Close to Home

by Lisa Jackson

  Gracie nearly gasped. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you’re going to try to open it? Now?”

  “I’m sure going to try,” Sarah stated tautly.

  “Really?” There was awe in her tone as Gracie moved past Sarah and shot out the front door ahead of her. Sarah second-guessed the wisdom of engaging Gracie in her mad need to open the vault, but she damned well wasn’t going to leave her daughter alone in the house with the angry, statuette-tipping specter.

  “He’s here!” Rosalie announced, as she heard the whine of the truck’s engine fast approaching. Never before had he returned only a few hours after leaving. But that was probably because they were getting ready for tomorrow night. “Shhh. No one say anything. Don’t let him know we’ve got a plan.”

  So far, they didn’t have much of one. Mary-Alice had made a half-hearted attempt to climb the stall walls, but she, like Rosalie, had crumpled the frame of the cot with her efforts and hadn’t been able to reach the top. Dana hadn’t fared any better. Rosalie had heard her trying to leap upward, only to land hard and swear loudly. And Candice . . . well, nothing had changed there.

  Rosalie figured they had a chance of beating one of the abductors, maybe both, by their sheer numbers. One girl could distract while another attacked. If they got the chance. If they were all free. If the fuckers who held them didn’t have weapons.

  All pretty big ifs.

  Mary-Alice had found a horseshoe nail in her stall, while Dana had come up with nothing. However, they had to escape before the other man, or men, showed up for whatever meeting it was that the abductor had planned. In her mind’s eye, Rosalie saw a huge orgy where the men, drunk or hyped on drugs, took turns raping the girls. Her insides shriveled, but she wouldn’t go there, wouldn’t let her imagination run wild.

  There would be time enough for that later.

  For now, just as it had been from the minute he’d locked her inside his truck when she’d stupidly been walking home that night, her mission was to escape and, while she was at it, do as much damage as possible to the son of a bitch who’d tricked her. If she could, for once, get the upper hand.

  The engine died, and the girls went silent.

  Seconds later the big man arrived, the door flying open, light flooding the area, making Rosalie squint against the flash of brilliance.

  Please fuck up, Just once, fuck up, Rosalie thought, clenching the clippers.

  “Okay, that’s enough!” he said, his breathing heavy, his tread shuffling as if he were struggling. The lights snapped on. “You get in here.”

  He had another one!

  Rosalie heard the girl trying to scream through her gag, and from the sounds of his movements, she was struggling, fighting him, dragging her feet.

  That was good. Now, if she was smart and figured out that the rest of them were in nearby stalls, she might come up with a way to let them out. “Hey!” Rosalie called. “What’s going on?”

  As if on cue, Candice let out a broken sob.

  “You got another girl?” Rosalie baited.

  “Shut the fuck up, Star!”

  “My name’s Rosalie!”

  “No more. Ooof!” More struggling. “You little bitch!” Slap! The sound of flesh meeting flesh ricocheted through the barn, and the girl let out a muted shriek of rage. “Quit your fighting, Rebel,” he said. “Or you’ll get no food or water or pail. You can go hungry and thirsty and defecate all over yourself for all I care!”

  More muffled shrieking.

  Smack!

  God, he was hitting her. Unfazed about leaving a mark. Never before had he seemed so angry, so out of control, at least not since Rosalie’s last thwarted attempt at escape.

  “You see that, do ya, Rebel?” he yelled. “No, I’m not talkin’ about my cock, you little whore, but this belt. I’ll use it on you, I will. Ask Star; she knows all about it.”

  Some other girl gasped, Dana maybe, and Candice crumpled completely; soft sobs emanated from her stall.

  The new girl shut up, which was probably smart, but Rosalie hated that she’d given up so quickly. True, the bastard who was holding them had all the power, but Rosalie would have liked to have heard a little more fight from their new cell mate. In order for any plan to work, they had to be strong, united, and willing to do whatever it took to break free.

  Familiar noises came from the stall, the addition of a pail and water bottles.

  Finally, things went quiet, and Rosalie imagined the bastard squaring off with his new victim. Tense seconds passed, and she heard a bat fly overhead. Next door Mary-Alice shrieked, and then the barn went silent again.

  He must have removed the new girl’s gag, because suddenly the barn was filled with a new voice. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she yelled. “You fucker! Let me go!”

  Thud!

  A stall door slammed shut, and with the click of a lock, the newest victim was bolted inside.

  “You can’t do this!” she screamed, and sounds of her throwing herself at the door echoed through the barn.

  He wasted no time and snapped off the lights before slamming the door. With a click, the lock was latched. “You damned freaking fuck! Let me out!” the new girl screamed at the top of her lungs. “You can’t do this!” She was beating on the door as if she thought she could break it down with her fists.

  The truck’s engine sparked to life, rumbling loudly.

  “No!” she cried, but the sound of the engine was already fading as he drove off. “Oh, God, no . . .”

  “Hey!” Rosalie said.

  “What?” the new girl said, sounding startled.

  “There are four of us locked in here besides you.”

  “What is this? What the hell’s going on?”

  Of course she was confused. She’d just suffered the trauma of her capture and then what sounded like a beating. “I’m Rosalie Jamison, the one he called Star.”

  “Oh God, I was afraid of this. I just didn’t want to believe it,” she said.

  “Believe it.”

  “Who else?”

  Rosalie said, “Candice, they call her ‘Lucky’.”

  “Candice . . . wait, ‘they’?” the new girl said.

  “There’s more than one guy.” Rosalie explained about Scraggly Hair, then introduced Dana as Whiskey. “Finally there’s Mary-Alice. She’s Princess.”

  She moaned, “Jesus, this is worse than I thought.”

  “Jade,” the snooty girl said as if the word tasted bad.

  “Mary-A,” Jade’s voice was dismal.

  “Hold it,” Rosalie barked, sensing a fight. “I don’t know what’s going on with the two of you, if you know each other or not, but we really don’t have time for any petty girl-bitch shit.”

  The two stopped talking to each other, thank God. Rosalie then laid out everything to Jade, the entire, dire situation, including telling her about the meeting planned for the next night and what her fears were about the future. “These bastards aren’t screwing around,” she said, “So our best bet is to get out of here before the rest of the posse of perverts shows up.”

  No one said a word for a few seconds, and the bat took another turn around the rafters.

  “Okay,” Jade said. “How?”

  “First of all, look for anything on you, or in that stall, that will help. We need weapons. You can’t see anything now, I know, but the second it starts to get light, or if he comes back and turns on the lights, look around, see what you can find, and get ready to use it.”

  “How can you be so calm?” she asked.

  Rosalie wasn’t calm, not inside. She was scared and angry and a whole shitload of emotions that just wouldn’t help the situation. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t like being called by a horse’s name, and I don’t like some freak kidnapping me and selling me off to a prostitution ring or whatever, so I’m going to try to get the hell out of
here any way I can.”

  Jade said with hard resolve, “I’m in.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Sarah jogged down the path leading to the cemetery. With Gracie beside her, the dog somewhere in the nearby fields, she followed the weak, bobbing light from her flashlight. Night was falling rapidly, and the beam did little to pierce the surrounding umbra.

  Years before, she’d followed this same path. First sneaking out of the house, then running across the fields, her heart light, her feet swift, moonlight her guide as she ran to meet Clint near the pond.

  Oh, how long ago that seemed. A summer of hot days and passionate nights, of sunlight, and swimming and sex.

  Now, instead of anticipation, she felt a burgeoning sense of dread steal over her. Rather than turn to the right, to circumvent the pond, she took a hard left, veering toward the graveyard she’d explored as a child and mostly avoided during her teen years, when she’d started to understand the malevolency of the undead, a notion fostered by her brothers, who gleefully told her ghost stories and scared the crap out of her. Of course, those tales had been silly attempts to scare her, and her brothers’ imaginations, though vivid, could conjure nothing that compared to the nightmare she was now living, whatever the hell it was.

  As they topped a small hill, the cemetery loomed before them, grave markers seeming to rise out of the surrounding mist, brambles growing over the decrepit, broken fence that had once surrounded the plot. Angelique Le Duc’s tomb was taller than all the surrounding headstones.

  “Wow,” Gracie said, in awe.

  Sarah found the gate that had tumbled into the enclosure, where grave markers poked through the tall grass and weeds.

  She didn’t wait, but cut across the graveyard to the vault built squarely in the center of the cemetery. A large marble edifice engraved with angels and scriptures, it had once been surrounded by a rose garden, but now, when she passed the beam from her flashlight over them, the plants that remained were leggy and leafless, winter-dead.

  Making her way to the front of the tomb, Sarah shined her light over the doorway and beneath the carved angels, where a bit of scripture from the book of Matthew had been etched into the stone.

  She moved to one side and swept the beam over the long, south-facing exterior wall. where a line of scripture attributed to the Gospel of Mark had been carved.

  “What’re you doing?” Gracie asked as the dog bounded over the fence and began sniffing the headstone. “Let’s go inside.”

  “We will.” Or I will, she amended as she wasn’t certain she’d let Gracie step inside the tomb if she were able to open it. Not until she’d viewed it first.

  She walked around to the rear of the vault to view another piece of scripture, this one from Saint Luke, and then finally, on the last wall, a verse from the Gospel of John.

  A tingle of dread slid down her spine.

  What was it Mother had said? That Theresa was safe with Matthew and John, and then, at another time, she’d mentioned her oldest daughter was safe with Luke? Dee Linn had even joked about Mark, wondering where he was.

  “Right here,” Sarah whispered and wondered about what she would find inside. A dusty, empty vault? Or the final resting place of the sister she’d never met?

  Sarah’s heart beat faster. Was it possible? Would she find Theresa in this very tomb? No . . . If Mother had known where she was, she wouldn’t have been so haunted, so hopeful that Theresa would return. But that cryptic bit of conversation that she and her siblings had considered just a part of her mother’s dementia . . . what did it mean?

  A gust of wind blew by, chasing the fog, chilling the air.

  She rounded the final corner that led to the front of the vault and again ran the beam of her light over the angels carved above the door. The cherubic faces were marred, streaks of dirt running down their cheeks like black tears.

  “Okay, let’s do this, but, Gracie, I’m going first. If I get in there and it’s safe, you can come on down the steps.” She slid a glance at her daughter. “I don’t know what I’ll find, if there are bodies down there . . .”

  “I can handle it, Mom. What else would you expect to find in a grave?”

  God only knows, Sarah thought, training the light with one hand and sliding the key into the lock. “I’ll be right back.”

  To hell with the party. Clint didn’t give a damn about Dee Linn or Walter Bigelow and the event he’d planned to attend. His reason for saying yes to the invitation was because he’d known Sarah would be there and he wanted to see her again. Of course, he’d told himself it was just to break the ice because they were neighbors and he’d be inspecting the work on her house and . . . well, it had all been bullshit. He strode to his truck and, because Tex was putting up a fuss about leaving, whistled and opened the driver’s side. The black-and-white dog was a streak as he leaped inside, as always, thrilled to be a part of any adventure, even if it was running to the store for a box of batteries. Every trip was an occasion to stand with his legs on the armrest and put his nose to the wind when Clint cracked his window, which he did before he fired up the Beast and took off. He didn’t know how he’d explain his presence to Sarah, and didn’t really care.

  He was a part of her family, whether she liked it or not, and after a day of coming to terms with the fact that he was Jade’s father, he’d decided to quit acting like a fool and take command of the situation, not just with the lawyer but with actions. They were neighbors, for God’s sake. They could make this work.

  There were rough times ahead, he saw that, but if he’d learned anything in the past few years, it was that life was short and a person had to do what he wanted to do or lose the opportunity. Sarah had taken the bull by the horns and come home to Stewart’s Crossing, even taking up residence in that old wreck of a house she’d sworn she hated. Well, hell, if she could fight her fears and inner demons, so could he. The plain, hard fact of the matter was that he’d turned his back on Sarah years ago because she was a complicated woman, different and intriguing, a woman to whom he knew he could lose his heart and soul. Loving her wasn’t easy then, and it sure as hell wouldn’t be easy now.

  Love?

  He glanced into the rearview mirror to look himself in the eye.

  Slow down, pardner, It’s far too soon to be thinking in those terms,

  Yeah, well, what the hell good would waiting do? He knew it half a lifetime ago, and he knew it now: Sarah Stewart McAdams was the single most fascinating woman he’d ever met.

  At the county road, he eased off the gas until the Beast nearly stopped; then, seeing there was no traffic, he cranked the wheel and took off again. He wanted to see Sarah and Jade and even little Gracie right now. Ridiculous? Probably. But now that he’d made up his mind to work things out with Sarah, he couldn’t wait.

  A sense of urgency that was way out of proportion to the moment overtook him, though he couldn’t say why.

  He rounded the final corner, looking for the lane leading to Blue Peacock Manor, when he saw headlights aimed at him. Easing off the throttle, waiting for the car to pass before he crossed in front of it, he squinted through the fog and sensed that something was off about the vehicle. It wasn’t completely on the road, and the driver’s side door was open.

  Frowning, he slowed down. It looked like someone had slid off the road in the fog or had suffered a flat, but whoever it was hadn’t had the sense to close the door. He rolled past the entrance to Sarah’s house and drove the extra hundred yards. To the car. The import seemed almost abandoned—though, in the fog, who knew? He nosed up to it, hit his emergency flashers, and cut the engine.

  “Stay,” he told a whining Tex. It was too dangerous with the low visibility for the dog to be out of the truck.

  He climbed out, his boots hitting the gravel on the side of the road, while a bad vibe stole over him. The car, interior light glowing, was empty, the engine running. “Hey!” he called out. “Need any help?” Only silence reached his ears. “Hello?” he tried again, turning slow
ly and squinting, eyes searching the surrounding forest on Sarah’s side of the road and, on the other, a wide field. Walking around the car, he saw that the back bumper had been bashed in, hard enough to crease the trunk, but no one was around. He thought he’d call it in himself when he noticed that the license plates were from Washington.

  Sarah drove an Explorer, so this wasn’t hers, but . . .

  For a second the world seemed to stop. Hadn’t Jade said something about her car, a Honda, being in the shop? The breath stopped in his lungs. Dread spiked through his blood. For a second he flashed on the accident scene where his son had lost his life. A mangled car. His wife at the wheel . . . But this was different. What the hell had happened here? The car was still running, so Jade hadn’t just left it by the side of the road and walked home. He checked inside it. Sure enough, her phone was on the floor in front of the passenger seat, her bag next to it. He looked for her wallet and found it. Cash and a credit card, her Washington driver’s license . . . all left in the car.

  His heart dropped.

  No woman left her purse unattended.

  No teenager was ever without her phone.

  Oh, sweet Jesus.

  A dark thought started deep in the back of his mind. He’d read about intentional accidents, in which the criminal rammed into the back of a vehicle in order to force the victim from the car and—

  He saw the blood. Deep red, a small pool near the side of the road, at the edge of the asphalt. God, please, don’t let it be Jade’s, he thought frantically, knowing his prayer was for naught. This was Jade’s car, and no doubt the pooling red stain on the dark asphalt was her blood.

  Yanking the phone from his pocket, he intended to call Sarah . . . maybe Jade was only hurt, taken to a hospital. If not, he’d dial the police. He hadn’t gained a daughter just to lose her again.

  He started to punch out Sarah’s number when he heard the thrum of a car’s engine rounding the corner; a second later, blue and red lights strobed the night.