“Don’t you guys… don’t you guys need to wait twenty-four or forty-eight hours before putting out a missing person?” he said absently.
It was something he’d seen on a police show once.
But when the hardened expression on Detective Rainsford’s face didn’t change, Keith’s heart sank into the pit of his stomach.
“Oh my god,” he whispered, now gripping the cross around his neck tightly. “They aren’t… my girls aren’t the first, are they?”
Chapter 5
Georgina was sobbing again; she couldn’t help herself. She remembered her dad telling her how important it was for little girls to be strong, to not show weakness.
But that was impossible. She was weak; weak and powerless.
Soon after the girl had limped down the hallway, the scratching started again. Despite what Georgina had seen—the girl slithering beneath the cell door—it didn’t take long for her mind to convince her that it was rats making the noise again… rats trapped in the walls, tunneling toward her.
Coming for her.
Because like Georgina, these rats were hungry. Hungry and tired and desperate.
And when they finally burrowed through the wall, Chase wouldn’t be able to save her.
No one would.
“Not even you, Dad,” she whispered.
Georgina barely recognized the sound of her own voice.
There was no telling how long it had been since she’d seen her parents last. The sun had set at least once since she’d arrived, that much she knew, but Georgina hadn’t slept yet.
As if fueled by her words, the rats started up again, their tiny claws moving more feverishly now.
Scratching, clawing, digging.
Georgina pressed her hands against her ears to try and block out the sound, but it was no use; the sound was in her head.
She squeezed her eyes closed tightly and begged for the scratching to stop.
What did I do wrong? Georgina wondered. What did I do wrong to deserve this? Was it because I said that Chase’s drawing of our family was ugly? Was it because I got up early and scribbled all over it? Is that why I’m being punished? I’m sorry… I’m so, so sorry…
Irrational questions raced in Georgina’s mind until her breathing slowed and became regular.
And then sleep took her. Only, it didn’t last long.
As the sun slowly started to set and the long shadows in her cell returned, the scratching sound returned.
Georgina’s eyes snapped open and she screamed.
The rats were back.
The rats were back, and it was all her fault.
Chapter 6
“We’re not absolutely sure yet,” Detective Rainsford said. “But there have been four other missing girls around your daughter’s ages who have gone missing over the past two years.”
Keith Adams could barely believe his ears.
“Four girls? What…? How?”
Rainsford shook his head and stared off into the distance.
Keith remembered the detective mentioning that he had children of his own, too young girls if he recalled correctly.
I bet his girls are safe and sound at home, maybe under police protection. But for us normal folk? Nobody told us about a possible serial kidnapper on the loose… a fucking child rapist, a pedophile on the prowl in Franklin. Nobody told us that kids were going missing… and for fucking two whole years!
Keith’s brow broke out in a cold sweat and his entire body started to quiver.
Eyes still locked on the horizon, the detective seemed oblivious to Keith’s impending breakdown.
“We didn’t… shit, we didn’t want to raise an alarm. People… the mayor… he pretty much put a lid on the whole thing. Besides, some people wait all year for the Franklin County Fair to roll in.” The detective’s candor would have been surprising, had it not been so infuriating.
“What?” Keith snapped, anger building inside him. “The other girls were taken from the fair? From this fair? And you never said anything?”
The detective’s eyes suddenly focused in on Keith. Their usual intensity had softened, it was clear that his revelation had been unscripted. It was also apparent that even though his own children were safe and sound, this ordeal had taken its toll on him.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Adams. I’ve… I’ve said too much. The truth is, there isn’t much to link the missing girls other than their ages and the fact that they enjoyed going to the fair. It’s entirely possible that this is all just a terrible coincidence and—”
“Coincidence? Coincidence? This is Franklin County, Detective, not New York City. Kids don’t… fuck, kids don’t just go missing around here. You should have told us. You should have told us that there was a fucking psychopath on the loose. I would have never…” Keith reached out and jabbed a finger in the detective’s chest. The man winced and took a step backward, but otherwise didn’t try to temper Keith’s rage. “If you’d told us, I never would have brought Chase or Georgie here!”
A uniformed officer, alerted by Keith’s heightened anger, hurried over.
“Detective Rainsford? Everything all right?”
The detective looked at Keith, his eyes still soft.
“Everything’s fine. Just make sure that you’ve called in everyone you can for the search.”
“We have… I even called several of the local volunteer fire departments. But you know what the mayor said…” the police officer let his sentence trail off, clearly uncomfortable speaking in Keith’s presence.
Keith, on the other hand, was torn: he was still angry, of course, but something else now occurred to him.
Before, he could have maybe passed off Chase and Georgina’s disappearance as a sort of prank, or something equally as benign. Perhaps the girls had just wandered off and had gotten lost. But now? After the detective had led it slip about the other girls?
Please, Keith thought, reaching into the collar of his shirt and gripping the cross. Please, God, please let them be okay.
Detective Rainsford suddenly reached out and grabbed Keith by the shoulders.
Even though his next words were directed at the police officer to his right, Rainsford never took his eyes off Keith.
“I don’t care what the mayor says. Make sure we get everyone on this. I want news, media, everyone in the goddamn county to be on the lookout for these missing girls.”
***
Kerry threw the door wide and hurried inside her home.
“Chase? Georgina? Are you guys in here? Chase!” she shouted as she moved through the lower level.
She’d half hoped to find the girls’ dirty clothes balled up and tossed on the floor of the laundry room, but she was, for once, disappointed not to see their mess.
The floor was also devoid of muddy tracks leading either from or to the back door on the other side of the kitchen.
“Chase! Georgina!” Kerry continued to yell as she searched the kitchen, then the family room.
Both were empty.
“Mrs. Adams?” the police escort said from the doorway.
Kerry ignored him and started up the stairs.
Her mind was working overtime now, trying, and failing to compartmentalize her fear and anger: anger at Keith for getting drunk and not looking after the girls, fear because they were still missing.
Kerry burst through the first door she came across, the one adorned with pink letters that spelled her eldest daughter’s name.
“Chase, if you’re—”
She stopped speaking when it was clear that the room was empty.
Heart racing now, fear usurping anger, Kerry hurried down the hallway to Georgina’s room.
This time, instead of shouting, she internally pleaded for her girls to be in there, hoping that they were playing, maybe with cheap dollar store headphones pressed to their ears.
Please be inside, she begged a god she didn’t believe in. Please, please, please.
The bed was so messy that for an instant, a split-secon
d, she thought that the lumps buried beneath the comforter were Georgina’s and Chase’s sleeping bodies. It didn’t matter that this was the middle of the day, that they were both light sleepers and would have awoken to just one of her many shouts.
Her mind was desperate to rationalize something wholly and unequivocally irrational.
When she grabbed a corner and yanked the comforter off the bed and saw that the mounds were just a pile of shitty throw pillows, her heart literally fell to the floor.
“Mrs. Adams? Are you alright up there? Do you, uh, do you want me to join you?” her escort hollered from below. “Ma’am?”
Sobbing now, Kerry started back down the stairs.
The police officer’s face went slack when he saw her, and as she approached, he grew increasingly uncomfortable, clearly wavering between laying a comforting hand on her shoulder or embracing her tightly.
In the end, he didn’t have to come to a decision because Kerry reached out and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt before he could do anything.
“They’re gone,” she wept. “My girls… my girls are gone.”
Chapter 7
The scratching had been going on for so long that it had worked itself into Georgina’s brain as a semi-permanent feature. In fact, she became so accustomed to it that during a very rare break in the noise, it felt as if her ears were plugged, and pressure was starting to build in her head.
This time when it momentarily ceased, it was replaced by something new. Shivering, with her arms wrapped around her knees in a failed attempt to keep warm, Georgina raised her head. Her entire body was so stiff and achy that the simple act of craning her neck around was enough to send a schism of pain down her back and shoulders.
There was movement in a cell across the hall and several units down, movement near where the bars met the earth.
At first, Georgina passed this off as an illusion and remained in the fetal position. But when she saw a familiar dark head of hair, albeit much dirtier than she remembered, her interest was piqued.
“Chase?” Georgina whispered.
But the figure who was desperately trying to crawl beneath the cell bars didn’t acknowledge her.
Georgina blinked several times; she still didn’t quite trust what she was seeing. And yet, it did appear as if there was a burrow in the earth, one that might just be big enough for someone to slip through.
Someone of about Chase’s size.
She thought back to the girl who had managed to escape in a similar fashion and then limped down the hallway and out of sight.
That had been the last Georgina had heard or seen of the girl.
A girl who may or may not have ever been here. A girl who might have just been a figment of her imagination, a waking dream.
In fact, everything that Georgina had seen and gone through over the past—hour? Week? Month?—while seemed like a nightmare; everything from buying the snow cone to rejecting the ride from the man in the van, to being overruled by her sister.
“Chase?” she repeated.
There was still no reply, even though the girl had managed to wriggle enough that her head and one of her shoulders were actually in the hallway now.
“Hello?”
The word came out as little more than a dry cough; it had been so long since she’d drunk anything that her insides felt coated in a thin layer of dust. Georgina took her eyes off the girl and let them wander to the empty glass inside her cell.
Had there been water in there at one time? Water or milk? Did I… did I drink it?
The fact that the timeline, the narrative, was all jumbled in her mind added to the feeling that this was, indeed, a nightmare.
Another thrust, another grunt, and then the girl’s second shoulder broke free. As Georgina watched through tear-streaked vision, the girl managed to slide her back through next, and unlike the other dream girl, this one’s hips easily cleared the bars. A second later, the girl was pulling herself fully out of the cell on her elbows.
When she finally stood and brushed some of the dirt off her, Georgina realized that it was a soiled, sweaty, raw version of her sister.
Relief instantly flooded her system, usurping the hold that fatigue and soreness had previously had on her.
She told me she wouldn’t leave me. Chase told me that she would get me out of here, and now she will. She’ll get us both out of here and bring us back to mom and dad.
With a grunt of her own, Georgina managed to stretch her legs and then scampered to the front of her cell.
When she spoke again, her voice seemed lubricated by the expectation of freedom.
“Chase,” she said. “Chase, are you—”
The girl in the hallway lifted her gaze and stared directly at Georgina.
It was Chase all right, but there was something about her eyes, about the way her irises were almost impossibly dark, that was different. It was Chase, but at the same time, it wasn’t.
Chase licked her lips and then her dark eyes darted around.
Georgina could hear others now, the voices of other girls she hadn’t known were locked in adjacent cells. Some asked to be let out, begged to be released, while others still admonished Chase for her actions.
But these people, whoever they were, didn’t matter.
All that mattered was Chase.
Georgina, confused by what was happening, by the traction that seemed to grip her sister who was now standing frozen in the hallway between cells, pushed her arm through the bars.
“Chase, get me out of here. Please,” Georgina pleaded.
A shudder suddenly racked Chase’s entire body, which seemed to shock her out of her stupor. She first looked down at her filthy clothes, then once again leveled her eyes at Georgina.
At long last, recognition crossed her features, and Georgina sighed with relief.
She was going to get out after all.
But then something happened.
There was a sound, a sound that seemed wholly out of place in this dungeon of earth: a metallic latch sliding somewhere at the end of the hallway.
“Help me,” Georgina said, her voice laden with desperation now. “Chase, help me!”
Chase sucked her lower lip into her mouth and she bit it so hard that Georgina detected a small stream of red drip down her sister’s dirt-smeared face.
When the sound of a door starting to open reached them, Chase began to move.
At first, Georgina thought that her sister was going to run to her, that she was going to break the lock and together they would escape this horrible place.
But when Chase lowered her eyes and focused on the end of the hallway opposite the opening door, Georgina’s heart sank.
“Please.”
She pushed her hand so far through the bars that her shoulder cried out in protest. And then she pushed harder still.
When Chase extended her own hand only far enough for their fingers to brush against each other as she passed, Georgina knew that her sister had lied to her.
In the van, when they’d clutched each other’s bound hands, Chase had promised her that she would never leave her.
And now she was.
“I’m sorry,” Georgina thought she heard Chase say, but it could have just as easily been her uttering those fateful words. “I’m so sorry.”
And then, before she could fully comprehend what had happened, the only trace of her sister was a settling cloud of dust.
For the first time in her life, Georgina Taylor Adams was really and truly alone.
Chapter 8
“I respect what you’re saying, Detective, but there’s no way in hell that I’m staying here while you go out searching for my daughters. You can tell me where to look, who to team up with, but I’m going. And nothing you can do or say short of putting me in cuffs and throwing me in jail will stop me,” Keith Adams said, his eyes locked on Detective Rainsford’s.
The softness that had crept into the man’s face, a thin veneer of compassion, was all but gone now
. Surrounded by his men, the detective needed to save face.
But despite his hardened exterior, the man wasn’t a complete asshole. After all, he had two girls of his own and while he couldn’t possibly understand what Keith was going through, the man appeared at least capable of empathy.
The detective cast a glance over his shoulder at a thin black man sporting a long, camel-colored overcoat even though the temperature was flirting with the century mark.
“You go with Detective Dwight,” he said, then, to the rest of the group, added, “we’ve got maybe five, six hours of sunlight left, tops. Each team of two will be given a quadrant to search; I want you to go over every square inch of dirt, inspect every tree, every groundhog burrow during this time. Every hour, on the hour, you’re to check in using the Walkie that you will be provided. If you find anything—and I’m talking anything at all that looks like it might belong to a child—stop what you’re doing and radio it in. Don’t touch it. Any questions?”
None of the more than two dozen officers, all of whom seemed to be wearing a different uniform—TBI, local police, Staties, off-duty officers from around Tennessee—said anything.
Rainsford clapped his hands.
“All right, then you know—”
“I’m coming, too,” a female voice interrupted.
The detective frowned and both he and Keith turned around and were greeted by Kerry Adams hurrying toward them.
“Kerry? I thought you—”
Kerry ignored her husband and headed straight for Detective Rainsford. She was as stubborn as Keith, if not more-so, but it was clear that the detective had had enough distractions. Every second that they stayed here was a second wasted. He held up a hand, stopping her progress while indicating with his other for the search to begin.
Keith remained in place.
“Mrs. Adams, I’m sorry, but—”
“I’m going to look for them,” Kerry said as she crossed her arms over her chest.
The detective shook his head.
“Ma’am, we need one of the parents to stay behind in case—”
Georgina's Story Page 3
