by Ladew, Lisa
“Go on, start climbing down the ladder. Make sure you don’t fall, it’s a long drop.”
Katerina climbed onto the ladder, slowly lowering herself into the pit, hand over hand. After she had gone down into almost complete darkness, at least twenty rungs below, Dylan clipped a light onto his belt and began climbing down after her. Katerina descended more and more slowly, but Dylan never caught up with her. He was staying well away from her.
Her foot touched hard dirt. She stepped onto the floor and backed away from the ladder.
“See the small door? Go through it. Leave it standing open and go to the middle of the room.”
Katerina pushed open the door and crouched to get through it. She heard Dylan drop to the ground behind her, then she heard screaming from ahead of her.
“You fucking bastard! You’ll never get away with this! You’re going to fucking fry in jail you sicko!”
Katerina rushed across the room, not even seeing it. All she had eyes for was the tiny door on the far wall with a little slot in it. She could see Jordan’s fingers holding the slot open as she screamed at Dylan.
“Katerina! Oh God, you shouldn’t have come.” Jordan cried. “I prayed you wouldn’t come.”
Katerina dropped to her knees and grasped Jordan’s fingers, tears spilling down her front. This was bad. This was so, so bad. She sucked in several deep breaths and tried to take stock of where she was. The only light was weak and flickering, from several oil lanterns on the walls. The place smelled slightly, and the floor was wet. She was kneeling in a small puddle. Fear started overtaking her again and she sidestepped it, encouraging the anger instead. Anger seemed to give her energy, while the fear sapped every ounce of her strength. She would need great strength to make it out of this alive.
Dylan spoke from across the room. “Now come over here and sit down.”
“Don’t do it, Katerina. Run. Get out of here,” Jordan said.
Dylan laughed. “There is nowhere to run to. Come now, I’ve even cleaned up for you. Remember your promise and I’ll remember mine.”
Katerina pushed herself to her feet. She saw no way out of this. She walked to the chair Dylan was pointing at and sat down.
“See those leg irons? Fasten them to your ankles.”
Jordan wailed from behind her. “Don’t do it, Kat! Don’t!”
Katerina leaned forward and clipped the leg irons closed.
“Now your right arm. See the handcuffs there?”
Katerina fastened the handcuff over her right wrist and snapped it shut. The other side was fastened to the chair.
“Tighten it.”
Katerina did, until it bit cruelly into her flesh.
Dylan put the gun behind him on the counter and pulled on a pair of thick looking electrical gloves, then moved in warily. Katerina realized that he didn’t want to touch her. Because of what she did to his brother. But could she even do that again? Would she even dare to try? Dylan was so much crazier and worse than his brother. Would it hurt her worse if she tried it again with this guy?
Dylan pulled a set of tools out of his back pocket and Katerina flinched. They were wicked-looking, long-nosed pliers. She couldn’t imagine what he was going to do with them, or maybe she didn’t want to.
He held one in each hand and advanced on her. “Grasp the arm of the chair. If you touch me, and I manage to get away, I’ll kill your friend in front of you.”
“And if I hold still?”
“I’ll free her. I can’t do it right away - not until we’re done here, but I will free her.”
Katerina heard his slight emphasis on the word free and let her eyes drop closed. He meant something other than what she did, but what could she do? She grabbed the arm of the chair and waited.
She heard metal on metal, and then the cold steel of the handcuffs touched her arms.
Whoosh. Although she was certain he wasn’t touching her, and although she wasn’t asking, Dylan’s essence rushed through the raw metal into her consciousness. Like his brother, images spilled out of him into her.
She gritted her teeth against the massive intrusion. Luckily he was quick, and as soon as the connection was broken, the images stopped.
Her eyes snapped open. “Oh my God. You’ve killed seventy-nine people? And Lance Payne was your friend. Your lover. He loved you.”
Behind her, Jordan moaned slightly, then started weeping. For the first time, Katerina heard what sounded like other women behind her. Someone spoke softly in a foreign language. Russian. There were more women here.
Katerina felt her anger building, surging inside her. Her hair tried to stand on end and her body felt super heated.
In front of her, Dylan seemed to ignore her words completely. He stared at her with a haughty look in his eyes, like whatever he did was his right.
She had one more thing to say to him, on her terms.
“Dylan, you’re not God. In fact, your brother sees you as the devil. I’m starting to think he’s right.”
Dylan’s fist opened and closed. His face twisted angrily and she felt his desire to hurt her. But he didn’t quite dare touch her.
He paced the room with large, angry strides, his feet splashing in the puddles.
Finally he turned. He stood straight and stared at her behind his mirrored sunglasses. He seemed to be waiting for something. He turned and positioned his body in several different ways. He raised his arms, lowered them again. He looked at the ceiling, looked at the floor, turned in a circle, said now, and then do it, and then I’m ready.
When nothing happened he froze in place, slightly bent, his face angled towards the floor. He stayed that way for at least ten minutes. Katerina held her breath, fear and anger pulling through her alternately.
He came back to life and straightened up. He lifted a finger and pointed it at her. His voice came, thundering in a mock deep tone. “I command you, Katerina Holloway, to release your power to me this instant.”
Katerina stared at him, not quite comprehending what he was trying to do. He wanted her power? He thought she could just hand it over?
He stared at her, his eyes widening and narrowing from disbelief to anger. Finally, he dropped his finger and spoke normally, with a bit of a petulant whine in his voice.
“I want your power. There’s a way for me to get it. Tell me how.”
“You can fucking have it.” Katerina fired back, meaning it.
“Really? How?”
“Touch me. If I can give it to you, I will.”
Dylan sneered. “Yeah right. You won’t fry my brain like you did my brother?”
Katerina stayed silent. Somewhere in the room she heard a chiming noise. From a phone? She didn’t know.
Dylan paced again, talking to himself. He didn’t seem to hear the noise. “There has to be a way to transfer the energy from her to me. If only Frank was here. He would have an idea. Something to try.”
Katerina lowered her head and breathed imaginary fire into her lungs. She’d never hated anyone in her life, but she hated Dylan Phillips.
Finally he stopped in front of her again. “Perhaps your friend is the key. She brought you here, maybe she’s the way to get you to loosen your powers. I’ll bet that’s it.”
From the counter, Phillips picked up a key, and a syringe with a long and sharp-looking needle.
Katerina stared at him in terror, knowing she wouldn’t be able to take whatever was coming. What had she been thinking, coming out here by herself? She pulled at her bonds and turned her anger on her only available target: herself, immediately feeling her cells start to boil.
Chapter 20
West ran to the very end of the parking lot, searching down the street for Blaise’s red Mustang. Ten minutes had come and gone and he couldn’t sit still any longer. Still no answer from Jordan, and he’d sent Katerina text after text and tried calling her phone, but it went straight to voice mail. Her phone was turned off.
If only he knew for certain which direction Blaise would be com
ing from! He would start off that way on foot. His phone rang in his hand and he whipped it in front of his face, hoping against hope that it was Katerina. A number he’d never seen before. He answered.
“What?”
“Hey, dude, uh, I’m just doin what the pants told me to, yeah?”
West stared at the phone in his hand, disbelief written on his face. Some Keanu Reeves wanna-be was calling him now? He poised his finger over the end call button and almost pressed it, but at the last minute something stopped him.
“What?”
“You know, the pants, they had your number written on them in lipstick?”
West’s entire body went cold in an instant. His heart seemed to stop in his chest. “What else was written on them?”
“Dude, uh, it says Please call. Life and death. Then your number. Then it says Dylan is Sheriff Payne. You know, Payne with a Y, not pain like ouchy.”
West heard the man stutter a laugh in his ear but it meant nothing to him. His mind spun in overdrive. Payne. Sheriff Payne. He always knew there was something wrong with Payne. But this was worse than he ever could have imagined in a million years.
“Where are you?” West forced out.
“Uh, Shell station on 4th St.”
“Stay there. I’ll be right there.”
“Dude, I gotta get to work.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes. I’ll give you $100 if you are there when I get there.”
“Dude! You got it.”
West hung up and pulled up Blaise’s phone number, even as he started running towards 4th street. Before the phone began to ring in his hand, Blaise pulled up behind him. West sprinted for him.
“He’s got her. Dylan Phillips has got Katerina!”
***
The man with the pants hadn’t seen anything but the clothes laying on the ground. His chosen name was Kai, and most of the time, he hung out with several homeless friends at the beach, surfing whenever he could. He was barely keeping a roof over his head himself, though and he wasn’t about to turn down free clothes. If they wouldn’t fit him, they would fit someone he knew. He had grabbed the pile of clothes and held them up, trying to get a feel for size. He found the message and called West and that was all he knew. West sent him on his way with his hundred dollars and he was thrilled. West got the feeling that he would be calling in sick to work that day.
Blaise and West combed Katerina’s car looking for anything that might tell them what exactly what happened this morning. Blaise found Katerina’s phone on the concrete, completely broken and useless.
“Something must have convinced her to leave the apartment without telling me this morning. He must’ve threatened her with something somehow,” West said, his fear and frustration mounting to new levels.
“Or maybe threatened you.”
“What?”
“Maybe he convinced her he could get to you in some way that made her think she had no choice but to go to him. She could have sacrificed herself to keep you safe.”
West considered it. He hated the idea but he could see how it could be true. “We have to find him.”
Blaise studied the roof line of the gas station. “Look, there’s a security camera, let’s go tell them we need to watch the video.”
West grabbed his arm as he turned to go to the station. “We already know it’s Sheriff Payne. How is the video going to help us? We need to find him and we need to do it right now. He’s got Katerina! Can’t you find out where he lives?”
Blaise looked at him levelly. “Do you really think he took her to his house?”
West pounded a fist on the trunk of Katerina’s car, denting it. “Yeah! Maybe! I don’t know! We have to try, don’t we?”
“We do have to try. But we have to be smart about this.” He lifted his chin towards the gas station. “I’m telling you, the smartest thing to do right now is ask for the security tape, plus I’ll make some phone calls and get Payne’s address. Maybe I can get a team sent out there.”
This time West let Blaise go into the gas station. He followed him, all the while praying they could find Katerina quickly. Who knew what that sicko was doing to her.
Fifteen minutes later, Blaise, having wisely gone over Detective Gagne’s head, had convinced Assistant Chief Foley to send a team out to Payne’s house. He hung up his phone and nodded to the manager of the gas station, who pressed play on the video recording equipment in front of him. He fast forwarded through most of the morning video, until West jumped up. “Stop! That’s Katerina’s car.”
They watched as Katerina looked at her phone, then got into the car next to her, looked at her phone again, then took her shirt off and dropped it outside the car window. West ground his teeth together hard enough to send a bolt of pain through his head.
“He’s instructing her somehow. He’s sending her texts,” Blaise said.
The entire scene took only a few minutes, and then they watched as she drove to the exit and waited.
A rusty old farm truck pulled into the scene and stopped. Sheriff Payne got out and picked up Katerina’s phone.
“Bastard!” West yelled. “He’s sending me the text there.”
They all watched as both cars pulled out of the parking lot. Blaise took down the license plate on the farm truck and called it into dispatch. He hung up, a grim look on his face. “The plate is stolen. It comes back to a red Honda Civic.”
“So what does that mean?” West demanded.
“Nothing. We know who’s driving it. I’ll put out an APB on the truck with the stolen plate, Plus that little car Katerina was driving, and we’ll have every officer in the area watching for him.”
West collapsed into a chair and rubbed his eyes. “You know they’re not driving around, Blaise. They are holed up somewhere. He’s got her, and he’s doing whatever he’s doing to her. She might already be dead,” he said, his voice losing strength on the last word.
“Don’t give up West. Katerina outsmarted him once. She can do it again. Look what she did to Frank Phillips.”
West shook his head. “This guy knows that too. He won’t touch her. He won’t give her a chance. That’s why he didn’t make her get into his vehicle.”
Blaise looked off in the distance and was silent for several moments. West watched him, but didn’t say anything. He knew his friend was a good cop, and he knew his friend knew more than anybody else about this case right now. He didn’t want to distract whatever thinking processes were going on in Blaise’s head.
“Okay look, we’ve got a team headed out to Sheriff Payne’s house right now. I think you’re right. I think he’s holed up somewhere with Katerina. We just have to find him. That old farm truck has me thinking. There were two farms in the Phillips family. The one that belonged to their father, and the one that belonged to their uncle. I’ve personally been out at the one that belonged to their father. I went over it with a fine tooth comb, looking for some sign that any of these women had been out there. There’s nothing there. I even brought a crew out and dug in the basement just like we did at Frank’s house in Westwood Harbor. But there’s another farm, and no one has been out there. It was sold fifteen years ago to a business called Creation Industries. No one has been able to get ahold of the owner and so a judge hasn’t given us the right to search it yet. I’m thinking he’s out at one of these farms. And if I had to guess, I would say it’s the one we haven’t searched yet. I say we go check it out. Just me and you. It’s in Tetam County, so I don’t want to ask the Sheriff’s office out there to do it. Who knows how they will respond to having to arrest their boss if he’s there. Plus I doubt we could make them understand just how dangerous he is.”
West shot out of his chair. “How fast can we get there?”
Chapter 21
Dylan stepped across the floor, past Katerina, needle and key in hand. Katerina closed her eyes, thinking this can’t be happening. Oh Jordan, I’m so sorry.
A stream of images streaked into her mind that didn’t come from
her. They came and went so fast that she couldn’t decipher even one. She twisted in her chair, her eyes flying open. Dylan hadn’t touched her. He hadn’t even gotten within two feet of her, so how had they made contact?
He arrived at Jordan’s cell. “Stick your arm out through the slot!” he ordered.
“Fuck yourself up the ass and die of strangulation!” Jordan screamed back at him.
He kicked the cell door once, but not very hard. His shoes were old, ratty tennis shoes with small holes starting at the seams. Katerina stared at his shoes. His wet shoes, with holes in them. She looked down at the floor to where her feet were resting on the concrete. The wet concrete. Half of her left foot sat in a puddle barely a quarter of an inch deep. The puddle was long, crossing almost half the room. Dylan had walked through it to get to the other side of the room.
Could she use it?
But once he pulled Jordan out of the cell, he would be touching her. Did she dare try anything with Jordan in danger too?
Did she dare not to?
Katerina tried to remember exactly what she had done to Frank Phillips. She had opened herself wide. She had pulled … no sucked the very essence of his being out through the conduit she made by touching him. She grimaced and prepared herself to do it again. To try anyway. And to die trying if that was what was required.
Dylan commanded Jordan again. This time he used his cop voice, and Katerina hated him for it. She watched him, her eyes narrowed, waiting to make her move, terrified she would mess it up. She pushed aside the fear again and fed her anger, whipping herself into an enraged frenzy. Her breath tore out of her lungs, her hands gripped the arms of the chair hard enough to snap the wood, her teeth pressed together hard enough to crack them in half.
“Have it your way. You’ll be begging me to let you put your hand out the slot after a gunshot to the knee,” Dylan spit out, turning.
Katerina’s anger surged horribly. She felt it spilling out of her body, a red heat that burned without consuming. She heard electrical snapping and popping sounds in her hair, and shook her head, thinking it was on fire, but not quite able to care.
