Worst Laid Plans (A Maddox Storm Mystery Book 1)

by Claire Robyns

  A wave of rage swept through me. Seriously, a dam of red actually burst into my vision.

  I clutched the chair leg in both hands and stabbed at the glass with all my strength. My scream came out like a tribal war cry as I stabbed a second time, a third, and that one was the charm. The wooden poker went straight through, shattering shards of glass over my head.

  “Yes!” I gave a fist pump and stood there, admiring my work for a moment before I stabbed and swung and scraped a large section of the window clear.

  Then I started screaming. “Help! Help! Someone, please! Help!”

  I fell silent to listen.

  The ache at my temple was trying to pound its way out and my throat scratched like hell. I swallowed tentatively. I didn’t know if it was the chloroform or if dehydration had already set in, but I’d have to conserve my screams.

  I stayed up on that table for most of the day.

  There was more traffic than I would have guessed. A couple of cars every hour or so, maybe more, maybe less, I had no way of telling how quickly or slowly time passed. But I changed it up, sometimes screaming the moment I heard the car, sometimes waiting until the engine strained at the crest of the hill, everything in between.

  It was just me, the shotgun, this hole, and my screams.

  And the thoughts.

  So many of them, swirling faster than a gyroscope. I tried to pick one to hold onto, but it seemed impossible. They just kept coming, feeding chaos into the gyroscope.

  The shadows lengthened.

  My throat burned raw and my screams dwindled into croaks.

  Nausea curdled my empty stomach. I wasn’t even hungry, but the thirst was unbearable.

  No one would ever hear me. Not unless they stopped the car and climbed out to have a picnic along the side of the road, and maybe not even then. My vocal chords were shot.

  I eyed the shotgun.

  Glanced out the slit to the rain tank.

  There’d been some trouble with the tank years ago, back when I was at school. We’d had a couple of excessively rainy seasons and the tank kept overflowing onto the road. The town council had tried issuing maintenance orders to the owners, a couple who’d inherited Mason Creek and had never set foot near Silver Firs. When they hadn’t responded, the council had sent someone over to seal the tank.

  I didn’t know if they’d emptied it as well, or if that amount of water could actually evaporate through the corrugated steel, but it was all I had.

  I also only had one bullet.

  One shot.

  I cocked the shotgun and took care lining that shot up, using the window edge as a pivot to angle the nose of the shotgun. I aimed for the lower half of the tank. It was pretty big. Even if I went wide on the recoil, I didn’t see how I’d miss.

  Plus, I had a death grip on the shotgun, both hands, and two fingers linked on the trigger. Not elegant, but hopefully effective.

  My calves cramped in my hunched position as I waited for the next car.

  And waited.

  Crap.

  Gingerly, extremely gingerly, I slid the shotgun forward to rest on the level ground outside the window. I had no idea how sensitive a cocked shotgun might be and I had no idea how to un-cock it.

  When nothing went ka-boom, I released a shaky laugh and slipped down from the table to fashion some sort of earmuff. If I survived this, I’d rather not do so deaf. After thinking the problem through, I shoved the ends of my robe’s belt into my ears and wrapped my pajama pants around my head to keep everything in place.

  If I looked madder than a hatter, then the picture probably wasn’t all that far off. I was psyched up on crazy juice right now.

  Back on the table.

  Shotgun aimed.

  It felt like hours, but the sun hadn’t quite dropped out the sky yet when I heard a car approaching. The engine sounded heavy, like a truck.

  I firmed my stance for the recoil. Yeah, I knew some things. Movies had loads of educational value. You never knew when you might need to blow the top off a rainwater tank, for example.

  A heartbeat later, I inhaled sharply and pulled the trigger. The crack reverberated between my muffed ears and the kick almost reeled me off the table. To my utmost disappointment, however, the tank didn’t explode into a geyser fountain show to announce my whereabouts.

  I tossed the shotgun aside, belatedly praying there hadn’t been a second round in the chamber. Fortunately, it clattered harmlessly to the floor.

  I unwrapped my pajama pants and tip-toed on the rickety table as I tugged them on again. When I unplugged the belt from my ears, I had to shake my head vigorously to clear the ringing. By the time I could hear properly again, there was no sound of the heavy engine.

  Hopefully that meant the truck had stopped.

  I tilted my head to peer through the slit, my ears pricked for voices. I croaked out a call for help, as loud as I could. Listened. Croaked. Listened. Croaked.

  Impossible!

  How could they not have heard? That shot was louder than a… Seriously? Louder than a truck backfiring?

  “You just had to go there,” I fumed to myself. Now that I’d thought the thought, it would probably end up true.

  I’d chosen a stupid truck that maybe backfired every other mile.

  A string of curses flew from my lips. The type of curses I usually refrained from, but for heaven’s sake, why couldn’t one damn thing go my way?

  Tears sprang to my eyes as I waited for the rescue party.

  I noticed a trickle of water drizzling from the base of the tank to the ground. I hadn’t missed. I couldn’t make out if I’d hit near the bottom or if the water was seeping from a hole further up, but I hadn’t missed.

  I’d done everything right.

  Everything I could.

  When night descended, I finally scrambled down from the table and huddled in a corner. I was in a hole in the ground. A cold, dark hole. The moon was out of sight and the little starlight that filtered in didn’t count.

  I tucked my legs up beneath my robe and pressed my forehead to my knees. Goosebumps stung every inch of my skin and my bones rattled. I didn’t know if the cold came from without or within, but add that to my morbid list; freezing to death.

  The gyroscope inside my head started spinning thoughts again. Memories of what had been. Hopes I’d yet to dream. People. Places. Decisions—good and bad—that I’d made in my life. So much crap, but some reoccurred more than others, grooving a well-worn path.

  The important ones, I guessed.

  The moment I looked up and caught sight of Joe that day he walked into my coffee shop.

  Me biting down nervous flutters at my first audition.

  The tingling warmth of Nate’s mouth on mine. I don’t always like what you say, but I like that you say it.

  Jenna smiling through her tears when I told her I’d decided, I was going to New York. The choke strangling her voice when she demanded an invite to an A-list party when I was rich and famous.

  Principal Limly stroking his beard, telling me I was suicidal, I just didn’t know it yet.

  Dad scooping Mom into his arms and smacking loud kisses on her lips, pretending he didn’t know he was being watched while I giggled up from my hideout treehouse in the back garden.

  Joe’s face planted in Chintilly’s breasts.

  The picture of Nana Rose sipping cocktails on the ship’s deck and dressed in, get this, a hula skirt. Oh, and the look on Mom’s face when we got the personalized postcard. That was priceless.

  So, yeah, the important ones.

  The good and the bad and, in Nate’s case, the indeterminate.

  SIXTEEN

  I must have dropped off into a paralytic sleep at some point, because I hadn’t moved from my position when I jerked awake. My neck had such a serious crick, I had to massage it before I could lift my head off my knees. Swallowing felt like sandpaper grinding my swollen throat. My croak had deteriorated into a ragged whispery thing.

  On the plus side
, my temple had stopped pounding. Oh, yes, now my entire head was just one big ache.

  Daylight streamed in from the window slit.

  I un-creaked my stiff limbs and dragged myself up onto the table to get a sense of the time of day. The sun sat midway up, or maybe midway down. I couldn’t scrape enough brain power together to remember which side the sun rose and set, let alone whether I currently faced east or west.

  I stayed there on the table, curled into a patch of sunlight that slowly, very slowly, melted the icicles from my bones.

  And I tried to muster a spark of optimism, I really did, but what was the point?

  I was going to die.

  Alone.

  In this hole.

  Alone.

  Maybe they’d never even find my bones. Maybe Jeremy Whatshisname was having the house demolished. Would the construction crew bother to check the cellar before they brought out the wrecking ball?

  I looked up at the low ceiling and all at once I could feel the cement crushing down on my chest.

  My pulse didn’t even stutter when I heard the sound of an engine on the road.

  Been there. Done that. Had the ruined vocal chords to prove it.

  I would have snorted, if it didn’t hurt so much, as I listened listlessly to the idling engine. Wait a minute. Idling engine?

  That spark of optimism ignited.

  I pushed to my knees, listening hard.

  There was a metallic rattle.

  Voices that I couldn’t quite distinguish, but definitely more than one.

  I stood and hunched in order to peer out.

  A black truck came into view.

  Oh my God.

  I stuck my arm out as far as it would go and waved while I croaked, “Help. Please help. Please…”

  The truck passed right past me and kept on going.

  Heart pounding in my throat, I jumped down from the table to collect the discarded shotgun and then I scrambled up again.

  “This is her car,” I heard a voice call out. Jack’s voice. “Beneath the canvas.”

  “Help!” I croaked as I reached out the window with the shotgun, banging on anything I could find. “Please, help!”

  My luck turned and I hit something hard, a switch box or a stone or a pipe, I couldn’t see, but it delivered a decent clang.

  “Wait, hold up.”

  Nate’s voice.

  “Help!” I clanged the shotgun until I saw a pair of boots step into my line of view.

  A moment later he dropped to his knees, grabbed my hand, and I was looking into his upside down smoky gray eyes.

  “Maddox?” He cursed, somewhat more colorfully than my earlier efforts. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded, a sudden eruption of tears pouring from my eyes.

  “Stay right there,” he said. “We’re going to get you out. Okay?”

  “Don’t,” I whisper croaked as his hand started to slide away. “Don’t let go.”

  An unreasonable request, I knew that, but I hadn’t realized exactly how alone and frightened I’d been until now that I was no longer alone and had no more reason to be frightened.

  “I’m not going anywhere.” His grip tightened as he flattened himself on the ground to look at me properly. “I’m not leaving you. Spinner! Over here!”

  Jack’s face dropped into my vision. “God, Maddie, are you—”

  “Get inside there,” Nate cut in. “I want her out, now. You’re looking for a basement.”

  “A cellar,” I croaked. “There’ll be some sort of chest dragged over the hatch.”

  “Did you hear that?” Nate asked Jack.

  He hadn’t, so Nate repeated what I’d said and Jack’s legs disappeared from view.

  “How did you find me?” I asked Nate.

  “Shhh, don’t say anything.” He brought his other hand over mine. “You sound like you’ve been chomping on live coals.”

  I smiled through my blurry tears. “Talk to me, please.”

  I needed to hear his voice. Well, any voice really, but his was somewhere near the top of my list.

  “Okay, well, Jenna wasn’t happy about that text you sent. When she couldn’t get hold of you, she called your husband in New York, and he hadn’t heard from you.” His thumb stroked my wrist mindlessly as he spoke. “We were out at the ranch all day but she told Spinner when he got home. She’d also been to see your parents and George Hollow, but no one knew anything. You’d left most of your stuff behind in your room and, although your suitcase was gone, she insisted you wouldn’t just leave like that, not without seeing her.”

  More tears swelled.

  I should have known Jenna would see through that message.

  “I didn’t hear about any of this until I got in to the station this morning.” Nate gave my hand a squeeze. “I was just putting out an alert and getting more men down from Auburn to begin canvassing the area when the call came in about the New Forest Road flooding. Spinner tipped me off on the history of the Mason Creek rainwater tank. I didn’t think there’d be any connection, but I needed to check it out. I like to be thorough about these things.”

  I like to be thorough.

  The most beautiful words in the world.

  “You scared the hell out of me, Maddox.” He swore beneath his breath, a grimace hardening his jaw as his eyes creased into mine. “When I heard you’d had Adrian Limly staying at Hollow House… After what we found at the ranch, my heart damn near stopped.”

  “Mr Biggenhill is dead,” I whispered.

  Nate’s jaw worked. “We found his body in a storm tunnel. What was left of it, anyway. His wedding band was still crusted to the bone of his finger and Mrs Biggenhill identified the inscription.”

  A scraping noise came from above, near the hatch.

  I blew out a ragged breath. “It was Principal Limly.”

  “I suspected as much.” He squeezed my hand again. “Don’t think about it now, okay? You can tell us everything after you’ve been checked over. I don’t know what the hell happened to your voice, but it sounds like you could be causing irreversible damage.”

  This couldn’t wait.

  I was safe, but no one else was.

  “He’s a monster,” I croaked. “You have to get to him before—”

  “Shhh, we already have him,” Nate said softly. “He was hauled in for questioning this morning.”

  “He was?”

  Nate gave a grim nod. “We’ve been showing that photograph around to folks who’d been associated with the ranch and we found a couple of good reasons he’d want to make that photograph, and Harold Biggenhill, disappear. We don’t have any hard evidence, but I can hold him for twenty-four hours, longer if I make a few calls. This can wait, trust me. Adrian Limly isn’t going anywhere.”

  ∞∞∞

  Nate drove me to the Skaneateles clinic, our nearest medical unit, while Jack went to tell my parents. This was the kind of news, he informed me, that had to be delivered face-to-face. Personally, I thought a phone call might have worked better, but who I was to interfere with his Academy training?

  I’d forgotten about my thirst until we stepped into the reception lounge and my eyes landed on the water cooler. Leaving Nate to deal with the admin clerk at the counter, I gulped down about a gallon of water, one tiny cup at a time.

  A mother scooped her toddler up and shifted a couple of seats further from the cooler. I couldn’t really blame her. I was barefoot, in pajamas, and my hair was probably not fit for public.

  Nate returned with a stack of admissions forms. He noticed the mother shooting baleful glances my way and immediately wrapped a protective arm around my shoulder, leading me to a secluded corner.

  “I tried to get you pushed through the system,” he said apologetically. “But the damn world will end apparently if we don’t dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’.”

  I smiled at him and shook my head. It doesn’t matter. Thank you for trying. Thank you for saving me! I was so grateful to Nate and Jack, I could barel
y think of it without feeling more tears come on.

  Drinking all that water maybe hadn’t been the best idea. I had to dash to the restroom twice before I’d completed the paperwork. Then I was whisked away from Nate by a stiff-lipped, stiff-backed nurse whose name tag read Jenkins.

  They fussed over me for hours. Nurse Jenkins treated my throat. A white-gowned technician fed me into a horrific tunnel chamber for a whole host of scans. A friendly doctor examined the results and then examined me from head to toe.

  I let them get on with it and didn’t say a word, until they wanted to stick me in a bed and shove a drip into my arm.

  Stark white room? Starched sheets? Scratchy blanket? Hospital gown that left my backside exposed? Not quite what I had in mind for my first post-kidnapping evening.

  “Thanks for everything,” I said, my voice still hoarse but it no longer felt like I was roasting every word on its way out. “But I just want to go home.”

  “You have a mild concussion,” Nurse Jenkins said firmly. “We’d like to keep you under observation for the night.”

  Her stern smile suggested she wasn’t asking for permission.

  “I have people.” I waved a hand about randomly. “I’ll make sure they observe.”

  “You won’t be able to eat properly with that throat, Ms Storm. It’s important we get nutrients into your body.”

  “Isn’t that what smoothies are for?”

  She wasn’t happy, but she reluctantly conceded to my wishes after I threatened to escape out the window the second her back was turned. With a curt reminder that I was confined to the room until she’d arranged my discharge, she marched off to see to it.

  Or to fetch a doctor to bully me into following orders.

  I counted to twenty and then slipped into the corridor to find my way to the reception lounge. Hopefully Nate hadn’t gone far, just in case this deteriorated into another rescue mission.

  He hadn’t.

  He stood in deep conversation with my parents. As soon as they saw me, Mom and Dad rushed up to engulf me in hugs and exclamations of every emotion under the sun. I couldn’t keep track.

  “Jenna was here,” Mom said when we finally pulled apart. “I sent her home and promised to call the moment we were allowed to see you. We weren’t sure how long you’d be and no one could tell us anything, but the detective—” she sent Nate a smile “—has been reassuring us that you would be fine.”