by Ann Swann
With his head clouding with possibilities, senses on overload, John turned, and with a short whistle to Turk, was gone.
Beth floated through the cabin door as if in a dream. Had his lips lingered on her hair? She thought they had. She thought about pinching herself, but that seemed ridiculous. It was John. It really was. He even seemed the same as when they were teens. Was that possible? Look how much I’ve changed, she thought. Deep down, I’m still the same old me. But the exterior . . .
She ran both hands through her hair and walked into the bathroom to examine her reflection in the mirror. She felt self-aware for the first time in months, as though she had found a part of herself that had been missing. But were these just “rebound” feelings? Sam had hurt her so badly. What if John wasn’t what he seemed either? Her mind wanted to pursue that avenue but her heart did not: I won’t spoil it yet, she thought, not yet. See where it goes, see where this path leads.
She plopped down on the bed and sent Abby a long, rambling text message. She didn’t have any idea when, or if, it would go through, but she had to tell someone how alive she felt. She was careful not to mention how she had longed for and searched for John during her teen years; she simply told her daughter that she had met up with an old friend and things felt brighter than they had in months.
Chapter Nineteen
Allie hugged her aunt and practically danced out to the car. Now that she had a plan, she was really looking forward to an afternoon of shopping, then maybe some pizza, or even a movie. She was so excited. When she had relayed the idea to Ginger, it had been all systems go.
She hurried to the car. In her mind, she was already trying on bathing suits and shorts. The Chevy Lumina was nice and warm after sitting in the sun all morning. Once inside, Allie started the engine, clipped on her seat belt, turned down the volume on the radio—why did it always seem so much louder when you got back in the car than when you got out?—slid her shades up on her nose, and backed out.
She was only about a mile out of town when he spoke.
“Pull over.” His voice was rough.
Allie’s eyes immediately sought the rearview mirror. She was horrified to see the disheveled countenance of the man she’d seen studying the Missing Poster this morning. Her first thought was that today would have been a good day to start locking the car—even if no one else in Stutter Creek did. The second thought was, is this some kind of a prank? She immediately thought of Ginger. Was this one of Ginger’s friends from college or something?
“I said pull off the road you stupid bitch!” The voice was guttural, like a dull, serrated knife. Without another word, he slapped a length of Danny’s cord around her neck and yanked backward.
In the time it took her to register that it was not a joke, Allie was inhaling what seemed to be her last breath. Her feet kicked out reflexively as her hands left the steering wheel and flew to her throat, fingernails digging into her own flesh as she fought to get a grip on the thin nylon cord cutting off her air. Just as it seemed she was destined to lose the battle, her right foot shot forward and smashed down on the accelerator. The instant acceleration caused Kurt to fall backward, jerking the cord even tighter.
Allie’s world was almost completely black when she suddenly had the presence of mind to let off the gas and crush both feet down on the brake. Forward momentum abruptly halted, Allie’s seat belt locked across her chest like a monstrous, rib-breaking hug. Kurt, teetering on the edge of the backseat, flew through the air past her head and smashed into the windshield. The safety glass cracked but did not break.
None of this registered on Allie’s oxygen deprived brain. Her body was in pure survival mode. Adrenalin pulsed through her veins with each terrified hammer-blow of her heart. All she could think of was getting rid of the thing cutting into her throat.
Her clawing fingers finally grasped the cord that had been pulled from Kurt’s hand. She whipped it off her neck, giving herself a stinging friction burn, but she didn’t feel it. She could breathe again! Yanking the seatbelt buckle loose, Allie was out and running before she even realized she’d opened the door. Her mind was a blank white page. Her only thought: live!
Kurt sat up and shook his head. He had been temporarily stunned, but everything was coming back to him now. She was getting away. The little blonde slut, number three on his list, was getting away. He couldn’t believe it. The first two victims had been so easy. Now this, on top of the fiasco with the woman in the Camaro . . . what had happened to Fate?
He slid beneath the steering wheel and took aim at the fleeing girl. “It ain’t going down like this,” he muttered, stepping on the gas.
Behind her, Allie heard the sound of her Uncle’s old Chevy. Her fight or flight instinct was not over, not by a long shot. Without even thinking, running completely on reflex, she veered off the road and into the forest, her fists pumping, long legs skimming fallen logs and small deadfalls. She knew these woods fairly well. In the time she’d been staying with her aunt and uncle, she and her friends had roamed them freely. Two miles from here was the lake where they roasted marshmallows and played chicken in the water; a few miles past there was Ginger’s parent’s house. But before that, there was a cave. She and Ginger had explored it more than once with Ginger’s dad.
Kurt drove along the road watching her carefully, looking for an opening. Shouldn’t have varied the plan, he thought. This is what happens when you just react to circumstance instead of following the plan. He had intended to lure Allie to the side of the road on her way home from work in the evening using Danny, just like the others. But Danny was useless now. He couldn’t even stand up.
Truthfully, he had been so intrigued by the idea of taking the girl in broad daylight, right out from under the Missing Girl poster, that he just hadn’t been able to pass it up. Seeing evidence of his handiwork displayed in public like that had excited him tremendously. He’d gotten cocky again. Just like with the woman in the Camaro. He’d actually attributed the coincidence of seeing the drugstore girl park the unlocked car behind the drugstore to Fate, again. Big mistake. Now look what had happened.
Suddenly, he gunned the engine directly toward the spot where he could see her disappearing ponytail flipping like the flag on a white tail deer. Up into the edge of the forest he flew, stomping on the brake at the last second as he plowed up an incline directly between two massive pines. Shoving the lever into park, he flung himself from the car. She wasn’t getting away. Fate or not, she was his.
Allie didn’t slow when she heard the car leave the road. She was headed up the mountain. One part of her mind screamed that it was suicide trying to outrun the killer going uphill, but she was positive she could make it to the hidden entrance of the cave. Only locals knew about it. She would be safe there. If she could just make it to the cave, she was pretty sure she would be safe.
Kurt couldn’t believe it; the girl was heading straight for his hideaway. He slowed to let her think she was getting away. Fate? She was going exactly where he wanted her. He felt inside his pocket to make sure he hadn’t lost the duct tape during the struggle in the car.
***
John gathered the supplies for a picnic and stashed them in the new Coleman ice chest on wheels. It really wouldn’t be much of a picnic; he had invented the idea on the spur of the moment to give himself a good excuse to be around her cabin early the next morning. In truth, he and Turk intended to spend the night there, again. He added his camouflage sleeping bag to the small pile of picnic supplies. Last night, sitting with his back against a tree for hours, had been uncomfortable. He wasn’t a young man, not any more. He laughed, thinking of how the years had passed so quickly, and then he turned his mind back to the present.
His night goggles—the ones with infrared—went into the bag. He wouldn’t carry his gun; he was afraid he would use it too readily. His trigger finger was way too itchy for civilian life, yet. Better to leave it behind and avoid the possibility of “jumping the gun” so to speak.
Aft
er sundown, he and Turk would set up a quiet, smokeless camp just west of her cabin. From that angle, John thought he could see both the front and back of the house at the same time. The creek bordered the east side of the property. He thought it unlikely anyone would come from that direction.
For a moment, he regretted not telling Beth that someone had been hanging around. It would be better if she were on her guard, but after all she’d been through, he didn’t want to mar their reunion with his paranoia. He was sure that’s all it was. After spending the last twenty years on constant guard, he was finding it next to impossible to turn off his reflexes now. Most likely the person who had been near the cabin last night was just some camper from the other side of the mountain who didn’t realize he was on private property.
***
By the time Ray got Janie back to the top of the ravine, a trucker was just pulling off the road to see if he could help with the flat on the Mustang.
As Ray told him the about the dead girl in the ravine, Janie clung to him like a near-drowning victim who’d just been pulled from the ocean. He felt it very likely that she was going into shock.
Spitting his ever-present toothpick onto the ground, the trucker’s eyes—his name was Dax—grew wider and wider as Ray told their story.
“And ya’ll just happened to be out walking down there,” he indicated the bar ditch with a jerk of his head, “after leaving your car, with the engine running, and a flat tire?”
Even through his own shock, Ray could hear the skepticism in the man’s voice. He was sure he would have felt the same way if the roles had been reversed.
“It was sort of a spat,” Ray tried to explain. “Jane jumped out of the car in a huff and I just took off after her.” He realized that now he was saying that he had chased one young woman into the same place where another young woman lay dead. “But the woman, er woman’s body, isn’t in the bar ditch, it’s in a ravine on the other side of the ditch.” He shook his head as he realized he wasn’t helping his cause at all. “Actually, it sounds a lot worse than it is.”
“Hell!” Dax interjected. “Don’t know how it could sound much worse. Dead body sounds pretty damn bad no matter how you tell it!” He began to back toward his truck. “Maybe you know how that gal wound up in that ditch,” he said softly, never taking his eyes off Ray. “Might be you planned on leaving that one down there, too.” His face clouded noticeably. “You got her drugged or something?”
Ray looked at Janie. She was barely staying upright. If he hadn’t been clasping her firmly about the waist, she would probably be lying in a boneless heap at his feet. He shook his head, not believing the way things were getting turned around. “She’s the one who found . . . the body. It was horrible.” His eyes strayed involuntarily toward the ravine. “I think she might be going into shock.” He jiggled Janie’s chin with his free hand. “Wake up!” He said. “Tell this guy what happened!”
Janie’s head bobbled; her eyes rolled. A teardrop shaped globule of saliva slipped from the corner of her mouth. Both men watched as it hit the shoulder of the road. It made a faint dark spot in the dust.
“I’d been teasing her when we had the flat,” Ray began to babble. “And she got out and took off walking. She walked right off in the ditch.” He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth as if the spit had been his, not Janie’s. He glanced at the trucker imploringly. “I swear it’s the truth . . . I don’t know anything about that—that other girl.” And then a thought occurred out of the blue. “Have you got a blanket?” he asked.
Dax was momentarily dumbfounded. A blanket? What’d he want with a blanket? Maybe to wrap up the body? Then it hit him: shock. The young girl was shivering and drooling. Maybe she really was in shock, but he didn’t want to take his eyes off the boy—he looked kind of like your run-of-the-mill hoodlum—long enough to get a blanket. Then an idea hit him. “If you’re on the up and up,” he said. “Then gimme the girl and go get the keys out of your car so I’ll know you ain’t gonna run off the second I turn my back.” He realized that he might be giving the guy an opportunity to escape, but as long as he had the girl, Dax didn’t care. She reminded him of his own daughter back when she’d been that age.
Ray nodded and shuffled over to where Dax was standing. He noticed the cell phone he was holding.
“I dialed 911,” he said. “Law oughtta be here soon.” He glanced at the tire iron mounted on the backside of the cab. It was the one he used to thump the tires each time he started a new trip.
Ray noticed him looking at the tire iron, but he wasn’t worried about that. He was just glad the guy was finally taking him seriously.
He pictured his own phone tucked into the console of the Mustang.
Dax slipped his arm around Janie’s waist. He did his best not to touch Ray or let Ray touch him. Ray thought, I could really give him a heart attack right now if I suddenly yelled Boo! But of course, he didn’t. It was just his wild streak again—the one that had gotten them in that ravine in the first place. Maybe his dad was right; maybe it was time to grow up.
Without further ado, Ray hurried over, turned off the Mustang, grabbed his phone, and rushed back to hand the keys to Dax.
“Sorry, man,” Dax said. “I just couldn’t take a chance on you being, you know, something other than what you say.” He shifted Janie carefully to his other arm and then opened the door to the sleeper cab on his truck. “Think I ought to put her in here? Or just wrap her up and put her in your car?”
“Let’s just wrap her up and put her in the Mustang,” Ray said. “She might freak out if we tried to hoist her into the sleeper. You say the cops are on the way?” He absolutely hated being out of control like this. He wondered if that is why Janie got mad so quickly. Maybe she felt out of control when he was joking and throwing his weight around like an idiot. Like he could do whatever he wanted.
“Cops are on the way,” Dax replied, handing Ray an orange and white blanket. Together they wrapped it around Janie and placed her gently in the passenger seat of the car. She looked at Ray and he thought he saw a gleam of recognition in her eyes. “Wish we had some coffee or something to give her. Even a drink of water, anything. I just want to do something—hey, are they bringing an ambulance for the, you know, body?”
Dax shrugged. “I got a bottle of water in the truck. I don’t know about an ambulance.” He looked up. “I called when I saw you leading her out of the ditch. I didn’t know about the body.” His eyes still registered a hint of suspicion. “Guess we’re about to find out. Here’s the Brewer County Deputy now.”
Rookie detective, Woody James, took the call from the Brewer County Sheriff’s Department. Even though Amanda was found in Brewer County, and she’d gone missing in Carrel County, the Attempt to Locate had covered the entire state.
“Sounds like our girl.” He hung up the phone. “Officer described a young blonde who appears to have been raped and strangled. Not necessarily in that order.” He shook his head. “Certainly fits the description of both Amanda and our suspect’s modus operandi.”
Senior Detective Kendra Dean was already pulling on her jacket. “I’ll drive,” she said.
Chapter Twenty
Kurt saw Allie just inside the cave’s almost-hidden entrance. She had stopped in her tracks when she spied Danny lying in a heap, hands and feet tied so that he couldn’t move, much less walk. He didn’t appear to be breathing.
Allie was bending down to get a closer look when Kurt crept up behind her and delivered a double-fisted hammer blow to the back of her neck just at the base of her skull. Administered just right, such a blow could cause instant loss of consciousness. Just another neat trick he’d picked up while incarcerated. His lawyer had advised him to use his time in prison to further his education; now he was infinitely thankful that he had followed that advice.
As soon as she went down, Kurt slapped the duct tape over her mouth and began to drag her toward the rear of the cave. The old woman would have to wait. When he was finished with Al
lie, she was going into the abyss. He couldn’t wait to hear her body hit the bottom of the seemingly bottomless pit. Too bad the daylight didn’t reach back there; he could only imagine what she would look like lying way down at the bottom of the shaft like a discarded rag doll. That would be an image he could take on the road to examine again and again. It would keep him warm on those cold, cold nights.
He rolled her over on the damp cave floor and jerked down the zipper on his stolen jeans even as his other hand began squeezing her windpipe.
Shoving his pants off his bony hips, still smashing down on Allie’s throat with all his weight, Kurt straddled her and tried to yank her shorts off with his free hand. In his excitement, he forgot to undo the buttons. He became enraged, taking his hand from her throat to tear at the fabric as if he would rip it from her body.
Allie’s stunned brain awoke. She pulled her knees up and instinctively began to rock from side to side, trying to free her body from the hateful burden.
Cursing, he reached for her throat with both hands.
But Allie was still in survival mode.
She whipped her head from side to side.
She couldn’t dislodge him, but she was able to prevent him from getting a death grip again. On instinct, she reached between his legs and grabbed his scrotum. With both hands she twisted and squeezed and dug her nails in with all her remaining strength. She heard and felt something rip and then warmth began to trickle into her palms. Blood, she thought. I hope that’s blood.
