by Kelly Irvin
“Your father is a murderer. You know how that feels. Why would you do this to your kids?”
“Who are they, Teagan?” Max struggled against the bindings around his hands. “How do you know them?”
The barrel of Bleached Blonde’s gun touched Teagan’s forehead. “Do you want the gag back in? Or should I just blow your brains out and get it over with?”
“If you were supposed to kill us, you’d have done it by now.” Teagan leaned into the pistol. “How angry do you think he’ll be if you shoot me? Angry enough to kill you? Angry enough to do to you what he had you do to Charity Waters?”
“Teagan!” She knew something Max didn’t, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t playing with fire. These two maniacs were known to Teagan. Both she and Max had seen them. The long-range plan didn’t involve letting them merrily trot back home after this—whatever this was—was over. “Let’s talk about this. What do you want? Money?”
Not that he had any.
“What we want is for you to shut up.” No-Longer-Bearded Man slapped Teagan in the mouth so hard her head snapped back. “Charity Waters was stupid. I’m not. My dad knows it.”
His dad. Teagan and Dillon had interviewed Leo Slocum’s son. What was his name? Max’s head pounded to the beat of the pulse in his ears. Think. Think. “You’re Chase Slocum.”
No-Longer-Bearded Man shoved Max toward the cabin. “Ding, ding, ding! Now shut it.”
Max dug in his heels and glanced back at Bleached Blonde. “And that makes you Joanna Dean.”
She mimed a ragged curtsy. “If you say so. You guys have a death wish.”
The whack between the shoulder blades sent him sprawling on the porch. A gush of warm liquid seeped into his mouth. Forcing back the urge to vomit, Max breathed through his mouth and struggled to his knees.
“Get up, get up!”
Two seconds later they were inside the log cabin. A flashback to his childhood. His parents had rented similar cabins at various state parks over the years so they could fish, swim, and boat. Only Mom would’ve had a field day with this one. “Maximilian, don’t touch anything until I straighten up. This place needs a deep cleaning, fresh linens, and the windows wide open.”
Her cheerful voice, always brimming with laughter, echoed in his head. Oh, Mom, I could use that sweetness now.
An avocado-green refrigerator and gas stove flanked a rusty sink on his left. The doors to three empty rooms stood open. To the right the room opened into a living area featuring a dirty stone fireplace and a blue plaid sofa with sagging cushions. The walls were bare. The odors of burnt mesquite, kerosene, and dust mingled in an unpleasant bouquet.
“Keep moving.”
Another vicious shove sent him flying through an open door. The bedroom held an elderly wrought-iron bed frame that had been stripped down to the mattress and a single straight-back chair. Blackout curtains banished any natural light from a single large window. A naked overhead bulb offered tepid illumination.
“Sit.”
“I’m not a dog.” Teagan seemed determined to provoke. “Try asking nicely.”
The blow sent her reeling onto the mattress. She rolled over and blew her hair from her face. “You think carrying out these murders will take the spotlight from your dad? Law enforcement will look elsewhere, leaving him to appeal a single conviction. It’ll never work. Even if he didn’t commit the murders in San Antonio, he’s good for the ones in the Valley that happened long before he was incarcerated.”
“You think you know so much.” Chase forced Max into the wooden chair and handcuffed him to a rung. He produced the duct tape and secured Max’s legs once again. “My dad never hurt anyone. He is a good man. A good father. Your dad had it out for him from the beginning. You can thank him for this. He did this to you.”
“A good man would never ask you to do the things your father has made you do.” Max sought a conciliatory tone he didn’t feel. “Does a good father make his son kill women on his behalf?”
“We didn’t—”
“Shut up, Chase.” Joanna slapped a handcuff on Teagan’s right arm and handcuffed her to the bed frame. “We’re not to say a word, remember?”
“I remember,” Chase huffed. “They just think they know so much. They don’t know anything.”
“Let’s keep it that way.”
“What harm is there in telling Teagan and me what’s going on?” Max strove for calm. To create a semblance of a connection between him and this man whose father was a monster. “Where’s Leyla? You have us where you want us. Why not let us in on the endgame here?”
“You know what you need to know.” Joanna smiled. Her sharp incisors made her look like a happy rat. “We know better than to fall for any mind games.”
“I’m not playing games. I’m trying to understand why two decent, hardworking parents would do this. What happens to you when the police catch you? You killed a cop. That’s the death penalty.”
“Shut up, just shut up.” Joanna’s smile crumpled into a thin, fierce line. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What happens to your children?” Teagan struggled to sit up. The handcuffs clanged against the bed frame. “Their grandpa is in prison. Their dad is next. And yours, Joanna, what about them? Do you have a sister or a mother to take care of them for you?”
“Don’t talk about my kids—”
“Shut up, Joanna. She’s just trying to get to you.” Chase edged toward the door. “Y’all take a nap. Don’t bother yelling. There’s not another soul within miles.”
Guns at the ready, they backed out of the room like bad guys from a B-grade black-and-white movie. The door banged shut.
“Are you okay?” Max jerked at the handcuff. No give in the chair’s rung. He flexed his legs. No give in the duct tape. “Why were you antagonizing them?”
“I’m good. I thought we were doing a bad-cop, good-cop thing. I thought maybe they’d get irritated enough to mouth off about their plans.” Teagan rattled her cuffs in vain. “I sat in their living room and talked to him for an hour. I met her. He was a loving father shocked by his father’s murder conviction. She was a good friend thankful to be able to share a home with him. They seemed to be hiding a secret—that they were involved. But nothing like this. I thought he didn’t want us to know he had an affair and that was the real reason his wife left.”
An obscenity blistered the air. Joanna’s voice raised in anger. Chase’s fierce bass mingled with the woman’s nerve-scraping shrieks. The topic of the argument seemed to be the kids.
“See, I hit a nerve.”
“You can’t tell me they didn’t consider the consequences before this.”
The shouting escalated. A door slammed.
“And just so you know.” A sneer on her face, Joanna charged into the room. “That’s the beauty of this plan. We can leave you here and go back home. No one will be the wiser. No one saw. Your phones are still in the building. Your car is still there. No one witnessed us take you down. They have no idea where you are. And they have no idea we’re involved. I’ll be home in time to make mac ’n’ cheese and chicken nuggets for the kids’ supper. No one will be the wiser. Don’t worry, we’ll be back to take care of you folks—one way or another.”
With that, she whirled and sashayed from the room. The door slammed again.
An engine fired up outside the windows. Tires squealed. The noise died away.
They were alone. Good. They wouldn’t be killed immediately.
But bad, because they were hog-tied and possibly left to die a horrible, slow death. No one knew where they were.
No one was coming for them.
36
The quiet had its own deadly sound. The sound of minutes ticking by. Max strained to pull away from the chair. To no avail. “We have to be gone when they come back.”
“You have a penchant for stating the obvious.” Teagan groaned and wiggled closer to the foot of the bed. “At a certain point, keeping us alive will serve no p
urpose.”
Max leaned as far forward as his bindings allowed. Somehow he had to loosen the tape or rid himself of the cuffs. How? With his teeth? Billy and Justin would know how. Gracie would have a toothpick or a tiny pocketknife or a paper clip hidden in her unmentionables. If memory served, all he had was a guitar pick and seven cents. “Can you tell if they left anything useful on you?”
“Nope. Who knows what they did with my purse.” She slid over on her side close to the bed frame and pulled her legs up, knees bent. “I can try to reach the tape and work it off, but there’s still the handcuffs.”
“One thing at a time. You’re short enough. That might work.”
“Nice. Kick me when I’m down.”
“You’re not down. You’re never down. I’m awed by your bravery.” He swallowed against emotions that could not be allowed to interfere. “I want to save you, but I’m positive you’ll end up saving me.”
“Okay, that makes up for the crack about my height.” Her voice lightened a fraction. “Maybe Leyla is somewhere in this house in another room—in the basement, if there is one.”
Max heaved a breath. “Leyla? Leyla!”
Their shouts echoed in the empty space. No one answered.
“If they killed her—”
“They didn’t. She was a bargaining chip.” Max prayed he was right. “We need to focus on getting out of here and finding her.”
Was. Past tense. Now that they had Teagan, they didn’t need Leyla anymore. What better way to inflict pain and suffering on their dad than to take not one but two daughters? They didn’t need Max either. Why was he still alive?
Because Chase and Joanna weren’t killers. They were pawns in a psychopath’s plan to make Dillon O’Rourke suffer. Leo Slocum faced the death penalty because Dillon had pulled the string that had unraveled Slocum’s secret life. He had to pay. Not a quick death, but a slow and painful descent into hell.
They had to get out. They couldn’t let this monster win.
“Do you have any idea where here is?” Teagan asked.
“It smells like lake to me. With the terrain and the vegetation, I’m guessing Medina Lake.” Max tried to stand. The cuffs bit into his wrists. His body strained. The chair came with him. Groaning, he plopped back down. “Medina Lake is something like eighteen miles long and thirteen miles wide. It’s forty miles from San Antonio. It’ll be tough for them to find us. They don’t know where to start searching.”
“I feel sick thinking about it.” Teagan’s voice took on that scratchy quality it got when she had a cold. “Poor Dad. First Leyla. Now me. It has to be eating him alive.”
“More likely he’s imagining all the ways he’ll kill the guy who did this.”
“They don’t have an inkling of who did this. If they did, they could do a real estate search. I’m betting this was a family vacation cabin for the Slocums. But they have to know Slocum’s behind it. That his son is his accomplice. He has to be the mastermind. Neither of those goobers is smart enough to have hatched this plan.”
“Or killed four women in five days without leaving a bit of evidence behind.”
“That’s not possible.”
“What’s not possible?”
“To leave no evidence behind.” She tugged at the tape with her free hand. A small piece gave way. “Locard’s Exchange Principle says that every time you make contact with another person, place, or thing, it results in an exchange of physical materials.”
No doubt this principle had been discussed over family dinners at the O’Rourke house. Or expounded upon by a CSU investigator on the stand in one of the many trials Teagan had been responsible for reporting. “That’s all fine and dandy, but the physical materials left at these scenes have not resulted in identifying the perp.”
He could talk like a cop as well as the next guy.
“We just haven’t figured it out yet.”
“There was something about these guys.” Max licked his dry lips. His throat burned for a sip of water. “They were afraid of whoever is telling them what to do.”
“Agreed. They were following a plan, a script, that someone gave them.”
He stared at her across the room. The woman he loved trussed to a bed by two people whose lives had been touched by not one but two serial killers.
At least one, if not two, of those killers held sway over them. No one forced them to kidnap Max and Teagan. They had made the choice. Such was the power that throttled their basic sense of decency.
They could not be allowed to continue. Max leaned forward again. This time he balanced on the balls of his feet, stuck together with tape, and let the back legs of the chair hike into the air. It inched forward a few inches. Hop. Plop flat. Hop. Plop flat.
Laboriously, he moved closer to the bed, each time measuring how far forward he could lean without losing his balance and flopping flat on his face.
“You’re doing it.” Teagan’s cheers egged him on. “You can do it!”
Hop, plop back, hop, plop back, hop, plop back.
His grunts resounded in his own ears. His shoulders and wrists ached. Blood dripped from his nose. His sweat stank.
Time passed. Shadows lengthened.
Finally, bed frame and nothing more separated him from Teagan. He heaved to the left until he lined up with her feet, then hopped so he faced away. “Stick your legs close so my hands can get at them.”
From there, it took only a matter of minutes for him to tear the tape from her legs.
“Now, your turn.” More shimmying and shaking ensued until he parked so he could lift his legs into the air and prop his feet on the bed frame so she could reach his feet.
“I hate to rain on your parade, but this is the easy part.” Her tone was matter of fact. “We can’t undo the cuffs with our fingers.”
“One thing at a time.”
Lord, she’s right. Give me the faith and the strength of David when he faced Goliath, please.
The tick, tick, tick of the clock in his head grew louder with each passing second. Tick, tock, tick, tock, until it became a dong, dong, dong.
“There, there, I got it.”
His legs kicked free and he slapped his feet on the floor. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“Now what?” Even as she voiced the question, Teagan’s gaze studied the handcuffs and the bed frame. “Remember when we assembled my new bed?”
“Yep, but me first. This chair is old. All this banging it around is loosening up its joints.” Max proceeded to demonstrate. He heaved his weight against the back. The wooden frame creaked but didn’t give. “Come on.” He heaved again. His shoulders screamed with pain. He spent so much time muscle building and punching a bag, when what he really needed was greater range of motion.
Two more times. The wood splintered. The chair gave way. Max slammed to the floor. The center dowels separated from the frame. He rolled up on his knees and let the dowels fall away. “Eureka.”
“Seriously, eureka? You’re still handcuffed.”
“But I’m walking around, which means I can try to find something to unlock them.”
“Too bad we don’t have a phone or a laptop so we could google it.”
“What did people do before Google? Trial and error?” His back to Teagan, Max grabbed the bed frame with both hands and shook it. Also ancient, but still sturdy. “First we get you out of this bed.”
“You don’t know how weird that sounds.”
“Hush.”
They went to work, first removing the mattress and box springs. Teagan acted as the eyes of the operation while Max provided the brawn—as much as possible given his circumstances. Below the bed set they found plywood slats and moved them aside. That left Teagan stuck, crouched in the center, handcuffed to the foot of the frame. “This isn’t helping. Even if you get the bed apart. I can’t run down the hillside dragging a footboard with me.”
“You’re the one with all the cops in the family. Weren’t handcuffs ever a topic of conversation around the supper t
able?”
“Not that I recall. Cops aren’t likely to share that information informally or on the stand in court. They’d rather keep the bad guys locked up. I only know what I see on TV. Bobby pins. Paper clips. Any skinny piece of metal that will fit in the keyhole.”
“I need a screwdriver to take the bed apart or a bobby pin for the handcuffs. Whichever comes first. I’ll be back.”
“Don’t be exploring without me.” Frustration lined Teagan’s face. She tugged at the handcuffs. “You don’t know what’s out there. Be careful.”
Vintage Teagan. Always worried for her loved ones.
“‘Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.’”
“Joshua 1:9.” The worry lines on her beautiful face softened. “Don’t throw worry in my face. God understands. His grace covers my fear. He sees me.”
“I would never. I’ll be right back.”
Right back indeed. The tiny cabin couldn’t be more than twelve-hundred square feet. An occupant would know Max was free. Noise echoed from one room to the other. Having his hands handcuffed behind him left him almost completely vulnerable to attack. That didn’t worry him as much as his mission did. Please God, don’t let me find a body. Anybody’s body. But especially Leyla’s body.
No scent of decomp assailed his nostrils. No doors leading to a basement. Aside from the living room and kitchen, the cabin consisted of a small bathroom off the first bedroom with an empty medicine cabinet, and a second, larger bedroom with its own full bathroom. This room had potential. Someone had lived in it recently. The bedding was semifresh. A dresser housed men’s clothing. A few shirts hung in the closet. Men’s stuff. What was the likelihood of finding a bobby pin here?
A suitcase shoved against the back wall of the closet caught his gaze. An old leather suitcase with the hard metal frame. Much used. It had no name tag. Max knelt with his back to it and felt along the top until his fingers touched the clasp. Please God.
It popped. He shoved it open with what little leverage he could muster, then scrambled around to face the contents.
