“Is it possible that you saw Allison there?”
“If I did, I don’t remember her.”
China looks from Ruby to the T-shirt and back again. “When you described the guy who attacked Allison on the trail, didn’t you say he was big—and very strong?”
“Yes.” Ruby shivers, remembering. “He was big enough to stop her in her tracks, almost effortlessly. When he knocked her out and she went down, he picked her up and carried her to the van as easily as if she were a child.”
“Think about it, Ruby.” China is frowning. “Is it possible that—”
Wide-eyed now, Ruby finishes the sentence. “That the attacker works out at Body Matters, too?” Why hadn’t she thought of this? “Yes, it’s entirely possible, China!”
China taps her fingers on the table. “When was the last time you went to the gym?”
“Friday night.” Ruby narrows her eyes. “No, Saturday night. The place was more than half empty, so I figured it was a good time to try out the machines.”
“Which were?”
“Well, let’s see.” Ruby ticks them off on her fingers. “I tried out a treadmill, a bicycle, an incline trainer, and an elliptical. I even got on a humongous whiz-bang Rube Goldberg thing called a combo weight machine.” She frowns. “But I was concentrating too hard to notice who was around me. I wanted to see which machines I liked best. I don’t remember being aware of anybody.”
“Yes, but.” China purses her lips. “Didn’t Sophia suggest that you might have come into contact with something the attacker had been touching while he was thinking about his plans for Allison? So maybe you used a piece of equipment that he had been using just before you.”
“Yes!” The realization jolts her, and Ruby snaps her fingers. “In fact, it could have happened on that combo weight machine. It’s exactly the kind of equipment a weightlifter would use for training. I set the resistance pretty light, but it can be set so it requires a lot of muscle. If he was thinking about Allison while he was using it, the physical energy he generated with that machine might have amplified the energies of his thoughts. His desires.”
“And maybe he was on steroids,” China says. “Maybe he was trying to bulk up. Which amplified his energies even more.”
“And then I picked them up when I got on the equipment. Like a virus.” Ruby shudders. She hates the idea of being infected by the man’s awful thoughts.
And then something else occurs to her. “I wonder if Allison might have been working out at the same time he was. The Body Matters equipment room isn’t all that big. He could have been watching her. And thinking about his plan to snatch her the next time she went running.”
“Okay.” China nods. “Now that you have a possible fix on where you might have connected with him, maybe it will be easier to connect with her—and find out where she is right now. That’s what we need to know. That’s what Sheila needs to know.”
Hearing her friend’s we, Ruby is momentarily heartened. China may be a skeptic, but she’s always supportive. If she doesn’t believe, she’s at least willing to suspend her disbelief, and offer whatever help she can.
Faced with the task, though, Ruby is even more afraid—afraid of failure and of success. She has no idea what she’s doing with this psychic stuff. It’s like stumbling blindfolded through a landscape pocked with bottomless sinkholes and littered with landmines. Stumble into a hole, she could fall forever. Trip over a landmine, she could blow up the whole world. She could get herself—or Allison, or both of them—into some really serious trouble. She might get stuck inside Allison’s consciousness and not be able to get out. And if she’s stuck inside Allison and the kidnapper decides to kill her, what happens then?
The more she thinks about it, the more frightening it seems. Her stomach is twisted into a knot and her hands are clammy. This is a terrifying nightmare, almost worse than the dreams themselves. There are no options, no alternatives, no escape. She wants to say I’m sorry, but I can’t do this. It’s too dangerous. I’m too afraid.
But China keeps prodding her. “Do you want to do it here, in the kitchen? Or would you prefer somewhere else?” When Ruby hesitates, she says, “You’ve come this far, Ruby. If you back down now, you’re both victims. You and Allison. If she winds up dead, you’ll blame yourself for the rest of your life.”
Like Sarah, Ruby thinks. Like Sarah.
“The living room, I guess,” she says, resigning herself. A few moments later, she is seated in her favorite chair, with Allison’s shirt on her lap and China on the sofa nearby.
“What can I do to help?” China asks.
Ruby tries to focus on the task in front of her. If this is going to work, she has to find out who Allison’s captor is and where he’s imprisoned her. “Maybe you can talk me through?”
“Talk you through?” China’s eyebrows go up. “How? What do I do?”
“I’m not sure. But if I’m able to connect with her, I’ll be Allison. You can help by questioning me—questioning her, I mean—about her surroundings. I’ll try—or she’ll try, we’ll both try—to answer.”
“Okay. I can handle that.” China smiles. “I used to be pretty good at getting clients to tell me stuff.”
“But it might not work,” Ruby says cautiously. “If Allison is locked in a closet, for instance, or blindfolded, she probably can’t tell us where she is. She might not even know what she knows, if that makes any sense.”
“Actually, that makes a lot of sense,” China says with an ironic laugh. “Back in the day, I had plenty of clients who didn’t know what they knew. Or didn’t want me to know what they knew. If I was going to defend them, it was my job to find out—before we got to the courtroom.”
Which makes Ruby very glad that China is with her. She has watched her question people. China almost always gets the information she’s after.
But Ruby is still uncertain and deeply, almost nauseatingly apprehensive. She hadn’t invited the dreams, and she hadn’t intended what happened to her on the trail. She’s mostly been a passive receptor of other people’s psychic energies. Using her psychic ability deliberately, with her own intention and purpose, is a whole different thing. She can’t do this. She opens her mouth to back out.
But China isn’t giving her the chance. “Want me to take notes? Or how about if we record it?” She pulls out her cellphone.
Resigned, Ruby says, “Better record it, I guess. I may not remember much.” And it might be a road map for getting me out if I get stuck, she thinks.
China dims the living room lights and Ruby relaxes in the way she does for meditation, clearing and centering her mind, opening herself to anything, everything that arises. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, but in a way, maybe that’s better.
At least, she thinks, it means that I’m open and ready for whatever happens. More or less, anyway. She knows she has no expectations. Only fears.
In the half dark, Ruby picks up Allison’s shirt, noticing that it hasn’t been washed since the last time it was worn. She holds it up to her face for a few moments, inhaling Allison’s scent, then drops it onto her lap. And with the fabric of the shirt under her fingers she closes her eyes and focuses on Allison, deliberately returning to the spot on the trail where the attacker seized her.
Dusk is falling. Off to her right, the river glints like hammered silver through the trees. She is on her way back to the parking lot, jogging slowly, cooling down, when she hears the loud crack of a branch and the rustle of underbrush. Grasped from behind in a powerful grip, she tries to scream but a thick, sweaty hand clamps her mouth shut and fingers press against her neck. Her ears roar. Her vision blurs and darkens. Her bones are jelly.
Sound disappears. She can’t breathe, can’t move. She sags, sucked into a silent, swirling blackness. Black, blacker, blackest.
Then a blank space and time—how long, she has no idea—and then darkness and light in chaotic, whirling waves, and she is there, where Allison is.
Wherever there is.
Chapter Sixteen
But no, it’s not there. It’s here, and Ruby is with Allison.
She whispers to her, gently, Allison, Allison. She can feel her yielding and opening, and Ruby slips into her mind as easily as a sleeper slips into a dream.
For Allison, there is a flickering instant of surprise, a who-are-you moment, and Ruby has the feeling that if this situation were anything else, Allison would resist. But she is stunned and dazed. She is huddled within herself, profoundly bewildered and hurting and utterly terrified. The attacker’s brutality has made her vulnerable, and she doesn’t have the strength to resist Ruby’s gentle intrusion.
Ruby: I’m a friend, Allison, I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t need me, and I’m here to help get you out of here. You can’t see me, but you can feel me, as near to you as your own thoughts. I am your thoughts, really. The two of us are thinking together, feeling together . . .
Then even that small separation fades and the two of them are in the same space, the same moment, the same mind. The first thing Ruby is aware of is Allison’s physical pain, the raw, throbbing ache that is the result of sustained, repeated, ruthless assaults. It’s excruciating, and she cringes.
Then, as if across a great, dark void, she hears a calm voice. Where are you, Allison? Can you tell me where you are?
The voice. China’s voice, and Ruby reaches for it as if it were a rope dangling over a cliff. She seizes it.
Where are you? The voice repeats. Where are you, Allison?
She is stretched out on her back, on a surface that gives a little. There is something over her. Something wooly, scratchy.
“On a bed,” she whispers. “Under a . . . a blanket.” She’s whispering because her throat hurts, because she was screaming and screaming and screaming. He likes to hear her scream but then he got scared that the neighbors might hear her so he stuffed a rag in her mouth and tied a gag over it. The gag is gone, but she can still feel it.
Thank you, the voice says quietly, and there’s a smile in it. Are you free? Can you move? How do you feel?
Ruby raises her arms, one at a time. She flexes her legs and is vaguely surprised that she can move them. As Allison, she remembers being tightly bound, her wrists lashed to the head of the bed, her ankles to the foot, her legs spread apart, while he—
“I’m free,” she says aloud, pushing the awful memory away. “I can move.” Her mouth is dry as straw, her lips bruised and sore, and she can barely manage the words.
Are you okay? The voice is sympathetic. How do you feel?
“Don’t ask,” Ruby whispers. “I don’t want to remember.” The horror rises in her and she takes a breath, wishing the voice would go away and let her slide back down into the blackness. He’s going to kill her, she knows, and knowing is like the hard, cold steel of a blade pressing against her throat.
The voice becomes stronger, more insistent. You don’t have to remember. I don’t want you to remember, not now. Just open your eyes. Look around. Are you alone? Where are you? What do you see?
Open her eyes? But her eyelids are heavy and gritty, stuck shut. It takes a great effort, but finally, she manages to open them into a gray, silent gloom. On her right is a wall, unpainted plasterboard, dirty white. She turns her head to the left, wakening a whirling dizziness. Her vision blurs and she blinks to clear it. And begins, after a moment, to make sense of the gloom.
Look around. The voice is louder now, and sharper. What do you see? Tell me.
She moves her head, fighting vertigo, and whispers a description of what her eyes tell her. Bruises the color of ripe eggplant on her arms. Angry red welts on her wrists and ankles, where he knotted the ropes around them. The narrow bed with a white-painted iron headboard and footboard, where he tied her, spread-eagled. Her bra and panties on the floor—the rest of her clothes, her pink T-shirt, her white shorts, nowhere to be seen. Yes, she’s alone. And beside the bed, there’s a wooden crate for a table, and a pitcher of orange juice and a half-full glass. She’s terribly thirsty and the juice is tempting.
But there’s a pill bottle on the crate and a scattering of small white pills. Roofies? Which may be why her wrists and ankles are free now and the gag is gone and there are deep black holes in her memory—for which, she supposes, she should be grateful. She wants to drink the juice but she doesn’t dare. In case she’s tempted beyond resistance, she swings her arm and knocks the glass on the floor. It shatters.
What else do you see? Tell me, the voice commands, and she responds.
The bed is pushed against one wall in a space about the size of a garage. It is a garage, for the floor is concrete and one wall is an overhead door, pulled down and chained. The air is stuffy and very warm, and its general mustiness is laced with the odors of dirty tennis shoes, Chinese takeout, and the sharper fragrance of a pine-scented air freshener. There are no windows in any of the walls, but a pearly gray light filters through a dirty overhead skylight, and when she looks up, she can see a noiseless rain falling in transparent sheets down the slanting pane. The silent movement is hypnotizing, and she stares at it until the heaviness closes her eyelids again and she is falling, too, pulled down and down and—
What else, Allison? What else do you see? It’s the voice again, impatient, as if the speaker has asked this question more than once. And then: Sit up and look around. What else can you see? For instance, tell me what you are wearing.
What is she wearing? She looks down her length and sees a gray T-shirt, several sizes too large, like a sack that covers her elbows and knees.
“A T-shirt.” She lifts it to check. “No underwear.”
Well, hey. At least you’re not naked. The questioner chuckles, and the chuckle is somehow heartening because it sounds so normal. But then the voice sharpens. It’s getting late. What else can you see? I need to know more before he gets back. He may be on his way.
On his way. The thought of it makes her want to throw up. She turns onto her left side and pushes herself up, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. The concrete floor is startlingly cold under her bare feet, as if she has just stepped onto a frozen puddle. The effort makes the room whirl and spin as if she’s on a carnival Tilt-A-Whirl. She sits on the edge of the bed for a few moments until the spinning slows and she can describe what she’s looking at, whispering, because her throat is so sore.
There’s an overhead light in the ceiling, a fluorescent fixture. It is turned off, but in the light from the skylight, she can see that this small garage has been turned into a small gym. A black rubber mat covers the center of the floor. There’s a treadmill and a rowing machine and a metal rack of weight sets and a piece of weight-training equipment that looks like a smaller version of the combo unit at Body Matters. Pull-up bars and rings hanging from the ceiling. On the end wall, high up, a window air conditioner, but it’s not turned on. The dirty gray-white walls are papered with fitness posters and life-size pictures of bodybuilders and weightlifters, mostly male, a few female. There is a closed door in the wall opposite the bed, presumably locked. Beside the door hangs a cork bulletin board, thickly plastered with signs and notices and papers, lots of pieces of paper. Above the bulletin board is a large clock.
Good, the voice says approvingly. All good. And then, What time is it?
Time? She squints at the clock. “Six forty-five,” she says, and thinks: Six forty-five. She has been here almost twenty-four hours. Or is it twelve hours, or thirty-six or forty-eight? Is it hours or days? How long has she been here? How long?
Her head is a pounding drum. She is chilled to the bone in spite of the warmth of the air and beginning to feel annoyed. Who is asking her these silly questions? Why is she sitting here? She could lie down and pull up the blanket and be warm again. She eyes the pitcher of juice. She’s smashed the glass but she is so thirsty. A sip or two surely wouldn’t hurt. Anyway, what if it did? A few Roofies, and she won’t know what comes next. He could kill her and she wouldn’t care.
But the voice won’t l
eave her alone. Hurry, it prods. Time is running out. That corkboard on the wall. I want you to take a closer look at it. All those papers and things—there may be a name. Walk over to it and tell me what you see.
Walk? That’s ridiculous. She can’t walk. Her bones are rubber. After a moment, she discovers that she has only thought this thought and hasn’t said it aloud. She tries again.
“I hurt all over,” she says, whimpering a little. “I can’t walk. I want to lie down.”
No. Get up. The voice is flat, insistent. I need you to tell me what’s on that board. And then, a little softer, coaching, coaxing: Come on, sweetie. You can do it. Don’t be such a wuss.
Don’t be such a wuss. The annoyance mounts. She pushes herself up and stands, one hand on the table to steady her. There’s a dizzy moment, a whirling sensation, and everything blurs. This is the first time she’s been on her feet since she was drugged, and the blackness welcomes her. She’s about to faint. She sits down on the bed again and puts her head between her knees. In a few moments, the roaring lessens and she manages to stand, feeling stronger.
“I’m not a wuss,” she says.
Good girl, the voice replies warmly. Let’s see what’s on that corkboard.
With that encouragement, she sets out. Taking small steps, she shuffles barefoot across the dim room, making her unsteady way around the treadmill and the rowing machine and the weight rack, all the way to the corkboard over the table, against the opposite wall. She puts her hands on the table and leans on it, grateful for the support. She doesn’t know what’s so special about the corkboard that she has to go to all this trouble to look at it, but she’s doing what she’s told.
“I’m here,” she says. “At the board. What do you want to know?”
I want to know what you see.
He has organized the board neatly, and she names the items. At the top is a large laminated red-and-white poster, “Fitness and Strength,” picturing a hunky male performing a dozen exercises that show off his bulging muscles. Under it is a paper headed Daily Workout, listing the things somebody is supposed to do every day: Bench Press, Superset, Parallel Dips, Cable Crossovers, Hanging Leg Raises. Beside that is a calendar from Matt’s Construction Company, with August displayed.
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