by Debra Webb
Help me! Call the police!
“Yes, sir, that’s her.” The cabbie was pointing to the chief’s cell phone and nodding.
Tony climbed out of the car. “Was anyone else with her?”
“No, sir,” he insisted. “She was alone.”
“Who hired you to pick her up?” the chief asked before Tony could.
“Dispatch received the call. When a third party hires a pickup they pay with a credit card. I called and verified that on the way here.”
“What was the caller’s name?” Tony asked.
“Orson Blume.”
“You’re sure the caller was a man?” Phelps asked.
They both knew Blume was dead.
The driver shrugged. “Dispatcher said his voice sounded kind of weird but it was definitely a man.”
“Weird how?” Nick asked.
“You know,” the man said, “like it was a computer speaking instead of a real person.”
Probably because it was.
“Where did you drop her?” Phelps demanded.
“At one of those creepy old buildings out at the old asylum.” He rattled off an address. “She said it was her birthday, that she was turning eighteen again.”
Fear ignited inside Tony. He reached for the door. “Take me there. Now.”
53
Jo had begged Sylvia to listen to reason but she refused. Pamela Blume had evidently convinced Sylvia that Jo was responsible for her sister’s—her mother’s—problems. That if Ellen had not been covering for Jo all this time she wouldn’t have slowly lost her mind.
The first thing Sylvia had done when the driver dropped Jo off was to take her cell phone. She’d tossed it into the woods, wagged her weapon and told Jo to move. Now as they walked through the dense woods toward wherever the hell they were going flashes of memory zoomed through Jo’s mind. She and Ellen had managed to get Carrie out of the white box prison in which they’d been held. They’d carried her between them through dark corridor after corridor until they’d grown so exhausted they’d literally sat down on the floor and fallen asleep. Later Jo realized they had likely been drugged. Something in the air, she was certain. When they’d awakened they had been in the woods, lying on the ground with Carrie’s cold, pale body between them.
At first fear and panic had them at each other’s throat. Then they’d realized they had no idea where they were or where they’d been. A dead woman they had murdered—Ellen had murdered—was with them. They had no proof of what really happened. No one to point to as responsible for what happened to them—nothing. How would they ever explain what happened? No one was going to believe such a bizarre story.
So they’d buried Carrie’s body and they’d never told a soul what really happened.
Jo blinked away the memories. Sylvia ushered her from the tree line, across the road and through an opening in one of the tall fences that surrounded a decaying building she and Nick Shade had thoroughly searched. How could they have been so close and missed it?
Jo felt confident she could overtake Sylvia and wrestle the gun from her. But she wouldn’t risk the girl getting hurt. The weapon could go off and one of them could end up dead. Jo needed to know where the others were so she cooperated. She would worry about clearing things up with Sylvia later.
If she was still alive.
To Jo’s surprise Sylvia didn’t go to the building; she went into the old guard shack that stood near the gated entrance to the compound. She raised a section of the cracked tile floor like a trap door and an old staircase lay before them, plunging into the darkness below.
“Go.” Sylvia gestured to the stairs with the gun.
Jo took the first step down and automatic lights came on as if activated by her presence. As they moved downward, the trap door closed behind them. At the bottom of the long staircase Sylvia urged her forward, along a dimly lit corridor.
Fear slammed into Jo’s gut.
She knew this place.
This had to be where she, Ellen and Carrie had been kept eighteen years ago.
Her heart pounded harder with each step.
Sylvia ushered her from the main corridor into a maze of narrower corridors, going through door after door. Jo couldn’t get enough air into her lungs. The urge to turn around and run back to those stairs was nearly overwhelming.
Finally, Sylvia stopped and opened one last door. Inside, a row of monitors lined one wall. Televisions showing the news on three different channels hung on the wall above the monitors. A conference table stood in the center of the room. Four chairs surrounded it.
She recognized the dark corridors but she had never seen this place.
A door on the other side of the room opened and Pamela Blume walked in. She held yet another gun pointed at Jo.
“Very good, Sylvia. You may lay your weapon down now.”
“I’m not stupid,” the younger woman said. She shifted her aim from Jo to Pamela. “I want the whole truth. I want to hear it from her before I take your word for what happened.”
“Dear, dear girl—” Pamela smiled “—did you really believe I would give you a loaded gun?”
Sylvia pulled the trigger on the .38. Nothing happened. She threw it aside and charged Pamela.
Jo screamed for her to stop a split second before the first of three shots rang out.
Sylvia crumpled to the floor.
Jo started toward her.
Pamela aimed her weapon back at Jo. “Do not move.”
Fury roared through Jo. She wanted to kill Pamela Blume. She wanted to tear her apart with her bare hands. But she didn’t move. If she got herself killed right now there would be no hope for Tiffany and the others. She owed it to Tony LeDoux to try and save his niece.
Blume said, “You should never have come back, Joanna. But—” she sighed “—you’re here. Do you want to end this where you stand or do you want to join the others and die with them? Either way, my plane is waiting.”
Jo stiffened her spine. “I’ll die with the others.”
“Very well. This way.” Pamela gestured for Jo to precede her through the door on the other side of the room.
The door led into a room similar in size to the one they’d exited except there was a big square hole in the center. About a foot down from the top of the hole metal bars covered it. Inside the hole the light was so bright it hurt to look at it.
Something hardened inside Jo. The place where she had spent those fourteen days was directly below her. Her body trembled. The urge to vomit was so fierce her throat burned.
The smell, the tension, the undeniable sense of doom.
She was back.
The choking sensation had her breathing in unreasonably deep gasps.
Pamela used a key to unlock an almost-invisible control panel in the wall. She pushed a button and the bars rose upward. A white shelflike thing lowered from the ceiling.
Jo’s gut clenched. This was the thing they’d used to lower food and water to the hostages—to her and Ellen and Carrie. To all the others imprisoned here after them.
“Hello?” one of the girls below called.
Suddenly, Jo knew exactly what she had to do. “Tiffany?”
“Yes? I’m Tiffany?”
The girl’s hopeful voice was suddenly nearer the opening in the center of the room.
“My name is Joanna. I’m a friend of your uncle Tony’s.”
Pamela gestured to the lift with her weapon. “Move. You can continue your little get to know each other face-to-face.”
Jo said, “Just one more thing.” With her gaze fixed on Pamela, she shouted to those below, “No matter what you hear, stay away from the opening!”
Then Jo ran for the door.
One shot, then another exploded from Pamela’s weapon, biting into the wall as Jo dodged and darted until she was out th
e door they’d only just entered. She slammed it shut. Two more shots pinged, the noise muffled behind the steel door.
She stabbed the lock button on the keypad.
Beyond the door Pamela screamed her name.
Jo moved away from the door. She hadn’t wanted to leave the girls but she needed Pamela disarmed, and wrestling the gun away from her wouldn’t have been a smart move. Jo did a quick count. Three shots fired at Sylvia. God, she hoped the girl wasn’t dead. She rushed to where she lay. Checked her pulse.
“Oh my God,” she breathed. There was a pulse. “Hang on, Sylvia.”
She checked her wounds. There was blood but not as much as Jo had feared there would be.
Pamela was screaming at her to open the door.
Another shot and then another echoed in the room.
How many was that? Seven or eight? How many rounds did Pamela have left? She hadn’t gotten a good look at the weapon she’d been wielding so she couldn’t be sure.
She needed a phone.
Jo raced back into the room with the monitors. She awakened each one by touching a key on the keyboard. One showed the three women—all alive and huddling in one corner of their prison. Thank God! Another showed Pamela doing something at the door. The third showed the outside.
Okay. Phone. She needed a phone. Where the hell was a phone? Pamela surely had a cell phone. She checked the conference table. A cabinet that sat against one wall. No phone!
“Fuck!”
No time to try and find her way out of here. She wouldn’t leave the others for that long. She prowled through the drawers. A flashlight, napkins, notepads. No phone. Pamela was still at that damned control panel. Just to play it safe Jo grabbed the flashlight from the top drawer.
The lights went out, including the monitors.
Jo decided she would take her quick thinking where the flashlight was concerned as a sign her luck was changing. Rather than use it for light, she opted to clutch it as a potential weapon.
She told her mind to settle. She listened.
It was way too quiet.
Had Pamela turned off the power somehow to disengage the auto locks?
Jo moved to the door that exited into that long corridor. Everything was pitch-black. Fear coiled in her chest. She remembered well all the days in utter darkness.
Don’t think about it.
Focus.
She slipped into the corridor. No more gunshots or shouting. No sound at all.
She held her breath and pressed her body against the wall, the flashlight held at the ready. Eventually Pamela would come looking for her or simply to escape. She probably thought Jo had already taken off. She hoped that was what the other woman was thinking.
She dared to draw in a breath. Released it very slowly, careful not to make a sound.
The whisper of breathing brushed her ears.
Coming toward the corridor.
Pamela.
Jo couldn’t see her but she could hear her.
She remained perfectly still and let the woman come to her. Slow, easy, silent breath.
Pamela was very close now. Her breathing was ragged. She was nervous. She had a good twenty-five or more years on Jo. This was far harder for her.
Bitch.
Sylvia cried out.
A weapon on Jo’s left fired. A blast of light flared in the corridor.
Pamela stared at her during that momentary flash of light.
Jo ducked low and charged the woman, slammed the flashlight into the last place she’d seen her head. Missed. Hit her shoulder. Pamela screamed.
Another flare of bright light. Another explosion of a bullet from a muzzle.
Jo raised her weapon again. This time the flashlight connected with the other woman’s head.
The blow sent the flashlight flying from Jo’s hand and clattering to the floor.
Pamela went down.
Jo scrambled in the darkness for the gun.
Found it.
Pamela didn’t move.
Jo felt around until she found the flashlight, turned it on. Pamela was out. Jo shoved the gun into her waistband, then grabbed the bitch by the arm. She dragged her into the room with the big square hole in the center. At the control box, Jo flipped switches until the lights came back on. She jiggled more switches until the lift lowered downward.
Dragging Pamela by the arm, Jo went to the edge of the hole. “Tiffany, send the other girls up one by one.”
“Okay.”
Jo figured if Tiffany was anything like her mother or her uncle she would be the strongest of the three.
First, the girl, Vickie Parton, rose to the top. She scrambled off the lift and into the nearest corner. Jo assured her everything was going to be fine as she sent the lift down again. This time a girl Jo didn’t know came up. The other girl.
Finally, Tiffany Durand was on her way up.
Jo checked Pamela’s pockets and found the key she’d used as well as her cell phone. Damned battery was dead. Shit! She shoved both into the pocket of her jeans.
Pamela started to groan. Jo dragged her to the lift and lowered her down into the square prison where she had been kept for fourteen endless days. Then she looked to the girls. “Let’s go.”
Once they were in the short corridor, she locked the door, securing Pamela inside. When they reached the room with the computers, she said to Tiffany, “Look for anything to cover yourselves.”
While they searched, Jo squatted next to Sylvia and lifted her into her arms. The girl was thin and petite, like her mother had been. She was still breathing and that was something.
There was nothing for the girls to use to cover themselves and they were out of time. Sylvia needed medical attention. Jo led the way into the first of the corridors.
When they reached a door, she said, “Take the key from my pocket. See if it unlocks the door.” She hoped like hell since Pamela was no longer at the controls that the key would do the trick.
Tiffany fished out the key and shoved it into the lock. The door opened into another corridor. They moved toward the other end as quickly as possible. Warm, sticky blood was invading Jo’s tee. Don’t you die on me, Sylvia.
They reached another door. “Try the key again.” Jo prayed.
Tiffany used the key again, the door opened into the wider, main corridor. Just a few more steps and that long staircase stood in front of them. Jo breathed a sigh of relief.
“Go ahead of me,” she ordered. “There’s a door at the top. You have to push it upward. It opens into a guard shack.”
The three young women huddled together as they climbed the seemingly endless stairs. It felt like hours instead of seconds before they reached the top. Gotta get out of here. Gotta get out of here.
Tiffany and the others cried out when they emerged into freedom. Jo hurried them out into the parking lot. Exhausted, the adrenaline receding, she dropped to her knees on the pavement and placed Sylvia carefully on the crumbling asphalt. She looked around. The girls were clustered close, sobbing.
She needed a damned phone.
Jo looked down at the injured woman. Wait...did Sylvia have a phone? Jo felt around in the pockets of her jeans. The feel of the thin bulge sent her pulse racing. Since she didn’t know Tony’s number by heart she called 911.
When the operator answered, she said, “This is Joanna Guthrie. I’m in the parking lot of the Ingram Building at the old Central State Hospital in Milledgeville. I found the women the police have been looking for. One has been shot. Please send help.”
Tiffany and the others came over and knelt down next to Jo. They thanked her over and over but she couldn’t say a word. She was sobbing so hard she couldn’t speak.
Within five minutes, sirens blaring and lights flashing, at least a dozen official vehicles showed up. When Jo saw Tony running toward the
m, she knew everything would be fine.
It was over.
54
Medical Center, Macon
11:00 p.m.
Tony pushed the wheelchair down the corridor toward the Cardiac Unit. A nurse followed close behind them.
Tiffany was alive. A little bruised, battered and plenty dehydrated but she was alive. As soon as she had been cleared to go by the ER physician back in Milledgeville, an ambulance had been ordered to bring her and Tony to Macon to be with her parents. Tony would forever be indebted to Chief Phelps for taking care of the details so there was no time delay. Tiffany needed to be with her parents.
When they reached the door to Steve’s room, Tony said to the nurse, “Give us a moment.”
She nodded. He came around to the front of the wheelchair and crouched down to Tif’s eye level. “I might not have a chance to tell you this once your parents get their hands on you, but I’m very proud of you. The other girls told the detectives how you helped hold them together. You’re a hero, Tif. A real hero.”
She managed a smile despite the tears slipping down her pale cheeks. Even the dark circles under her eyes and the bruises on her battered body didn’t detract from how beautiful she was. “Thanks, Uncle Tony, but I’m not the hero. Joanna is the hero. That crazy old woman was going to kill us and Joanna saved us.”
Tony blinked at the burn in his eyes. “That’s right. She’s a hero, too.”
Tif’s smile wobbled a little. “So are you. I knew you’d come.”
She’d told him that over and over since the rescue. He kissed her on the forehead and stood. He swiped away a couple of tears he couldn’t hold back and nodded for the nurse to open the door. Angie and Steve looked toward the open door as Tony pushed the wheelchair into the room.
His sister’s eyes lit with joy. Steve cried like a baby. Tony stood back and watched the incredible reunion, his knees a little weak.
He needed to be with his family tonight, but tomorrow he was heading back to Milledgeville. There were statements to make and reports to sign.
And there was Jo.
55