“So if I lose him now, it’s my fault? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Of course not, Carrie. You didn’t know.” He licked his lips, knew it wasn’t the time to say it, then said it anyway. “But now you do, so don’t you think you’d better start thinking about getting him back? Focusing on that? Creating that?”
She stared at him. “I think I hate you right now.”
“No you don’t,” he said. “But if it makes you feel better, go ahead and think it. It’s better than feeling powerless.”
Gabe turned, following the now-distant cop car onto a dirt track that writhed up a mountainside. And then, near what seemed to be the very precipice, he spotted it: the giant red, shiny SUV parked in the pull-off that overlooked the gorgeous, if slightly ominous—especially now—Shadow Falls. Every cell in him filled with dread, and he glanced at Carrie. “I’m sorry. Even I’m having trouble expecting the best right now. But I’m trying, Carrie. I’m trying. Sam is fine. He’s fine, and he’s coming home, and—what the hell is that?” He pointed. Something—no, someone—had just staggered out of the woods and collapsed in the grass by the parking area.
“It’s Rose!” Carrie wrenched her door open before Gabe had even brought the van to a full stop. She was lunging out of the car and running for the woman, who had dropped down onto all fours, her head down, her snowy hair littered with brambles and leaves.
“What have you done with him!” Carrie demanded, even as Gabe and Bryan both surged after her. Gabe didn’t know what Bryan was thinking, but his own dread stemmed from the worry that she might do the older woman bodily harm.
“What have you done with my son, you lying, scheming bitch!”
Gabe couldn’t catch Carrie, but Bryan managed to lunge into her path just as she reached for the other woman. He caught her shoulders and held her off, as Gabe came running up behind.
“That’s her!” Carrie shouted, fighting to get past the police officer. “That’s Rose McQueen!”
Gabe looked past them at the woman on the ground, a sickening feeling rising in his stomach as the woman lifted her head slowly. There was a gash in her forehead, trickling blood. Her clothes were torn, her face scratched, and he thought she might have a black eye. But even with all that, there was no way he could fail to recognize her.
“Gabriel…” She lifted a hand toward him as he shook free of his stunned paralysis, moved forward and bent to help her. He was still reeling with shock.
“Where is my son, Rose? Where is he?” Carrie cried, still fighting against Bryan Kendall’s death grip on her.
“Her name’s not Rose McQueen,” Gabe said softly. His hands were on the older woman’s frail shoulders, and he was helping her up. She’d made it onto her knees, but she was shaking and crying and clinging to him. “It’s Roseanna,” he went on. “Roseanna Cain.”
The frail woman wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head against his chest. Gabe kept his hands on her shoulders, not hugging her back, but not quite cruel enough to push her away. He felt the others’ eyes on him and turned to see Bryan staring at him. Carrie had stopped her struggling and gone still, her eyes filled with disbelief and confusion as she, too, stared at him.
“Cain?” she whispered.
Gabe nodded. “She’s my mother.”
17
Sammy opened his eyes, his brain foggy and his mind dull. But he knew something was very, very wrong, and he knew that he couldn’t afford to stay asleep.
There was a sense of motion, and he realized he was lying on his back inside a moving vehicle. The surface beneath him was hard, though. More like a floor than a seat. And the ride was rough. It was completely dark, and he smelled something pretty pungent. Not exhaust, though.
He tried to move his hands to feel around himself as a suspicion took shape in the mists of his mind, and he found his hands tied together. He lifted them as one and touched the ceiling of his prison, only a foot above him.
His suspicion had been right. He was in the trunk of a car. The kidnapper had him. The same one who’d killed Kyle. The same one who’d taken Sadie. It hadn’t been grumpy old Nate Kelly after all. Sam’s breath came faster, and his heart began to pound in his chest, but he gave himself a mental shake. Sadie had gotten away. If she could do it, so could he.
He wasn’t gagged, but he didn’t think yelling would do him a hell of a lot of good right now. Who would hear him besides the killer driving the car? And why tip that bastard off that he was awake?
He had to think. And the first thing he tried to think about was how he had wound up here. He remembered stopping to help Rose, and that she’d asked him to take her up to the falls before taking her home. Just for a few minutes, she’d said. She didn’t want to leave town without seeing the waterfall, but she was afraid to traverse such a winding, remote route all alone, especially now that her car was acting up.
He remembered thinking it wasn’t all that much to ask. He remembered thinking how she had organized that candlelight vigil for Sadie, and that he ought to show her how much he appreciated that. So he drove her up there, even though he was going to be even later meeting his friends than he’d intended.
Rose had been thrilled, though. And she’d promised not to linger long. They got out of The Beast and walked over to the path that began at the edge of the pull-off. Sam had promised her that it wasn’t far to the best view, then led her over the meandering trail some fifty yards through the woods to the spot where the trees parted like curtains on a stage. There was a steep drop at the edge, but the town had erected a low barricade to keep people from walking over the edge in the dark. The view from this spot was just awesome, because you were standing practically on top of the falls’ very crest. Below, and forty-five degrees to the left, the waterfall shot out from its rocky riverbed and tumbled some ninety feet to the frothy, violent pool below before rushing onward once more. As they stood there admiring the cascade, Rose said there was something she had been wanting to talk to him about.
And then he heard a sickening, smacking sound that made him jump, and Rose crumpled to the ground right beside him. Just like that. One heartbeat and bam. He saw a black crowbar lying beside her, felt a presence, but before he could even turn the rest of the way around to look, a pair of arms encircled him from behind and a wet rag was smashed into his face. It stank, and a single word floated into his mind.
Chloroform.
“I was out cold, I think,” Rose said, “after he hit me with—whatever it was he hit me with.”
Her voice was trembling, and Gabe felt as if he were bleeding inside. His mother was sitting in the backseat of Bryan Kendall’s SUV, holding a cold pack from the cop’s first aid kit to her cheek, recounting the tale of how she’d had car trouble and asked Sam to drive her home, with a brief detour up here to see the falls.
Gabe didn’t believe a word of her story, but he needed to hear it to the end. Give her enough rope to hang herself. Eventually, he was sure, she would. Not that he thought she’d had a thing to do with the abduction of two—now three, he thought with a shudder—teens. Much less the murder of one of them. But he knew her too well to think she wasn’t here for a reason—or, more accurately, five hundred thousand reasons.
“I managed to get to my feet,” Rose went on. “And I realized I could hear someone moving, so I ran back along the trail, the way we’d come. I glimpsed someone walking, with Sam flung over his shoulder.”
“Oh, God,” Carrie whispered. “Was he…?”
“I don’t know. He wasn’t moving. Wasn’t…conscious.” Rose’s eyes pleaded with Carrie’s as they filled with tears. “God, I never meant for this to happen. You have to believe me.” Her desperate gaze moved from Carrie’s face to Gabe’s.
“Just finish the story, Mother.”
She sniffled, and Bryan handed her a tissue. “I ran after them. I saw the man putting Sammy into the trunk of a car, and I just—I didn’t know what to do. I shouted at him to stop. I ran as fast as I could at him. I don’t even know what
I thought I was going to do! But he slammed the trunk and turned, and then he came right up to me and… Oh, God, I was so scared. I was petrified. I started to back away. And that’s when he punched me. He actually punched me, hard, right in the face.” She moved the cold pack away, shaking her head slowly and wincing at the movement.
“You said it was a man who hit you and took Sam,” Bryan said. “Can you tell me what he looked like?”
She shook her head. “He wore a black ski mask.”
“Then how do you know it was a man?”
She frowned. “I don’t know how. I just do. Maybe from how easily he carried Sammy. Maybe from how hard he could hit.” She grimaced and lowered her head, eyes blinking rapidly as tears filled them.
“What about his hands, his clothes?” Bryan prompted.
She frowned hard, shaking her head, blowing her nose as gently as she could. “I don’t know, I don’t know. I think he wore gloves.” She nodded. “Yes, gloves. Black ones. I don’t remember his clothes. That black ski mask held my attention.”
“All right then, what about the car?”
She tilted her head to one side. “It was silver. An ordinary-looking silver car.”
“New or old?” Bryan asked.
“It seemed like a fairly new model.”
“Was there anything about it that you noticed? A logo? A bumper sticker? A dent?”
She blinked, frowned, and it seemed to Gabe that everyone held their breath as they awaited her answer. When she only sighed and shook her head, the disappointment was palpable.
“All right,” Bryan said. “Now, we’re going to have to know why you lied about your name when you came here—when you rented the apartment from Carrie.”
She lifted her eyes, and her expression was all innocence. “I didn’t want my son to know I was here…not until I was ready. Gabe and I…we’re somewhat estranged. I knew he was coming here, and I just thought this would be a beautiful place, a beautiful time, to try to patch things up with him. But then, when I got here, I got scared he’d send me packing. So I gave a false name, so he wouldn’t find out I was in town until I was ready. I was working up my courage, but mostly thinking about chucking the whole idea and heading home without ever seeing him or letting him know I had even been here.”
Bryan studied her, nodding, and looking for all the world, Gabe thought, as if he believed her. Gabe knew better. She was lying through her perfect, expensive, white teeth.
“And the yearbook we found among your things?” Bryan asked. “Why were the faces of all the victims circled?”
She seemed to search inwardly for an answer. “I guess I got caught up in that missing baby story like everyone else. Those were my guesses for who it could be. I—” She closed her eyes. “I…I’m going to faint.”
A siren blurted briefly to announce the ambulance that came trundling up the dirt road and into the pull-off. Several official police vehicles came behind it.
Bryan spoke firmly to Rose. “You need to go to the hospital and get checked out. You’ve got some pretty nasty injuries. I’ll be by later to talk to you some more. I don’t want you leaving town, Mrs. Cain.”
“It’s Miss,” she corrected.
Bryan nodded at her and turned to Gabe. “You can go with her if you want.”
Gabe met Carrie’s eyes, and saw that they were filled with anger. At him or at his mother? Maybe both of them.
“We don’t need the ambulance,” Gabe said. “Carrie and I will drive her in.”
Bryan spoke up quickly. “I don’t think that’s—”
“I’m a doctor,” Carrie said. “She couldn’t be safer.”
“Yeah, and I couldn’t be more likely to lose my badge.”
“She’s my mother,” Gabe said. “I’m not going to let anything happen to her.”
“It’s all right,” said “Rose.” “I’ll ride with them.” And she started limping toward the VW Bus.
Chloroform. Yeah, that was what Sam smelled now in the trunk of the car. He brought his bound hands to his face to try to wipe it clean, realizing that traces of the stuff had probably clung to his lips, his face. He didn’t need to be inhaling that shit and getting woozy again. He spat on his hands and scrubbed at his face some more, then tried to wipe his hands on the carpeted floor of the trunk.
In the process, he discovered that his hands were bound with duct tape, not rope, so he brought them back up to his mouth and, locating an edge, started working on the tape with his teeth.
His ankles were bound, too, he realized, but if he could get his hands free, they would be no problem.
Okay, so he would get himself free; that was step one. And he would stay alive; that was step two. And then, step three, he would get away. Alive. He would.
God, his mother must be going ballistic by now. There was no doubt in Sam’s mind that she would know he was missing in short order. She was too protective not to check up on him and learn that he had never made it to the park. He wondered how long he had been unconscious. He wondered if poor Rose was okay, and he hoped to God the bastard hadn’t killed her when he’d hit her with that crowbar. Damn, he was in a mess.
But if there was one thing Sam knew about, it was cars. Maybe he could find the trunk release and get himself free. Maybe.
It might just be his only chance. He didn’t know what kind of car he was in. Still, there was a good chance he could get out. He tore at the duct tape with his teeth while he ran through the next step in his mind, his eyes straining in the dark, trying to see. If there was an inside trunk release, it could be a T-handle attached to a short length of cable, or it might be a button. It would probably be brightly or at least lightly colored, to make it stand out. He got his wrists free, then struggled to reach his ankles and began tearing the tape from them, as well.
Finally unbound, he felt around the inside of the trunk, almost giving up, until something yellow caught his dark-adapted eye. He reached for it. A T-shaped yellow handle. That had to be the release!
They hit a bump, and he was jarred so forcefully he let go. The vehicle continued to bounce over rough terrain, and it was moving slower than before.
Sam quickly located the T-handle again, and this time he managed to hold on long enough to give it a solid yank.
The trunk popped loose, and he grabbed the edge of the lid before it rose too far and gave him away. Twisting onto his side, he peered out. He didn’t see pavement or road stripes or other vehicles. He saw darkness—night had fallen. He saw the red glow of the car’s taillights. He saw what looked like grass and weeds rolling away behind them, rather than blacktop or gravel.
They weren’t even on a road.
He drew a breath and prepared himself to dive out of the car and run for his life. But just when he began to move, about to do just that, the car braked hard, rocking to an abrupt stop and hurling him to the front of the trunk, where he hit hard.
He heard the driver’s door slam, and before he could even think of what to do, the trunk lid rose high, and a human shape, just a shade darker than the night around it, stood staring in at him.
“You’re smart. Like me. I guess that’s one more piece of the puzzle, isn’t it, Sam?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sam narrowed his eyes, straining to see the man’s face in the darkness. The taillights no longer glowed. He must have shut the car off.
There was something familiar about his voice.
“It doesn’t matter,” the man said. “We’re here. Come on, climb out.”
Seeing no point in arguing, Sam climbed out of the trunk and stood facing the man. And then, finally, his eyes adjusted enough to let him see the man’s face.
Blinking in shock, he said, “Ambrose?”
“Come on. Come with me and quit trying to delay the inevitable.”
Those words sent a chill through Sam that he hadn’t felt before. He was more afraid now than ever. Because this was Ambrose. Just not the Ambrose he knew. No awkward, almost shy attitude. T
his guy was confident, cocky, aggressive. Dangerous. He gripped Sam’s upper arm, jerking him forward and leading him around the car.
Just ahead stood a small hunting cabin. It was too dark to tell much, other than that it was built of logs and its roof was sagging noticeably. As his captor tugged him toward it, Sam said, “Ambrose, I don’t understand what’s happening here. What do you want with me?”
“Isn’t it obvious, Sam?” Ambrose said. “I’m your father.”
“You want to tell me the truth, now, Mother?” Gabe asked.
Rose—Roseanna, Carrie corrected inwardly—held the ice pack to her face and said nothing. The woman was sitting in the backseat of the VW Bus while Gabe drove and Carrie sat in the passenger seat beside him.
Now she turned in her seat to face the older woman. “Come on, tell us. And don’t hold anything back. Sam is my life, and you might do well to remember that I’m the doctor who’ll be taking care of you in the E.R.”
Gabe glanced at her with stark surprise on his face. “Easy, Carrie.”
“Shut up, Gabe. She got my son kidnapped, at the very least. Frankly, I’m not sure she wasn’t involved. And neither of you seem to be too familiar with honesty.”
“I’ve told you the truth, Carrie. And he’s my son, too.”
“He is?” Rose leaned forward in her seat. “I knew it. I just knew it was Sam. It had to be. He looks just like you did, Gabe. Those dimples, the birthmark, those eyes.”
“Stop talking about my son!” Carrie barked. She climbed out of her seat and into the back to sit beside Roseanna and saw Gabe tense, saw him watching in the rearview mirror. “The only thing I want to hear coming from that lying mouth of yours is what the hell you know about this that you didn’t tell the police.”
Roseanna nodded hard. “I know it looks bad. I do. I just… When I read that Livvy—the woman Gabe once lived with—had been dead for sixteen years, and that she’d had a child right before she’d been murdered…I just had to know if that child was Gabe’s. The timing fit so perfectly. Don’t you see? I had to know. He’s my grandson, Carrie.”
Kiss Me, Kill Me Page 25
