Chapter 36
Casey shivered in the dampness. Her coat was around her shoulders, but she was still cold. Cold to the very bone.
“That too tight?” Adam asked, securing her feet to the legs of an old wooden chair he had sat her in.
She just glared at him. He was a madman.
He frowned and tore another strip of duct tape off the roll. He was working by the light of a shop lamp hanging from a hook in the rafters of the low ceiling.
Adam had taken her out into the country somewhere near Roxana. They had followed a long farm lane and parked behind a run-down frame farmhouse similar to many that dotted the local countryside. When they had driven up, Casey had thought it was abandoned, but it had turned out the electric was turned on inside. Someone was using it, though not living there. It appeared as if nothing had changed since the 1950s, including the kitchen appliances.
Adam had led her through the kitchen, into a hall, to a doorway under the front staircase, and down rickety wooden stairs, festooned with banners of cobwebs, into a cellar. She had stood a moment in inky blackness before he had found the hanging lamp and snapped it on. The bulb was low wattage, so the light did not reach the far corners of the large, cluttered room. An area had been cleared where he had sat her, but she was surrounded by berry baskets and half-bushel baskets stacked in towers, skeletons of furniture, and lumpy cloth feed sacks. She could see the silhouettes of more junk outside the ring of light, and the dark rectangular shadows of small windows high on the walls at ground level.
“That okay?” Adam asked, adding another strip of tape around her ankles. He rested his hand on her knee as he rose.
She turned her head away…just as she had done that night in Billy’s car. He had parked in the backyard of his house, of all places. She remembered a dog barking. She remembered him forcing her into the backseat.
Billy had made her take off her shoes, then her jeans, then her shirt and bra. When she had resisted him, he had ripped off her panties.
They had been lavender cotton with pink hearts. “Happy drawers,” Jayne had called them when their mother had bought multiple pairs for the sisters.
Casey still remembered the panties on the floor of the car. She remembered them more than the pain. She had gone home without her panties and wondered later if they had been in the car the night Billy had driven off the bridge in the white LeSabre and drowned in the river.
Would he even have been on the bridge if her father had believed her when she had said Billy had raped her? If he had been less concerned about his reputation and allowed her to go to the police? What if Lorraine had spoken up in her daughter’s defense? Could Billy’s arrest have put him in jail and saved him from going off the bridge that night? Or was it fate? Had Billy been doomed to his wet grave the moment he had picked up Casey, walking back from the library in the rain?
Tears filled her eyes, not because Billy had drowned, not because Adam was a madman who was about to murder her, not even because Billy had raped her, but because she had become a victim once again.
She took a shuddering breath.
She had sworn she would never be caught in this position again, and now, here she was, all these years later. Everything had changed. Yet nothing had changed. And this time, it would mean her life.
“Adam, please,” she begged. “You can’t—”
“I can do it and I am going to,” he said sharply. “And I’ll get away with it, just as I’ve been getting away with things for years. Now shut up and sit there. I hope you’ll excuse me, but I’m not quite ready yet.” Adam’s tone had changed; now he suddenly sounded as if he had invited her to lunch and the meal wasn’t prepared.
Who was this man? How could Casey have misjudged him so greatly? How had everyone around him misjudged him?
“I’ve got some things to do upstairs. But I’ll leave the light on. There’s nothing that can harm you here, so you needn’t be afraid.”
He walked to a workbench and flipped on another hanging shop light. Behind the bench were shelves lined with fruit and tomatoes canned in dusty glass jars. On the bench were pieces of mechanical equipment. Tubes. Wire. Some sort of timers.
Adam picked up something off the bench and turned to her. He was holding a white plastic tube with wires and a device attached to it.
Casey’s mouth went dry. She’d never seen a bomb in her life, but she knew that’s what it was.
“A little project I’ve been working on, weekends.” He squatted in front her. “There’s mercury in this little glass vial. If you jiggle it, the contents of the tube will mix and explode. I haven’t had a chance to use it, but my suspicion is that you’ll explode.” He used the tape to attach it somewhere under Casey’s chair. “I know you promised me you wouldn’t try to get away, but this is assurance for me.”
“How do you know I won’t blow myself up to save myself from you?” she asked, looking down at him.
“Because you won’t. Because you’re human, and until the very last second, you will believe there is some chance you’ll escape, be saved, or I’ll change my mind about killing you and hiding your body parts so that they’ll never be found.”
Satisfied with the placement, he stood up. “I’d blow myself up to escape, but not you, Casey.” He tried to stroke her chin but she turned sharply from him.
He walked out of the circle of light and toward the stairs. “Sit tight. I’ll be back.” He winked. “Promise.”
Lincoln gripped the steering wheel. It had taken him three calls before he had found someone willing to go into the Delaware Criminal Justice Information System and look up Adam Preston III’s home address. Lincoln owed the detective a big favor.
Lincoln was surprised that Adam had two addresses listed. The first one was on the ocean side in South Bethany Beach. He went there first. He looked in the windows, found the BMW in the garage, but saw no lights on inside except for one that he guessed glowed in a hallway.
Lincoln had gone there first because it was closer, but he hadn’t been hopeful. For whatever depraved reason Adam had kidnapped Casey, Lincoln doubted he would take her to such an obvious place. Now Lincoln was headed for an address in the countryside near Roxana. He had used his cell phone to map it. It was out in the middle of nowhere. It was the kind of place you would take a woman if you wanted to—
Lincoln refused to allow his thoughts to go there. What mattered right now was finding Casey. Nothing else.
He made a turn at the intersection, following the mapping software on his phone. He glanced in his rearview mirror. It was a cold, windy night. There were few drivers on the country road. Right now, just one, half a mile or so behind him.
Lincoln began to slow his car. According to the map, he was 200 feet from the address. He peered through the windshield. In the distance, across a field, he saw the outline of a two-story house. Light glowed behind shades in some of the windows.
He almost missed the dirt lane. He cut his headlights and made the turn into the driveway, then pulled over. He waited until the car that had been behind him went by and disappeared into the woods. Then he got out of the car and walked up the dark driveway, adrenaline rushing.
There was definitely someone home in the old farmhouse. Lincoln went up on the front porch and tried to look in the windows, but the lamp glow was from rooms in the back of the house. He heard music from inside. One of the Three Tenors, he believed.
He couldn’t see anyone or anything. He walked around to the back to find a light blue Honda that he didn’t recognize.
Had he made a mistake? If he was peering in the windows of the wrong house, he might end up getting arrested or shot. But the cop said this property was owned by Adam. Not his father or grandfather. The third. And if you were going to commit a crime, would you use your own car if you didn’t have to?
Lincoln stood in the driveway, undecided as to what to do. There was a back door, which probably led to a kitchen. Knock? No, that would be crazy.
He needed to get a lo
ok inside.
He glanced at the car. On impulse, he opened the passenger-side door, not really sure what he was looking for. A flashlight maybe? A tire iron to use as a weapon? Light flooded the interior and he quickly climbed in and flipped the overhead light off.
The car smelled like Casey! It smelled like her hair….
Lincoln’s throat thickened with emotion. He had no doubt Casey had been in this car.
He had his cell phone in his pocket. He should just call the police. He knew he still had no evidence Casey was even inside, but he pulled it out of his pocket and dialed 911.
The screen on the cell flashed a message: “Loss of Service.”
Damn! It had been working a few minutes ago when he’d used the mapping service. But there were a lot of places in southern Delaware where there was weak or no cell phone service because there were too few towers. He fought the urge to throw the phone as far into the field as he could. He would have to walk back to the main road.
But walking to the car would mean leaving Casey.
Finding nothing of use in the car, he got out and eased the door shut. He walked around the other side of the house, still hearing the music faintly through the walls. He debated again whether or not he should hike back to the car.
On the south end of the house, he noticed a feeble light coming from the ground. Tiny, darkened, rectangular windows. Lincoln crouched in front of one of the windows. If you kidnapped someone, where would you take the person? A cellar in an old farmhouse was a pretty good hiding spot.
Unable to see anything, Lincoln stuffed his cell into his coat pocket and dropped to the wet, cold grass. The window was painted over. Barn red. He rubbed the glass with his hand. Nothing. Then he tried to scratch it. To his amazement, paint peeled away and a thin line of light seeped through. It had been painted on the outside instead of the inside!
He scrubbed vigorously with his fingertips, making a peephole, not caring that shreds of paint jammed under his fingernails sent shooting pains through his fingers. Then he lowered his body flat on the ground. He eased forward.
It was a cellar very similar to his: whitewashed brick walls, dirt floor. Except that this one didn’t appear to have changed in the last fifty years. Cobwebs hung everywhere. He saw stacks of baskets, feed bags, even home-canned vegetables.
Then he saw her and his chest tightened so quickly that he had to gasp for air. Casey was sitting upright in a chair in the middle of the room, her back to him.
He couldn’t fit through the window, even if he was willing to take the risk of Adam hearing the glass breaking. Lincoln didn’t know where Adam was, but he didn’t appear to be in the cellar.
Many of these houses had outside entrances to the cellars, as well as inside entrances. Adam had to be in the house.
Lincoln leaped to his feet and ran for the aluminum door that led underground.
Ed didn’t take the dirt road up to the house. Instead, he and Frazier trekked across the fallow cornfield.
Ed had parked in the woods down the road. He’d been nervous when he’d backed out of the driveway. He’d been afraid he wouldn’t remember how to drive, but his hands and feet had remembered.
When Lincoln had turned into the driveway at the old farmhouse, Ed had been afraid to pull in behind him. He had been afraid Lincoln would make him go home. Lincoln didn’t understand that Ed had to be here. That Ed had to save Freckles.
It was a longer walk across the field than Ed had thought it would be, and he was getting hot in his coat. He unzipped it. Frazier trotted beside him. Joe Frazier was a good dog. He heeled without a leash. Joe Frazier had been a good boxer, too.
At the house, Ed walked around to the back. He could hear music. Pavarotti’s Rodolfo in La Bohème. Ed didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He just figured he would get Freckles and then they would walk back across the cornfield to the car. Now that he could prove to her that he was capable of driving, maybe she would let him drive home.
Lincoln believed in God, but he was not typically a man of prayer. He prayed as he tugged on the handle of the cellar door and God smiled upon him. It creaked so loud as the hinges gave way that he froze for a heartbeat. Two. He held his breath.
After a moment, when he heard nothing from inside, when Adam didn’t burst out of the darkness, Lincoln pulled harder.
He only opened the door far enough to climb through the opening and step down into the stairway. He eased it closed over his head and fought the urge to run down the steps to Casey. Instead, he crouched there listening. He heard nothing. How could she not have heard the door? How could anyone within a mile radius of the house not heard it? As he eased down the steps, he guessed why.
There was music coming through the floorboards overhead. A rich tenor voice. He didn’t know enough about opera to identify the tenor.
He peeked around the corner, and as he did so, his hand brushed against a glass jar, causing the jar to slide and make a scraping sound. He stared at the jar with tomatoes bobbing in it.
“Is someone there?” Casey whispered. She didn’t turn around. She didn’t move.
Seeing no one, Lincoln made a run for her. He would just sweep her up in his arms and carry her out of there. He had seen the keys dangling in the ignition of the Honda. They would take the Honda. They would drive away, and the minute he had phone service, he would call the police.
“Casey,” he whispered. When he reached her, he rested his hand on her shoulder and stepped around her to see her face.
“Don’t touch me,” she warned in a voice that didn’t sound like her own.
Lincoln let go of her at once. All he could think of was that Adam had already raped her.
“Casey…” He gazed into her tear-stained face. Her hands were cuffed in front of her.
“Get out of here,” she whispered harshly. “Go, Lincoln. Run.”
“Casey…” He put his arms out to her. He didn’t care what Adam had done. He loved her. He wanted to marry her. He wanted to have babies with her.
“Under the chair, Lincoln.” She was nearly hysterical. “A bomb under the chair.”
He lowered his gaze, her words barely sinking in. A bomb? Then he saw it. Wires. A tube. Crude. Homemade, but almost surely a bomb.
“Call for help,” she whispered, her eyes pleading. “Your cell.”
“No service here. I tried.” He crouched down in front of her.
“You can’t touch me,” she warned. “Or the chair. He said it would be triggered by movement. You have to go for help if you can’t use your phone. You have to go now before he comes downstairs.” She pointed with her chin to a narrow wooden staircase without railings that led upward into the dark.
Lincoln looked down at the device looped in wires under Casey’s chair. This just got crazier and crazier by the moment. “You think he’s capable of—”
“I know he is!”
The outside aluminum door creaked and Lincoln shot to his feet. Had Adam slipped out of the house and come around to the outside? Had he realized Lincoln was there?
The door creaked again and Lincoln and Casey both cringed.
“Lincoln,” she whispered, her eyes filled with tears.
He lunged for the closest object he thought he could use as a weapon, a long wooden handle that had once been attached to a rake or a shovel. He put himself between the back of Casey’s chair and the outside staircase.
He heard footsteps and something shot out of the dark. Lincoln reacted without thinking, swinging the stick.
Fortunately, he wasn’t a good aim. He missed Frazier’s head by a foot.
“Oh my God,” Lincoln muttered as the dog skittered around him.
Two steps behind, out of the darkness, Ed appeared.
“Ed, what are you doing here?” Lincoln begged.
“Came to get my daughter.” He walked around her. “What’s she—”
“Shhh,” Lincoln warned, grabbing his arm and pulling him back before he touched Casey or the chair she was tied to. �
��He’s upstairs.”
“Nixon?”
“Adam Preston.”
Ed stared at his daughter. “I saw Nixon.” He pointed at Lincoln. “Tell him I’m not crazy.”
Casey was smiling and crying at the same time. “You’re not crazy, Daddy. He was wearing a Richard Nixon mask. Now listen to me. You have to get out of here. You have to go for help.”
He looked down at her. “I’m not going without you. I’ll just get a knife and cut that tape.”
Casey looked to Lincoln for support.
Lincoln took Casey’s father’s arm and tried to steer him toward the door. “Even if we cut the tape, she can’t just get up. We have to get the police. We probably need the FBI.”
“I don’t understand.” Ed struggled to escape Lincoln’s grip. “Why can’t she get up? If she can’t walk, I can carry her. I’m still strong. I’m strong for an old man.”
“Ed,” Lincoln said as gently as he could, “listen to me. He’s tied a bomb to her chair. If she tries to get up, it will explode.”
Ed turned to stare at his daughter’s back. “A bomb?”
“Yes. So you see, I need you to take my cell phone”—Lincoln pulled it out of his coat pocket and pressed it into Ed’s hand—“and go to the road. Go as far as you have to until the phone works, and then you have to call nine-one-one and tell them where we are. The address is here in my phone. You don’t even have to remember. You can just read it to them.”
Ed halted halfway to the staircase. Lincoln tried to push him, but the old man wouldn’t budge. He was strong for his age.
“There’s a bomb under my daughter’s chair?” he said in a small voice.
“Yes.”
He looked up at Lincoln. “Then what would make you think I’m going anywhere, boy?”
Chapter 37
The End of the End
I check the contents of my duffel bag one last time, dragging my fingers lightly over my tools. Maury explained the use of each item as I wrote them down.
I am, frankly, delighted with myself.
Don't Turn Around Page 35
