Blood Games (26 page)

    ‘It’s only a theory,’ Vivian muttered.

    ‘We know she didn’t go off on her own,’ Finley said. ‘Not without her shoes. So somebody had to take her. It was probably that kid. Maybe with some friends. But whoever it was, he had to know about the rest of us. And he’d know that the lodge is the first place we’d come looking for her. So if he didn’t want to deal with the rest of us, he’d hurry and get her away from here.’

    ‘Into the woods,’ Cora said.

    ‘She might’ve… just gone along with him,’ Vivian suggested. ‘You know? There’s no reason, really, to think that he forced her. Or hurt her. Maybe she went willingly. Maybe he’s a nice kid and they got talking, and she just… went with him somewhere.’

    ‘She would’ve put on her shoes,’ Finley said.

    ‘Not necessarily. I mean, if it wasn’t something like that, then…’ Vivian hesitated. Voice trembling, she went on. ‘Then she isn’t going to be all right. She’s probably… she’s probably already been raped. She might even be…’

    ‘Cut it out,’ Cora broke in. ‘Let’s not go off the deep end. We don’t know what happened. Maybe nothing, and she’ll just turn up.’

    ‘Here’s the thing,’ Finley said, a sudden eagerness in her voice. ‘Look, we’re assuming she was attacked. That’s really the most logical explanation. Nothing else makes much sense. Somebody got to her while she was down in the pool. And I know how bad all this looks. But if the guy’d only wanted to rape her or kill her, he could’ve done that right at the pool. And left her there. But he didn’t. He took her away instead. Would’ve been a lot easier just to leave her, even if there was a whole bunch of guys. So what I think is that he - they - plan to hang onto her.’

    ‘Keep her prisoner,’ Abilene said, now understanding why Finley sounded excited about the idea.

    ‘Which means she’s probably alive,’ Cora said.

    ‘You got it.’

    ‘God, I hope you’re right,’ Vivian said.

    ‘It makes sense, doesn’t it?’

    ‘All we’ve gotta do is find her. And nail the bastard that grabbed her.’

    ‘Bastards,’ Finley corrected her. ‘I think it’s gotta be more than one.’

    Cora put a hand on Abilene’s back. ‘How are you feeling?’

    ‘A lot better. Let’s get going.’

    They left the flashlights on the porch stairs and headed for the corner of the lodge. Finley carried the water bottle. Cora carried the tire iron.

    Stopping on the slope beside the Wagoneer, Cora suggested they find something to eat. Abilene climbed in. Reaching over the seatback, she opened the cooler. She grabbed a pack of hot dogs and crawled out. Finley had already taken a bag of potato chips from the box that Helen had left on the driveway. The bag was clamped between her knees as she lifted the box onto the roof of the car.

    ‘Anybody wanta change before we take off?’ Cora asked.

    Abilene considered it. A change into dry clothes would feel good. Sneakers would be much better than moccasins for hiking through the woods. They were probably still wet though.

    ‘Let’s just go,’ Finley said. ‘Whatever we put on is gonna be soaking before long anyway.’

    Vivian nodded.

    They hurried down the steep driveway. At the rear corner of the lodge, they followed Cora to the small, outside pool.

    Helen’s sneakers and the bag of chips were still there. Abilene noticed that the granite, where she and Cora had climbed out dripping, was completely dry.

    ‘Okay,’ Cora said. ‘We figure they started here. Why don’t we spread out and head across the field?’

    ‘Just a second,’ Abilene said. ‘There might be some kind of signs.’ The others waited while she walked along the stone slabs, studying the ground cover beyond the edge, looking for trampled weeds, mashed grass. ‘I don’t see anything,’ she said as she came back. ‘But maybe they stayed on the cobblestones.’

    ‘Well, let’s keep our eyes open. At least we saw where the kid went yesterday.’

    They each took a drink from Finley’s bottle. Then they fanned out, stepped off the granite and made their way slowly across the field. Cora, at the right end of the line, circled around the far side of the brick fireplace. Abilene, in the middle, strode along one of the cobblestone walkways.

    The sun, high above the trees ahead, glared in her eyes. She wished she had a hat or sunglasses, but she rarely wore them and they were back in the car. So she squinted and kept a hand at her brow to shield her eyes.

    Near the far end of the grounds, they converged on the old swimming pool. Its bottom was swampy with stagnant rain water that looked like brown muck, thick with decayed leaves and branches. It smelled rank. It buzzed with mosquitos and flies.

    Helen wasn’t down there.

    But something was.

    Directly beneath the high dive, four small furry legs protruded from the soupy water. The instant Abilene realized what she was seeing, she averted her eyes. She didn’t want a good look at it.

    Finley pointed. ‘Hey. A critter. Toes up.’

    Vivian covered her mouth and turned away fast.

    ‘Probably a raccoon,’ Cora said.

    ‘Should we fish it out and take it along for lunch?’

    Cora and Abilene stared at her.

    Finley shrugged. ‘Guess not.’

    Walking away from the pool, Abilene realized that she’d been holding her breath. She inhaled. The air was fresh and sweet. But the smell of rot and the image of the dead animal seemed to be stuck inside her head. A raccoon? It might’ve been a dog. She wondered if it had jumped into the pool on purpose. Maybe it saw something appetizing down there, leaped in, and found itself trapped. Or it might’ve been careless, gotten too close and fallen off the edge. Maybe someone had killed it, then thrown it in.

    
Could’ve been Helen down there
, she thought.

    But it wasn’t.

    Finley has to be right: Helen wasn’t killed. For whatever reason, she was taken prisoner. Abducted. Led away.

    Why?

    As Abilene wondered about it, Cora led them to the border of the forest at about the same place where the kid had rushed in yesterday afternoon. She was glad to get out of the sunlight. But the hot air felt motionless and moist.

    Cora stepped around a clump of bushes and halted. ‘A trail,’ she muttered.

    ‘All right!’ Finley said.

    The footpath was barely visible, a narrow strip of matted leaves and undergrowth winding away from them. It didn’t look as if it had been heavily used. It might’ve been made by a lone person trampling over the same area every once in a while. A couple of times a day. Maybe only a few times each week.

    ‘This must be the path the kid takes,’ Cora said.

    ‘I’d bet on it,’ Finley said.

    Abilene wondered why they hadn’t found a similar track leading across the field from here to the lodge. Maybe once clear of the forest, however, the kid altered his route often enough to avoid making a trail.

    Single file, Cora going first, they began to follow the path.

    Helen might’ve walked over this same ground just a couple of hours ago, Abilene thought. It was probably the way Finley suggested: more than just the kid taking her away. He and some friends. One guy just couldn’t have handled someone as big as Helen. Not the kid, anyway. He’d been fairly small and thin. So he must’ve had help. Even if there’d been several attackers, however, it didn’t seem likely that they would’ve carried Helen away. They took her, but didn’t hurt her. Didn’t hurt her so much, at least, that she wouldn’t be able to walk under her own power.

    
Could’ve been just one guy
, Abilene thought.
If he had a gun. Threatened to shoot her if she didn’t cooperate
.

    ‘I hope he doesn’t have a gun,’ she said.

    Finley glanced back at her. ‘That’d sure be the pits, huh?’

    ‘Gun or not,’ Cora said, ‘we’re gonna have to take him by surprise. Sneak up on him. So maybe we’d better keep quiet for a while.’

    ‘They’ve got an awfully big head-start,’ Finley pointed out.

    ‘Yeah,’ Cora said. ‘And they might’ve stopped anywhere. For all we know, they’re ten feet away from us right now.’

    ‘Do you think we should try calling out?’ Vivian asked.

    Cora and Finley, in unison, said, ‘No.’

    After that, they stopped talking. Abilene, at the rear, listened for sounds of voices or movement in the woods around her. She peered through breaks in the trees. For a while, she held onto hopes of spotting Helen off in the shadows. Then she began to hope that she wouldn’t. If Helen were out here, she might be on the ground. Sprawled motionless. Left behind. Discarded like trash.

    Afraid to keep looking, Abilene turned her eyes to those in front of her.

    Cora’s head kept swiveling. Her short hair, the color of dry hay on top, was dark around her ears and neck where it clung to her skin in wet points and Curls. Her tank top was sodden. Her tanned shoulders looked greasy with sweat. The seat of her red shorts looked molded to her buttocks.

    By comparison, Vivian appeared almost cool in her white knit shirt and shorts. But the back of her shirt was pasted to her skin. It took on the contours of her shoulder blades and rib cage. Abilene could see the straps of her bra through the thin fabric.

    Finley, just in front of Abilene, wore her baggy shirt with its tails hanging out. It looked dark as rawhide down to her hips. There, where the shirt overlapped her shorts, it was still dry and its usual tan color.

    
We’ll be lucky if we don’t all collapse
, Abilene thought.

    Though her head seemed clear, she felt hot and filthy and miserable.

    She wished she’d worn socks. She didn’t like the slimy feel of her moccasins against the bottoms of her feet.

    Her denim skirt was damp and thick and heavy, but at least it was very short and air came up from below. Her panties, bra and blouse were wet and clinging. After a while, she asked the others to wait. She clamped the cool, wet pack of hot dogs between her thighs, peeled off her blouse and removed her bra. It felt good to be free of the hot, confining straps and cups. She folded the bra, tucked it under the waistband of her skirt, then struggled back into her blouse. As she fastened a couple of its buttons, Finley set down the water bottle and bag of chips. She pulled the pack of hot dogs from between Abilene’s legs.

    ‘Let’s go ahead and eat these suckers,’ she said. ‘I’m starving.’

    ‘Just a short break,’ Cora said.

    Finley peeled open the plastic wrapper. She slipped out a wiener, poked it into her mouth, and held the package while the others helped themselves. ‘Gourmet breakfast,’ she said, her words garbled, the end of the frank bobbing and wiggling.,

    Abilene took a bite of the hot dog she’d taken. It was warm, moist, mushy. It tasted okay, but she suddenly felt sick as she remembered dinner last night. The sizzling dogs had tasted wonderful, then. Helen had wanted the last one. They hadn’t allowed her to eat it. They’d passed it around, instead, ‘helping’ Helen with her diet.

    Abilene’s throat went tight.

    God, she wished they’d let her have it. It might’ve been the last hot dog she would ever get a chance to eat.

    
She’s all right. She’s gotta be all right
.

    Abilene had a very hard time swallowing, but she managed to finish her hot dog, washing it down with a lot of water. Finley offered her another.

    ‘No thanks.’

    ‘Go ahead. Two each, then we can toss the package.’

    ‘Maybe we should save a couple for Helen.’

    Finley looked as if she felt a sudden pain. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and nodded. Cora, about to bite into her second hot dog, slipped it back into the wrapper in Finley’s hand.

    Nobody ate a second one.

    Finley shook some juice out of the pack, then folded it carefully and slipped it into a deep pocket of her shorts.

    They all drank some more water, then resumed their trek through the woods.

    Soon, they came to a split in the trail. One path veered off to the right and the other continued straight ahead.

    ‘Now what?’ Vivian asked.

    ‘Flip a coin?’ Finley suggested.

    ‘We can come back to this if we don’t find anything,’ Cora said.

    They stuck to the original path and soon came to a lake. An old, weathered dock reached out from its shore. Off the end of the dock was a diving platform that floated at such an angle that one corner dipped into the water. Apparently, one of the drums buoying it up had sprung a leak.

    Abilene supposed this must be the lake Helen had told them about. Somewhere near its shores, the hunters had killed that girl.

    The lake was bigger than she’d pictured it. Maybe a quarter of a mile wide and twice that long. She saw no boats on its surface. No other docks. No dwellings along its shores. No people. In spite of its blue, glinting surface and the lush beauty of the forest surrounding it, the lake seemed forbidding. An alien, ominous place.

    Abilene rubbed her arms and the nape of her neck. Her hot skin, slick with sweat, was pebbled with goosebumps.

    ‘Sure looks deserted,’ Vivian whispered, as if afraid to raise her voice in the stillness.

    ‘Doesn’t anybody live around here?’ Finley said.

    ‘Creepy,’ Vivian muttered.

    ‘It’s like the whole lake’s been abandoned,’ Abilene said, still rubbing the achy skin on the back of her neck.

    ‘There might be houses we just can’t see from here,’ Cora said. ‘Hidden off in the trees. I’d bet on it’

    Leaving the shelter of the forest’s edge, they made their way down to the foot of the dock.

    Just to the left, Abilene saw what looked like the remains of a beach. The small area sloped down gently to the shore. It had probably been cleared by workers from the lodge, sand carted in to create a nice little beach for the guests. Now, weeds and bushes grew there and the sand was littered with driftwood.