by Ninie Hammon
The man who'd held a knife to her throat was big, had to squeeze through the opening in the fence with the puppy on his heels, barking. But he must have closed the opening in the puppy's face because as Bailey was dragged across the neighboring back yards, through pools of dark and shadow, she could hear the puppy's barks fade into the distance.
This can’t be real!
It had happened too fast. Had it even been a minute ago — no, maybe thirty seconds — that she'd been telling Bundy to go potty and a heartbeat after the words left her lips she was hauled away into the night by the man who'd murdered Poli and tortured Jeni. Bailey had already been strangled to death by this man once and the thought of it happening again, to her own body this time … no waking up later on the floor, feeling all the sensations of being strangled to death, but still alive.
There'd be no waking up at all.
A tiny voice in her head whispered that dead was not such a bad thing. It had been so appealing three months ago that she'd tried to put herself in the grave. But that time was a lifetime of experience ago and life had become infinitely precious. That parade of terrifying moments — lying on the wet pavement looking under a car as a one-eyed monster murdered her husband, hearing the roar of flood waters thundering toward her, blinking in and out of the tortured mind of an insane child — all seemed puny compared to this. She was so afraid now she thought she might be sick, might throw up, or pass out, or start screaming and not be able to stop until someone silenced her.
She kept the nausea at bay and held onto the frayed edges of her panic with her fingernails. And tried to think! What could she do?
The answer was grim: absolutely nothing. These men were practiced killers and they wouldn't blink at blowing her guts out her back or slicing her throat.
But they hadn't killed her when they had the chance. The man could have sliced her throat and even now she'd be bleeding out on the grass of the back yard. He didn't.
If he'd wanted her dead, she'd be dead. Clearly, he wanted her alive.
And she knew why. He wanted to know how she had known the girl named Poli was "in danger," that a man with a skull tattoo on his wrist was going to try to kill her. And when they asked her how she knew, what could she say?
Well, it's like this, see — I paint pictures of what hasn't happened yet …
She had no explanation they would believe.
And what would they do to her when they didn't believe her?
What would they do to her to make her give them answers that made some sense to them?
She heard the remembered sound of the chainsaw, its rumble echoing off rock walls.
The men hauled her stumbling, dragged, carried her across the back yard of the neighboring house toward a dark car that was parked a couple of houses down beneath a burned-out — or otherwise disabled — streetlight.
When they approached the car, the driver, a small, Middle-Eastern-looking man hopped out and opened the back door and the man who had held a gun on her shoved her into the car, pushed her down into the floorboard behind the driver, jammed her painfully into the small space and slammed the car door. Seconds later, the knife-wielding man got into the back seat on the passenger side. The driver and the third man leapt into the front seat and the car began to move forward. Not in a hurry, slowly, drawing no attention. Every second, they were moving farther and farther from any hope Bailey had of survival. How long had she been gone? Two minutes, even? Three, tops. She considered trying to leap across the car, open the door and dive out of the moving vehicle. But that was absurd. She'd never even make it up out of the floorboard.
When she lifted her head, she saw that the man seated on the other side of the car was looking at her. His face was washed in rhythmic splashes of light and shadow as they passed beneath streetlights.
"I come to take you and you're served to me on a silver platter." The voice was too rough and ragged to be natural. It'd been damaged somehow and now came out in a human growl. "Scared, are you?"
Then he slapped her, backhanded — casually sent hot pain searing down her cheek, knocking her sideways so her head connected with the back of the front seat with a force that blurred her vision. There was no reason for him to slap her, and he had done it offhandedly, with no clear intent of any kind, like a man might reach up and flick a ladybug off his shoulder.
"You don't know what scared is, little mouse. But you're about to find out."
Bailey could only draw quick, shallow breaths, her heartbeat a single, prolonged hum, a hammering blur of sound so loud it drowned out the rest of the world. But she saw his wrist when he slapped her, saw the skull tattoo. She'd been right. This was the man who had murdered Poli, had yanked out a bloody chunk of her hair, kicked in her teeth and then strangled the life out of her.
Bailey was, indeed, a mouse, hypnotized by the dead black eyes of a snake.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Brice concentrated on the letters and number on the sign Bailey had seen through the eyes of one of the teenage girls who'd soon be dumped into the back of a van and hauled away. Maybe already had been.
"Ohio Route 7 runs right along the riverbank," he said. Outside he heard the puppy barking.
Whispering Mountain Lake was in West Virginia, but the western shore was only a couple of miles from the Ohio River which formed the whole length of the boundary between West Virginia and Ohio.
"Some letters before the W." Brice repeated Bailey's words, willing his mind to figure out the puzzle.
T.J. and Dobbs leaned close. The puppy's barking was softer now. "And the W is on the line above."
"With some letters in front of the W … " T.J. said. "It might be S as in SW, southwest Ohio Route 7."
"Think about what she said — how it was dark," Brice said. "Outside the spill of light from any town. And rocks. When the girls were shoved out of the van, they landed on rocks. So this wasn't a field or a barn, anything like that."
Brice heard the puppy scratching on the back screen door.
"And a rock wall," put in Dobbs. "What's that tell us?"
"If the letter in front of the W was N, then we might be onto something." Brice's mind was moving fast, skipping from one thought to the next. "A rock wall — like in a cave. Nothing more private and soundproof than a cave and Rock Creek Cavern is on North West Ohio Route 7 … what? Ten, twelve miles from the casino?"
The puppy scratching on the screen door was annoying and Dobbs was closest to it.
"Open the screen and let the puppy in," Brice told him.
And even as he said the words something felt hollow and empty in his belly.
No.
He leapt to his feet, dropping the sketchpad where Bailey had jotted down what she had seen through the eyes of the girls in the closet.
In two strides he was at the door. When he opened it, Bundy trotted happily inside.
"Bailey?" he called out.
Nothing.
He switched on the back porch light, which flooded the porch and the area directly in front of it in light, but left the rest of the huge yard in shadow.
"Bailey!"
T.J. and Dobbs caught his tone.
"She took the puppy out to pee, couldn't a'been more'n a couple of minutes ago," T.J. said.
Brice stepped out onto the porch, calling urgently, "Bailey! Bailey, where are you?"
He flipped the switch on his shoulder mic.
"Unit Seven, this is Unit One. Report position and status."
Unit Seven was Deputy John Tackett, the officer Brice had stationed at the back gate of the yard.
Brice let go of the button. Silence.
He pushed the button again. "Tackett — position and status!"
Still silence.
"Unit Four, do you copy?" he said into the mic, but he was already moving out the back door, across the porch and into the yard. Unit Four was the deputy in a cruiser parked at the curb in front of the Watford House.
"Affirmative, Unit One. All cl—"
Bundy had hopped back outside when Brice opened the door and the puppy was racing across the yard, not toward the gate, but toward the back corner, yapping. The fence there didn't look—
Dobbs stepped out onto the porch behind Brice.
"She must be inside," he said. "Came back in by the front door. I'll go check."
That was absurd, of course, but even more absurd was the fact that she wasn't in the back yard with the puppy. She hadn't been gone five minutes. Not even three. Dobbs had started the coffeemaker before she left and the decanter was less than half full.
He heard Dobbs calling her name in the house and felt the dread solidify into a lead ball in his belly. His heart knocked so hard his vision pulsed, and the carotid arteries thumped in his throat as if jolts of electricity slammed through them.
"Tackett, position and status!" he commanded into his shoulder mic as he raced across the back yard, looking around in the shadows beyond the porch light. Silence. He punched the button again. "Four, did you see anything, anybody in the yard beside the—"
He stopped cold. The back fence wasn't right. He ran to it and a quick examination told him everything he needed to know in one sickening glance. The nails connecting the fence to the post had been pulled out, and the fence had been shoved inward, across the grass, bending it down. There was dirt beneath where the fence had been and as he knelt down to take a closer look, his mind was already three steps beyond where he sat crouched down.
Bailey was gone.
She'd been kidnapped.
The words slammed into his consciousness individually, each one with the force of a wrecking ball.
That's what the puppy had been barking at!
With a sheriff in her kitchen and officers front and back. These guys had ice in their veins. Snatching her out of her own back yard … but he instantly calculated they hadn't come expecting to do that. That'd been a lucky bonus. They had come prepared to take on all of them — kill everyone except Bailey.
Where was Tackett?
When he stood and turned toward the back gate, he saw that T.J. was already there. He had opened the gate and was looking at something on the other side.
Something on the ground.
No!
He knew from the look on T.J.'s face what he'd find when he got there.
The sick feeling, the awful sick feeling …
T.J. stepped aside wordlessly when Brice got to the gate. Tackett was lying on the ground just beyond in a puddle of blood. His throat had been slashed. Even from where he stood, Brice could see that the wound went all the way to his spine.
Moth thoughts, fluttering around a back porch light:
Marjorie Tackett was pregnant with their third child. John was hoping for a girl after two rowdy boys, but had chosen not to be told the baby's sex.
"We'll wait until the baby's born to find out … we're old-fashioned like that."
John had taken the statement of that poor fisherman who'd hooked onto the dead body of the girl in the lake.
He keyed his mic. "Officer down!" It took a great force of will to bar the entrance to his conscious mind, banish memories of the last time he'd spoken those words. "I repeat, officer down. All units respond to the Watford House."
He drew a breath.
"Dispatch, I need a bus."
He didn't need an ambulance. It was too late for that. Tackett was dead.
But Bailey was alive. At least for now.
Sam Henderson, Unit Four, who had been stationed in a cruiser in front of the house, was suddenly standing beside him and Brice didn't know when he'd arrived.
Brice turned to him.
"You're in charge here," he said. Sam stood gawking at John's body, in shock. Brice grabbed his shoulders and got in his face. "I said, you're in charge."
Maybe Sam nodded, maybe he didn't. Brice didn't know because he was running across the lawn back to the house as his mind was forming plans. He pushed past Dobbs and stepped into the kitchen.
He paused.
Get a grip!
Took a breath.
Then he punched the button on his shoulder mic.
"Dispatch, this is Unit One. Notify the Weatherford County Sheriff and the Ohio State Police Post in Lewiston of a ten-thirty-one." Ten-thirty-one was the code for major crime in progress. "A confirmed 207." A 207 was a kidnapping. "Repeat, confirmed 207. Suspects headed from the Nautilus Casino toward Rock Creek Cavern on north West Ohio Route 7. Armed and extremely dangerous, at least two subjects suspected in the" — there was a heartbeat pause; he needed a full breath to continue — "the murder of a police officer and the death of the Jane Doe we dragged out of the lake this morning."
The dispatcher repeated his message back to him, her voice strained, her words terse and clipped. He was proud of Sylvia for her professionalism.
"Dispatch Units Five and Nine Code Three to the Tucker's Landing Marina to take the launch across the lake. Contact Water Patrol — Dan Witherspoon's on vacation, call dispatch and advise … whoever! … that I need a boat at Joe's Hole Marina — Code Three." Code Three meant haul ass!
Again, the dispatcher repeated his message back to him.
He'd get the West Virginia State Police to meet him on the other side of the lake to take him across the Ohio River Bridge and on to Rock Creek Cavern. But the Ohio officers would get there sooner. He needed to call Gail Miller, the Weatherford County Sheriff — on her cellphone, let her know what she and her officers would be walking into.
Gail and John Tackett's wife … weren't they cousins?
Brice paused then, looked at T.J. and Dobbs. There was nothing to say.
"Keep going over those notes she left. There may be more information in there that we can use. If you find anything, call my cell. Or dispatch will relay messages."
Then he was running again, out to his cruiser. He could hear the mournful wail of sirens ripping open the night air. Pulling out of the Watford House driveway, he slammed the car into gear and peeled out, leaving rubber smoking on Sycamore Street, his lights flashing and his own siren joining the symphony.
Only then, when he had done all that he knew to do, did Brice allow himself to suffer the onslaught of guilt that he wouldn't allow himself to feel before, with his game face on. Now, as he flew down the streets, ignoring stop signs and passing cars on the right and left, he considered the reality of the situation.
Deputy Sheriff John Tackett — a friend — had been murdered. Had died only minutes ago! His body was probably still warm.
Bailey was in the hands of the men who'd killed him. Murderers who wanted information she couldn't give them, information they would stop at nothing to get.
His grip on the steering wheel was so tight his knuckles turned white.
John had been killed in the line of duty. But Bailey — that was on Brice. He never should have let her out of his sight for a second.
Whatever happened to her was — His. Fault.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
T.J. stood with Dobbs in Bailey's kitchen. Silent. Not companionable silence. Nothing-to-say silence. They needed to get to work, do something, go back over Bailey's notes. Search for other pieces of the puzzle in the random images she'd been able to see through the eyes of them girls who was being hauled away to be murdered.
Of course, Bailey was being hauled away to be murdered right along with 'em!
T.J. swore, let fly a string of the most colorful expletives in his vocabulary, and he'd collected many of them over the years, collected and stored but never used.
Dobbs looked at him and made no comment, though the explosion of profanity constituted more cursing than he'd ever heard come out of T.J.'s mouth in the going-on-seven-decades of their relationship.
T.J. didn't curse. Not even in the military. It was a self-discipline he ruthlessly imposed on himself, one of many. Discipline built strength and T.J. was determined to be strong. He'd long since traced that determination to its source: the weakness he'd felt watchin' his daddy beat his mama, helpless
to do anything about it. He understood that the violence had hardened his childhood, turned it to stone, and he'd had to carve from it the shape of his manhood. But understanding it was as far as he ever got. He never mastered it, rose above it or worked through it or came to terms with it or whatever other psychobabble term shrinks used. He just incorporated it into his life.
That's why he had joined the military, why he'd chosen Special Forces. Heat, cold, back-breaking labor, sleep deprivation — T.J. had switched it all off, stopped attending to it, assigned it no value. It flat out didn't matter how bad conditions got, T.J. went on.
A blind determination to be strong was the reason T.J. pushed himself relentlessly in everything he did, constructing strength from the bricks of small acts of self-discipline, mortared together with the belief that if he always forced himself to do things the hard way, it would toughen him.
That's why — and how — he had eradicated his West Virginia dialect.
And why he refused to allow himself to curse. Obscenities were a crutch for the lazy. It was mental release. T.J. didn't want to vent — what was inside he kept inside, to make him strong.
But he cursed now, fouled the air around him with every obscenity he could think of. Cursed himself and Brice for their stupidity. Cursed them both for their colossal failure as law enforcement officers to assess the threat and guard against it.
Dobbs returned to the table, but sat down opposite where Brice had been seated when Bailey was leaning over his shoulder, showing him the notes she had made — when they were figuring out that WOH7 stood for North West Ohio Route 7.
T.J.'s mind was racing, constructing survival scenarios — ways Bailey could somehow — and discarding them immediately. He wasn't yet able to stare the naked truth in the eye, grasp the implications of it. He couldn't make himself admit that Bailey—
