded. “Me too.”

  Finn’s phone lit up. He glanced at the caller ID and held up a finger, asking us to be quiet, before he answered. “Yes, sir? Of course, sir. Thank you, sir.” He hung up and looked at me. “Mosley just made the call. Damian Rivera has been alerted to a very suspicious transaction on one of his accounts, totaling more than three million dollars. Mosley’s asked him to come down to the bank in person so they can straighten it out.”

  I nodded. That was the favor that I’d asked of Mosley, given his position at First Trust bank.

  Bria and Owen picked up their binoculars again and stared at the mansion, while Finn kept his eyes glued to his phone, waiting for an update from Silvio. I looked out over the lawn, but no guards appeared, not even Bruce Porter heading back to his caretaker’s cottage.

  Finn had already walked around the cottage and peered in all the windows, making sure that the structure was empty. Porter must be up in the mansion with Rivera. Hopefully the dwarf would drive his boss to the bank and take at least a couple of men with them. The fewer guards here, the better it would be for us and especially Elissa.

  A minute passed, then two, then three. Cold worry trickled down my spine. What if Rivera didn’t take the bait? What if he didn’t go to the bank? What if he didn’t leave the mansion?

  My hand tightened around my knife. Then I’d go in and confront him after all, no matter how many guards were in there with him—

  Finn’s phone lit up with a new message. “Silvio says a car just pulled out of the front gate. Porter’s driving, and Rivera’s in the passenger’s seat.”

  I’d been hoping that they would take at least one more man with them, but this was the best—and only—chance that we had to find Elissa.

  “Good,” I said. “Let’s go get our girl back.”

  Finn nodded and texted Silvio, telling him that we were going in. He put his phone away and pulled a silenced gun out from the small of his back. Bria and Owen both had similar weapons in their own hands. We all plugged transmitters into our ears so that we could talk to each other, checked to make sure that they were working properly, and headed for the mansion.

  Since no guards were patrolling back here, we were able to sprint all the way across the lawn and over to the stone patio that surrounded the pool. We hunkered down behind the patio furniture and peered in through the windows. I spotted two women in the room where the giant Christmas tree had been, boxing up ornaments and other holiday decorations. I glanced in through the other windows, but I didn’t see any more servants or guards.

  “Remember,” I whispered to the others. “We need to be as quiet and as invisible as possible. We get in, get Elissa, and get out.”

  Finn, Bria, and Owen all nodded back to me, and the four of us split up. Keeping low, Finn and Bria hurried over to a side door, which was unlocked, and vanished inside the mansion. Owen and I climbed up the same trellis that I’d used two nights ago to reach the second story.

  I got to my feet, hurried over, and plastered myself against the side of the mansion. I waited until Owen was next to me, and then I eased forward and peered in through the window.

  The white velvet bow had been removed from the frame, giving me a clear view inside. Rivera’s office looked the same as before. Empty desk in the corner, fancy bar and shelves of liquor along one wall, photos lined up on the mantel, expensive antiques everywhere. Disappointment filled me. Now that we knew that Rivera was the Dollmaker, I’d half expected to see Elissa tied to a chair in the office. But of course things could never be that simple and easy.

  Still, the office was empty, so I reached out and raised the window, which was unlocked. I held my breath, just as I had the other night, waiting for alarms to ring out, but none did. Rivera hadn’t fixed his security flaw, and I was going to take advantage of it again.

  Owen and I slipped inside the office, and I left the window wide open behind us, just in case we needed to make a quick exit with Elissa.

  “Where to now?” Owen whispered.

  “Since she’s not in here, Elissa is most likely to be in Rivera’s bedroom. It’s the biggest room in the mansion, besides this office. Let’s go.”

  We crept over to the office door and stopped, listening, but no movement sounded on the other side of the thick wood. Owen twisted the knob and wrenched the door open so that I could peer out into the hallway beyond. It was empty, and I gestured for him to open the door the rest of the way. We slid out into the hallway and stopped, looking and listening, but the mansion remained quiet.

  I frowned. Normally, the quiet would have been a good thing, but right now it bothered me. Rivera’s perimeter men had been gone for more than two hours. You would think that someone would have noticed and tried to contact them by now. If my men hadn’t returned from a job, I would have been doing everything in my power to track them down, in addition to circling the wagons and bringing in more guards. Maybe Rivera was too drunk to notice, or maybe he just didn’t care what happened to them. Maybe his guards were as disposable to him as all the women he’d murdered.

  Despite Mosley’s ruse to get Rivera out of the mansion, I’d still expected the place to be crawling with guards, but it was as silent as a tomb. Weird. More worry and apprehension swept through me, but we were here now, and I wasn’t leaving without Elissa, no matter what dangers we might encounter.

  I gestured for Owen to stay behind me. He nodded, and together we crept down the hallway, quietly opening every door and peering into every room we passed.

  But all of them were empty, except for their fine furnishings.

  My frustration grew with every single room we searched. The mansion was large, but it wasn’t infinite, and we were running out of places to look. Finally, I reached the door to Rivera’s bedroom, the last and final room on this floor. Once again, I stopped, listening, but I didn’t hear anything.

  I looked over at Owen, and he raised his gun and nodded, telling me that he was ready. I nodded back.

  I tried the knob, expecting it to be locked, but it too was open, just like everything else in the mansion. Surely Damian Rivera wouldn’t be so foolish as to kidnap someone and not keep her under lock and key, but apparently, he was. So I decided to roll with my good luck. I opened the door, and Owen and I swept inside the room, our weapons up and ready.

  But it was also empty.

  A massive four-poster bed dominated the space, black silk sheets trailing off one side and down onto the floor. Antique clocks, vases, and other knickknacks covered the nightstands on either side of the bed and the mirrored mahogany dresser that took up most of one wall. Empty champagne flutes and bottles littered the floor, and some stuck out from underneath the bed and the dresser. The air reeked of alcohol and cigar smoke, mixed with Rivera’s nauseatingly sweet cologne.

  But Elissa wasn’t in here, and there was no sign that she had ever been in here. No ropes or other bindings perched on the nightstands, no women’s clothes or accessories strewn across the floor, and, most telling of all, no golden tubes of Heartbreaker lipstick sitting on the dresser. Frustration surged through me, but I pushed it aside, hurried over, and opened the door to the walk-in closet, while Owen checked the attached bathroom.

  But they were both empty too.

  “Dammit!” I hissed. “She’s not here. Finn, Bria, you guys got anything downstairs?”

  Finn’s voice crackled back to me a second later. “Nothing. No sign of Elissa anywhere. Just those two women still working on those holiday decorations. I’m sorry, Gin.”

  I sighed. “Yeah. Me too. Keep looking. Owen and I will do the same up here.”

  “Roger that.” Finn signed off.

  Owen and I searched the bedroom, but there was nothing out of the ordinary, except for all the empty bottles of champagne.

  Owen shook his head. “Surel
y he doesn’t drink all this by himself, does he? It’s a wonder his liver hasn’t exploded by now.”

  I let out a harsh, humorless laugh. “You should have seen him guzzling down booze in his office the other night. You’d think it was water and he’d just run a marathon the way he was swilling it down.”

  That bothered me too, more than anything else about this whole situation. Sure, Damian Rivera was arrogant, and he liked to hit people. But he was also a lazy drunk. He didn’t seem to have the smarts to kidnap and kill so many women, much less to actually get away with it for so long without leaving any evidence behind. But I didn’t have time to think about it right now, so we left the bedroom and searched the entire floor again, looking for anything that might lead us to Elissa.

  But after ten minutes, I had to admit defeat. “She’s not here,” I said, talking to Finn and Bria through our earpieces again. “She’s just not here.”

  “Yeah.” Finn’s voice was as sad as mine was frustrated. “There’s no sign of her down here either. Let’s meet on the patio and regroup.”

  Owen and I went back to the office to leave the same way we’d come in. I didn’t want Rivera to know that anyone had been inside his mansion. At least, not until we’d found Elissa. Owen went over to the window and peered outside, checking to make sure that no guards had come around to the back of the house. But I lingered in front of the photos on the fireplace mantel, looking at them all again and hoping that I would find something, anything, that would tell me where Elissa was.

  For some reason, I found myself studying that photo of Damian with his parents. In particular, his mother, Maria, caught my eye. The strange thing was, the more I stared at her, the more I realized that Maria Rivera looked exactly like Elissa and all of the Dollmaker’s other victims. Young, blond, pretty. But what made my heart drop and made a chill run down my spine was her makeup.

  Her lips were painted a familiar, sickening blood-red.

  Of course, she wasn’t holding a tube of lipstick in the picture, but I knew—I knew, deep down in my bones—that she was wearing the Heartbreaker color.

  Could this all be about Maria Rivera? Did Damian have some deep-seated mommy issues that had twisted him into a serial killer? Was he kidnapping women so he could kill his own mother over and over again? If so, why? What had Maria done to her own son that was so terrible? That made him want to beat and strangle her substitutes time and time again?

  Owen noticed that I’d stopped in front of the mantel, and he came over to me. “What are you looking at?”

  I pointed to the photo. “Who does she remind you of?”

  He didn’t see it for a moment, but then he leaned forward, his eyes narrowing with understanding. “Elissa . . . and all the other victims.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Rivera is our guy. He has to be.”

  “So where is Elissa?” Owen asked.

  “I don’t know, but I’m not leaving here without her. C’mon. Let’s go meet Finn and Bria.”

  Owen nodded and headed back over to the window, but I stayed where I was, still staring at that photo of Maria Rivera standing with Damian and his father, Richard, with Bruce Porter hovering in the background. It was your average family picture, completely innocent and innocuous. But once again, something about this whole situation bothered me, some nagging little thing that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I looked over the photo for a third time, but try as I might, I couldn’t puzzle it out.

  “Gin?” Owen asked. “You ready?”

  “Yeah,” I said, finally turning away from the photo. “Let’s go.”

  22

  Owen and I went back out through the open office window, crossed the roof, and climbed down the trellis. Finn and Bria were waiting by the pool, guns in hand, once again hunkered down behind the patio furniture.

  “Now what?” Finn’s green gaze darted back and forth, on the lookout for any servants or guards.

  “Now we spread out and expand our search,” I said. “Just because Elissa wasn’t in the mansion, that doesn’t mean Rivera doesn’t have her stashed around here somewhere. Maybe he’s holding her in one of the outbuildings. So let’s split up again and look for her.”

  The others nodded, and Finn pulled out his phone and texted Silvio, telling him what we were doing next. Almost immediately, Finn’s phone lit up with a new message.

  “Silvio, Jade, and Ryan are still in position on the street outside the front of the mansion,” Finn said. “Everything’s quiet on that side of the estate, and none of the guards have moved away from their posts. We’re still in the clear.”

  I nodded. “Let’s get to work, then.”

  Finn and Bria went left, and Owen and I went right.

  As with many such places in Northtown, Damian Rivera’s estate was like its own little city. Several sheds and outbuildings surrounded the main structure on both sides, positioned in small clusters of trees to blend in with the rest of the immaculate landscaping.

  Owen and I went from one shed and outbuilding to the next, careful to stay out of sight of the guards patrolling the front of the mansion. He kept watch while I slipped inside every structure that we came to and searched for Elissa. The sheds held everything from lawn mowers and other gardening equipment, to cleaning supplies for the pool, to red and green plastic tubs filled with all the holiday lights and decorations that had covered the mansion. We moved carefully, quickly, and quietly, looking at all the supplies, peering into the cobwebbed corners, and searching the floors for any trapdoors or sublevels.

  But there was nothing. No women’s clothes or accessories spread out across a table, no telltale footprints made by a woman’s stilettos in the dust, no gold tubes of lipstick glimmering on a shelf. There wasn’t a single sign of Elissa anywhere.

  More and more frustration surged through me, burning like acid in my veins, and once again, I got the nagging feeling that I was missing something important, something obvious. Ten minutes later, Owen and I had cleared all the buildings on our side of the property, and we snuck back to the pool area.

  “Finn, Bria, you guys got anything?” I asked through the transmitter.

  Finn’s voice crackled back to me a second later. “Nothing. Nothing at all, and we’ve looked everywhere on this side of the estate. I don’t even see any ropes that might be used to tie someone down. If Elissa is here, then Rivera is doing a bang-up job of hiding her.”

  Even more frustration spiked through me, and I reached up and massaged my forehead, which was suddenly aching. “All right. You guys sneak out through the woods on that side of the mansion and go meet up with Silvio, Jade, and Ryan out front. Owen and I will make sure that we didn’t overlook anything and go out through the woods in the back the same way we came in. We’ll see you guys in a few minutes.”

  “Roger that.” Finn signed off again.

  Owen looked over at me. “We’ll find her, Gin. I know we will.”

  I let out a long, tense breath. “I wish I had your confidence. It seems like all I’ve done the past few days is run around in circles, going nowhere fast.”

  He lifted his hand and cupped my cheek, his warm, strong fingers stroking my face. “You’ll get somewhere. I know you will.”

  I grabbed his hand and pressed a kiss to his palm. “I love you for saying that, and I love you even more for actually believing it. So let’s go over everything again. Elissa has to be here somewhere. She just has to be.”

  We left the patio behind and took the same route as before, avoiding the guards and working our way from one outbuilding to the next, checking to make sure that we’d looked absolutely everywhere. But we had, and there was nothing for us to do but head back across the lawn.

  Ten minutes later, we were at the very back of the estate, getting ready to step into the woods, when a series of low mutters caught my ear. I stopped and turned around, scanning the grounds, wondering where the sounds were c
oming from, since we were several hundred feet away from the mansion now. And I realized that there was one place that we hadn’t searched yet.

  The caretaker’s cottage.

  My eyes narrowed, and I reached out with my Stone magic, listening. Sure enough, the stones of the cottage were the ones that were muttering, the harsh notes repeating over and over again, almost as if they were the words to a song ringing in my ears.

  Blood, violence, pain, death . . . blood, violence, pain, death . . .

  According to the info that Finn and Silvio had dug up, Bruce Porter had lived in the caretaker’s cottage for years. As Rivera’s head of security, Porter oversaw all the other guards and the servants. He would know every little thing that went on here, including his boss’s proclivities. Porter probably wouldn’t have any problem letting Rivera use his cottage, as long as the dwarf got to keep his cushy job. The building was also isolated enough to keep the other guards and servants from realizing what was really going on inside. That was why no one had talked, like Bria had thought they might.

  Owen noticed that I wasn’t following him, and he stopped and turned around. “What is it?” He raised his gun. “What’s wrong?”

  “The cottage,” I murmured.

  “But Finn looked in through the windows when we first got here,” he said. “Elissa wasn’t inside.”

  I reached out with my magic again, listening to the continued shrieks of the stone.

  Blood, violence, pain, death . . . blood, violence, pain, death . . .

  And I realized that the sounds were harsher, louder, fresher than they had been two nights ago. Emotional vibrations faded with time. They didn’t grow stronger. Not unless someone was around to make the sounds increase with her sharp terror and stomach-churning fear.

  “Gin?” Owen asked again.

  Blood, violence, pain, death . . . blood, violence, pain, death . . .

  “Elissa wasn’t anywhere that Finn could see through the windows,” I murmured again. “And he couldn’t hear the stones. Not like I can. But she’s in there. I know she is. C’mon.”