A hundred questions badgered my mind. Who had taken Holly? Why were they forcing her to terrorize me? Was this all an elaborate trap? What if Holly was already dead and there was no chance of saving her anyway? Nothing made sense to me, which I imagined was exactly what Holly’s captors wanted.
The music crescendoed through the bridge of a song. The crowd sang along, but I couldn’t make sense of the lyrics. It blended together in a rush of static. My vision blurred, and I sagged against the counter, cradling my head in my hands with the photo pressed to my cheek. Then, all of a sudden, the steady drip of water and the hum of an old appliance replaced the hubbub of the bar. I looked up.
“What the hell?”
I stood in the middle of an unfamiliar basement. Piles of dirty laundry surrounded the washer and dryer, waiting to be tended to. The wash basin faucet leaked, plopping uneven patterns into the drain below. The humming emanated from a decrepit hot water heater stained with rust and dirt. A thin wall separated the basement into two sides, one for maintenance and the other for recreation, but the drywall had been knocked through several times with a hammer, exposing the wood beneath. I peered through a jagged gap in the wall. A ripped leather sofa sat atop a roll of muddy carpet. An outdated television had been set up on top of a cardboard box alongside a broken, crooked antenna. In the far corner, a weathered boxing bag hung from the ceiling. The whole place smelled like sweaty socks and corroded metal.
“Where am I?” I muttered.
“Bridget?”
I whirled around, my heart battering against my rib cage. “Holly?”
“Over here.”
I followed her voice around to the back of the washing machine. As soon as I laid eyes on her, rage boiled in my chest. Holly—my seventeen-year-old sister, star of the local high school’s softball team and an all-around beautiful person—was tied to an exposed joist, her hands and feet bound together by a length of twisted, dirty rope. She was filthy. Her white practice pants and Belle Dame High School varsity athletics softball shirt were stained with dirt and blood. Someone had taken her shoes and socks. The soles of her feet were scratched and scabbed, as though she had been made to walk barefoot for several miles. Her strawberry blonde hair looked gray in the dingy light of the basement, and the only clean parts of her face were the tear tracks that traced down her cheeks and chin.
“Oh my God.”
I lunged forward, reaching for the ropes that held her in place, but it was like pushing through quicksand. No matter how much I struggled, I remained unable to make contact with my little sister. She shook her head sadly.
“You can’t do that,” she said.
I pounded and kicked against the invisible wall. “Why not?”
“Because you’re not really here.”
I stilled my vigorous attempts to reach her. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re at The Pit.” Her eyes drifted shut, and her chin drooped to rest against her chest. “You’re listening to Autumn’s boyfriend’s band play their first show in town. I can see you there.”
Kneeling down, I swiped my fingers through the layer of grit on the floor. “But I can see you here. I can feel this dirt. What the hell is happening, Holly? Where are you?”
She shifted her hips so that her weight rested differently on the concrete foundation, and I caught sight of the red scabs that the ropes had rubbed into her wrists.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know where I am. Somewhere in Belle Dame, I think. Not far.”
“You’ve done this before,” I said. “This whole time you’ve been missing, I kept hearing your voice in my head. It wasn’t me going crazy. I wasn’t hallucinating. You’ve actually been talking to me. How are you doing this?”
She lifted her head, peering at me through bloodshot eyes. “I don’t know. I think it’s both of us. I think we’re connected.”
“Connected.”
“Yes.”
“Holly, I need to find you. You have to help me find you,” I pleaded, once again trying and failing to touch her. “What happened? Who took you? Who’s keeping you here?”
Her chapped lips barely parted as she fought to get the words out. “I remember leaving the practice field. I got in my car to drive home, but someone was in the back seat waiting for me.”
My stomach lurched. “Who?”
“No idea. They shot me up with something, and I woke up here.”
I groaned, keeling forward and clenching my core to keep the nausea at bay. There were subtle track marks on the insides of Holly’s elbows. She’d been unprofessionally sedated a number of times.
“Bee,” she whispered. “We don’t have much time. If you want to find me, you have to play their game.”
“What game?”
“Follow the clues,” Holly instructed. “It’s going to be awful. I know it is. But I’ll be there for you when I can be. They want you to find me. They want to lure you here. You have to be smarter than them, Bee.”
“Who are they?” I begged. “Holly, please.”
“I don’t know,” she said again, her voice breaking. “It’s two people. They cover their faces when they come down here, but I can hear them when they argue upstairs. They sound familiar.”
Suddenly, a drum fill split the comparative silence of the basement. The scene flickered in and out of existence as my connection with Holly wavered and the reality of the bar tried to take over again.
“I’m losing you,” Holly whispered.
“No, Holly! Focus!”
A closing chord progression boomed as I lurched toward my sister, but there was nothing substantial to take hold of. Holly wasn’t there, and neither was I. The visual of the basement muddied itself against the real backdrop of The Pit.
“Holly!”
“You can find me, Bee. You can do it. I love you.”
And then she was gone.
The bar top was damp, not with beer, but from my tears. They had dripped onto the photograph too, smudging Holly’s handwriting. I blinked to clear my vision, heaving for breath as the reality of Holly’s situation fully hit me. The blurriness faded, but the panic didn’t.
The bar was too quiet. The band had stopped playing. Everyone was staring at me. The drummer of the band—my best friend’s boyfriend—stood on his throne, the microphone to his mouth.
“I don’t think she heard us, folks,” he said into the mic. “Let’s try that again. One, two, three—”
The entire crowd shouted, “Happy Birthday, Bridget!”
I smiled half-heartedly. Then I passed out.
2
Isolated
I woke to the subtle beep of a cardiac monitor, the drip of an IV bag, and the sterile sting of disinfectant in my nostrils. My eyes fluttered open, taking in the soothing mint color of the walls, stiff white sheets, and the fuzzy felt blanket that seemed to occupy every hospital room. A line of sunshine traced across the room from the crack in the curtains. The back of my hand twinged. A needle was taped to the vein there, tracking up to meet a bag of yellow fluids hanging next to my bed.
My best friend, Autumn Parker, slept in the armchair by the window. She was slumped at an odd angle, her neck tipped back in a way that could not possibly be comfortable. A spare blanket pooled on the floor near her feet, like it had fallen off during the night. She wore the same clothes from the previous evening, cut-off denim shorts and a billowy linen top. The shirt rode up against the armchair, revealing a little baby bump.
In a rush of overwhelming thoughts, everything from the night before came flooding back to me. Holly was tied up in an unknown basement, and I had instructions to play a diabolical game to get her back. On the upside, my birthday was over, which meant that another anniversary of my parents’ death had passed too. I was officially twenty-six, and it had been ten years since I’d had parents or a real place to come home to.
“Autumn,” I croaked, pushing myself up to sit against the crunchy pillows.
She remained asleep, jaw slac
k, lips parted in a delicate snore.
Someone—Autumn probably—had left an empty takeout container on the table next to the bed. I seized the plastic fork and tossed it across the room. It bounced off of Autumn’s forehead, and she woke with a start. When she saw that I was awake, she pried herself out of the armchair.
“Bee! Hey, you’re okay.” She sat on the bed next to me and traced soft patterns in the palm of my hand, careful not to jostle the needle.
“Yeah, I know that,” I replied. I felt fine, if a little groggy. “What the hell am I doing in here? What’s with the hook-up?”
She followed my gaze to the IV bag. “It’s standard fluids. Vitamins, I think. They said you were dehydrated when you came in. Bridget, do you remember what happened last night?”
“Christian’s band played—”
“And you fainted,” she reminded me. “Hardcore. We couldn’t wake you up, and we couldn’t find a pulse. Officer Hart was totally freaking out. What is up with her anyway? Are you guys suddenly best friends or something?”
I ignored the note of jealousy in the question, peeling the medical tape from the back of my hand. “I have to get out of here.”
“Whoa, whoa!” Autumn pried my fingers away from the needle. “You can’t do that. At least wait for a nurse.”
I swatted her away. “I don’t have time for this, Autumn.”
“Bee, stop.”
We fought for control over the IV, lightly smacking at each other like a pair of five-year-olds bickering in the back seat of their parents’ car.
“Let go!”
“Are you crazy? You passed out, Bee!”
“Well, I’m awake now!”
A passing nurse paused at the open door as our argument spilled into the hallway. When she noticed Autumn and I grappling over the needle, she rushed in.
“That’s enough. Off you go,” she ordered, edging Autumn away from the bed and securing the tape to my skin again. “What’s going on in here?”
“I need be discharged,” I told her. “It’s urgent. There’s nothing wrong with me anyway. I was dehydrated last night. That’s why I passed out.”
The nurse took my chart from where it hung at the end of the bed and flipped through it. “Admitted last night,” she muttered. “Unconscious without medical reason.” She tapped a detail on the chart and looked up. “We can’t let you go yet. The doctor wants to run a CT scan before you leave.”
“I’m fine,” I insisted. “I don’t want the scan.”
The nurse raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Ma’am, I don’t think you understand the risks here. If you leave the hospital against medical advice, you could be putting yourself in all kinds of danger. If you have some kind of head injury that we aren’t aware of—”
“Discharge me,” I demanded. “I understand the risks. I’ll sign whatever forms you want me to. I don’t care. I just need to get out of here.”
“Ma’am—”
“Discharge me.”
The nurse pursed her lips. “All right. I’ll get the paperwork.”
Autumn watched as she left, her arms crossed over her chest. “Are you kidding me, Bridget? Why are you doing this? You won’t be any good to Holly if you’re dead.”
I returned to peeling the tape off the back of my hand. This time, Autumn didn’t try to stop me. “Would you relax? I’m nowhere close to dead.”
She wrinkled her nose as I coaxed the needle out of the vein. “How do you even know how to do that?”
I unwrapped a bandage with my teeth and smacked it across the tiny pinprick left over from the IV connection. “Not my first rodeo. Did you bring me clothes?”
Autumn lifted a large purse from the side of the armchair and set it on the bed. I kicked off the scratchy sheets, shook off the flimsy hospital gown without shame, and upended the purse. It was full of brand new outfits from Autumn’s boutique.
“Thanks,” I said, slipping into a plain black T-shirt and a pair of jeans. “Shoes?”
She pointed to my sneakers at the foot of the bed. I stepped into them, straightened my shirt, and shook out my legs so that the jeans settled more comfortably on my hips, all with the weight of Autumn’s gaze on me.
“You want to take a picture?” I asked her.
And then I remembered. The photo from last night. Where had it gone? That picture could not end up in the wrong hands. It put me at the center of one of the most notorious crime circles of the past several years. If someone found it before I did, it could mean years in prison. I ripped the sheets off the bed then rifled through the plastic bag of belongings that the paramedics had collected off my person yesterday. No sign of the picture.
“Oh, I would love to know what you’re doing,” Autumn quipped as I tore apart the hospital room.
“The photo,” I said, shoving aside the armchair by the window to check underneath it. “I had a picture last night of me and a big group of people. Did you see it? Did I have it when I was admitted last night?”
Autumn sank onto the destroyed linens of the bed. “I have no idea, Bee. I didn’t see anything. You probably lost it at The Pit.”
“Did you drive here?”
“Yeah. They wouldn’t let me ride in the ambulance with you because I’m not family.”
I grabbed her hand and pulled off from the bed. “I need you to give me a ride back to the bar. Now.”
She planted her feet and leaned back, preventing me from leaving the room. “Excuse me? You’re supposed to sign this freaking paperwork the nurse is talking about.”
“I don’t have time—”
“Your insurance won’t pay for any of this if you don’t sign.”
I scoffed. “Please. Like I have insurance.”
Autumn’s mouth dropped open. “You don’t? Haven’t you been bungee-jumping off bridges and cliffs for the past ten years? What would’ve happened if you got hurt?”
“See, that’s the thing,” I told her, offering the purse to her. “When you don’t care whether you live or die, you don’t need health insurance.”
Autumn’s bottom lip quivered. “Bee—”
“Forget about it,” I said. “It’s not like that anymore. Holly needs me. Now. Please, can we just go?”
“Yeah.” She wiped a tear out of the corner of her eye and stood up. “Yeah, let’s go.”
But the nurse stopped us in the doorway of the room, blocking our path with a clipboard.
“I don’t think so.” She shoved the clipboard against my chest. Big, block letters—AMA—were printed in bold across the top of the first page. “Not on my watch. Fill this out.”
After signing my name a hundred times, Autumn and I finally made it out to the parking lot, where the windshield of her tiny white sports car reflected the blinding North Carolina sun into our eyes. The heat beat down on me as I slid into the passenger seat, shoving aside the collection of shoes that Autumn kept on the floor. Autumn turned the key in the ignition and kicked off her wedges to add them to the pile. Barefoot, she reversed out of the parking space and sped out of the hospital lot.
Blissfully, it was a Saturday and the traffic was minimal, so Autumn’s questionable driving habits were less alarming than they would’ve been on a busy weekday. For once, I appreciated her need for speed as we zoomed up the interstate on our way back to Belle Dame.
“Just drop me off at The Pit,” I told her.
“It’s seven in the morning. It won’t be open yet.”
“That’s fine.”
Autumn looked over at me, taking her eyes off the road for longer than advisable. “Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on? You’re acting like a complete freak.”
I kept my gaze trained on the rural landscape passing by the passenger window.
“Can you at least tell me what’s so important about this picture that you want back?” she pestered.
I pressed my lips together.
Autumn’s lips fluttered in a gusty sigh. “God, what the hell happened to make you like this? I mis
s the old Bridget.”
“She’s gone,” I muttered, resting my forehead against the window.
Suddenly, Autumn slammed on the brakes. I braced myself against the dashboard as she crossed all three lanes and rolled to a stop on the side of the road.
“What are you doing?” I demanded. “I told you. I have to get back to Belle Dame!”
She put the car in park. “We’re not moving until you clue me in.”
“Are you kidding me?”
Autumn pulled her legs up onto the seat and crossed her arms. “Nope. It’s you and me, Bee. Tell me what’s going on or sit here on the side of the road with me until the end of eternity. But just so you know, I can be incredibly annoying when I want to be.”
“Do you think this is a game?” I asked, deadly quiet in the tiny interior of the sports car. “Because it’s not. This isn’t Candyland, Autumn. Holly’s life is on the line.”
“Yeah, I get that she’s gone,” Autumn snapped. “Everyone’s freaking out, not just you, but you don’t care. You only care about yourself, and you shut everyone else out.”
“Autumn—”
“No, let me finish. What makes you think you have a better chance of finding Holly than the police? Huh? You’re acting like you’re the only person who has a chance in hell of finding her, but the last time I checked, you weren’t exactly up to snuff on detective work. Did you watch a lot of CSI when you were overseas, Bridget? Is that it?”
“You don’t understand—”
“Then fill me in,” she said. “Ever since you got back into town, something has felt off with you. You’re blowing me off, messing with Emmett’s head, making friends with the local cops. I mean, come on. You gotta give me something.”
“No, I don’t!” I exploded, filling the front seat with anger. “Why don’t you get that, Autumn? I don’t have to tell you anything! In fact, it’s better if I don’t. It’s dangerous—”
“Just because I’m pregnant doesn’t mean that I can’t handle it,” she insisted.
“It has nothing to do with your kid,” I told her. “It’s just better for you to remain uninvolved. Now put the damn car in drive.”
Deadly Visions Boxset Page 70
