I stumbled back to the bed, feeling my way, and looped my rope around the bedpost and the railing. Then I wrapped my wrists back up, but I wasn’t sure if I’d hidden all the rough edges and prayed that he wouldn’t notice.
We sat in the dark again. I wished we could speak, but I felt a tiny spark of energy. We had a plan. We were almost free.
After what felt like another hour, our door flung open. I shielded my eyes against the light, peeked over my shoulder. Gavin was looming in the doorway. He stumbled in, obviously drunker than he had been earlier. He walked over to me, knelt down, and gave me a smile. He reeked of booze and cigarettes. He took one out of his pocket, lit it, and blew the smoke slowly into my face. It went right up my nose—I coughed, couldn’t get my breath for a minute.
“I saw your mommy tonight,” he said.
I looked into his eyes. Was he telling the truth? What happened?
“Scared the shit out of those bitches.” A mean laugh. My thoughts scattered in a million directions. Had he hurt my mom and Dallas? I wanted to rip my hands free and strangle him, but I couldn’t do anything—not yet.
He licked his lips, looked at my legs, traced his hand down to my foot and back up toward my thigh. I was filled with terror and rage, had to fight the urge to kick him in the face even though everything in my body wanted to run away.
He gave me a blurry-eyed leer. “Think I’m too drunk to enjoy you tonight, but your time’s coming.” He stood back up, let out a loud burp, and looked at Crystal. “Don’t worry, sweetie. You’re still my favorite.”
He stumbled over to the stereo, turned the music down. “This shit’s giving me a headache.” Then he flicked off the light and left the room. I could hear him locking the door, swearing like he was struggling with the key.
I waited until I heard his steps go all the way downstairs, then gave it awhile longer, hoping he’d pass out. Finally I decided it was time.
I pulled my wrists free, removed my gag, and untied my rope from the bedpost. I crept over to Crystal, feeling for her in the dark, and undid her gag and wrists.
“I put some glass under your corner,” I said, already climbing up on the bed to start cutting her rope.
“Cut at the end behind the post, not in the middle,” she whispered. “In case we have to tie it up again. We don’t want him seeing the cut marks.”
While we worked, we talked in the dark.
“How did he get you?” I said.
“I was stupid. He didn’t recognize me, so I picked him up at the pub, told him we should go down to the river—it’s where those assholes attacked us when we were kids. He was getting some pot out of the glove box. I had the gun in my hand.” She was quiet for a moment, then said, “I think he saw the reflection in his window, because he turned around, yanked the gun out of my hand, and hit me in the head. I woke up in here, and—” Her voice broke. “I’m so sorry, Skylar.”
“It was my choice to follow you. I was worried.”
“How did you know I was in Cash Creek?”
“I broke into your house. I saw what you were looking at on your computer.”
“I should’ve cleaned that out.” She sounded really upset.
“Mom said you’d never come here. She thought you’d just run off.”
“I wish you hadn’t come.”
“But now I can get us out.”
We lapsed into silence, the only noise the glass scraping over the rope.
“I’m worried about Mom and Dallas,” I said after a minute.
“It sounds like Dallas and your mom reported us missing,” Crystal said. “Brian and Gavin aren’t going to hurt them—not when the cops are involved.”
“But he said that they were scared.”
“He was just trying to get to us.”
I took a breath. “Okay,” I said. “And we’re going to get out of here soon too.”
“I’m going to make sure you get out,” Crystal said. “No matter what.”
“What do you mean? We’re both getting out.”
“That’s the plan,” she said. “Keep working on the rope.”
It took us the whole night, and we were exhausted by the time we finally cut Crystal loose. The light was starting to creep in through the window. Gavin might be up soon. We plotted in the dark.
“He’ll come with breakfast and water,” Crystal said. “When he leans over to feed me, see if you can get the rope around him from behind. Then I’ll stand up and get mine over his head. We can wrap the rope around the post for leverage, then we’ll strangle him—it won’t take as much strength that way.”
We gagged ourselves again, wrapped the rope loosely around the bedposts, taped our wrists. Then we waited.
Finally I heard noises downstairs, a toilet flush. Then loud voices—he’d turned the TV up. A few minutes later I thought I heard a truck start but wasn’t sure. It could have just been the TV. I looked at Crystal and she shook her head.
As it grew hotter and brighter in the room, I began to wonder if he was going to come up that morning. What if he was waiting until Brian came? What were we going to do?
After what felt like a couple of hours, the TV was suddenly turned off, the silence startling. I held my breath, stared at the door. I heard his boots stumbling up the stairs, and sounds of him unlocking the door. He flung it open. His face was pale and grizzled, but he was wearing a dress shirt, his hair slicked back.
“Got to run up to the ranch for a few minutes and look at the tractor. Brian can’t seem to do fuck-all by himself if I’m not around. You girls be good, now.”
He turned the music up, then walked out and closed the door behind him.
I looked at Crystal. She shook her head again, telling me to wait. I watched her, ready for the signal, but I was getting frustrated. A few minutes later, Crystal pulled her wrists apart and yanked her gag down off her mouth.
“We need to be sure he’s gone,” she said.
“We don’t have enough time,” I said. “He might come back with Brian. Then they’re going to take us to the warehouse.”
Crystal’s face was grim as she thought for a couple of seconds, like she was considering our options.
“We have to bust through the door.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
JAMIE
I woke up on the bed, still dressed in all my clothes, my mouth tasting like dry cotton. I glanced at the clock. Seven-thirty. Dallas was standing by the window.
“It’s going to be really hot today,” she said.
She’d brought back muffins and coffee from the front office. I sipped at the coffee, tried to choke down some of the muffin, but everything tasted like paste. At nine-thirty my phone finally rang. It was the sergeant.
“Did you speak to Gavin?” I said.
“He came in this morning, but he won’t let us search the property.”
“He must have something to hide.”
“Not necessarily. Lots of people don’t like the police.” A long pause. My body stiffened as I realized he was about to tell me something I wasn’t going to want to hear. “Crystal’s phone was found on the side of the road near the river. Looks like it might have been smashed with a rock.”
I sucked in my breath. “Brian and Gavin took us to that river when we were teens. That’s where they attacked us.” Dallas sat up on the other bed.
“We don’t know how the phone got there at this point, but the last place Skylar’s phone pinged was off a cell tower on the highway toward Vernon.”
“She didn’t go to Vernon—she doesn’t know anyone there.”
“We still need to follow through on that lead.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“Parents don’t always know everything that’s going on in their kids’ lives.” His patronizing tone was starting to really piss me off.
“You’re wasting time. I’m telling you—she never left this town.”
“I’ll keep you updated on what we find.”
I hung up the phone,
and yelled into the air, “Fuck!”
“What’s going on?” Dallas said.
“They found Crystal’s phone smashed down by the river, and they think Skylar’s in Vernon—her phone pinged off a tower.”
Dallas looked confused. “Do you think maybe she got away from them?”
“They’re still in this town. I can feel it.”
“Maybe it has something to do with that hitchhiker.”
I spun around. “Shit, she probably stole Skylar’s phone or something. And now the cops are going to change their whole investigation.”
Dallas narrowed her eyes, thinking. “We should stake out the ranch and tail them if they go anywhere today.”
* * *
We were careful when we left the room, checking for Gavin, but we didn’t see anything. We grabbed some bottles of water from the corner store and were soon parked on a side road where we could see if anyone left the Luxton Ranch.
“I hope those assholes don’t have a back driveway,” Dallas said.
“Shit, I never thought of that.”
“Let’s just keep an eye out and see what happens.”
We took turns, one dozing while the other kept watch, both of us still exhausted from our sleepless night at the motel. No one left the ranch, and not many vehicles drove past. It was a quiet road.
Finally, at ten-thirty, a navy-blue truck came down the driveway. I elbowed Dallas, who was asleep behind the wheel.
“Look.”
We lowered ourselves as the truck roared past. I couldn’t see who was on the passenger side but I caught a flash of the driver’s profile and dark hair. It was Brian.
“Was that Gavin with him?” I said.
“I don’t know, the sun was glaring off the windshield,” Dallas said.
“Let’s see where he’s going.”
* * *
We followed the truck to the bus station and parked around the back side, where we could watch the truck in the parking lot. Brian’s wife got out of the passenger side and went into the station. She was wearing a pretty sundress. His daughter, in shorts and a T-shirt, climbed out of the backseat but stayed by the truck. Through the window we watched his wife go up to the ticket agent.
“Can you see how many tickets she’s buying?” Dallas said.
“No.” I was worried about the fact that we’d left Gavin back at the ranch. What if he went out to the warehouse and hurt the girls? I reminded myself that he probably wouldn’t go without Brian.
A few minutes later the woman walked out to the parking lot. Brian was helping the young girl bring a suitcase out of the back of the truck. He also handed one to his wife, then gave her a hug, but it was perfunctory. The wife and daughter walked toward the waiting bus. His wife looked back at him, her face anxious as she climbed aboard. I wondered what he’d told her.
Brian was leaning on his truck, watching the bus. It started up and he glanced at his watch, like he couldn’t wait to get out of there. He looked back at the bus, gave a smile and a little wave. I could see the girl waving back from the window, her dark eyes big. I thought of Skylar.
The moment the bus was out of sight Brian’s smile disappeared. He walked into the building.
“Where the hell is he going?” I said.
“Maybe he’s using the bathroom?”
We stared at the door, waiting for him to come back out.
Suddenly his face was at Dallas’s open window. We both jerked back in our seats.
“Why are you following me?” His voice was cold. His eyes flicked around, checking to see if anyone was watching.
“We know you have them,” I said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Where are they?” My voice shook with rage. A woman walking by looked at us curiously.
“I told you already, I don’t know.”
“The cops are talking to your son today. He was the last person to see Skylar. If anything’s happened to her, he’ll be blamed.”
“Still don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” he said, bending down and peering into the car. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m married now.” He held his finger up, showing his ring. “So if you were looking for a little repeat…”
Dallas’s face was flushed and angry, like she was going to explode any minute. Her hand reached under her seat where she’d put the gun.
He straightened, stepped away a couple of feet.
“Go back to wherever you’ve been hiding, girls.” He walked to his truck, climbed in, and roared off.
* * *
Dallas was silent all the way back to the motel. She whipped open the door, tossed her purse onto the bed, and started pacing, her hands on her hips, her jaw clenched. “Fuck,” she said, shaking her head. “It should have been me.”
“What are you talking about?”
She sat down on the edge of the bed, ran her hands through her hair. “I should’ve come here years ago and finished those scumbags off. That’s why I bought the gun—I just never had the balls to see it through.”
“It was smart you never came back. Look what’s happened now.”
“Yeah, they’ve got Crystal and Skylar.…” She turned away, hiding her face. She got up and grabbed a cigarette from the pack.
“It’s not your fault.”
“I should’ve killed Dad, it should’ve been me. I screwed up, and I screwed up when we got to Cash Creek. I didn’t protect you.” She sat back on her bed.
I didn’t know what to say, had never heard Dallas talk like this.
“You always look out for us,” I said. “We know you tried.”
“I just want to kill those fuckers and make it right.” She took a drag, blew it out in an angry rush.
“Nothing will ever make it right,” I said. “It happened. We just have to find the girls and get out of this shitty town.”
She looked down at the cigarette in her hand, rolled it between her fingers, her eyes narrowed. “We should go back to the ranch, wait until Gavin leaves, then sneak onto his property. We have to find out if the girls’ cars are there.”
“You think they would’ve kept them?”
“Maybe this all came down on them too fast,” Dallas said. “They haven’t had time to deal with everything.”
“Bring your gun,” I said.
* * *
We drove down the same side road and stared at the driveway. My temple was pounding with a headache, all the muscles in my body tense. We assumed Brian lived in the bigger house with his family and Gavin lived in the smaller one below. We figured we could cut across the field and avoid the driveway after he left.
We sat in the car for an hour. We were hot, sweaty, and smoking too many cigarettes. My throat was dry, my head aching. I glanced at my watch. It was almost one, and there’d been no sign of them. We’d brought water but had almost drunk all of it when we finally saw Gavin’s black truck pulling out of his driveway, and then going up to the main house, a plume of dust behind him.
“He might be gone for only a few minutes,” I said.
“It might also be our only chance,” Dallas said.
“Okay, let’s go.”
We climbed the fence and cut through a lower field, trying to stay on the edges of the ranch until a house came in sight. “That must be Gavin’s,” I said.
The front doors on the shop wouldn’t slide up. We circled the garage and tried the side door, but there was a big padlock on the door. We noticed a window at the back. Dallas hoisted me up. I wiped at the dirt on the window.
“Can you see anything?” she said.
“It’s dark, but it looks like there are two cars—they’re both under tarps.” I looked around. “And some cutting tools on the bench! Shit, I think they’re stripping the cars.”
Dallas lowered me, and we looked for a way to break into the garage.
“Maybe we could smash the padlock with a rock,” I said.
Dallas was staring at the house. “Listen how loud that mu
sic’s playing.”
“Should we try to break in?”
She looked down the driveway, then in the direction of the ranch.
“This might be our only chance,” I said.
She nodded. “Let’s do it.”
I tried the back porch door. Locked.
Dallas was looking up at the porch roof. “Do you hear something? Like underneath the country music?”
The music was even louder near the house.
“That thudding sound?”
“Yeah.”
We were both quiet, but we couldn’t hear the sound anymore.
“Maybe we should smash one of the windows,” I said.
“Let’s check the front first.” Dallas was walking around the corner of the house when she stopped suddenly. “Crap, I think a truck’s coming!”
We ran for the back of the garage, keeping low. We’d just made it when I heard the truck pull up. We leaned against the wall, our bodies tucked behind some old barrels, staring at each other. The truck shut off and a door opened.
“Wait.” Dallas peeked around the corner. I held my breath. “Okay, let’s go.”
We were crossing the field, trying to get to a cover of trees, when a shout rang out behind us.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
I glanced back and saw Gavin running down the hill after us. I started sprinting, Dallas running hard beside me, our feet thudding on the compact ground. I looked over my shoulder, almost tripping on a rock. He was slowing down, then stopped in the middle of the field, watching us.
“That was really stupid, bitches!” he yelled.
* * *
We clambered through the fence, dashed across the road, jerked open the car doors, and jumped in. Dallas tore off down the road.
I looked out the rearview mirror. No one was following.
“We can never go back now,” Dallas said. “He’ll be keeping watch.”
“He has their cars,” I said, starting to cry. “That’s why Gavin refused the search—he must have them in the house.”
“We have to tell the cops,” Dallas said. “They can get a warrant.”
I called McPhail as soon as we got within range.
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