Fatal Burn

by Lisa Jackson

  Over the years her dad had shown her how to respect the river. He’d taken Dani windsurfing, fishing and boating on the Columbia’s ever-changing surface. They’d ridden horses on the steep ridge overlooking the river’s chasm, they’d pitched a tent near the falls.

  She felt another sharp pang of guilt. Travis Settler had done everything he could to teach her about living in the wild, taking care of herself and preserving nature. She knew how to man a canoe, hunt with a bow and arrow, track and make a campfire. He’d shown her which plants and grubs were edible, and which were poisonous. All in all, he’d done everything in his power to make her strong and self-sufficient.

  And how was she repaying him?

  By lying to him through her teeth!

  Yet she’d come this far and wasn’t about to turn back. She was too close to the truth.

  As she passed by a Dumpster behind the Canyon Café, she scared a cat who had been sunning himself. Hissing, the tabby scurried off the top of the large green box and slunk into the adjoining parking lot, where it hid beneath a dirty white van with Arizona plates. Dani probably wouldn’t have noticed that the van was from out of state, except for the game she and her dad had played for years when they took road trips. Each would try to outdo the other, spotting new and different plates as they drove. Hadn’t she seen a van like this across from the school yesterday afternoon?

  With the cat glowering from beside a back tire, Dani slowed to a walk and shoved the sweat out of her eyes with the back of her wrist. She slipped into the shade of an awning covering an empty loading dock for the hardware store. Quickly, before anyone came through the open back door, she slid off her backpack, unzipped the main compartment, reached in and retrieved her disguise, which she felt she had to use just in case she came across anyone she knew. It wasn’t much, but at a passing glance no one would recognize her. Just in case she messed up and her dad started asking questions.

  Besides, though she’d never seen anyone spying on her, lately she’d had the weird feeling that she was being watched and followed. She worried that her dad had sensed something was wrong and was tailing her. Which was just stupid. Her guilt eating at her for deceiving him.

  Shoving those uncomfortable thoughts aside, she put on a tattered Yankees’ baseball cap and oversized gray sweatshirt she’d taken from the school’s lost and found. Next she withdrew a pair of cheap dark sunglasses she’d bought at the drugstore. She completed the outfit with a pair of blue sweatpants that someone had left in the locker room two days earlier.

  Her shoes would have to do. She wouldn’t change out of her favorite Nikes. Just in case she had to make a quick getaway. Beyond the obvious dishonesty, there was something about her scheme that made her nervous. Probably because she looked like a total dweeb. The fact that she did look so nerdy and overdressed for the hot day might cause someone to notice her more than if she’d just left well enough alone, but she was committed to her plan.

  She crammed her hair into the cap, drew the bill down over her eyes, slid the sunglasses onto the bridge of her nose and sweltered in the huge, stinky sweatshirt. Then, to make sure she wouldn’t attract attention should her cell phone ring, she turned it off and slipped it into her pocket.

  So it was now or never!

  A yellowjacket buzzed around her head and she swiped at it while glancing around to make certain that no one had witnessed her transformation. Her palms were sweating and she bit at her lip, her nerves showing, no doubt, because she’d been lying to everyone she knew. Even to her best friend, Allie Kramer, whom she was supposed to meet after school, right before they got onto their buses.

  If she made it.

  Hurry, hurry, hurry! And don’t get wet feet now. Just do it!

  But the paranoia, a feeling that she was being observed from some hidden window or crevice, remained with her.

  Dani had resorted to lying to her father on other occasions when she’d thought he was being ridiculously overprotective. Her cell phone had made it so convenient. She was able to call him and tell him she was somewhere she wasn’t, or diffuse any upcoming fight by calling him first and explaining before actually admitting anything face-to-face.

  Taking a deep breath, she slung the backpack onto one shoulder just as she heard the sound of voices emanating from the open door of the hardware store. And they were getting louder. Someone was definitely coming. Someone who probably knew her and her dad. Crap! She flew off the loading dock and tried not to think about how disappointed her father would be if he found out what she’d been doing.

  Dani hated sneaking around behind his back, but ever since her mother’s death, he’d been more closed-mouthed about her birth parents than ever, always saying, “When you’re older, eighteen, if you still want to know, I’ll help you.”

  Eighteen? That was five years from now. She could be dead before then.

  No, she couldn’t wait, she thought as she rounded a corner. Since there was no traffic she jaywalked across the street, past a tavern named the Not Whole. How dumb, she thought, eyeing the neon beer signs in the window and the pockmarked door.

  Tucking an errant lock of hair under her cap, Dani wiped the sweat from her neck. Well, it wasn’t her fault that he’d gotten all weird and overprotective when Mom had died. Jesus, all of a sudden he’d started acting like she would break or something, all of a sudden he was angry if she brought up questions about her birth, all of a sudden he drank a lot more until, finally, he’d started dating again. And that was another nightmare. Dad getting all dressed up and combing his hair and splashing on skin bracer and cologne for God’s sake.

  Yuck! Sick!

  Dani shuddered at the thought. She used to be able to talk to him about anything but when it came down to the big question—Who am I really?—her father just plain shut down. His blue eyes darkened, his lips pinched and the cords in the back of his neck appeared to stick out. It was as if he didn’t trust her with that knowledge, afraid she’d up and leave him when she found out the names of her biological parents.

  But she couldn’t wait any longer, even though she knew Travis would blow a gasket. He’d find out that she’d missed her last class, but she had her excuse down pat: she was having menstrual cramps and was too embarrassed to tell the teacher. Her father wouldn’t want to discuss that subject any too deeply. She’d beat the school to the punch and tell her dad about missing the class once she got home. He’d warn her never to do it again, the school would call, and he might go so far as to ground her for a couple of days. Probably he’d just lecture her.

  But it would be worth it. Finally, she would have some answers.

  She rounded a final corner to the cybercafe, checked her watch and found she was right on time. The Wireless Gorge, as it was called, was a little old house that had been converted to a warren of small offices. Sizzling pink neon announced that the place was open for business and other hand-painted signs listed their services: e-mail, fax, copying, printing and the like.

  Palms sweating, Dani walked inside where the air was dry and the rooms were stuffy despite several fans busily moving the air around. The guy who ran the place was sitting in front of one of the dozen computer monitors all connected in a tangle of wires, modems and keyboards. He called himself Sarge and she thought he was somewhere in his sixties, though it was hard to tell with anyone over forty. He sat in the tattered secretary’s chair he always seemed to occupy. Though he was obviously going bald, he pulled what remained of his hair into a ponytail and the clamped gray strands clung together and snaked down the back of his camouflage jacket. At the sound of the door opening, he glanced over his shoulder.

  “I just want to check my e-mail,” Dani said in a rush.

  “Go for it.” He pointed to the sign that showed what the price would be per fifteen-minute segment, then turned back to his computer monitor where, it appeared, he was playing an engrossing game of chess.

  Good.

  He’d barely given her a passing glance.

  Dani wedged her
way around a stack of copy paper and into what had once been the dining area of the little house, which now housed five glowing monitors. She found a computer in the back corner away from the windows and quickly logged on using her new cyberalias.

  There was one message from BJC27.

  Dani’s heart pounded as she opened the e-mail and wondered why there was no attachment. Bethany Jane had written only three partial sentences:

  Sorry. I’m having trouble with my e-mail attachments today. Will send ASAP.

  Dani couldn’t believe it. The woman had promised she’d send everything today. Promised!

  What a flake! She silently seethed for a second and quickly replied:

  Pls send as soon as u can!

  Then she logged off. What a waste of five bucks! She left a bill on the counter and hurried outside where the heat hit her like a blast furnace.

  She’d gone to all this trouble for—what?

  Nothing!

  Not one darn shred of information.

  She’d have to lie to her dad and come up with another way to come down here, but only after she’d checked on Jessica’s computer to see if an e-mail with an attachment had come through. She couldn’t risk downloading it at her friend’s house, so only when she knew the attachment had made it through would she come back and spend another five dollars.

  Angry and deflated, she was peeling off her sweatshirt when she noticed the white van parked in the alley. She probably wouldn’t have thought much about it, but it seemed like it was the same dirty one she’d seen across from the school.

  Nah…this one had Idaho plates, but it looked a lot like the van she’d seen the tabby cat hiding beneath. It had the same dirty exterior. Same make and model. As she was passing, she noticed one door wasn’t quite shut. Then she heard something…like a puppy whimpering. Geez, did someone have a dog in that tin can in this heat? What kind of moron would do that? She paused for a heartbeat when she saw a flash in the corner of her eye, something lunging at her.

  She started to run, but it was too late.

  A man leaped from behind the van and grabbed her in a viselike grip with one arm. He smashed a rag soaked with something awful over her mouth.

  No! Oh, God, no!

  She bucked away from him, but he was too strong.

  If only she could round on him, she could kick and strike, landing blows that would incapacitate him. She writhed and tried to break free, to no avail.

  Fear and adrenaline raced through her bloodstream.

  She tried to scream but only took in more of the sickening smell. It filled her nostrils and throat. Frantically she kicked but hit nothing in her attempts. Whatever the hell the noxious stuff on the rag was, it weakened her, made her woozy, and within seconds she couldn’t move, was barely awake.

  In a daze she realized she was being dragged into the van.

  No! Dani, don’t let this happen. Fight! Run! Scream!

  She flailed wildly, but her arms and legs were like rubber and any blow she landed was weak. Darkness welled at the corners of her brain, dragging her under.

  In one last attempt, she swung her arm at his face, but only managed to slap him feebly, her fingers scraping down the side of his jaw without an ounce of strength. Her arm felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.

  As he hauled her into the van, she noticed that there was no dog, no scared, overheated puppy in the darkness, just a cassette player hidden in the back.

  She’d been fooled.

  This guy had been waiting for her.

  And she didn’t doubt for a moment that he was going to kill her. As her eyes closed, she caught a glimpse of something else in the van.

  A black plastic garbage sack, tied with a yellow ribbon. And from the bottom of the bag, through a tiny hole, leaked a thin, dark stream of something that looked like blood.

  Sickened, she rolled her eyes up at her captor, fearing she was about to die, certain that his face was the last she would ever see, and then, blackness.

  Chapter 4

  “It’s been days,” Travis Settler muttered through tight lips, fear for his missing daughter congealing in his blood as he sat idly, impotently at his kitchen table. “A damned lifetime.”

  He closed his eyes. Leaned back in the old dinette chair. Tried to quiet the rage and anxiety roiling deep in his gut by counting to ten. When that didn’t do any good, he kept on reeling off numbers in his head. Eleven, twelve, thirteen…At seventy-nine he quit, opened his eyes to find Shane Carter, the sheriff of Lewis County, sizing him up.

  Carter was a tall, rangy man who could have, in another century, been a cowboy. A bushy moustache that matched his near-black hair covered his upper lip and he had those hard brown eyes that could cut to the center of a man. Right now they were staring straight at Travis. “We’re working on it,” he said.

  And the third man in the room, Lieutenant Larry Sparks, of the Oregon State Police, nodded his agreement.

  Sparks was leaning a shoulder against the wall of the kitchen alcove, sipping coffee and frowning. Not a speck of humor showed in Sparks’s dark gaze and the lines etched into his face said it all: everyone was worried. Beyond worried.

  They all felt it, the disquiet of knowing that with each passing day they were losing ground. Over the stove, the old clock ticked off the seconds, emphatically reminding Sparks that time was rapidly fleeing.

  “We’ll find Dani,” Carter said, conviction underscoring his words. “Just like we’re going to nail the bastard who killed Blanche Johnson.”

  “When?” Never in his life had Travis felt so impotent, so totally worthless. Not even when his wife had died three years earlier. That had been painful. Unfair. Wrong. But this…“Hell!” he ground out before Carter answered his question. Because the sheriff couldn’t respond. No one knew when…or, oh, God, if, she’d be located. No one knew a damned thing! They’d used tracking dogs. They’d used the Explorer Scouts along with the police and all the neighbors to search the town and surrounding wooded hillsides of Falls Crossing. They’d put up posters, called in the media, begging the public for help. And the police and FBI had questioned the students and staff of the school.

  Still they’d found nothing. Not a damned thing.

  And he was going out of his mind.

  The police had gone over her room, inch by inch. They’d even taken his computer, hoping to find some indication that Dani had been surfing the Web, logging onto the Web sites where pedophiles trolled for unsuspecting prey.

  Travis’s guts squeezed so hard they ached. If some perverted bastard so much as touched one hair on her head…He couldn’t go there—wouldn’t. The authorities hadn’t found any evidence on the hard drive that Dani had been searching for anything other than the humane society and related dog sites, always looking for another pet to rescue and bring home. As if three cats, a dog, two horses and even a box turtle weren’t enough.

  He glanced over at the box turtle’s cage, an elaborate terrarium that he and Dani had created together. It now sat beneath the laundry room window, the turtle hidden inside his “house,” a cutout plastic tub. His striped head, feet and tail were all tucked inside his shell. Travis could relate. At times he wanted to hide away; others, like now, he was so anxious and keyed up, he needed to do something, anything!

  Rage and fear, his constant companions since learning that his daughter was missing, were eating at him, getting to him, and he couldn’t stand another minute—make that second—of sitting around and waiting. As the clock ticked loudly and the empty refrigerator hummed, Travis Settler thought he would surely go out of his mind.

  “No one has any idea where my girl is,” he said, his voice rough. “Except for the son of a bitch who grabbed her.” For a minute he couldn’t breathe. He thought of Dani, his only child, with her untamed brown hair, smattering of freckles across her nose and wise-beyond-her-years eyes. She was tough—he’d raised her tough—but, Jesus, she was a kid, just a kid. Alone. With some kind of psycho.

  Maybe she’s ju
st run away, as the police have suggested. Maybe her disappearance has nothing to do with Blanche Johnson’s murder.

  God, he only wished he believed for even a heartbeat that Dani had gotten a wild hair and set off for parts unknown, that she was safe, just rebellious.

  But that was all hogwash. He knew it. Probably the police did, too.

  His teeth gnashed in frustration and dread wormed its way through his soul. What was she going through now? Where the hell was she? Was she hurt? Or…or worse? A lump filled his throat. His eyes burned. But he wouldn’t think the worst. Not yet. What was it his aunt had always said during trying times? “Where there’s life, there’s hope.” Well, damn it all to hell, there had better be life…Oh, fuck…A hole the size of Wyoming filled the space where his heart had been.

  He glanced at the corner of the table where he was sitting, to the phone, the one that the FBI had installed with a separate headset. It sat silent. Mocking him. Daring him to believe that his daughter was safe.

  Dear God, Dani, where are you?

  He unclenched one fist to shove it through his hair.

  For the first time since leaving his special forces unit in the army nearly eighteen years earlier, Travis felt the need for quick action, a decisive plan, a no-holds-barred attack on whoever the hell it was who had stolen his child. His jaw grew so tight it hurt and his hands clenched into fists, only to open and curl up, open and curl, over and over again.

  Finally he said the words that he’d been afraid to say earlier. “Whoever’s got her isn’t going to call. There won’t be any ransom demand.”

  “It’s still early,” Carter began, then, with a cutting glare from Travis, didn’t finish his thought. Carter wasn’t a man who could lie easily. That much Travis understood; the sheriff just wasn’t any good at platitudes. Thank God.

  “It’s not early.” Travis shoved back his chair, the legs scraping on the scarred hardwood floor of the small cabin where he’d made his home for over a decade. “You know it. I know it. Lieutenant Sparks—” Travis hitched his chin to Sparks who sipped from a chipped brown mug. “He knows it, too—don’t you, Sparks?”