Come and Get Me

by August Norman

  “Mike Roman,” she said, “you’re under arrest.”

  “What for?”

  She held out a photo of his face going up Branford’s stairway. “Breaking and entering and grand theft auto.”

  Mike held back a smile. She didn’t mention the pink plastic bags, but someone must have noticed.

  “Greenwood said I could use his father-in-law’s truck.”

  Maverick shook her head. “That old son of a bitch saw his parking spot empty and called it in. Hands on the wall, please.”

  Mike assumed the position so the detective could frisk him. “Greenwood know about this?”

  “Pretty sure that’s why Chief Renton suspended him.”

  CHAPTER

  79

  THE STATEMENTS STOLE hours from Embower. First with the officers who came to the Branford house, then the trip to the station to off-load his security footage, then back to the house—but the attention paid off. Both Greenwood and Roman would be out of his world. Embower didn’t understand what had stopped Greenwood’s involvement—something about the red and white truck—but Roman’s face in Branford’s house would be enough to file for a restraining order once they released him from custody.

  He watched the last two officers pack up in the shelter of his dry garage. “As far as you can tell, the only thing missing is the hard drive?”

  The older of the two nodded. “If you hadn’t noticed the drive missing—”

  The other one closed the trunk. “Or had the video.”

  “Right, if you hadn’t noticed the missing drive, then checked your footage, we wouldn’t have been able to tell he’d been inside. What was on the drive?”

  Branford shook his head. “Stuff for my classes. I’d only bought it a month ago. Don’t know what he’d want with it.”

  Mike Roman hadn’t found anything. After Embower’s own wall-to-wall search, he’d tucked his work hard drive under the passenger seat of his SUV, then set its padded carrying case in the upstairs bedroom amid a pile of random financial papers pulled from his filing cabinet and thrown on the floor. Anyone watching Roman climb the stairs on the video would assume he’d found the pile important.

  “Sounds like he thought you knew something about that reporter. Don’t worry—he won’t bother you again.”

  The officers turned their car around, drove away.

  Embower went to the kitchen, opened his laptop, and shuttled through the three-and-a-half hours the house had been full of police. Convinced they’d found nothing, he switched to the farmhouse network.

  He clicked on the exterior camera that faced the Branford house, looked through the same time frame. No one so much as glanced toward the farmhouse.

  They don’t know. Your collection is safe and ready to be played with.

  He clicked on the feed from Caitlin’s room. She lay on the bed, facing the wall. The floor looked dark, wet. Rain still fell outside but couldn’t have filled the room that fast.

  “Not possible.”

  He switched the camera to the low-light setting. Caitlin looked normal.

  How did the drain fail, and why isn’t the sump pump pulling the water out?

  He switched back to the normal exposure.

  And why is the water dark?

  He rewound the footage. Almost three hours back, the dark stain receded under the table. He hit “Play.”

  Caitlin knocked over the toilet, limped to the bed, and got under the covers as filth spread across the floor.

  CHAPTER

  80

  CAITLIN WATCHED THE alarm clock under the covers. 9:58 PM.

  She’d been facing the wall for twenty-eight adrenaline-pumping minutes. Her muscles anxious, she fought the urge to wiggle. Two more minutes and she’d shift slightly to her left. She didn’t need for Embower to believe she was sleeping, but didn’t want to have to rearrange the items hidden in the sheets.

  The light above her turned off.

  Time to go.

  She put her head under the sheets, breathed in deep.

  The next sound would decide everything. If the fan turned on and ran smoothly, she’d end up on the torture table, or worse.

  She held her breath, started counting.

  The fan came to life, but not in a healthy way. A series of clicks ended in a low hum—the sound a motor made when blocked by three tampons, five wet wipes, and the covers of two Tom Clancy thrillers.

  She reached for the first of five bottles. At a thirty-eight count, she raised the empty Sprite bottle, twisted the cap off, and shoved the opening against the spread-out cotton of a tampon in her palm.

  No way to know if Embower’s gas would get up her nostril faster than the air from the bottle, but she moved the cotton and inhaled.

  After five seconds of lemon-lime smell, she set the empty between her legs and held her breath again.

  9:59 PM.

  She counted seconds in her head. The clock hit 10:00 PM before she reached for her second bottle. So far, the only effects she felt were from holding her breath.

  Twenty years ago in her father’s pool, she’d held her breath for more than three minutes. That time, she’d wanted to die. This time, she wanted to live.

  CHAPTER

  81

  THE TIMER STOPPED. He’d followed the usual math, two minutes of gas, three minutes of dissipation. Embower looked through the window. Caitlin hadn’t moved. He opened the door, smelled the mix of treatment chemical and decay.

  “Caitlin.”

  He stepped in, watched the filth swirl around his shoe.

  “I know this was you lashing out, testing me.”

  He moved past the table, kicked a pair of empty Sprite bottles.

  “But I have to teach you. This time, you will learn.”

  He picked a paperback off her pillow, threw it behind him, then pulled back the sheet.

  “In time, you’ll thank me.”

  Caitlin lay in the fetal position, one hand tucked into her chest, her other under the pillow. He pulled her shoulder, set her flat on her back.

  Her eyes snapped open.

  “Thank you,” she said, then struck his head with something sharp and metal.

  CHAPTER

  82

  CAITLIN’S FIRST SWING broke the skin. The jagged corner of an anchor bolt cut Embower’s cheek, inches from the eye.

  He reached for his head. She reached for his crotch, twisted three hundred and sixty degrees.

  Embower fell toward her. Caitlin used the closing distance to attack again, this time bringing the edge of the metal disc down against the base of his skull. He collapsed onto her lap. She shoved him to the side and ran for the open door, hearing movement behind her.

  “Caitlin, wait—”

  The raised doorjamb snagged her left foot going into the hallway. The drain cover fell from her hand, but she caught herself on the wall and turned around. Embower staggered around the table, his face a mix of blood and blue toilet water. Caitlin slammed the door and turned the top deadbolt. Through the window, she saw him throw his body against the door as she flipped the second lock.

  “Caitlin.” His face left a smear of blood against the glass. “If you don’t open this door, I will tear you in ways Troy Woods never imagined.”

  Caitlin looked around, found a light switch panel with a timer next to a pipe with a valve. She turned the valve, twisted the timer, and ran down the hall to the door past the playroom. There was no window, but she turned the locks and opened the door.

  A woman wearing pajamas, pink like Caitlin’s but with the word “Angel” across the front, stood three feet away, arms at her sides, bag over her head.

  The bag tilted to one side. “What’s going on?”

  “Angela Chapman, take that freaking bag off your head.”

  The girl pulled the black bag away, revealing the ghost of Angela Chapman. Two years in captivity had stolen more than time’s entitled toll. Angela’s tired, dark-circled eyes dared only a second of connection before darting into the r
oom’s corner. Her defined, athletic muscles had dissolved into the gaunt, pulled skin of an anorexic. Her hair held neither the youthful bounce of her high school photos, nor the rebellious spike of her college days, but hung limp in a dishwater bob. A severe scar crossed her right forearm. Another on her neck, where the remains of her hummingbird tattoo had been lost to raised pink tissue.

  Caitlin reached her hand out. “I’m Caitlin Bergman and we’re getting out of here.”

  Angela flinched away. “Why are you doing this?”

  Not the reaction Caitlin expected.

  “I don’t want to rehearse tonight,” Angela whimpered. “I just want to sleep. Take off the wig, Embower, please.”

  “Rehearse?”

  Christ, the wig.

  Three days ago, before he’d impersonated Caitlin at the prison, Embower must have visited Chapman as well, workshopping his character on his captive audience.

  “This isn’t rehearsal, Angela, and I’m not Embower. I left you the note.”

  The girl backed closer to her bed. “This isn’t funny.”

  “Isn’t funny?” Caitlin looked back down the hall. No movement, yet. “Angela, I know he dressed like me, but I am the real Caitlin Bergman. I’m a reporter from Los Angeles. I’m working with Lakshmi Anjale and your mother, Doris. I wrote a book—”

  “Fallen Angels,” Angela said.

  “Right, like in the playroom. That’s me. He had me in Paige’s room on the other side. He killed Paige, and he’ll kill us both unless we leave here right now.”

  The girl’s eyes shifted back toward Caitlin’s face, daring another look.

  Caitlin reached for her own hair, pulled. “See? Not a wig.”

  Chapman’s head cocked to the side.

  Shit, this is like talking to a puppy.

  “Angela, I know you need sensitive handling right now. After everything he’s done to you, I know you need time to trust. But time’s the one thing we don’t have. How can I prove it to you? How can I get you out of this fucking room?”

  Caitlin searched her knowledge of Angela for anything Embower wouldn’t also know but realized Angela’s disappearance had defined her.

  Missing student, Angela Chapman.

  Sainted daughter to Doris.

  Black eye to the BPD.

  Fuck buddy to Kieran.

  Lesbian lover of Lakshmi.

  Prize to Chad Branford.

  What did Caitlin really know about her? What did she have in common with this young, wounded woman?

  “Angela, look at me.”

  Chapman’s eyes met hers.

  “Right now you’re dead. You might feel alive because you’re breathing and you’re scared and you’re in pain, but you’re not living. You’re trapped at the bottom of a pool, looking up at a world that doesn’t know you’re there and can’t help you until you swim to the top.” Caitlin shook her head. “I don’t have the words to make this pretty. My hands are raw, my feet are covered in piss and shit, and I don’t know how long …”

  She stopped, checked the hall again, turned back to Chapman.

  “He’s killed the real you, Angela, so you could be his Angel. And when you dared not to be, he hit you, and he cut you, and he raped you. That’s his sickness. Men like him want you to live out their fantasies on a pedestal, to define you according to some image they’ve built in their messed-up minds. And I can’t say this isn’t going to define you—”

  Caitlin’s chest spasmed with the need for a sharp breath, and her voice came out with a tremble. “Some Neanderthal did the same thing to me twenty years ago, and sometimes it still feels like I’m dead.” She sniffed up the tears clouding her sinuses. “Like every good thing in my life died right there in the dirt.” She wiped the corner of her eyes and fought through. “But it didn’t. I’m still alive and I’m ready to get back to the surface with everyone else. And you can be too, Angela, if you come with me right now.”

  Angela took a sharp breath, then another, then tears came. She moved closer. “You’re real?”

  Caitlin nodded and threw her arms around the girl. “In all my fucked-up glory.”

  For the first time since Caitlin had opened the door, Chapman’s face broke into a smile. “Is Embower dead?”

  “No.” Caitlin put space between them and pulled Angela toward the door. “He’s locked in my room.”

  Angela recoiled. “Did you get his keys?”

  “His keys?”

  She took another step back. “He has a remote for the locks.”

  Caitlin looked back down the hall. The door to her room was still closed. She’d started the gas, and Embower didn’t have the benefit of air trapped in Sprite bottles, but with the fan too messed-up to circulate, Caitlin had no idea how long the effects of the gas would last.

  She took the girl’s arm, felt nothing but bone. “Chapman, come with me or we both die today.”

  “He’ll catch me,” Angela said, shaking. “He always catches me.”

  Caitlin grabbed her hand. “Last time you were alone.”

  Angela jerked to life, went through the door with Caitlin, then took the lead. “There’s a dumbwaiter on the right.”

  Caitlin winced through the feeling of the rocks on her bare, torn feet and passed her bedroom without looking. “What about the tunnel to the left?”

  “No good,” Chapman answered, already climbing onto the shelf where the topless dumbwaiter waited. “His remote does that door too.”

  The folding chair Embower would bring into Caitlin’s room rested against the wall. She ran back, wedged the chair under the doorknob, and glanced through the window. Embower lay on the floor facing the bed with his hands over his mouth, but he wasn’t moving.

  She ran back to the dumbwaiter opening in time to see Chapman’s feet disappear through the ceiling. Next in line, she climbed the shelving, grabbed the rope on the side, and jumped up until she could wedge her foot on a support beam. Above her, Chapman kicked her way out of the shaft, eight feet up. Caitlin reached for another beam, then froze.

  The distinct chime of a timer dinged in the hall below.

  So much for the knockout gas.

  No going back now, Caitlin pushed off a support and pulled her way up into the kitchen, clamoring over a countertop and landing on the linoleum.

  Angela helped her up. “There’s no phone.”

  “No knives either,” Caitlin said, turning back to the counter. “Help me lift the microwave.”

  The large appliance hadn’t been moved in years. Caitlin knocked a stack of plates off the top and grabbed the cord. They each took a side, then stopped.

  Though distant, there was no mistaking the crisp shots of deadbolts being turned echoing up through the dumbwaiter shaft.

  “He’s awake,” Angela said, her eyes wide.

  Caitlin swallowed hard. “Well, he’s not getting up the way we came.”

  They pushed the microwave through the dumbwaiter opening. It fell three feet before getting lodged, blocking the shaft.

  “He’ll just come up the other way,” Angela said.

  “Do you know where it comes out?”

  Angela shook her head no.

  Caitlin considered their options. They could try to fight, two against one, but she’d already lost one fight in the farmhouse. “We run.”

  “We won’t make it. He has cameras.”

  Caitlin saw Embower’s laptop on the kitchen table and smashed it against the counter. His surveillance fell in pieces onto the linoleum. “Back door,” she said. “Let’s move.”

  CHAPTER

  83

  “NOT THAT WAY.” Chapman pulled Caitlin toward the corn. “The main road’s closer.”

  Under the light of a full moon clouded by a steady drizzle of rain, Caitlin looked across the field to the Branford house, then in Chapman’s direction. Even in the dark, she could tell the girl was right.

  “How many times have you done this, Angela?”

  “This makes thirteen.”

&nb
sp; “Lucky number thirteen? Let’s go.”

  Mud coated her feet, rain soaked her clothes, and cornstalks sliced her skin, but Caitlin ran the quarter mile without flinching.

  Chapman stopped for breath at the country road. “This is the farthest I’ve gotten. Which way?”

  Past the cornfield, trees lined both sides. Caitlin didn’t see lights in either direction. “Left, toward State Road Thirty-Seven.”

  “But don’t we want to get to town?”

  Caitlin thought back twenty years, remembered the woman in the van who took her to the hospital after Woods’s attack. She’d come from her job at the hospice down the road.

  “That’s what he’d expect, Angela. We go left.”

  “Okay.”

  Angela took off in a sprint. This time, Caitlin struggled to keep up. Half a mile down, the girl looked back, stopped in the middle of the road with her arms up, and yelled, “A car.”

  Caitlin pulled her down against the embankment. “What if it’s him?”

  She caught her breath, soothing her bloody feet on the wet grass. “I don’t know how much more I can run, Angela. You hide and I’ll flag down the car. If it’s safe, I’ll wave you over. If it’s him, I’ll run the other way.”

  “I can’t leave you,” Chapman said between breaths, her face glistening from raindrops. “He’ll kill you.”

  Despite the little light there was, the young woman’s face looked different than it had under the subterranean fluorescents. Flush with life, renewed by water, Caitlin saw Doris Chapman’s daughter Angie, and Lakshmi’s best friend Angela, ready to win a two-on-two basketball tournament and down a few beers with her friends.

  Caitlin squeezed the girl’s hand. “Wait until there’s no way he can see you, then run until you find someone. Tell them you’re Angela Chapman and that Chad Branford kidnapped you.”

  The girl shook her head. “Embower said no one knows who I am, that no one ever even looked for me.”

  Caitlin moved closer, her thin pajamas wicking the rain from the grass, and grabbed Chapman’s shoulders. “Angela, your mom, your dad, Lakshmi, the whole campus, the FB-freakin’-I—everyone in Indiana—is looking for you. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”