by Kaylea Cross
She whirled and darted into the office instead to grab the first substantial thing she could see—an old stapler, and her keys. Whipping around, she stepped into the hall and threw the stapler at his head with all her might.
He threw up his hands and ducked. She spun and raced for the door, keys in hand as a heavy thunk sounded behind her but she didn’t stop, her entire focus on reaching the door, just steps away. All she had to do was get out and make it to her car.
She shot out a hand to grab the antique doorknob, conscious of him coming closer and closer with each heartbeat. It took precious seconds she didn’t have for her fumbling hands to unlock the door and twist the knob.
But it was already too late. He was on her.
He wrapped frighteningly strong arms around her from behind and jerked her off her feet. She screeched and clawed at his arms with the keys, cutting him. He yelled in pain and seized her wrist with an angry snarl.
Poppy shrieked and fought him. They struggled there in the front entryway, him trying to wrench the keys from her hand while she used all her strength to try and drive her hand upward and gouge his face with the serrated edges locked in her fist.
His fingers bit deep into the underside of her wrist. In seconds her entire hand was numb and weakening. Poppy screamed and twisted as hard as she could but she couldn’t make him let her go. The keys clattered to the floor.
Out of desperation she wrenched her body to the side and kicked out at his legs, tripping him. They tumbled to the floor with a crash and his grip momentarily eased.
Gasping, Poppy scrambled to her knees and lunged for the front door again, terror giving her added speed. This time she got it open. She staggered to her feet and took a lunging step through the doorway.
Powerful hands seized her arms and dragged her down to the porch.
“Let me go,” she screamed, so overloaded with adrenaline and fear that nausea churned in her belly.
Breathing just as hard as her, he didn’t answer, just banded his arms around her to hold her down, his legs coming around hers. Trapping her.
His erection pressed hard against her hip.
Cold speared through her, bile rushing up her throat. She screamed in fury and denial, thrashing, trying to bite him. But he held her so tight it was useless. He clamped a hand over her mouth, simultaneously silencing her and keeping her head immobile.
Poppy sobbed against his restraining hand and wrenched her head back and forth, trying to rip his hand away from her mouth.
No use.
Out of the corner of her eyes she barely caught the blur of his other hand as it swung up toward her head. She flinched, jerked as something sharp jabbed into her neck. A needle.
No. No!
A feral, animalistic snarl tore from her throat. Why was he doing this? She could barely suck in air in the tiny space above the meaty fingers clamped over her mouth. Her muscles burned, her bones aching from the effort of trying to throw him off.
Don’t give up. Fight. You have to fight him off!
Within moments her head began to spin and her body grew weak. She fought against a new, more powerful threat—whatever drug he’d injected her with.
Her body was shutting down fast.
She was still conscious when she went limp against him, though her thoughts were sluggish and it took superhuman effort to force her heavy eyelids open. Her body was eerily unresponsive as the jangle of her keys reached her. Then he dragged her from the floor and slung her over one shoulder like a sack of grain.
She hung limply over his back, unable to move, much less scream. While inside her chest, her heart pounded in a frantic rhythm.
Noah wouldn’t be back for hours yet. There was no one else on this road who might see her. He wouldn’t find her until it was too late.
His shoulder dug hard into her stomach as he rushed down the brick pathway. Fear turned to grief. There was nothing she could do to save herself. What did he plan to do to her? Rape her, then kill her?
Tears pooled in her eyes, blurring her already swimming vision.
His footsteps pattered against the pavement as he crossed the road, then hushed as his feet hit something softer. The scent of the forest surrounded her. Poppy forced her eyes open, watched the trees close in behind them as he carried her deeper into the woods.
She was floating now, numb, not even feeling the ridge of his shoulder in her stomach, and the fear began to ease.
No! Don’t give in. You have to fight it, stay awake. It’s your only chance!
Poppy battled to stay conscious, to keep the blackness swirling at the edge of her vision from closing in and somehow stayed conscious. They were still in the woods. She could smell the dampness of the forest floor from the rain.
After a time, he slowed and shifted his grip on her. The distinctive sound of something unlocking reached her, then a door or something groaned open.
A van. He’d carried her to his landscaping van.
The darkness was too strong, like black curtains closing from either side of her mind.
He opened the back doors and climbed inside to place her on something. Carefully. Almost tenderly. And she swore she felt Paul’s hand brush over her hair in a gentle caress.
As he retreated she rolled her eyes upward, her fuzzy brain struggling to make sense of what it saw.
A shovel.
And a potted plant with deep coral blooms on it. It was blurry, but also somehow familiar.
In that split second before the doors slammed shut, sealing her in total darkness, she realized what the flower was.
A poppy.
Chapter Eighteen
Noah stood next to the coroner’s van while rain poured off the brim of his hat and watched as they loaded the black body bag containing Carter’s charred remains into the back. He couldn’t get the smell of burned flesh out of his nose. It clung to him even now, on his skin and uniform, thick and nauseating.
Two hours it had taken them to pry Carter’s remains from the mangled wreckage of the truck. Noah had closed this section of the highway in both directions, and it wouldn’t be open until tomorrow. There was a lot of work that needed to be done before then.
The van drove away, taking Carter to Portland. Crimson Point’s hospital morgue was small and he hadn’t wanted Carter transported to the same place where Molly worked, so Noah had ordered the body taken to Portland for autopsy. It would be some time before the results came back but he was already sure they would find Carter’s blood alcohol way above the limit at the time of his death. He’d also been on so many meds, which Molly had given Noah a list of, there was no way to know for sure at this point whether it was a tragic accident or suicide.
Peering over the edge of the cliff at the blackened remains of Carter’s truck where it had plunged a hundred-and-ten feet down the cliff, Noah’s gut said suicide. And, more importantly, so had Molly’s.
Christ he felt bad for her. He’d called to tell her at Beckett’s place as soon as he’d verified that Carter was dead. Then he’d talked to both Jase and Beckett.
So many lives were affected by this tragedy, and the damage might not be over with yet. Noah shook his head. Had Carter veered off that cliff because he wanted to die? Or had it been a final way to hurt Molly for divorcing him?
A team had gone to Carter’s apartment to search the place while Noah assisted with the recovery on scene. So far no suicide note had been found, and Carter apparently hadn’t been active on any social media. The cell phone they’d found in the wreckage was mangled beyond repair, and Noah didn’t hold out much hope that the forensics techs would get much, if anything from it.
Hopefully Carter’s brain would be a different story. After everything that had happened, it would almost come as a relief to find something in the autopsy that would explain his violent shift in the past few months.
It felt like there was sand trapped beneath his eyelids as Noah drove home from the station hours later just as the sun came up. He rubbed at them when he stopped
at a red light just east of town. He was wiped and desperate for a shower to wash the charred smell away before he ate something and crashed. But more than anything he just needed to see Poppy. The promise of seeing her was like a golden ray of sunshine in the current gloom surrounding him.
He was so deep in his thoughts he almost missed Paul as he turned at the next intersection in his landscaping van. Noah lifted a hand at the last moment and received the same in response before driving straight through. Normally he was good at compartmentalizing the ugly things he had to deal with in the line of duty, but they usually didn’t hit this close to home and he was still processing what had happened to Sierra not too long ago.
Two minutes from home now and he couldn’t wait to get there. He would grab a quick shower, then head over to Poppy’s to see her before she left for work. He needed to touch her, hold her, and feel her arms around him for just a little while.
He pulled into his carport, hopped out and texted her as he went inside. She had gone back to her place sometime during the night. Home. Will you still be there in 10 mins?
After showering and changing, he checked his phone. No response, so he walked over to her place. Her car was still in the driveway.
Partway up her walkway, he noticed something in the grass. A hairclip he’d seen her wear. He picked it up and continued to her front door, finding it slightly ajar.
He knocked once before pushing it open slightly. “Hello?” he called out. “It’s Noah.”
No answer.
He pushed it open wider and walked in. “Poppy?” The oven timer was going off, and the scent of something on the edge of burning filled the air. Maybe she was in the shower.
He took off his boots and walked into the kitchen to wait. He and Poppy were too new for him to go upstairs and surprise her in the shower; it would scare the hell out of her. So he stayed put.
If she was showering, it was weird that she would do it so close to when whatever she was making in the oven was finished. He was no baker, but it sure smelled like it was burning in there. He switched off the timer and opened the oven door a bit to look inside. Faint wisps of smoke drifted up. The scones were past done, all turning black around the edges.
Quickly turning off the oven, he looked around for some oven mitts and pulled the scones out, placing them on the counter.
Everything about this scene made him pause, his senses on alert. Her door had been open. The house was so still and quiet. No water running upstairs.
He headed for the back porch. The back door was slightly ajar too.
He walked outside, hoping to find her in the yard. But it was empty.
Frowning, he went back in and headed down the hall to pause at the bottom of the stairway. “Poppy?”
A phone rang from nearby. He followed the sound to the small office she’d set up by the entrance. Her cell phone was on the desk, along with her purse.
Alarm bells clanged in his head.
As he turned around, he spotted something on the floor in the next room. A stapler lay on the hardwood floor. And halfway up the wall, the drywall was dented. As if the stapler had hit it with a good amount of force.
His heart beat faster as he put the pieces together. The hairclip. The doors. The burned scones. The dent in the wall.
Then he remembered seeing Paul’s van pass by him as he neared his neighborhood, and his heart stopped.
It’s too early for landscaping.
Fear congealed in his gut. “Holy shit, no.”
Praying he was wrong, he whipped out his phone and called dispatch, ordering a BOLO for the landscaping van and a full team to Poppy’s house, asap.
****
She was going to be beautiful in his garden.
Euphoria and arousal pumped through Paul’s bloodstream as he drove out of Crimson Point and headed for his garden. Poppy was passed out in the back, lying on the floor like a pretty doll in her robe, her rich blond hair fanned around her.
He’d had a bad moment when the sheriff had seen him earlier. For a moment he’d panicked, ready to race off and risk a car chase to get away, but the sheriff had merely waved at him and kept going, not suspecting a thing.
Paul took it as a sign this was meant to be. A sign that hopefully once this was done, he could rest.
He was okay. Even if the sheriff happened to notice Poppy was missing in the next while, it would still be too late. He was less than fifteen minutes from his property now. Once he got there, it was so private that no one would find him.
If his luck continued to hold, no one would ever find out what he’d done. If he was caught… Then he would have to face the consequences.
A few minutes out of town he turned onto a secluded dead end road where he’d left another vehicle for him to transfer into. If for some reason the cops or Feds started looking for him, his landscaping van was too conspicuous.
Poppy was still unconscious when he opened the back doors. He’d put duct tape over her mouth just in case she came to enough to try and scream.
The sight of her lying so peacefully like that stirred something close to what he imagined paternal instinct would feel like. He remembered how her face had glowed with happiness when she’d found Liz that day on the cliff.
He shoved it from his mind and focused on her with the eyes of the monster, seeing her for what she was. His victim.
He lifted her dead weight from the floor and carried her to the new vehicle, lying her across the back seat. He hoped he hadn’t drugged her with too high a dosage. She had to be awake when he planted her.
It’s fine. She’ll be awake soon.
He’d given her the same dosage as his last flower, a woman about her size. Everything should be fine.
He transferred the shovel and his tools to the trunk, and put the delicate hothouse-grown poppy in the front passenger seat. The color was perfect for her, the dark brown centers nearly the exact shade of her eyes.
After ditching his van in some brush where it was hidden from view from the road, he got in the second vehicle and drove the rest of the way to his garden. He glanced in the rearview mirror at Poppy, so beautiful against the black leather seat.
She would look even more gorgeous in the grave he’d made her.
Soon he would remove that duct tape from her pretty mouth so he could hear every plea that fell from her lips. Every terrified scream and wail.
His breathing turned harsh and erratic, his heart galloping in his chest. He hadn’t decided yet if he would rape her before he killed her, but he didn’t stress about it. Sometimes he took them, sometimes he didn’t. The monster would tell him what to do when the time came. It always did.
So close now…
Hands shaking, his whole body tingling and an urgent erection shoved against his fly, he made the final turn onto the lane that led to his property. No one had followed him. This was happening. No one could stop him.
The thick stand of evergreens on either side of the lane sheltered him from view as he followed the curve to the left. And suddenly he was there.
He smiled, giddy at the thought of what would happen the moment she opened her pretty brown eyes. “Welcome to my secret garden, Poppy.”
Chapter Nineteen
Frantic with worry, Noah brutally blocked the panic burning inside him as the team began a thorough search of Langford’s place. Even with probable cause, it seemed to take forever for the damn search warrant to come through, though in reality it was under ninety minutes.
Noah had been at Poppy’s going over the latest tips that had come in when he got the call from the judge. The moment it had come through, he’d raced to Langford’s residence. A small bungalow on a regular lot several miles out of town.
He didn’t wait for the FBI to arrive. He was the first one through the door ahead of his deputies, weapon up, a tiny sliver of hope existing that they might catch Langford here.
But Langford wasn’t there.
His place was tidy. No sign of forced entry or any kind of disturb
ance, and no signs that he’d brought anyone back here recently. No outward clues of any kind to suggest where he might have taken Poppy.
He and his team kept searching until the Feds arrived. They were already searching every kind of record possible, looking for clues, including possible other vehicles, property or bank accounts Langford might hold. While forensics combed the place, he and the Feds talked to Langford’s neighbors, trying to establish a timeline for his whereabouts leading up to Poppy’s disappearance. No one had seen him since yesterday, and all were shocked that such a kind, gentle man would be the subject of any kind of FBI investigation.
Noah wasn’t shocked anymore. Instead he was filled with a deep, terrible rage. At Langford, for hiding in plain sight all these years. For taking Poppy.
But Noah was just as angry at himself.
This was his ultimate nightmare come to life. Just like all those years before with Sierra’s young friend, he had missed all the signs again, even though they’d been there right in front of him the whole time. Now Poppy had paid the ultimate price for his failure.
Suddenly it was hard to breathe.
He walked outside, down the front steps and across the road to stand a few feet inside the police tape. No one approached or bothered him and he was glad. He needed a minute to himself.
There on the side of the road he struggled to keep his emotions in check. The Feds were using every means of their formidable arsenal at their disposal, scouring databases, digging into Langford’s background. There had to be something to generate a solid lead. Had to.
Once he was calmer he called his sister back. He’d ignored her three calls, too engrossed in the investigation and unable to bear telling her the news.
“Has something happened to Poppy?” Sierra demanded as soon as she picked up. “The girls at the café said she never showed up this morning and she isn’t answering her phone.”
There was no easy way to say it. “She’s missing.” He swallowed. “Looks like kidnapping.”
Her gasp sliced across the line. “Oh my God. Who? Who would’ve taken her?”
