Fatal Burn

by Lisa Jackson

  And each one carried some of the creep’s DNA on it.

  Good.

  Without thinking twice, she inched her body to the middle of the van and tried to pick up one of the smoked cigarettes with her joined hands. If nothing else she would somehow, someday, get the Marlboro Lights butt to the police, and they could run what was left of it through the lab and their databases and somehow be able to nail his sick hide, just like she’d seen on those true crime shows. And if it turned out that she wasn’t able to talk…if she was found really, really hurt, or…even…She swallowed hard and recalled the garbage bag in the back of the van with its sickly trail of blood seeping from the corner. Oh, God…

  Dani didn’t want to think that the jerk-wad might actually kill her, that he might use his long-bladed knife on her throat. She nearly lost control of her bladder when she considered it, so she stubbornly pushed that horrible thought aside and had gnashed her teeth until they ached. She decided if the son of a bitch tried anything with her, he’d be in for a surprise. Though she was playing the part of the scared, witless little girl, she planned on fighting him tooth and nail before he so much as scratched her skin.

  In the dark interior, she inched closer to the driver’s side of the van.

  The handcuffs hampered her movements. She was running out of time.

  Still, she had to chance it. Couldn’t just play the scared little girl forever. But she’d have to be careful, so that she didn’t spill anything out of the ashtray and make him suspicious.

  She licked her lips. Told herself it was like playing Pick-Up-Sticks, a game she’d played with Allie Kramer. The object of the game was to withdraw one plastic stick from a nest of jumbled plastic sticks without disturbing any of the rest. She was pretty good at it. But thin plastic sticks played for fun were a lot different from cigarette butts jammed into an ashtray.

  Wiping her sweating palms on her pants, she held her breath. Carefully she attempted to extract one of the smelly, squashed butts from the full tray. Just as her fingers clamped over one filter tip, a loud roar had cut through the night, the sound of a huge engine sparking to life. Twin beams of light glared from the open doors of the garage. Startled, Dani jumped. And that’s when cigarette butts had rained to the floor of the vehicle—in plain sight.

  Dear Jesus, she’d be caught!

  She’d been about to try and retrieve them and force each back into the tray or brush them under the seat when a black truck rocketed out from the garage, its headlights blazing like the eyes of a monster.

  Dani sat frozen, sweat seeming to curdle on her scalp.

  As she watched, the creep parked his truck on the far side of the garage, then jogged across the open space to the van.

  Her heart seized.

  Oh, no!

  He would see the spilled cigarettes and guess what she’d been doing!

  His boots crunched ominously on the sparse gravel.

  Fear crawling up her throat, she stuffed the cigarette butt into her pocket and silently prayed he wouldn’t notice anything wrong. She was sweating from the exertion and a case of nerves, but forced herself to pretend to just be scared to death.

  Which hadn’t been hard.

  Though she’d barely been able to draw in a breath, she tried to figure out how to keep him from seeing what she’d done.

  She had to distract him!

  That was it!

  Before he realized anything was amiss.

  Her heart thudded so loudly she was certain he would be able to hear it. The cigarette butt in her pocket felt heavy as a stone. Oh, this was a dumb plan! He was going to see the scattered filter tips on the floor and know what she’d been doing. He might even search her and find her phone!

  He climbed inside and cast her a quick, harsh look that had turned her insides to water. Without a word he flicked on the ignition, drove forward into the long, weed-choked drive, then stopped and rammed the gearshift into reverse. Flinging one arm over the back of the seat, his fingers nearly brushing the back of her collar, he checked the mirrors, then stared over his shoulder as he eased the van backward, quickly wedging it into the dilapidated garage.

  Dani could scarcely breathe.

  She wondered if he would leave her there. Handcuff her to the door, gag her, abandon her and let her die in that dark, smelly, rat hole of a van with the dead girl in the trash bag behind her.

  Oh, Jesus!

  Her mouth was chalk.

  Or would he take her with him?

  Either option was bad.

  She held her breath and waited.

  The van was so large that there were mere inches between the exterior and the walls of the old building. But somehow, with little effort, he managed to park it without scraping the fenders. When he braked the taillights illuminated the small garage in an eerie red glow. Dani withered inside as she caught a glimpse of the cobweb-infested walls of ancient two-by-fours.

  With a satisfied grunt, the creep slammed the transmission into park and cut the engine. “Come on, let’s go. Get out,” he ordered. He clicked off the autolock mechanism that kept all the passenger doors secured, allowing her door handle to work. As he opened the driver’s door, the dome light flicked on. He turned toward her—intense eyes narrowing a fraction. “Don’t try any funny stuff.” Then he stepped into the small space the door opening allowed and his gaze swept the van’s interior.

  Dani froze.

  “I said, let’s go!” He reached in and grabbed his pack of Marlboros, an old gas receipt and a notepad. That’s when he spotted the quashed cigarette butts spilled onto the floor near the accelerator. “What the fuck?”

  His gaze cut swiftly to her face. Dani pretended not to notice as she feigned to struggle with the door. As if for leverage, she then “accidentally” kicked the dash, her foot hitting the overflowing ashtray. Other cigarettes tumbled out. “I can’t get out,” she mewled, the pitiful sound of her voice making her cringe inside. She hated acting like a pathetic, scared little kid. Even though she was frightened, all she really wanted to do was have a chance to kick him where it counted and scratch out his sicko eyes.

  “Christ, you’re an idiot,” he growled, jabbing a finger at the telltale butts. “What were you doing? Trying to escape?” His lips flattened over his teeth and his eyes blazed with an evil light.

  Dani shivered inside.

  “Don’t get smart, kid.” He slammed the driver’s door shut and strode quickly around the back of the van.

  Dani unlatched the passenger door and nearly fell out. As the bottoms of her sneakers hit the earthen floor of the garage she felt his fingers against her nape, twisting in the collar of her jacket. The smell of earth and years of dust filled her nostrils and she thought she heard wings, those of bats or an owl, overhead.

  With hardly any effort he jerked her off her feet. “Listen,” he snarled against her ear, his rough beard scratching her cheek, his breath still laced with the smoke of his last cigarette. “You’d better do as I say or you’ll regret it!”

  Her skin rippled in revulsion. She thought she might pee her pants. Worse yet, her cell phone began to slide against her wet skin.

  He yanked her away from the van, slammed the door shut. With her feet still struggling to find purchase as he pulled her with him, he growled in her ear, “I’m warning you one last time. Don’t fuck with me. You got it? Do not fuck with me!” He shook her hard and the phone slid farther.

  No!

  Desperately she tried to tighten her arms closer to her body. But she could feel the cell slip.

  As he dropped her to her feet, she lost her balance, tumbling against the fender of the van, feeling the hot metal of the hood as the engine ticked and cooled. The phone slid to the floor of the garage. She cringed, waiting for discovery.

  “Now, move it, kid. We don’t have much time.”

  He was nervous as he pushed her forward and slammed the van’s passenger door shut. But in the scuffle, he didn’t notice her cell, wedged tight against the tire. She�
�d wanted to dive for the phone but knew he’d catch her. She’d wanted to run, to scream, but any attempt to get away from him at that point would have been futile. The abandoned farm was so remote and desolate no one would ever hear her.

  So, she was forced to remain passive. Help me, she silently prayed as she stumbled toward the black truck. Help me…Please, God, help me!

  She wished fervently that she hadn’t skipped Sunday school any chance she could. When her mother had been alive Dani had been forced to attend, but once Mom had died, Dad hadn’t pushed the whole church thing. And she’d been glad that she hadn’t had to get up early on Sunday mornings to listen to the teacher, Jewel Lundeen, with her saccharine-sweet smile and iron will—a woman who’d forced her to memorize Bible verses and then, if she’d forgotten them, would kindly but firmly remind her how important it was for her to learn the Word of the Lord.

  Worse yet, Mrs. Lundeen had seemed to really get off on stupid crafts like making Jesus puppets and putting on a play with the little figures of Jesus and all the disciples. Jesus walking on water. Jesus casting tiny bits of bread into the cellophane lake. Jesus turning the minuscule jugs of water into grape Kool-Aid.

  It had been so inane, but as she was being shepherded toward the big black truck with its canopy, by a man who scared her half to death, Dani so wished she’d paid more attention. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in God. She just didn’t believe in all the foolish little rituals and so, once her mother had died, her dad had agreed that she could give up the Sunday-morning tradition as long as it was replaced with doing something outside, in nature.

  Which had been way cooler.

  Or so she’d thought until she sat in the passenger seat beside the sick bastard who’d kidnapped her. If only he wasn’t so careful! If he would make a mistake. Her heart sank as she watched him take the time to close the garage doors and lock them securely before climbing behind the wheel of this newer vehicle, and turn its nose to the road: a roundabout route that eventually led south.

  Now, after days that felt like months, she knew she was in California; she’d heard enough talk radio to prove that. She sent up another prayer and fervently hoped that God was listening. That He would forgive her.

  That her dad would find her.

  Her abductor wasn’t making it easy, though.

  Every day or so, he switched license plates, first on the dirty white van and now on this truck. Originally, the truck had been equipped with Idaho plates. That had changed when he’d driven east, toward the Montana border, and stolen the back plate off an SUV from Washington state.

  And all the while on their zigzagged course across Wyoming, Colorado, and Nevada, she’d kept the cigarette butt hidden. He had a porta-potty that he kept in the back of the truck under a canopy and when she told him she needed to go to the bathroom, he’d uncuff her and let her into the back, always staying right at the tailgate.

  Food was bought at drive-thru restaurants or at gas stations, always late at night, and each time he watched her like a hawk, his knife always a visible threat.

  During all the hours since he’d forced her into the van, he’d never once blindfolded her, and that was a worry. All the cop/detective/forensic shows she’d seen on television suggested to her that if he wasn’t worried about her seeing his face, then he would probably kill her so she couldn’t identify him.

  Her throat closed at the thought, but she didn’t fall victim to her fear. He’d kept her alive this long. He hadn’t so much as touched her except to pull her in and out of the van, and when he did cast a glance her way, he didn’t seem to see her. It was as if she was nothing more than cargo that had to be dealt with.

  He was silent. Serious. A simmering anger evident in the way he gripped the steering wheel, or flattened his lips whenever they had to slow or stop for road work. When he talked to her, it was to bark orders and remind her that if she did as he told her, she wouldn’t get hurt.

  So far he’d kept his word.

  What did he want with her? No. She didn’t even want to think about it.

  As if he sensed her staring at him, he quickly glanced her way. Her eyelids drooped and she feigned sleep, leaning against the glass of the passenger door window, all the while wanting to scream.

  “I know you’re awake,” he said.

  His voice was deep and rough, scratching against her ears like sandpaper. She hated him. Hated him.

  “No use pretendin’. So quit staring, okay?”

  He pushed on the lighter in the dash, she heard the familiar click, then the rustle of cellophane as he unwrapped another pack of cigarettes. Marlboro Lights. The lighter popped as he braked and she heard him fiddling with it, then she smelled the familiar, acrid scent of smoke. He inhaled and rolled down the window, the fresh air quickly filled with the smell of burning tobacco.

  As the tires hummed over the dry pavement and bugs splattered against the windshield, Dani tried to figure out how to escape. At the next rest stop? When he pulled over to sleep? But how? He always handcuffed her.

  Every problem has a solution. Sometimes you just have to work hard to figure it out.

  She could almost hear her father’s voice. He’d told her often enough. Whenever she was having trouble at school with her friends, or she was certain she wouldn’t pass the next math test, or when her fishing line was caught on the overhanging branches of a tree leaning over the river.

  Tears welled in her eyes. Dad was tall. Strong. Honest. And tough. Really tough. Even when Mom had died, he’d managed to hold himself together.

  She swallowed back a sob, pulled herself together with an effort. Chancing another glimpse of her captor, Dani considered her father again. He would come for her. She knew it. But when? And how? This guy wasn’t about to leave any kind of trail, especially since he changed the vehicle’s plates at every opportunity. What were the chances he’d be pulled over?

  Dani’s hands, cuffed together at the wrists, curled into fists.

  Somehow her dad would find her.

  He had to.

  And soon.

  Chapter 6

  Armed with a bit of knowledge and a lot of suspicion, Travis parked his truck a mile and a half from Shannon Flannery’s home. He’d driven twelve hours straight from his home in Oregon to Santa Lucia, California. He’d already passed by her lane leading off the main road because he didn’t want to be seen. Much as he’d like to burst into her house and demand answers, he figured he’d better watch her place for a while and scope out the surrounding area, to try to determine whether Dani was anywhere nearby.

  It was night. A smattering of stars and a quarter moon offered little light and though there was a thin layer of clouds wafting over the black heavens, the temperature was simmering several degrees above eighty.

  Stealthily, wearing black and carrying a backpack, he jogged through the back streets and overgrown lots, scaring a cat hiding in the shadows and causing a dog down the street to start barking its fool head off.

  He cut through a couple of back alleys and around an old, abandoned rifle range until he came to a warped chain-link fence that surrounded the property next to hers. New NO TRESPASSING signs had been posted and he ignored them, rimming the fence line, moving within the night shadows to the far side where, he saw through a few scraggly oaks, warm light emanating from the windows of a house. Shannon Flannery’s property, where she trained search and rescue dogs.

  He’d have to be careful.

  Quiet.

  Stay downwind.

  He circled around the field until he was standing in a sparse copse of trees at the fence line. Less than a hundred feet away was the house. Her house. Hoisting himself over the fence, he landed lithely on the other side, then he crept along the shrubbery to the two-storied cottage. She was home, he heard her voice floating through an open window. But from his position, he could catch only parts of the conversation.

  “…Telling you…I just don’t know…” she was saying emphatically, her voice low and calm. />
  She paused as if listening to a response.

  Then he saw her, walking past the window, a phone to her ear. He didn’t move a muscle.

  “…Sorry…look, Mary Beth, Robert doesn’t tell me anything, you know that…” Another pause. She stopped dead in her tracks and walked to the window, her eyes searching the field where he stood. Her red hair shone in the illumination from an overhead light, her eyebrows drawn together in concentration, a frown pulling at her full lips.

  His heart thudded, certain she would see him. Instead, using her free hand, she lifted the hair off her neck and nodded, as if the person on the other end of the line could see her.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea…Right…I can’t explain what’s going through his head. I think—” She closed her eyes, threw back her head and sighed. Her throat curved backward, a smoothly tanned column above the V of her blouse and just a hint of the hollow between her breasts.

  His own throat tightened seeing the sweat that was drizzling down her neck and into that dusky cleft. For the first time since leaving Falls Crossing he realized how foolish he’d been, how he’d been grasping at straws. What could this woman possibly know about Dani? What were the chances that Dani had linked up with her…? What had he been thinking driving like a madman down here, certain that this woman was somehow behind his daughter’s disappearance?

  His jaw slid to the side.

  “…I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Mary Beth. Listen, I know I’m not a good one to give advice, but—”

  Again she was cut off and as it happened her eyes flew open, her head snapped up and she flushed scarlet. “That’s it. I don’t have to take this from you or anyone else. Good-bye!” She clicked the phone to OFF. Clenching her teeth for a moment, she muttered something under her breath and moved away from the window.

  Travis let his breath out of his lungs.