by Conley, Anne
He told himself all of this, because the alternative was unthinkable. There was no way she was in trouble. Of course, this was the thought that he just couldn’t shake. He wouldn’t be able to sleep until he saw her and found out what had happened. On his way home, he drove by her house, and contented himself with the knowledge she wasn’t in trouble there, since her car wasn’t in the driveway.
She must have gone to Summer’s house to stay with her mom. That would make sense, although he sure wished she would answer his calls to her cell phone. The little tendril of fear in his gut wouldn’t go away though, as he recalled his questioning her about breaking glass, and how she’d immediately snapped at him. Was she still angry?
Deciding she must be madder at him than he’d realized, he went home and slept fitfully, vowing to apologize profusely tomorrow, when she’d hopefully be speaking to him again.
Brent was beside himself. He’d slept later than he’d intended, and when he finally made it to Casey’s that morning, her car still wasn’t there. Her door was left unlocked, so he let himself in, running through the rooms of her house, calling to Casey, knowing she wasn’t there. He felt her absence in his bones.
When he got to her room, he stopped short at the lack of Casey. If he hadn’t seen her in this room recently, he would think it was a perfectly preserved room from her childhood. All traces of adult Casey were gone. Her closet emptied of everything except her letterman jacket and old prom dresses. His hands slipped across the taffeta of the blue one. He remembered that one well.
His senior prom, he, Max and Les had taken Summer, Casey and another girl, whose panties Les had been trying to get into. They had all gone as a group. It had been unspoken, but Casey was Brent’s date, because he couldn’t take his sister. That would have been too weird. Fingering the dress, he remembered what it had looked like on her emerging high school curves, as she looked up at him while they’d slow danced in the gymnasium. He hadn’t kissed her that night, as much as he’d wanted to. That was the night of the skinny-dipping debacle, and the night he’d realized how much she meant to him. The night he’d fucked everything up. That had been his big chance, and he’d blown it.
As he looked around her room, he found a photo book on her bed. He flipped through it idly, then more slowly as he realized what was in it, and a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach made it turn. He ran to the bathroom and threw up, mostly bile and stomach acid since he hadn’t eaten anything. Weak, he sank to the floor with the sudden knowledge that something was wrong. Really wrong.
He had to find Casey.
What would get this awful smell out of her nose? Casey’s head whipped from side to side to escape the smell, which had coated her throat and mouth. The side to side motion caused her innards to swim and her head to pound with an agonizing pain. What had happened?
When Casey managed to open her eyes, everything was still black, so she assumed she was blindfolded. Coming a little more to her senses, she could feel the tight tie wrapped around her head, pressing down on her nose. Trying to move, she realized she was tied spread-eagle to a bed. When she opened her mouth, she found herself gagged. Something wet and sticky dripped down her face, but she couldn’t move to touch it. Everything smelled like lemon oil, yet familiar somehow. And that chemical smell still overpowered everything. She was somewhere she’d been before. She could hear the fear pumping through her veins.
Clashing with the fear rising in her gut at her circumstances, she could hear birds chirping and water lapping. Was she outside? She didn’t feel any wind, and it was hot, so she deduced there wasn’t air conditioning wherever she was. The lemon-oil scent gave her a clue she was inside somewhere, but where?
She groaned through the gag, and tilted her face toward a shuffling noise to her right. She tried in vain to remember what had happened to lead up to this moment, but nothing besides broken shards of memories she wasn’t sure of. She saw Kevin’s face, peering at her through the darkness in a rear-view mirror, which was strange, and Brent kissing another woman in a bar, which was also strange. She struggled to make sense of the images, but the only thing that made sense to her now, was the familiarity of her surroundings.
Was she at the cabin? Why was she tied up?
“Hey there, Babe,” a familiar voice greeted her, and nausea roiled her stomach. She tried to swallow it down, she didn’t want to vomit into the gag. Thoughts of choking to death on her own vomit repulsed her. She didn’t want to die this way.
Panic filled her body as she thrashed against her bindings. They were tied tight, and she realized she wasn’t going anywhere. Her panic gave way to a sudden, bone-deep exhaustion, and she felt the sensation of falling, before the chemical smell in her nose and throat took over and she succumbed to blackness.
Brent let himself into Summer’s house, using his key as he called, “Mrs. Stewart! Mrs. Stewart!”
“Good lord, son. What?” Casey’s mom’s voice came from the kitchen, where smells of baked bread emanated.
“Where’s Casey?”
The older version of the love of his life wiped her hands on a dish towel, before tossing it over her shoulder. “I don’t know Honey. Did y’all have a fight?” Brent knew Casey’s tells, and apparently she got them from her mother, as he knew immediately she wasn’t being honest with him.
“Sort of, but I think he’s got her.” He tossed the photo album across the table to Gloria, who looked at it and paled.
“Mrs. Stewart. Where would he take her?” Brent stood there, helpless in the face of this woman standing with her hands on her hips. He brushed his fingers through his hair as he let out a defeated exhalation before sinking into a kitchen chair. “I have to find her. Something’s wrong.”
She slumped into a chair at the kitchen table. “Well, that does change things a bit, doesn’t it?” She sounded worried, suddenly, and Brent felt validated in his own worry.
Biting her lip in a gesture that made Brent’s heart ache with its familiarity, she finally relented. “Olly Olly Oxen Free, Blind as a Bat, you can’t catch me.” Her voice came from deep inside her, as she seemed to struggle with the book that had fallen open in front of her, displaying a picture of Kevin and another woman, smiling happily at the camera. “He always had a thing for that damned cabin. Now go, Brent. Go get her.” He was out the door before she finished her sentence.
Chapter 27
Casey awoke again to blinding light and the accompanying sharp stabbing pain that went with a serious head wound. She turned her head left and right, realizing that somebody had removed her blindfold, but her head still ached with the movement. Looking up at her hands, she saw she was still tied to the bed, but when she saw where she was, she whimpered.
She was at the cabin, which wasn’t all bad. But somebody had been living here. For a while, by the looks of it. The cobwebs were swept out of the corners, and it had been dusted. The windows had been opened, to air the mustiness out, which had never totally left on their visits here when she was a child. Now, no trace of mustiness remained, which told Casey someone had been here longer than a week or two. There were groceries stacked in the cabinets, and a pot of coffee simmering on the stove. When she saw the suitcase on the luggage rack in the corner, with clothing spilling out of it, dread seeped into her consciousness.
She had bought Kevin that suitcase for their last anniversary present. And he’d gotten her a pen and pencil set. The romance had been gone long before that.
Her head lolled to the side, and she saw the framed wedding photo sitting on the table next to the bed. A groan escaped her mouth, as realization dawned.
Then she looked down and saw her body, and that’s when the blood in her veins ran cold.
She was wearing the bra and panty set she’d been missing, as well as her black stilettoes. All of Kevin’s favorite things.
She had never been so wrong about somebody in her life. Horror rose with the bile in her stomach at the thought that not only had she shared her bed with a man who commit
ted the ultimate betrayal, he’d been stalking her, and had kidnapped her. There was no telling what his plans for her were. Casey had had difficulty coming to terms with Kevin being a stalker, but kidnapping was beyond her realm of thought. If he was capable of doing this, how horrifyingly wrong had she been about him?
She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply to calm the panic raging inside. She imagined candles lit and the soft play of shadows in an attempt to calm herself. That image, coupled with being at the cabin, brought Casey the memory of Brent’s head in her lap, watching him sleep while the firelight and shadows danced across his face in repose. She allowed the feelings of safety with Brent to pull her into a state of semi-consciousness.
Continuing with her positive imagery, she imagined herself in a different bed, in Brent’s arms, in safety. She slowed her breathing and focused on Brent’s bed, with the faded patchwork quilt over it, and the lumpy pillows that smelled of hay and horses. She surrendered to the feelings of protection in the image, and didn’t dare open her eyes to the horrors around her.
Brent drove like a mad man. Something pulled him, as if he had a rope tied to his middle, with the other end tied to a tractor trailer. He hadn’t thought of Casey’s family cabin in decades. The last time he’d been there, he and Summer had gone with Casey’s family for a couple of weeks one summer because Nana had someone she wanted to visit, and Casey’s mom had offered for them to come along and keep Casey company. He had been glad they did, because Casey’s dad had spent the entire time drunk, fishing, and her mom had been a mess, trying to keep him happy with cleaning, cooking and making sure the kids stayed out of his hair.
So they’d made up games. Hide and seek in the woods, tag, flashlight tag, blindfolded hide and seek. Summer had just been to some girl scout camp, where they’d played a game using the words Olly Olly Oxen Free, and they had made their own variation of the words, and stuck them in a game of flashlight hide and seek. Of course the next day, her father had yelled at them all for using the flashlight batteries up, and after that, they just played in the dark.
He couldn’t remember exactly where the cabin was, but he knew the general location. If he could find the road it was on, he’d be okay. It hadn’t occurred to him to get directions before he left Summer’s house.
Please be okay. Please be okay. Please be okay. He repeated the words to himself in a lame attempt at Casey’s visualization. He pictured her sitting by the dock of the lake, the wind ruffling her curls as she sunned herself, being outraged at him for following her out there to encroach on her seclusion. Some part of him held out hope he was horribly wrong about Kevin having her.
He didn’t care if she was mad at him. He felt like something was wrong, and he had to see her. Make sure she was okay. He hated himself for not thinking of the cops’ suspicions last night. What the hell had he been thinking? He knowingly let her go home, and Kevin had gotten her. He just knew it.
The tendril of fear in his stomach was coiling and twisting in his gut, squeezing it tightly. He prayed he was wrong. But he couldn’t stop his suspicions from taking over his whirling mind. Unable to take anymore, he called the cops and talked to Officer Sanchez, telling him about the photo album, Casey’s disappearance, his horses, and the cabin. It had to be Kevin.
He had to be wrong.
Casey was still focusing on her visualization of safety, when she heard the door open, and Kevin’s voice brought her crashing back to reality.
“Still doing that deep-breathing shit?”
She was still gagged, so neither of them understood the curses and oaths she spewed at him. He laughed at her before walking over to the bed.
“I realized I’d made a mistake, Casey. I never should have let you go, you know.” His eyes almost looked at her tenderly as he caressed her cheek with the back of his hand, sending a shudder through her. “Patricia was a good lay, but so demanding! Change this diaper, feed the baby, answer the phone, do the dishes…” He gestured with his hands, implying “yadda yadda yadda” but she just rolled her eyes at him. “And then the house got foreclosed on, so I just left. I couldn’t take it anymore.” His voice was cold at that last part, and it sent a chill straight to Casey’s spine.
She was disgusted. He repulsed her.
Casey remembered back to when they first met, how handsome he’d been, how charming. Almost as soon as they’d gotten married, it had all changed, almost overnight. She soon realized the muscles were from a gym he quit going to, and the charm was fleeting and rare.
He’d been the one breaking into her house and stealing her things, after he was the one who cheated. He was the one who made her feel inadequate. As soon as she’d found happiness with Brent, he’d kidnapped her.
“I followed you up to Serendipity, and watched you, you know.” His voice was soft, and kind, but there was something underneath. A familiar resentment she could hear behind the words. The disappointment in his eyes, “I watched you watching the roofer, and I realized what a slut you were. You’ve probably been banging every repair man you ever brought into our house while I was at work earning money to pay for your things.”
His eyes passed over her body, lingering on the bra that Casey had purchased with her own money. She’d never had an affair, and she worked just as hard as he did to pay for their things. Not that she could tell him that, he was obviously in some alternate reality, one where it didn’t matter what she said to him. That and the gag shoved into her mouth.
“Patricia wanted too much. She didn’t take care of me the way you did. All she did was take, take, take…And you left me with all the bills, I just couldn’t do it anymore. She was a great assistant, a fabulous lay, but she couldn’t keep a house to save her life. And the baby? She gives that damned baby more attention than it deserves.”
Her stomach lurched at the thought of Kevin actually living in the same house with an infant. If he was capable of this, what would he do to a baby that cried too much?
“You know we bought a house together?” She nodded, as he seemed to be waiting for a response. “Patricia wanted this amazing house, and my buddy Dan at the bank managed to get me a loan for it. Even with all the shit you left me with.” He ran his fingers through his hair, causing it to stick up wildly. He was lost in his own world now, and nothing Casey could do would snap him out of it, not tied here with a gag in her mouth, so she let him talk. And she was forced to listen.
“Well, Patricia quit working to have the baby, so I didn’t have an assistant, and I couldn’t pay for the house, or the cars…” His fingers were tangled in his hair, pulling at it now. Kevin’s eyes were bulging wildly and his face was red. “Dan foreclosed on the house, after only three missed payments, and the cars got repossessed. I couldn’t show my face at work anymore, and the damned baby wouldn’t stop crying at all hours.”
“I realized what I’d lost, Casey.” She had no idea if he was talking about her or the house and cars, or his assistant. “Patricia threatened to leave me. Leave me! I got fired for not showing up for work. I lost everything, and so I came up here to try to find you.” His eyes were pleading with her now, and the idea of doing anything with him revolted her in a way nothing ever had before. “To see if you could fix it. But I found you watching him.” He was pacing around the small cabin now, ripping at his hair, while his voice rose into a fevered pitch. He was losing all semblance of reality, and Casey wondered what exactly had made him snap.
“And when you moved in with him, I knew I had to do something.” He looked off into the distance, and she saw a faraway look in his eyes, followed by a determined glint she’d never seen before. She felt the terror in her toes. “I knew I had to take you for you to ever be mine. But I had to make him pay, so I fucked with his precious horses…If you wouldn’t come willingly…You’ll see. It’ll be good again, Casey.” He clutched at her hand tied to the corner closest to him. “I got rid of his horses, so he won’t be able to support you. He doesn’t deserve you, Casey. Not like I do.” He was squeezing her hand
so tightly, she thought he might break fingers.
A chill of fear passed over her. What did he intend to do to her? She realized he was unbalanced. Maybe he’d realized how beyond his means he’d been living, and something had snapped inside him. She wanted to ask him what had happened, why he’d lost it. She needed to get out of this gag, and try to talk some sense into him. She might be the only person who could.
She pleaded with her eyes for him to let her go, but he only chuckled at her. Standing, he went to his suitcase and rummaged around. “I’ve always liked this cabin, Casey. Something about it just brings out the primitive side of me.” He pulled a brand-new looking hatchet from his suitcase. “Now. We’re going to come to an understanding…”
When he advanced on her, Casey screamed around the gag in her mouth.
Brent didn’t wait for the police. He told them what had happened, that he suspected foul play, he thought Kevin was in town, and gave the best directions to the cabin he could provide. Then he raced down the highway to the turn off he remembered.
Thank god the sign was still there. He remembered making fun of it, and getting a dirty look from Casey’s dad. It had been a bright purple no-trespassing sign posted in front of a nondescript gravel road. As soon as Brent saw the faded lettering, he turned his truck and barreled down the road, spraying gravel in all directions. He remembered it was a long road, the cabin secluded. When he got to a tree that had been freshly cut to fall over the road, he gunned his engine and barreled over it. It wasn’t a large tree, and whoever had put it there, had done it recently. It was still green and the branches were pliable, bending under his massive four wheel drive truck tires. Once he’d gotten over the tree, he slowed his truck to a crawl, and finding a break in the wooded area next to the road, parked his truck. He didn’t want to alert anyone to his presence.
