by Cindy Dees
“Tell me about Hidden Pines,” she demanded.
“I have a better idea. Come over here, bitch,” Lester snarled.
She walked as slowly as she could toward him. He sidled away from the bar toward the window, staying well out of her reach. Although it wasn’t like she was about to jump an armed and clearly crazy man.
“Drink that,” he ordered.
She looked down at the bar and noticed a glass with a few ounces of clear liquid in the bottom of it. “What’s that?” she asked.
“Drink it, or I’ll kill you here and now. Everyone’s left the building. I’ve made sure of it. It’s just you and me.”
She recalled the rows of empty and half-dark cubicles she’d walked past on her way to his office. He was right. Panic skittered down her spine.
“Drink it!” he repeated more forcefully. The barrel of the gun wavered and then steadied upon her, deadly and threatening.
She reached out to pick up the glass and noticed her hand was shaking. She sniffed at the glass. It didn’t smell like anything.
“Drink!” he shouted.
She tipped the glass and took a sip. Oh, God. It was bitter.
“Drink it all or I’ll shoot!” he screamed.
Terrified, she tossed down the entire contents of the glass. At least she didn’t immediately start choking or convulsing or anything. She turned to face Lester. “Okay, I’ve drunk whatever that was. Now you can tell me. What was in that? Did you just poison me?” Visions of her future with Finn danced through her mind’s eye. They’d been so close to having it all. Had this madman just taken it all away from them? Panic and grief and rage swirled within her at the thought.
“Craig’s the only one I poisoned,” Lester answered slyly. “Slipped it into his drinks a little at a time. Idiot never had a clue. Just got sicker and sicker. And then that damned doctor had to come along and figure it out.”
Finn. He was talking about Finn. Her head was beginning to swim a little. The lights overhead were swaying slightly. Or maybe that was her doing the swaying. “What did you give me?” she asked thickly.
His gaze narrowed. “You’ll feel it soon enough. Stupid bitch. Had to go and try to ruin everything my associate and I have worked so long and hard for.”
She tried hard to concentrate. He’d said something important. An associate. He wasn’t working alone. “Who’s your associate?” The word came out closer to “ashoshiate,” but it made him scowl either way.
“Do I look dumb? Do I look like I’d tell you something like that?”
“Uhh, I guesh no’…” She’d passed through woozy to stoned in about two seconds flat. She was having trouble following anything the guy said.
Only snatches of his next words registered with her: “…get you out of here…can’t kill you here…too messy…find somewhere to stash you first…then kill you…”
The lights spun crazily overhead, and then everything went dark.
Chapter 15
Finn looked at his watch—six forty-five. It wasn’t like Rachel to be late. But she had said she had a lot of work to do, and he’d kept her out of the office for nearly two hours at lunch. The look on her face when the salesman had handed her the car keys had been priceless. He’d never forget the wonder and delight in her eyes. He wanted to put that expression there every day for the rest of their lives.
He shouldn’t bug her. But worry niggled at the back of his mind. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed hers. It went straight to voice mail. That was strange. He dialed it again and got the same result. Somebody had just turned off her phone.
He leaped out of his truck and hit the ground running. Something was wrong. Very wrong. He reached the Walsh building and yanked on the front doors. Locked. He swore violently. He punched another number into his cell.
“Wes, it’s Finn. Get over to the Walsh Enterprises building right away.”
“I’m on my way, bro. Talk to me.”
Finn heard a siren go on in the background and an engine gun. “I was supposed to pick Rachel up at six-thirty. When she didn’t come out I called her cell phone and somebody turned it off. The Walsh building’s locked up tight. Do you have a key or can I break in now?”
“Bust the door. I’ll be there in five minutes,” Wes replied sharply.
Finn had already checked her cubicle and found her purse under the desk by the time Wes came storming inside. They searched the building by floor and found nothing until they reached Craig Warner’s office. Over by the wet bar, Finn found several printed papers scattered on the floor and—oh, crap—one of them had Rachel’s signature on it. The document was dated today.
“She’s been in here,” Finn bit out.
Wes glanced at the document and then at the bar. “That glass still has a little fluid at the bottom of it. Someone’s been here recently.”
“Then where is she?” Finn demanded.
“Hang on. We’ll find her. We’ve been watching this place.” Wes had his phone out and was dialing a number. Finn listened as the panic mounted in his gut.
“This is Sheriff Colton. I need you to run back the surveillance tapes of Walsh Enterprises for the past hour. And pull up the entry and exit logs for the security system. Who’s gone in and out of the building since, say, six o’clock?”
Finn waited in an agony of impatience for Wes to get off the phone. “Well?” he demanded when his brother ended the call.
“Lester Atkins is the only person to leave the building since six o’clock. And the security cameras at the rear of the building show him carrying a large cloth-wrapped object outside.”
“The bastard’s got her,” Finn rasped.
Wes was already on the phone again, ordering police units to Lester’s home.
Finn paced. Nothing could happen to her. He’d promised her he’d keep her safe! They were going to live happily ever after with each other. Have a home together. Kids. Grandkids. This couldn’t be happening.
“He won’t be at his house,” Finn announced, certain deep in his gut that he was right. “Atkins is too smart to go there. He knows that’s the first place we’ll look for him.”
Wes nodded, thankfully not arguing. “Lester must have figured out that she stumbled onto the embezzlement and the Hidden Pines deal. He needs to get her out of the picture. Silence her.”
“My God. He’s going to kill her!” Finn gasped.
Wes frowned, working through the logic. “Looks like your suspicions that he was the one to poison Warner were right.” Finn looked over at the empty glass standing on the bar. Atkins had access to Warner’s office. It would have been an easy matter to slip a little arsenic into all of the man’s drinks.
Wes continued, “Good news is he didn’t try to kill Warner outright. He used indirect means. Assuming he’s behind the attacks on Rachel, he didn’t use direct means on her, either. He sabotaged the pipe over her desk and then hit her with a car.”
“And that’s important why?” Finn asked impatiently.
“He’s not a naturally violent criminal. He’s probably going to have to work himself up to the idea of killing Rachel outright. I think we’ve got a window of time before he actually kills her. He’s careful. A planner. He’ll want to know where he’s going to stash her body. How and where he’s going to kill her. I think maybe he grabbed her today on impulse.”
“Rachel told me he’d given her a pile of work to do today and wanted a report on it by close of business.”
Wes frowned. “Then snatching her today might have been a premeditated act after all. C’mon. Let’s head out to his place and see what the boys find.”
But even as Finn rode out to Lester’s home on the outskirts of Honey Creek, he knew the visit would be fruitless. He racked his brain for where he’d take someone if he wanted to kill a person neatly and quietly. But his panic for Rachel was too much. He couldn’t think past it.
A half hour later, Wes stood beside Finn in Lester’s living room, swearing under his breath. “Nothing.”
“What now?” Finn asked, barely containing himself from tearing the room apart.
“Helicopters are searching the surrounding area and the state troopers have set up road blocks for sixty miles around town. We’ll find her.”
Yeah, but would they find her in time? Or would they find a corpse? Unfortunately, because of his medical training, he knew all too well what a corpse looked like. And the idea of his Rachel blue and still and lifeless made him want to throw up.
“Let’s head back to Walsh Enterprises,” Wes said. “It’s where the trail starts. There has to be a way to track her, damn it.”
“Has anyone local got a tracking dog?” Finn asked hopefully.
“A pair of police bloodhounds are on their way down from Butte, but it’ll be midnight before they get here,” Wes replied.
Finn’s gut told him they didn’t have that much time.
“Go home, Finn. You can’t do any good here. Let us do our job. I’ll call you if there are any developments.”
Because he couldn’t stand here any longer without exploding, he did as he brother suggested. He blinked when his truck stopped in front of Rachel’s house, though. Her place was already “home” to him, and in his distraction and terror, he’d driven here. He got out of the truck and went inside.
His knees all but buckled when he stepped into the living room and smelled the vanilla scent that always pervaded the place and reminded him so much of her. He couldn’t fall apart. He had to hold it together for her. He tried to sit. To turn on the television and watch the news segments the Bozeman channels were breaking in with to cover the search for a missing woman in the Honey Creek area.
But his agitation was too great for stillness. He straightened up the already neat living room and moved into the kitchen with the intent to eat or maybe clean the sink. Something, anything, to keep his hands busy so he wouldn’t tear his hair out.
Where are you, baby? Talk to me!
Rachel regained consciousness slowly, registering small things first. She was cold. And she was lying on dirt. The air was perfectly still around her. And it stank. Something rustled nearby. She wasn’t alone, then. She kept her eyes closed as her mind slowly started to work again. Her wrists were tied behind her back. And her ankles were tied together. Her left arm was asleep. She would roll off of it except the movement might alert her captor that she was awake. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she slitted her eyes open. A dark figure moved in the near total darkness, maybe a dozen feet away from her.
It looked like she was in some sort of cave. Slowly, she turned her head a little to look out of the opening. A mountain loomed in front of her at close range. It was oddly colored, a speckled white in the darkness. And strangely symmetrical. Its sides were smooth and its slope consistent. No trees or gullies marred its side. Odd. Too bad the night was cloudy and no moon shone to illuminate it more clearly.
And why would a cave opening be facing a mountainside like that? Wouldn’t a cave open up out of the side of a mountain so she was looking down into a valley. In this area, caves didn’t form at the bottom of valleys. She was too groggy to make sense of it, though. Dang, her arm was killing her.
Killing. Was that what Lester had in mind for her? She vaguely remembered hearing him say something to that effect before she passed out. Terror, sharp and bright and sudden, pierced her, doing more to wake her up than a bucket of cold water in the face.
She was not going to go down without a fight, damn it. She and Finn were just finding each other again, and she wasn’t about to lose him now.
Lester, silhouetted in the cave opening, tipped a bottle up to his mouth and took a long drink. He shuddered as if the liquid burned. Oh, God. He was getting drunk to work up the courage to kill her.
Finn, where are you? Find me, please. And hurry.
Urgency rolled through Finn. Rachel didn’t have until midnight for the tracking dogs to arrive. He knew it as surely as he was standing there breathing and sweating bullets. There had to be something he could do. But what? He finished emptying the dishwasher and turned to stare out the back window into the blackness of the night. The woman he loved was out there somewhere. But where?
He took a step forward and kicked something metallic with a clang that startled him. Brownie’s food dish. Too bad the mutt wasn’t here. Maybe he could track down Rachel. Lord knew, the dog adored her.
It was a thought. If he could find Brownie, maybe the dog could track her. But Rachel had been looking for Brownie for a week to no avail. And Finn had only a matter of hours at most to find the dog and find her.
Think. Brownie had left during or immediately after the tornado. No one had seen hide nor hair of the mutt since, which meant he’d either died or gone somewhere with few or no people. And given the animal’s general terror and state of abuse when he’d come to Rachel’s porch, it was a good bet the beast had headed away from humanity.
He refused to believe Brownie had died from exposure or coyotes or the like. The animal’d had enough common sense and survival instinct to drag himself to Rachel’s porch for help. He was still alive, damn it.
Okay. People-hating dog. Bum leg. No way could he have gone far on that broken femur. He would need food and shelter. Finn racked his brains on where the dog could find both within a few miles of Rachel’s house.
And he hit on an idea. The landfill. It was about a mile from here. Outside of town. Good pickings for a scavenger like a dog. It was a long shot, but chasing it down was better than sitting around here staring at the walls and losing his mind.
He drove to the landfill and got out to examine the chained gates. He was startled to see the chain was merely looped around the gates and wasn’t locked. He opened the gates and drove through. The stench was thick enough to stand up on its own and slug him in the gut. He climbed toward the symmetrical mountain of trash and trudged up the rough road carved into its side by the garbage trucks coming up here to dump their loads. A pair of bulldozers were parked on top of the acres-wide mound, quiet and dark in the cloudless night.
“Brownie,” Finn called. “Here, boy.” He strode across the landfill, calling as he went. He had no way of knowing if the dog would come to him or run for cover from the human who’d caused him pain. He would like to think the dog knew he’d been helping to heal his broken leg.
A cloud of seagulls flushed up in front of Finn, startling him badly. Their cries grated on his already raw nerves.
“Brownie!” he called again. “Come here, boy. Rachel needs you.”
He’d reached the far edge of the mountain and had turned around to hike back when he thought he heard something. A whimper. He turned sharply. “Brownie?”
A shape, low and broad, moved in the darkness.
“Is that you, boy?” he asked gently.
Another whimper. The dog always had been talkative with Rachel.
Urgency rode Finn hard. He squatted down patiently, though, and held out one of the dog treats he’d grabbed from the kitchen before he left the house. “Are you hungry? I brought your favorite snack.”
A furry shape sidled forward. The fur resolved itself into speckled brown, and the familiar gray muzzle took shape. “Hey, buddy. How are you? Miss Rachel and I have been plenty worried about you.”
The dog inched forward, sniffing at the snack. Finn didn’t rush the dog but let him come in his own time. Brownie finally took the bone and Finn reached out slowly to scratch the special spot on the back of the his neck. Brownie still had his collar on. Finn held it lightly while he pulled a leash out of his pocket and snapped it onto the collar.
He gave the leash a gentle tug and the dog went stiff. Finn swore under his breath. Lester Atkins could kill Rachel any second. Improvising, Finn pulled out Rachel’s nightshirt that he’d stuffed inside his jacket and held it out to the reluctant dog. Lord knew if Brownie could smell anything but trash out here, but it was worth a try.
“We’re going to find her, buddy. You’re going to help me. Let’s go get in
my truck and head over to Walsh Enterprises. And if the gods are smiling on me and Rachel, you’ll pick up her scent and lead us to her in time to save her.”
His voice broke. No way was this harebrained scheme going to work. But he had nothing else. And he couldn’t just give up hope. He loved her too damned much for that.
Brownie sniffed the nightshirt deeply and wagged his tail.
“That’s right, buddy. We’re going to find her, you and me.”
Brownie whimpered and danced a little with his front feet as if he were excited at the prospect.
“C’mon. Let’s go.”
But the big dog balked. Finn swore aloud this time. He didn’t have time for this. Rachel didn’t have time for this. He pulled harder on the leash. “I’m sorry, but you’ve got to go with me. Rachel’s life depends on this. I swear, I’ll make it up to you later. Just help me now, dog.”
But Brownie set his feet and yanked back. Finn watched in horror as the collar slipped over the animal’s broad head. Crap! The dog turned and took off running, a limping half skip that was faster than Finn would have thought possible. He took off after the dog, frantic to get him back. Everything depended on catching him!
The dog scampered across the landfill, moving rapidly back toward the rear of the massive hill. Finn stumbled in the uneven landscape of garbage bags and dirt, cursing grimly. He couldn’t lose Brownie!
The dog started down the steep slope at the back of the fill, which was blessedly covered with dirt and weeds. White plastic bags and bits of trash speckled the hillside, but it was smoother going for Finn. The incline gave the injured dog some trouble, though, and Finn closed the gap quite a bit. Brownie reached the bottom of the hill and paused to sniff the air. The act struck Finn as strange. But at the same time he was grateful for the extra yards the dog’s pause had given him.
“Brownie!” he called with frantic, fake cheer. “Do you want another snack?’
The dog looked over his shoulder once, almost as if to check that Finn was still following him, and then took off running again.
