“Dammit, Jake, why would I do that? It was your gun. I told you that would happen.”
Cree worked her hands, twisting and wrenching. The tape was tight. She would never get it off.
A doorbell rang. She struggled. It would be the police. She heard Jake’s voice but couldn’t make out what he said.
She tried to scream. To thump her feet.
Jake would hear her. What could he do with the police right there?
Sweat streamed under the heavy thing she wore. She cried in frustration. This was her only chance.
Jake shouted again for Lina to hurry it up. The police must have gone.
If she could make a nick in the tape that bound her, she might be able to tear it. She felt around for something sharp. All she found was a bolt anchoring the toilet to the floor. Its protective cap was missing. The end that protruded was flat, not sharp, but it had an edge.
She could barely squeeze herself between the toilet and the sink. Could barely get her wrists close enough to rub them against the bolt.
This was it. The end of her life. She could not imagine being dead.
She gritted her teeth and tried harder, rubbing her hands against the edge of the bolt. She wished she could take off her jacket and move more easily. It didn’t feel like her quilted one with the tiger in back. It felt thick and nubby.
Like Grandma’s purple suit. Why was she wearing that?
Another memory floated by. Kelsey Fritz in a big white house with a lot of windows. Kelsey crying about a skeleton with no pants on. It was all mixed up and fuzzy, like a dream.
Like her head. She didn’t feel really awake. Her brain was soft and mushy, a pot of cooked oatmeal.
She froze at the sound of footsteps.
They weren’t as heavy as before. She lay down quickly.
The door opened, letting in a stream of light. It didn’t feel or smell like Lina. Again she peeked through her lashes.
He was waiting for that. He smiled. It was the same friendly smile she first saw in the window of his pickup truck.
“Sorry, kid, I gotta piss.” He unfastened his belt. She thought men could pee without taking off their clothes.
She wriggled away as far as she could, and hit the bathtub.
He chuckled. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I got nothing to hide.”
He was going to rape her. She tried not to look at him but light poured in from the hallway. He unzipped his fly. The trousers slid down to his knees.
He had a skinny rear, and spoke to her over his shoulder. “Like it?”
He must have been proud of that tattoo. It covered nearly all of his right buttock.
A grinning death’s head.
Chapter Twenty-six
Jake fastened his belt and went out, leaving Cree in darkness.
Kelsey’s dream was not a dream. Four years old and she saw that outside her window? What could she possibly make of it? Her family never knew they lived next door to a pervert. He might even have threatened her. Wait till she told Maddie!
She would never have the chance, and he knew it. She would carry his secret to her grave, once he figured out where that grave should be. You know how hard it is to get rid of a body.
How would he do it? Probably strangle her. She imagined his thumbs pressing her throat. Felt herself kicking and fighting for a breath that couldn’t come.
Whatever he did, she hoped it would be quick, but the choice wasn’t hers. She hadn’t chosen any of this, only blundered into it. She had been thinking Emerson Santiago simply because he was weird.
So was Ben, but he was—Ben. She relived the time she lifted him out of his truck. The time he helped her out of her tangled bike. She thought of his ideal world and she wanted to help him find it. To make his own world better for him, not die with Jake’s thumbs on her trachea. Damn it, anyway.
Slowly her eyes adjusted to the dark. Now she could sort of make out the window. They had covered it with something black but chinks of a lighter dark filtered in around its edges.
She thought back to when the light shone in. It was his tattoo that caught her attention, but there was something else as well, on the wall above the sink. Only now did it begin to register. She thought it was a razor.
She tried to sit up. She couldn’t, with her ankles taped and her hands useless for pushing.
She was trapped. By a monster.
Jasper knew. She remembered the first time she saw the man, at the curb by Olive’s house. Grandma going over to his truck with Jasper in her arms, and Jasper growling. He knew. Dogs could be intuitive. They weren’t hampered by a lot of extra thinking.
Now it was her turn. What would she do if she simply felt and acted intuitively? If she didn’t take the time to panic and worry.
She rolled onto her knees. It was her feet that needed to be under her. She tried to get them there, and toppled over.
She tried a second time. And fell again.
His voice, too close, stopped her cold. He barked orders and Lina whined. It was something about the baby waking up. Or not waking. If they had kept him drugged all this time, he could be brain damaged. The people bringing a suitcase full wouldn’t like that. And they couldn’t sue if the whole transaction was illegal, which she knew it was.
The voices moved away. She planted her feet on the floor, knees bent, and braced herself against the tub. She pushed, she sweated in Grandma’s purple jacket, and commanded herself to stay upright.
Steady, steady.
She raised herself enough to sit on the edge of the tub. She teetered and almost fell into it. But she had good balance from dancing and managed to stay perched.
From there, she could stand. She did it carefully, balancing all the way. It was a small, cramped room and the sink was so close. Though her feet were still taped, she could wiggle them together, back and forth, and inch her way across the narrow space.
She fell.
Against the sink. It held her up.
She straightened and found herself nose to nose with the light switch. It was only a blob in the dark, but she had seen it earlier.
She saw the razor, right where she remembered it. It was on a hook, too high for her taped hands. She had to get it before they came in. She rested against the wall and pushed with her shoulders. A corner of the medicine cabinet blocked her way.
She leaned over the sink and raised her arms in back as high as she could. Even her ballet training was no help. A ballerina developed strong legs and feet, a supple back, but her arms were meant only to be graceful.
For an instant her hands barely touched it. She thought it moved but couldn’t get hold of it. She sagged, dizzy from the effort. All for nothing.
Do. Not. Give. Up.
Again she wiggled her feet back and forth and inched around the sink.
The light switch, too, was higher than her bound hands could reach. She might be able to get it with her shoulder.
The jacket had padded shoulders, soft and squishy. With her arms tied together, she couldn’t take it off or slip it down.
She could use her chin. Her nose. Even her tongue. Quick, before somebody came.
She thought of that disgusting Jake and how he must have touched the switch a million times. She couldn’t use her tongue.
This was no time to be squeamish. She rehearsed the sequence in her mind. Three long, three short, three long. Or was it the other way?
Short first. Even if she had it wrong, they might understand.
They. Whoever saw it. As if anybody would.
She found it easier to close her lips around the switch and hoped she wouldn’t be electrocuted. Flash-flash-flash. Flash … flash … flash. Flash-flash-flash.
It was useless, with that black curtain on the window. Who would possibly see it?
She couldn’t think of anything else and was about to try again when she heard footsteps.
It was Jake. “Make it quick. There’s another cop car.”
Cree spat into the sink and wished she could rins
e her mouth.
Something clattered to the floor. She threw herself after it.
Lina whined. “How do you expect me to get in there? Why can’t we hide in the woods?”
“You crazy? With them cops all over? Get the girl.”
The door swung open. Lina stood silhouetted in the hallway light.
A big thing coming at me, Davy said. As big as a house.
To drug him. So she could steal Kip. Just as she had drugged Cree. A whack on the head and then a hypodermic needle.
Lina wore jeans and heavy shoes. She gave Cree a kick. “Get up.”
Cree moved her legs. She felt the razor under them.
Lina turned back and called through the door, “Jake, I gotta get that stuff off her feet.”
“So get it off. Quit stalling.” His voice was high and nervous.
“I can’t. There’s no room in here, I can’t bend down.”
“Fuck you, bitch.”
While Lina was turned away, Cree raised herself enough to grab the razor.
Grandma’s jacket had slit pockets. She could barely reach one to stuff the razor in and couldn’t push it all the way.
“Jake, get in here. I need you.”
“Fat bitch.” He came thundering in and ripped the tape from Cree’s ankles, tearing her pantyhose. He seized her bound arm and jerked her to her feet. The doorbell rang.
That made him more frantic. “Get in there!” he ordered Lina. “Now!”
“I can’t,” she whimpered. “I can’t fit!”
“You hear me?” He pushed her ahead and dragged Cree after him.
They were in a bedroom. Its enormous bed had been shoved aside and the carpeted floor gaped open. Was that what he meant? That hole?
If she had to go in there, under the house, there must be a way out.
But there wasn’t. Beneath the hole she saw another floor laced with pipes and wires.
And Kip. He lay among the wires with a strip of tape covering his mouth. He kicked, thrashed, rolled back and forth, choking and trying to cry. To breathe.
Jake pushed Lina toward the hole. No way would she fit in there between the floors. It was barely big enough for Kip.
Lina braced herself, falling across the bed. “I’m telling you, we can hide in the woods. They’ll be quiet, I’ll make them be quiet. They can hear him in here.”
Jake doubled his fist. Voices came from outside, and the single whoop of a siren.
Lina tried again, “Jake, I—”
“Shut up, bitch.” His knuckle cracked against her jaw. She was instantly silent, wide-eyed. Blood oozed from the corner of her mouth.
Cree edged toward the door. Her hands were still tied. She wrestled them, trying to break through the tape.
Jake must have seen, finally, that Lina couldn’t fit there. His eyes traveled over Cree. Although not nearly as large, she wouldn’t fit either.
Quickly he covered the hole. Put back the chunk of floor he had cut. The square of carpet. He pushed the bed into place, burying Kip alive.
“Here’s what you’re gonna do,” he told Lina. “You’re gonna get under this here trailer. All the way under, in the middle, I don’t care how you do it.”
“They’ll look there!” she cried. “And there’s rats and spiders!”
“You hear me?” Again he showed his fist.
Cree backed a little more. She was in the hallway now. Almost at the bathroom. She knew it from when Jake dragged her through there but she hadn’t seen anything then. Not the alcove that held a washing machine. And next to it, not a dryer, but—
The hall went black.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Maddie watched the cars piling up on Fremont and people spilling out to see what was happening. The police did their best to keep things moving.
Another car pulled up. The officer on traffic duty tried to wave it along, then recognized the plaid jacket that got out of it. The jacket recognized Maddie.
“I heard the police call,” Reimer said. “What’s going on? All I have is a possible hostage situation.”
Maddie was grateful that the police took Ben’s call seriously. It must have been his authoritative male voice that did it, not to mention the reference to firearms.
“I’m not sure what’s going on,” she said. “We think my friend Cree might be in there. She’s not anywhere else.”
“Cree? Lucretia Penny? What happened?”
She started to explain and was drowned out by a bullhorn.
“Jake Wyler. Put your weapon down where we can see it. Come out with your hands on your head.”
A pair of headlights came slowly along the road and hesitated. The officer waved it to keep going.
A window opened. The driver held up a map. The officer pointed to the trailer and made a wipe-out motion.
A woman in the passenger seat gasped, her hand to her mouth. The car drove a little way, parked at the side of the road, and the couple got out.
They paused at the sound of the bullhorn.
“Jake Wyler, we are getting a search warrant. You can make it easier on yourself if you come out now.”
The couple looked bewildered. The man asked, “What’s going on?”
Reimer said, “They friends of yours?”
“Not really.” The woman spoke in a watery voice. “We came to get the baby. This is the right place, isn’t it? Wyler?”
“That’s right, ma’am,” said the officer. “But I told you—”
“It can’t be! Jake Wyler? What’s happening?” She turned to Reimer and asked again. “What’s happening?”
Maddie felt a prickle all the way down her arms. She answered for him. “I heard you say you came for a baby. May I ask what baby?”
The woman reached into her purse and brought out a piece of paper. Maddie couldn’t it see in the dark. “He said he had a baby for us,” the woman told her. “We came all the way from Michigan.”
“What do you know about the baby?” Maddie asked.
“He’s supposed to have a baby for us. We put an ad in the paper and he answered it.”
“When was that? When was your ad?”
“A couple of weeks ago. We put ads in different places. We were looking to adopt and he was the first one who answered. He said it was a boy. We wanted a boy.”
A blaze of lightning lit the sky. Kelsey’s house showed up clearly, and the woods in between. Maddie had to wait for the thunder to finish. “Did you pay a lot of money?”
The woman looked embarrassed. “We paid some and we brought the rest with us.” She didn’t notice her husband trying to silence her. “Why? What’s wrong?”
Maddie refrained from pointing out the first thing that was wrong, the crime of buying and selling a human being, even a baby. The adopting couple could pay the mother’s medical expenses and a reasonable legal fee, but no one was allowed to profit.
“I hate to tell you this,” she said, trying to stay calm in spite of her excitement, “but it looks as if—well, a baby was kidnapped from his home last week. He’s not a newborn. He’s eighteen months.”
Phil Reimer stepped back and talked into a pocket tape recorder. The woman sagged, ready to collapse.
Her husband caught her. “Kidnapped? You must be mistaken.”
Reimer came back. “’Fraid not. There’s too much secrecy about all this and there’s the hostage situation. Also, a baby did disappear, last Wednesday. Hasn’t been found.”
Next to Maddie, someone spoke. “What’s happening?”
Maddie knew the voice. Kelsey recognized her outfit minus the wig and glasses.
“It was you!” Kelsey cried. “How could you do that?”
Maddie felt an instant of guilt. It quickly passed. “How could I not? My brother didn’t deserve what you did to him. He liked you. He wanted to be friends. The threat was all in your mind and I had to find out why. Ben was only a scapegoat for your stupid dream. I thought Mr. Payton should know that. By the way, I borrowed your horse but I put him back.�
��
“You tricked me!”
“Okay, I tricked you, but reflect on what you did. Ben only wanted to talk things over so you wouldn’t think badly of him. Instead you thought worse and there wasn’t any reason.”
“I was scared.”
“Of what? It’s all in your mind. He may be unusual but he never hurt anybody. He’s honest, smart, and talented, and he had great hopes for his future. You ruined it all.”
A hand clamped down on Maddie’s shoulder. She was being arrested.
She turned her head and met white hair and twinkling eyes. Her father.
“My dad,” she told Kelsey. “Daddy, this is Kelsey Fritz, the girl who made all that trouble for Ben.”
Kelsey’s tears dried in shock. Ed Canfield inclined his head and politely acknowledged her. “Miss Fritz.”
Kelsey backed away from them both, then turned and ran.
“Where’s Ben?” he asked.
“Around someplace.” Maddie pointed to the trailer. “He said those are the people who pushed that rock down at my friend Cree. He recognized their tire tread. And he asked if I have nail polish.”
“Whatever for?”
“Something about explosives. But I don’t have any right here, so don’t worry.”
Her father looked up at a lightning flash. “I don’t think nail polish is very explosive. He’ll have to try something else.”
* * * *
From the moment he met Emerson Santiago, Ben had been impressed. Not only did the guy devour science fiction, he wrote it, too, and was an expert on various forms of mayhem.
Emerson came right away. He’d been in the middle of dinner but this was a lot more interesting.
Except, as Emerson said, “She doesn’t like me.”
Ben blew that off. “She doesn’t like me either. So what? I was thinking some kind of flash-bang, to shake things up. I don’t know what they’re made of, and whatever it is, we don’t have it.”
“What about nitroglycerin?”
“Emerson, buddy, a flash-bang is noise and flash and no damage. Nitroglycerin is damage and I don’t have that either. Do you?”
Twenty Minutes Late Page 20
