Even though I knew it wouldn’t help, I wanted to call Garrett and ask how the investigation was coming. I wanted all the details, even the smallest minute indication that they were one step closer to catching Jonas and finding Katie. I couldn’t call, though, because I couldn’t be distracting him from doing his job. I knew he’d check in with me when he could.
I busied myself with my pendulum dowsing, asking about specific locations and remote possibilities until my eyes were crossing from fatigue and my stomach was grumbling, demanding food. Unfortunately, I had an intense craving for a pizza made with sausage, roasted peppers and provolone from Serious Pie. There was a very good chance that what I was craving wasn’t pizza at all but the naked body of a certain FBI agent. And that agent was definitely not Jill.
Thinking of Jill made me realize that I’d been home for several hours and she had not poked her head in to check on me once and it was after nine. She had not even asked to use the bathroom all day. That woman must have an iron bladder or else she’d chosen to squat in the tall grass rather than use the washroom in my trailer. I went to the window and squinted into the darkness. Jill was not in her car. No doubt she was out patrolling the perimeter like the badass agent she was.
Wookie went to the door and whined.
“Aw, sorry, big guy. You probably need to get out to pee, right?”
I went to the back room to get my runners that were lodged under my bag. When I moved my bag, my divining rods tumbled out onto the floor. As I stuck my feet inside my runners, I noticed the rods vibrating. At first I thought they were trembling because they’d been knocked to the floor but then I picked them up. They simultaneously swung around to point behind me.
“Oh shit.”
My first thought was that Agent Jill had managed to nab and kill Jonas. But, if that wasn’t the case, there was a body out there and I’d better tell her about it. I stuffed the rods in my back pocket and opened the door. Wookie bounded outside, ran to Jill’s car and peed on her front tire. I caught up to him just as he took off into the field behind my trailer, happily barking as if on the trail of something that had the potential to be rabbit stew.
The wind kicked up a notch and whipped my hair straight back from my forehead as I followed Wookie into the night. My nerves jangled as I waded through the tall grass. The dog was headed into the back forty and he was already almost out of my line of sight.
“C’mon, Wookie!” I called. “Let’s not do this tonight!”
There was a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, and when I pulled out my rods and they immediately pointed in the direction Wookie was headed, that feeling turned into full-blown panic. I froze to the spot while I considered my options.
I could just go back to the trailer and wait for Wookie to return and wait for Agent Jill to come and tell me what was going on. Besides, it was not like the dog would get lost on our acreage or beyond. Whenever he’d wandered out of eyesight before, he’d always returned after a few minutes. He could be dropped off ten miles away and still find his way back home.
“I’m going back inside!” I shouted to Wookie but the wind tore my words from my throat and buried them in an angry howl. As I shouted and turned away the rods whipped to point behind me.
“Damn. Damn. Damn!” I did not want to follow the rods.
And I sure as hell did not want to find whatever body they were indicating, even if it meant that body was Jonas’s and this entire horrible ordeal was over.
With a sigh and a loud colorful curse, though, I turned back around and followed where the rods were pointing. After all, maybe a girl’s body was out there on my property. I sure hoped not but Jill was probably out patrolling the perimeter nowhere near where the rods were saying a body could be, so I needed to be sure. Maybe Jonas was making some sort of a sick point by tossing the victim near my house.
And maybe that victim was Katie.
The thought hit me like a punch to the gut, and it took me a second to recover my breath. If it was Katie, I owed it to her mom and out of respect for all our years of friendship to not let her body sit out in the elements for longer than necessary.
So I put one foot in front of the other, following the rods and listening to Wookie’s distant bark. The area I was headed was one of the sections of land sold off when Gramps began downsizing his property. Whoever bought the acreage had allowed most of the land to go fallow and had only farmed less than half.
I did not want to head off in the direction of that acreage. Quicksand thoughts rolled around in my head and made me want to run home, lock the door and hide under my covers. But the rods pulled me forward and Wookie barked off in the distance. I kept wading through the grass and followed. In the dim light I could already make out in the distance the garden shed Grandma had locked me in when I was just a kid. I’d hoped the new owners of the land would bulldoze the building but they never had and now I was nearly upon it. The gray silhouette of the narrow building looked ominous against the night sky.
“There is nothing sinister about a garden shed,” I told myself as I walked. “It’s just a building for hoes and rakes and...and...”
And whips with metal bits tied on the ends of the strands of leather to inflict the most damage and pain.
“Rotten little girls with sluts for mothers don’t deserve a roof over their heads,” Grandma hissed in my ear.
“Shut up!” I screamed until my throat was raw.
I shook my head but her voice persisted and the memories came in waves. The worst night ever had been when she’d discovered me pendulum dowsing, and now it was divining rods that were leading me right there. Soon I’d reached Wookie, who was standing directly in front of the garden shed, his head low, ears back and the rumble of a growl emanated from between bared teeth. The rods crossed.
“Jesus, Wookie.” I blew out a nervous breath. “C’mon, boy.”
I whistled for him and patted my thigh but Wookie never even lifted his head or turned in my direction.
“There is nothing inside that old shed,” I said, my voice angry now. “Nothing but bad memories so come o-o-on!”
Even though I said the words I knew they were a lie. The rods didn’t make shit up. There was a body in there and, even though it could be Katie’s, I couldn’t bring myself to open the door.
With a grab of Wookie’s collar, I attempted to yank him away but he whipped his large head around and snapped at me; something he’d never done before.
“Jesus, Wook. What’s got into you?” I ran my hand through my hair. “Did a rabbit get inside that shed? Is that what this is all about? Some stupid friggin’ bunny?”
But there was no rabbit. Maybe he realized that Katie, his previous owner, was in there and he had some kind of misplaced loyalty to the girl who didn’t care a rat’s ass about him. Well, if a dog could be loyal to her, I sure as hell didn’t have the right to walk away.
“Fine.”
I pushed past Wookie and put my hand on the door handle. “I’ll open the shed. I hope you’re happy.”
Wookie growled low and deep in reply. I sighed and went to turn the door but, of course, it was locked.
“Guess we can’t get in.”
I released a long relieved breath but even as I took my hand off the knob I knew what I had to do. If this was a dozen years ago the key to the lock would be a yard away under a rock but this lock looked newer.
That gave me pause. There was only one reason why a new lock would be on this old shed, and that was because it was being used for a new purpose.
I walked a few feet to the right of the shed looking for the rock that used to be the hiding place for the old key. I’d found it as a kid and had thrown the key far and wide into the field. Grandma had laughed at that because, of course, she had spares. Many spares.
In the dark and tall weeds I actually tripped over the rock bef
ore my eyes could adjust enough to see it. I bent and lifted the stone and, sure enough, there was a silver key with hardly a speck of dirt on it.
When I slid the key in the lock I said a mental prayer that the rods were wrong for once and that the only thing inside was a poor trapped rabbit hiding from Wookie. I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when I flung the door open.
Agent Jill lay in the center of the small shed, her hands and feet bound by rope and a white ribbon tied tightly around her neck.
She was dead.
A scream burst from my throat and died there as I was hit on the back of my head so hard it brought me to my knees and I bit through my lip. I attempted to turn around and face my attacker but even as I fought to get to my feet I was hit again and again. The world faded to black.
Lights out, Julie Hall.
* * *
Who knows how long later, my first thought was that I must be dead because I couldn’t see a thing. The second thought I had was that I couldn’t possibly be dead because I had pain. A shit-load of mind-blowing pain in my skull that was far worse than I’d had even on my worst benders. I realized something was over my head and that was why I couldn’t see. Some kind of cloth hood. My wrists and ankles were bound, and the rope cut into the familiar abrasions from earlier. I tried to find a voice to scream but only a garbled groan passed through my lips. When I struggled against the ropes they didn’t budge.
Think! I ordered my brain but the response I got from my head was: No thinking. Let’s just take a lo-o-ong nap.
The urge to give in to sleep was strong but, instead, I tried to focus on what was happening. I was being bounced around in some kind of hard open trailer. I could feel the cool night air on my skin and hear the loud motor of the vehicle pulling it. Occasionally the trailer would bounce or lurch in a rut and my body would slam painfully into the sides, or worse, I’d slide against something soft and fleshy that I knew had to be Jill.
Dead Jill.
I tried really hard not to think of that. Instead, I focused on sounds.
Jonas had somehow gotten on the property, killed Jill and then commandeered Gramps’s ATV and trailer. Gramps kept the keys for the ATV on a hook inside his door.
I hoped Gramps was okay. The overwhelming emotion that accompanied that thought threatened to swallow me whole.
“Jonas! Don’t do this!” I shouted against whatever hood covered my head but my scream was blown away by the wind.
I used to know this part of our land like the back of my hand but having no vision fooled with my head. Near as I could figure we were heading west, and the only thing in that direction was a creek that was normally just a trickling line of shallow water but now, with spring runoff, it was a few feet deep and across.
Would he tie the ribbon to my body before or after he strangled me?
The thought iced my veins just as the trailer came to an abrupt stop. Footsteps sounded and there was the rustle and grunt and dragging sounds that had to be Jill’s body being hauled out of the trailer.
“Please...” My voice came out on a whimper. “Don’t...don’t.”
No response came. The only sounds were heavy, solid footsteps accompanied by a slow dragging sound that stopped after a few minutes. He was tossing Jill in the creek. Poor Jill. Nobody deserved that. I blinked back tears and struggled to free myself. I hoisted my body over the edge of the wagon and wriggled and writhed until I’d flung myself over the side, landing on dirt and rocks with a solid umph.
Now what?
My ankles and wrists were bound and I had a cloth tied over my head. I found a large rock, placed my wrists on an edge of it and fought against my ties. If I could get the ropes off my wrists I could remove the hood and free my feet and then run!
The ropes finally felt like they were loosening when abruptly I was hauled upright by my armpits then dragged and flung back into the trailer.
My lips parted to protest but then I heard an electronic hum and my entire body went rigid. I couldn’t form thoughts or move.
I knew I was put back in the shed but just when I began to feel like I could protest, I heard the hum and my body went rigid again. After a while I regained control of my body and my thoughts enough to realize I’d been tased. What roused me was someone trying to remove the cloth from my head. At first I remained very still but then I decided to head butt my attacker. I was probably going to end up dead anyway. There was no way I was going down without drawing blood! Fingers fumbled with ties around my neck and just as the hood was being lifted off I pulled my head back and slammed it forward connecting with Jonas’s face.
“Ouch! God fucking dammit!”
But that wasn’t Jonas.
It was Katie!
I shrugged the hood the rest of the way off and there she was in all her glory. Except not very glorified at all. Her feet were bound and so were her wrists. Her hair was caked with old blood and she now had fresh red that ran down her chin from her nose.
“Katie! It’s you!” I screamed. “Oh my God.” I shuffled on my ass to get closer to her. “I’m so happy to see you.”
“Sh-h-h!” she hissed. “He’ll hear you. You’re happy to see me, huh? You’ve got a funny way of showing it. I figured you were in on this little fucked-up episode but...” She looked me over and shook her head. “I guess not.”
“You thought I was in on this?” My jaw dropped in surprise. “Just because we had a fight doesn’t mean I wasn’t doing anything and everything to try and find you!”
“Fine. You obviously did a fine fucking job. You found me. Now what? We’re both stuck.” She blinked back tears. “There’s no way out of here. Lord knows I’ve tried. The closest I came was rubbing the duct tape off my mouth and loosening the rope on my wrists enough that they didn’t cut off the circulation. I’ve been tased so many times I look like I’ve got chicken pox from the barbs, and drugged so much my brain doesn’t work. It’s been days, Jules.” Her voice broke. “I wish he’d just kill me already instead of making me starve to death.”
“You’re not going to starve to death and he isn’t going to kill us. We’re getting out of here just as soon as I get the ropes off my wrists. After the ropes are off I’ll snap the back off the dead bolt and use something to undo the screws and then we’re free.”
“You got some superpowers besides finding dead people?” Katie remarked coolly. “‘Cuz I don’t see any of that shit happening. I’ve been here for days. I get water bottles drugged with his sleeping pills as he told me but that’s it. There’s no way out of here.”
I explained to her how I’d been abducted before and how I’d managed to get out but she was only half listening. The look on her face said she’d given up and made her peace with dying. The girl in front of me wasn’t my irreverent, plucky bitch of a half-friend. This girl was broken and it killed me to see it.
“Don’t give up,” I whispered.
“Your grandma knew all about it. How fucked up is that? She knew all along he was killing and she just held it over him so that she could keep beating you. That’s what he told me. Started with some poor baby in a well. How fucked up is that?”
Baby in the well? The first time I’d used my rods I’d found that toddler. Could Jonas have been killing that long? He would’ve just been a kid himself.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re delirious but you’re going to be okay. We just need to get out of here. We’re going to fight and get free. There’s no way we’re going to let Jonas win.”
Katie’s face screwed up into a skeptical sneer. “Who the hell is Jonas?”
“Jonas. You know...” I nodded at her. “The guy I worked with at the gas station. Guess you didn’t see who took you but that’s who it was. He’s been taking all those girls and—”
“Jesus...” Katie muttered. “I saw who took me, Jules. Looked hi
m right in the eye while he pointed a Taser at me. It sure as hell wasn’t any guy named Jonas. It was—”
But the name never left her throat because there was the unmistakable sound of a key in the lock outside. I looked at the door in fear but struggled to my feet hoping I could perform my head-butting maneuver again, this time on Jonas when he opened the door.
The door flung open and the figure was backlit by the bright moon behind him.
Gramps.
“Thank God!” I cried. “You gotta be careful. He’s still out there and—”
But even as I spoke I realized he had a roll of white ribbon in one hand and a handgun in the other.
Chapter Twelve
“No-o-o!” I cried.
But Gramps ignored my protest. He had Katie by her ankles and was dragging her out of the shed, ignoring her screams of protest. He hauled her out of the shed and then there was the fumbling sound of a key going back in the lock, but I rushed the door before he could lock it again and it sprang open. With my ankles bound I couldn’t run. I fell out through the door and landed on the rocks outside while I screamed and screamed.
“Shut up or I’ll blow both your heads off right here,” Gramps hissed.
This was impossible! How could the man I’d loved my entire life be a monster?
“Wh-why?” I murmured. “Why are you doing this?”
“I love you, Delma,” Gramps said fiercely as he wiped sweat from his forehead. “I’m not gonna hurt you. Once I deal with this brat you and I can go live in the woods and fish and—”
A Grave Calling Page 22
