Again she tried the stupid cell. Just in case.
Nothing, of course. Dead.
“Fine.” Carrying the flashlight in one hand and the cookies and useless cell in the other, she followed the flashlight’s weak, wobbling beam and started jogging along the dirt ruts, where thankfully there were only bits of gravel to dig into her feet. Still, she’d kill for a pair of running shoes. Hell, no, she’d kill for a car that worked—anything to get her away from that damned cabin of death.
She thought of the monster she’d trapped in the dungeon and hoped he died a horrible death. Prick! What a sicko!
Don’t think about him, just keep running!
That part was natural. She’d run all of her life. On the soccer field. For pleasure. With friends in 5K or 10K races, even a half marathon just last year. And now the pain of the injuries she’d sustained while being held by the freak were giving way to an adrenaline rush that surged when she worried that somehow, some damned way, the freak could escape.
Run, run, run!
One foot in front of the other. Around the bend and . . . ahead she saw the gate, battered and shut. She raced toward it and felt a sliver of hope. If she could just get to the main road, find someone . . . oh, please. Reaching the gate, she tried the sliding bolt, but it was jammed, then decided to just climb the sucker and get to the other side. She placed the pack of cookies in her mouth, held both cell phone and flashlight in one hand, and scrambled over. As she landed on her feet, she noticed the dog, who had obviously followed her. He stood inside the gate, panting.
“Go home!” she yelled, turning the flashlight on him.
Another bark.
A good thing? Or bad? Maybe someone would come to her aid. But what if the freak’s boss, Myra, was nearby? Or what if the monster had escaped and was making his way to the damned van. If he heard the dog here at the gate, he would know that this was the route she had taken.
“Go away!” she cried. But the hound held his ground and started to bay, sending her into a new panic. “Oh, for the love of God!” She hurled the pack of cookies over the fence. Maybe that would deter him. She didn’t pause to look, but took off again.
Soon she’d reach a main road.
Soon she’d get help.
Soon she’d find Zoe.
CHAPTER 19
From the couch in his apartment, Jase hit the Send button on his laptop, then set the computer aside and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. It was late, after two in the damned morning, but he knew he couldn’t sleep. He was still too hyped up.
He’d missed his deadline for the morning edition, but his story, a piece about Donovan Caldwell, would run the following day. He hoped by then to have a companion piece about the Denning twins, but he needed to interview their parents, and that would happen in the morning. He’d called and left messages for Selma and Carson independently. Selma hadn’t wanted to talk on the phone, but had agreed to speak with him in person at eight in the morning. She wanted the word spread about her daughters, but she insisted on talking with him face-to-face. Probably to make sure he was legit.
Carson hadn’t wanted to talk to him and had said so when Jase had finally connected with the guy on the fourth try. “I’m not interested,” he’d said flatly. “If the girls are really missing, I want the police to handle it.”
No arguments had changed his mind. He wasn’t buying into the fact that the paper with its print circulation, online subscribers, and connection to other news sources could broaden the search for his daughters.
“Look, thanks. I know you have a job to do, but I’m not certain that the girls are missing. Not yet. This is just the kind of stunt they’d pull.”
“Stunt?”
“Well, prank, I guess.”
Jase had thought of Selma, the way her frail body had seemed on the verge of collapse in Brianna’s arms.
“They would do this?” Jase had probed. “Put everyone who cares about them through an emotional wringer?”
“They’re kids,” Carson had responded. “And sure, now they’re supposedly legal adults. You know. Twenty-one. But we all know that twenty-one is the new seventeen. They’re all about themselves, still.”
Jase had checked his notes. Both girls had been good students and athletes, no arrest records, no real sign of trouble. Chloe worked at a coffee shop near campus. Jase had already spoken with the owner, who’d sung her praises. Chloe had never missed a day of work, and aside from one time when she’d been late due to her car not starting, she’d been on time, a stellar employee. Zoe, who was employed by an accounting firm, had gotten a similar review from her boss. “Tons of energy, always a smile,” Peggy Tavernaro had said. “Always eager. Never complains. At least not to me. To tell you the truth, I wish I had three more Zoe Dennings on my staff. I’d love to replace a few slackers.”
Both the coffee shop owner and Ms. Tavernaro had expressed concern that the girls hadn’t shown up and had asked Jase for reassurance that they were “all right.”
“I don’t know,” he’d admitted, and said he’d hoped so.
But Peggy Tavernaro hadn’t been put off. “If someone from the Observer is calling,” she’d pointed out, “this can’t be good news. What’s happened to Zoe?”
“I don’t know,” he’d admitted honestly.
“Well, please, have someone keep me in the loop.” She’d sounded worried, and he hadn’t blamed her.
Considering everything Jase had learned about the girls, he had been pissed by the flat response of the twins’ father. Did Carson Denning really think his twins would “pull a stunt” and thoughtlessly put their mother, and presumably him, through hell? Did he really think they would disappear for a few days as some kind of twisted joke?
No. He didn’t think so.
Nonetheless, Jase hadn’t been able to convince Carson to grant him an interview.
Yet.
“All in good time,” he said, though patience definitely wasn’t a virtue that could be attributed to him. Eager. Pushy. Anxious. Now, those were his character traits, and they had served him well in his profession. Just not in his private life. Especially not with women. And so he staved off his new feelings for Brianna. These were emotions best left alone, considering the mess with her sister. Jase cringed a little when he thought of Arianna Hayward.
Of what he knew about her death.
About how he was involved.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, and squeezed his eyes shut. His last view of Arianna, in one of his recurring but ever-changing dreams had been at night, through the shimmer of clear water. Hair floating around her face like a feather cloud, strands caught in the current. Skin that was a white, unworldly hue. Eyes open, as if staring upward, reflecting the silvery shafts of moonlight that had pierced the surrounding trees.
Jesus God.
That face had haunted him for over a decade. He was reminded of Arianna’s pale countenance several times when he’d caught Brianna staring at him. Brianna’s eyes, that same golden hue, and her features, carved so similarly to her twin’s, had brought back the anxiety, the anger, the out-and-out fury that he’d experienced the last time he’d seen Arianna. Yes, there were differences in the two women, but when he’d been with Brianna earlier tonight, twice he’d gotten that same hit, that eerie sizzle of déjà vu, and the sensation that he was looking into the eyes of a ghost.
Guilt nagged at him. From what he’d learned about siblings who’d been conceived and grown in the womb together, there was always an invisible cord linking them. If that connection was severed, the remaining twin often felt inconsolable grief. Wasn’t it true for Brianna? Hadn’t the reason she’d organized the twinless twin meetings been because of her anguish at losing her sister?
His gut clenched and he walked into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and dragged out the last beer from the six-pack he’d bought earlier in the week. After twisting off the cap and taking a long swallow, he discarded the cardboard pack and headed back to the living r
oom, where he flopped onto the couch and stared at the cold grate.
Maybe it was time to unburden himself.
And what? Face murder charges? How would that help anything?
Another long pull on the bottle. More staring at the blackened firebox.
But still no answers.
He couldn’t let her get away with it.
If he didn’t find a way out of this trap, everything would be ruined. Everything! He couldn’t let that happen. With difficulty he dragged in several deep breaths. Then, assured that his windpipe was intact, he grabbed hold of the edge of the workbench and hauled himself to his feet.
He had tools, lots of them. Crowbars and scissors and wire cutters. And screwdrivers that would fit into the screws holding the hinges of the trapdoor in place.
But getting up to reach it was another problem. The ladder was useless, as there was no opening to rest the rails on. But maybe if he dragged his workbench to the spot below the opening . . . If he stood on the bench, he was tall enough that he shouldn’t have any trouble reaching the hinges and unscrewing them.
The hard part would come when he had to force the door open on the hinged side when the locked side wouldn’t budge.
But what had his miserable mother told him over and over again? “Where there’s a will, there’s a way, boy. Don’t you forget it.”
God, he was glad she died young. Early-onset dementia and some kind of paralysis in her lower extremities had sent her to the nursing facility long before her time.
Served her right.
He rolled to his side and winced. Shit, his face ached, his throat was on fire, and his crotch was still throbbing. Goddamn that Chloe! He pounded one fist against the stained concrete floor, then told himself to rein in his rage.
For now.
Until he caught up with her. With them. Zoe was out there, too. His back teeth clenched as he thought of how he’d been duped. By each of them. He’d underestimated both girls.
Myra would be beyond pissed.
Reaching up to the corner of the worktable, he struggled to his feet. The longer he lay down here, the farther the damned twins would get. He grabbed both sides of the workbench and, putting his back into it, dragged the heavy table inch by inch, scraping over the concrete.
Ignoring the sting of his own salty perspiration seeping into the cuts on his face, he managed to place the table beneath the opening. Then he found several screwdrivers, slipped them into the pockets of his apron, and climbed atop the heavy structure. He had to hunch a little, but after testing the first screwdriver, he dropped it onto the floor and used a second, a Phillips, which slipped perfectly into the grooves on the first screw.
A slow, determined smile spread across his jaw as he worked. Now the element of surprise would be on his side. Chloe, though spurred to get away, would think she was safe, and that was his advantage.
It wasn’t much, he thought as the first screw fell into his hand and he dropped it into the apron’s pocket, but it was something. And, by God, he’d use it for all it was worth.
Lying flat on his back, Donovan Caldwell stared at the empty upper bunk and counted his heartbeats. The prison was quiet now; a few men snored, others rustled in their cells, and the guy two doors down tapped the wall rhythmically, maintaining that maddening clicking noise. Donovan had thought it was some kind of code—maybe the inmate, Claude, was punching out some secret message to another con—but the truth of it was that Claude was just tapping out a drumbeat, the tempo of a song that ran through his head constantly.
At first, when Claude had been brought in and the sounds interrupted the inmates’ sleep, Donovan had been irritated. But over time he’d gotten used to the ticking. Now he almost found it comforting, which was saying something for this hellhole.
The smells in the cell block were the same as they had been that fateful, god-awful day Caldwell had been locked inside. Some kind of acrid cleaning solution used to wipe away the odors of sweat, testosterone, and yeah, fear. At first the collective smell of confined men had burned his nostrils, but like the clicking from Claude’s cage, Donovan had gotten used to the sharp ammonia smell of disinfectant mixed with the aroma of despair that clung forever to the walls of these cubicles.
Though it was long past “Lights Out,” a bluish-gray illumination slid through the hallways, a perpetual reminder that there was always someone watching.
He’d never gotten used to the half-light. Maybe no one did. He knew that some inmates tossed and turned on their bunks, though a few of the convicts, more than he would have thought, slept like babies through the night.
His head pounded, his heartbeat thudding with adrenaline as it raged through his body. Tonight was to be his last in this godforsaken place.
He thought of his sisters. Diana and Delta, gone for over a decade. Although the girls had been the light of his parents’ lives, Donovan felt nothing for the twins.
No grief.
No regret.
No anger.
His emotions for them were as hollow and empty as the polished floors of this prison. His sisters had deserved to die, even if they had died young. He’d never questioned that, but he’d never expected to be blamed.
In the next cell over, Henry was snoring like a buzz saw just as he did every night. The guy slept as if he hadn’t a care in the world, as if the void of prison life didn’t bother him, as if he weren’t going to live the rest of his pathetic years in a tiny box, cut off from civilization, forced to reside in a community of robbers, thieves, rapists, and murdering SOBs. Then again, what did Henry care? He was in for taking an ax to his wife and her lover, a premeditated double homicide that had caught him two successive life sentences.
And yet the bastard slept.
Like a damned baby.
Donovan couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a full night’s rest. Or even four hours in a row. Since the time he’d landed here, he’d felt out of step and uneasy, swearing his innocence to anyone who would listen, disbelieving that he wouldn’t be a free man come the morning light.
It was the dreams that kept alive the nugget of hope burrowed deep in his chest. Dreams of being free, of fishing mountain streams, of running on a beach, the frothy warm Pacific tide spraying against his ankles. Dreams of making love to a woman, usually faceless, but with big tits and a juicy pussy. That was the worst. Waking up to the wet spot on his cot and knowing what he’d thought real had only been a dream, that his chances of ever screwing again were nil.
His head began to pound as he thought about it.
There was a reason coming unhinged was called stir-crazy.
No more.
Silently he pulled his tiny weapon from the inside of his shoe. He’d swiped the bolt from a metal cart in the laundry, where he’d worked for a while. He’d whittled on it as best he could, made certain that it was sharp enough to cut through skin and veins.
Barely an inch long, this tiny bit of metal was his salvation.
If there was a God.
He wasn’t so sure about that.
He bit down on his lower lip and held the blade between the fingers of his right hand.
It’s now or never. Make your move.
Clearing his throat, he went to work and attempted to slice downward from the base of his palm and across his wrist lengthwise as he’d learned. But the tender skin refused to break despite it being so thin he could see the webbing of blue veins just under the surface, even in this half-light.
Damn. Why wasn’t he able to saw through?
Because you’re weak, numb nuts. Try again.
Clenching his teeth, he gave it another go. This time he pressed harder, and as he scraped his skin, a hot pain seared up the inside of his arm.
Perfect!
At least he was scratching the surface.
In the dim light he saw the first red drop well.
It ran.
A second glistening globule appeared to chase after the first.
Now, he had only to rip
a little more, make a deeper, longer cut, and then maybe a few more. Whatever it took. He needed a lot of blood to flow to get it done.
He felt a grim satisfaction at his accomplishment. Hovering somewhere between euphoria and terror, he pressed the sharpened edge to his skin again and decided to take his time.
He wasn’t in that big of a hurry.
He had the whole damned night.
CHAPTER 20
It didn’t take as long as he’d expected.
The screws had come out easily, but the trapdoor was heavy, the lock holding it in place unforgiving. He’d worked feverishly, using brute strength to push against the inside of the hatch. Over and over again he thrust his palms against the trapdoor, shoving his weight and all his force upward. But the door would only wiggle a bit, push up an inch or two, then fall back into place. The long plate holding the lock didn’t budge.
Not good enough.
But there was movement. Progress.
He stopped to throw on his jeans, shirt, and boots, which gave him protection and extra height. Dressed, he’d be able to chase down that stupid Chloe. If he could find a way to escape!
Every time he thought of how she’d duped him, he saw red and felt the pain still throbbing in his crotch and face. Revenge burned bright in his soul as he scowled and paced the room, noticing the crowbar mounted on the wall. Would it work? Only one way to find out. He yanked it from its hooks and climbed on the table again. Wedging the curved part through the opening, he put all of his weight on the handle and shoved, hard.
Crreaaak. The wood and metal resisted, but started to give.
He tried harder. Pushing. Prying. Forcing the bar to move the door. And sweating. Oh, man was he sweating. In the dank cement room, one of the few basements in this area, the air was still and warm. Salty perspiration ran down his face, irritating his wounds.
But he didn’t stop.
With each straining thrust of the metal rod he thought of the Denning twins, how they’d outwitted him, played him for a fool.