And then Chase was thrown into the back of the van.
Chapter 64
“Beneath us!” Stitts yelled. “The shouting, it’s coming from beneath us!”
Jordan nodded and then started scanning the floor for a door of some sort.
Stitts hurried from the bedroom and did the same in the kitchen, tearing open cupboards in search of a secret passage, a door, anything.
But all he found were plastic bags and a bottle of bleach.
“Do you find anything in there?” he shouted to Jordan.
“Nothing in the closet and nothing under the bed,” the man hollered back.
Stitts, hearing the sound of the girl’s voices louder and clearer than ever, worked frantically, shoving the kitchen table aside and testing the floorboards first with the heel of his hand and then with the heel of his boot.
It sounded hollow in places, pretty much everywhere but there didn’t appear to be a way to lift the floorboards up.
He growled in frustration and was about to shout again when he spotted a rug that seemed out of place in the antiquated bungalow. The design was newer, and the fabric appeared to be some sort of plastic instead of cotton or wool.
Stitts sprinted over to it and kicked it across the room.
Then he gasped.
Beneath the rug was a brass ring attached to a trapdoor.
“I found it!” he yelled. “Jordan, I found it! Get in here!”
With the rug gone, there was no mistaking the girl’s shouts now. They were starting to panic.
And then, as he shone his flashlight on the trapdoor, Stitts saw tiny fingers poke up from between the boards.
“Oh my God,” he whispered. “They’re here! The girls are here!”
Jordan was suddenly at his side, but unlike Stitts, he wasn’t frozen in place.
The man dropped to his knees and grabbed the brass ring. He pulled hard, and his face turned red with the effort. He even arched his back, but it didn’t even budge.
“Help us!” the tiny voices screamed. “Hurry, you need to help us!”
Jordan looked at Stitts, his eyes watery.
“Get something to break this open,” the man shouted, indicating the metal lock attached to the brass ring.
It was the expression on Jordan’s face that finally broke Stitts out of his stupor.
He bolted to the kitchen and yanked all the drawers open. In one of them, he found a tray of cutlery and he scooped up the forks and knives and tossed them on the floor. He was about to slam the drawer closed when he noticed the cylindrical knife sharpener. He grabbed it, judged its weight in his palm, and then ran back to Jordan.
“Use this,” he cried.
Jordan took the tool from him and wedged it between the ring and the lock and then leveraged it backward. At first, nothing happened. But as Jordan applied more pressure, the lock started to bend, and an audible creak could be heard throughout the bungalow.
“Girls, get away from the door!” Stitts shouted. “We’re going to open it, but you need to get away from the door.”
Their fingers disappeared, and the sound of their cries became muted.
And then Jordan gave one final heave and the lock broke.
What happened next was like something out of the movies.
Jordan pulled the trapdoor back and the girls immediately rushed out, their faces filthy, their eyes wide, the hair tangled messes atop their heads.
Stitts just grabbed one girl after another and embraced them before quickly motioning towards the door. He saw someone who looked like Stephanie McMahon and then he saw Becky Thompson. Jordan grabbed Becky and squeezed her tightly, both of them sobbing, before he passed her on to Stitts who then instructed her to run out the front door.
That’s when he saw Terrence sprinting toward the bungalow.
“Run, girls! Run to Terrence! Run to the police officer! Run! Run!”
Stitts hadn’t realized that he was crying until all four girls — Stacy, Tracy, Becky, and Stephanie — were out of the basement and sprinting across the lawn. He turned to Jordan.
“Chase?” Stitts asked.
Jordan ducked his head into the trapdoor and then pulled back.
“I dunno… I can’t see anyone else.”
Stitts drew his gun again and placed the flashlight on top. Then he shoved Jordan out of the way.
“She’s down there,” he said as he lowered himself beneath the floor. “She’s down there and I’m gonna find her.”
Chapter 65
Chase’s eyes snapped open.
For several seconds, she was too confused to act. There was someone on top of her, someone heavy and sweaty.
And he was grunting. He was grunting something fierce.
Chase could only see the top of his head, but with her memories now flooding back with renewed clarity, there was no question as to who this man was.
And it sure as hell wasn’t Stitts.
She heard a sound from her right and turned her face in that direction.
A skinny man was standing there, trying, and failing, to pull his underwear over his massive erection.
He had been thin back then when he’d thrown Chase over his shoulder and put her in the van. But now, he was almost emaciated.
Although Chase did her best to keep a poker face, something in her eyes must’ve changed because when Tim looked at her, he immediately stopped fiddling with his boxers.
And then he started to walk backwards.
“Brian,” Tim said. “Brian.”
It was then that Chase realized that she was clutching something in her hand. Something long and sharp.
With a dexterity that shouldn’t have been possible given her injured fingers, she somehow managed to remove the bandage from the shard of glass.
“Brian!” Tim shouted, desperation creeping into his voice.
But Brian was too preoccupied with fucking her to do anything.
In one, smooth motion, Chase bucked her hips and sent the confused man rolling off her.
And then she lunged, leading with the shard of glass.
She had been aiming for Tim’s chest — center mass — but the bed beneath her was springier than Chase expected.
In the end, the result was better than she could’ve hoped for. Her left hand, the one not holding the shard of glass, struck the man in the shoulder and sent him spinning to his right.
And then the piece of glass slid into Tim’s flesh directly above his collarbone. Even though Chase was small, Tim was lighter, and her momentum propelled them back against the wall. A puff of dirt momentarily blinded them both.
Chase blinked rapidly, and when her vision cleared, she made sure to stare Tim directly in the eyes. Then she yanked the piece of glass upward and across his throat.
Hot blood immediately sprayed her chest and hands.
Chase backed away and Tim gurgled and fell to his knees. He brought his hands up to his throat, trying to stop the bleeding. It was pointless; blood sprayed from between his fingers like a leaking dam.
“Wh-wh-wha-what are you doing, Chase?” A voice asked from behind her.
Chase, her chest bloody and heaving, whipped around the hunk of glass still clutched in her hand.
Brian saw the makeshift knife and the blood and his mouth when slack.
This wasn’t Stitts, Chase reaffirmed. Stitts and never been here. This was a sick, demented pervert who kidnapped little girls and brought them up to be his wives.
“You ruined my life,” Chase hissed. “You ruined my life, now I’m going to take yours.”
The man tried to retreat, but his pants were wrapped around his ankles and he stumbled.
He raised a meaty forearm to shield his face just as Chase lunged again.
Only this time she never got the satisfaction of puncturing the man’s skin, of taking his life.
The door to the bedroom suddenly burst open and a flash of white flooded the room. Something hard hit her wrist and she dropped the glass. The strike also sent her off balance
and she stumbled to the ground, causing more dirt to rise into the air.
Chase blinked once, twice, and then found herself staring up at her sister’s face.
“Georgina,” she gasped, still breathing heavily.
“You can’t hurt him,” her sister replied immediately.
Chase’s brow furrowed in confusion, and then she raised her eyes above her sister’s shoulder.
All four of the women in the white dresses were shielding Brian with their bodies as he struggled to pull up his pants.
“Please, don’t hurt him,” they said in unison.
Chase looked down and spotted the bloody shard of glass in the dirt and quickly grabbed it.
“He took you,” Chase said. “He took you all. He kidnapped you when you were young. You just don’t remember it. He’s a… he’s a fucking pedophile, a pervert.”
She hoped that recognition would wash over their faces the same way she’d expected that Georgina would realize that it was her after all these years.
But like at the dinner table when she first arrived, this didn’t happen.
“Well fuck you,” Chase spat. She leaped forward again, intending on shoving the women aside with one hand and slashing with the other.
But Georgina stepped in her path.
“Get out of my way,” Chase hissed.
But Georgie wouldn’t move. Even when Chase gave her a hard shove, she just rebounded and took up residence in front of her again.
“Get the fuck out of my way!”
“I can’t let you hurt him, Chase,” Georgina said softly.
Brian had finally succeeded in pulling up his pants, and to Chase’s horror, she saw that he was smiling again.
Chase wanted nothing more at that moment then to slash the man’s throat and watch the blood flow out of him.
But she knew that these women were so brainwashed that she would have to kill them first to get to him.
And she couldn’t do that.
Chase could never hurt her sister.
She could never hurt her Georgie.
Chapter 66
Stitts found himself in some sort of tunnel — a tunnel of dirt that extended far beyond the footprint of the bungalow. As he ran, he kept picturing the little girls being trapped down here and how horrible that must have been.
And then he remembered Chase and wondered if she had been taken here as well — before, when she was just a little girl like Stephanie, Tracy Stacy, and Becky.
Eventually, Stitts came to a door, a cheap wooden door that someone had already broken the lock off of. Taking a deep breath, he pushed the door wide and was met with another scene that took his breath away.
These are the cells, he thought. These are the cells that Chase described when she’d touched Louisa. These were the cells that Chase had used a plate to dig out of.
He shuddered as he passed them but was ecstatic to find that they were all empty. Eventually, he came to a dead end, with one door on either side of the dirt hallway.
He placed his ear against the first door and heard what sounded like people scrambling. People scrambling up. He grasped the door handle and was about to turn it when he heard a familiar voice coming from behind the other door.
Without hesitating, Stitts whipped around and kicked the door open.
And then he saw her.
Stitts saw his partner huddled in the corner of the room that only contained a single bed. Chase was curled in the fetal position and she was clutching something sharp and jagged in her hand.
The room was dark and because he was so focused on Chase, Stitts almost didn’t notice the figure on the bed.
But as he got nearer, he smelled the familiar coppery scent of blood and trained his flashlight on the bed.
Timothy Jalston, or Tyler Woodcroft, lay on his back, his arms outstretched at his sides. The only item of clothing he wore was a pair of soiled boxer briefs that were half on and half off his hips. The man’s eyes were pale, and he stared blankly at the ceiling.
His throat had been slit ear to ear.
“Chase,” Stitts gasped. He ran for her then, but as he neared, Chase started to unfurl and then she aimed her weapon at him.
Stitts couldn’t be sure if it was a knife a piece of metal, but either way, it was soaked with blood.
As were Chase’s arms and chest.
“Don’t come near me,” she whispered.
Stitts lowered his gun.
“It’s me, Chase. It Stitts. Please, lower the knife,” he pleaded.
Chase twisted her head awkwardly to one side as if trying to figure out if he was really there.
“I don’t know what’s real,” she gasped. “I have no idea what’s real.”
Stitts cautiously moved towards her then, holding his hands out in front of him in an attempt to calm her.
“I’m real, Chase. It’s me, Jeremy Stitts. We met back in New York when you called in the FBI to help you with the Download Killer case. I’m the one who you saved from Agent Chris Martinez. Remember how you put the tracker from your jacket on my dog? Remember the blanks you put in the microwave?”
Chase twitched again but didn’t lower the blade.
“It’s me, Chase. You saved me and then we went to Chicago. Remember that? Remember Rebecca Hall tied you up and propped your eyelids open with matchsticks? And then there was Vegas… Vegas and Mike Hartman, who was trying to blow up the Las Vegas Golden Knights. Remember that?”
It was his mention of the Las Vegas Knights that finally broke her. Chase lowered the blade, and Stitts didn’t hesitate. He ran to her, first swatting the weapon from her hand and then embracing her tightly, not caring that the blood on her chest — Tyler Woodcroft’s blood — was soaking his shirt. He squeezed her tightly, breathing in the smell of her sour sweat.
And then he was whispering in her ear that she was going to be okay. That he’d found her, that the man who’d taken them was dead.
When he said this, however, Chase reacted by shoving him away.
“Georgina,” she said, her eyes wide. “You need to save Georgie. He’s… he’s taken her again!”
For a moment, Stitts thought that she’d fallen back into her delirium. But then he remembered the scurrying he’d heard behind the other door.
He glanced in that direction, then he bit his lip. The last thing he wanted to do now was to leave Chase, but he also couldn’t let whoever was in the other room get away.
Finally making up his mind, he wrapped his arm around Chase’s waist and hoisted her to her feet. Then he pulled her into the hallway.
“We’re going to do this together,” Stitts said, as he raised his foot and kicked the door open.
Chapter 67
The second room led to another trapdoor that exited on a field about ten meters from the back of the bungalow.
Once outside, Chase saw her sister first, and then her niece.
“Georgina,” she whispered. Stitts tensed at her side.
Chase had no idea how the man had found her, and still wasn’t fully convinced that he was indeed real.
But none of that matter.
The only thing that meant anything to her was keeping Georgie safe.
“Georgina, please, you need to come with us,” Chase pleaded.
The girl stared directly at her for several seconds before saying anything.
“I told you, my name isn’t Georgina; It’s Riley and I’ve never seen you before my life.”
Chase started to cry then.
“You’re not… you’re my sister. You’re my Georgie,” she whimpered.
Stitts strode forward, aiming his gun out in front of him.
“Nobody move,” he ordered.
That’s when Chase noticed Brian. Like in the bedroom, the three other women in white dresses were standing of him, just in case Stitts decided to open fire. And as she watched, Georgina, tightly grasping her daughter’s hand, leaned closer to them.
Chase could see where this was headed even before it happened.
No matter what Brian had done to her, even though he’d kidnapped her and spent decades indoctrinating her, Georgina had still been complicit in the kidnappings of four other girls.
Amber Alert Page 21
