Hide My Thoughts: A Romantic Suspense Thriller Book (Hide Me Series 2) (4 page)

Katerina snapped her fingers and tried to put together all the connections in her brain. Dylan Phillips. That was the man they were looking for. She knew it.

West spoke up. “What about Frank Phillips? Is he being cooperative? Will he tell you anything about his brother?”

Blaise looked dejected. “We’re not even allowed to talk to him. His lawyer has got a security guard in front of the door who calls the lawyer anytime we try. In fact, his lawyer is pushing hard to get him released from custody. He’s saying this new murder proves his client wasn’t responsible for the old ones.”

“What about the bodies under his house?” Katerina cried shrilly, startling Jordan.

“The lawyer says they must have been planted there, or put there before Frank moved in. We’re investigating how long he’s lived there now.”

Katerina shook her head, disgusted. She looked at West, hoping he would have something illuminating to say. He was running his hands through his hair, his face contemplative. Katerina noticed how it made his hair stick up at spiky angles, offsetting his deep, blue eyes. A sudden lust for him pulsated through her entire body, warming her instantly. The wave of desire hit her so hard, it left her shaky, and she almost fell to the ground, revolted with herself.
Talk about the wrong place and the wrong time.
What was her problem?!
She staggered into the kitchen, not wanting anyone to see her.

From the living room, she heard Blaise tell West he had to get to work, Detective Gagne was waiting for him at the station, but he would come by as soon as possible with anything new. Katerina leaned against the stove and fanned herself, trying to calm down. She hoped Jordan wasn’t leaving too.

She didn’t trust herself alone with West.

She didn’t know if she wanted to fuck him … or kill him.

Or both.

Lance pulled into the driveway of the old farm and maneuvered his truck around the worst of the potholes. The mile-long driveway got worse every year, but he didn’t want to bring anyone out to lay stone on it. Mostly, he hoped people forgot this place existed. It was the very last homestead on a lonely dirt road, surrounded by miles of forest on one side and miles of farmland on the other. As he hit the halfway point of the driveway, a chime sounded on his phone. He picked the phone up and pressed the button marked driveway alert, silencing the alarm that told him whenever someone approached his farm. He and Frank had been the only ones to trigger it in the seventeen years since he’d installed it.

It took him at least ten minutes to make his way to the farmhouse, where he pulled behind the house itself and parked between it and the barn. He climbed out of the truck and stretched his lower back. The hot, dry air sat still and heavy on the dirt, but purple clouds boiled in the distance. A storm was coming. Lance didn’t worry about the storm. Weather always helped him. If a storm was coming, then it was because he needed a storm, for some reason.

He waited for a few more minutes, internally checking his mental radar, making sure no one was watching him. No one was, so he grabbed his backpack and packed it full of bags of food, then swung it on his back and started across the parched, dead grass to the bomb shelter. At least that’s what he and Zippy called the underground hole. The bomb shelter. They’d discovered it when Lance had been eight and Zippy had been six, during one of their many visits to the old farm. The farm had belonged to their father’s brother and the boys had spent many afternoons out back while their father and uncle drank beer in front of the old TV. The bomb shelter was located directly beneath the dilapidated red barn, its entrance hidden. The barn had been falling down even when they were children and they had been banned from going inside it, so they had never asked their father or their uncle what the bomb shelter really was.

It had been boring out in the yard with nothing to do except pump water from the old well or try to catch the horses. So they had dared each other to go into the barn. They had explored every empty stall and even the old hayloft, their light, young-boy bodies not weighing enough to fall through the decaying rafters that surely would’ve plunged the adult men to the cement floor below. One day, Lance had decided to fuck with Zippy. He had peered out of a high window, then whirled around to his brother and shouted, “Daddy’s coming! We’re going to get whipped!”

Zippy had slid down the old ladder so fast that he had splinters in both palms for a week. Then he’d run flat out across the barn floor, heading for the slightly adjacent back door, desperate not be caught in the old barn. Lance was still laid out in the loft, laughing silently.

As Zippy ran across the last ten feet leading to the door, his foot had broken through a board. They both heard the crack it made when it broke, like a gunshot in the overwhelmingly silent heat of the empty barn. It hadn’t slowed Zippy down at all, and he had charged out the back door, probably thinking Daddy was shooting at him. When Lance finally convinced him that he’d been playing a joke and Daddy hadn’t come out to the barn after all, they both crept back in to see what Zippy had broken. The boards were long and wide, painted red, and laid over the floor just before the back door. Or at least Lance and Zippy had thought they were laid over the cement floor, But upon examination, it turned out that the boards were actually covering open space below. By systematically pulling on each board, they discovered a trapdoor that swung open and revealed a ladder that plunged into absolute darkness below.

As the boys were discussing who should go down the ladder, they heard their father calling from the back porch and so exploration immediately ceased, to wait until their next trip. The two had been giddy with excitement about what could possibly be down there and it was all they could talk about when they were alone. Luckily, their father hadn’t waited long before heading back over to drink his brother’s beer. Four days later, they found themselves once again alone in the back of the old farm. They both had a flashlight in their pocket and were ready to explore the unknown, a boy’s paradise. They watched their father and uncle from the porch and as soon as they saw their father reach the end of his first beer, they crept into the barn from the back door, pulled up on the trap door, and made their way down, Lance going first. He was frightened, but he was the older brother, and although he could’ve made Zippy go first, this was one of those situations where it was just right for him to lead.

Before starting down, they shined their flashlights into the hole and revealed an open tube, into which the ladder plummeted farther than their lights could reach. Reluctantly, they turned their lights off and stuck them in their pockets, then began to climb down the ladder. The farther down they went, the colder the air became, and the more the darkness seemed to press in on them. Lance finally stopped, holding onto a rung with one hand and pulling his flashlight out with the other. Looking around, he saw the tube was getting smaller, but not small enough that he could reach the far wall. He looked down, and realized the floor was only a few more rungs down. He let go of the ladder and dropped to the ground, holding the light still so Zippy could see his way down. Still in the tube, they flashed their lights around 360 degrees. Lance felt bitter disappointment when it seemed to him that this was it. A dirt floor, and a cold dirt tube. But then Zippy had noticed a small, dark door. It was only half the height of a regular door and the same color as the dirt, which almost made it hidden in the dim light. Lance rushed to it and laid his hand on the knob, the feeling that he was about to discover a great secret that would change his life forever, coursing through him. And he had been right.

Lance opened the door. He had to duck slightly to go through it. Zippy didn’t have to duck at all. An adult would have to crouch and maybe even crawl through the door, which made the room that it opened up into that much more surprising. The room was large and the walls seemed to be concrete. There was no electricity, but gas lamps were hung from hooks every few feet. There was an old-fashioned ice box, plus counters built all along every wall of the square room. In the very middle were chairs, each fastened to the floor, and in front of each chair was a large metal ring. Back when they were children, the chairs and the metal rings had fascinated Zippy, but Lance had been more interested in what they found along the far wall. Twelve cells, each with a heavy wooden door, poured right into the concrete of the wall, so there were no hinges, and no way to open any of the doors once they were locked shut. Each of the doors was only half-size though, like the door leading into this room. Lance and Zippy could enter each of the cells at a slight crouch, but an adult would barely be able to sit down without their head touching the ceiling of the small cell. Lance knew they had to be cells, but were they for humans? They seemed to be too small to be for a human. They were a little over six feet long though, so a human could lay down in them comfortably.

Lance had tried to imagine being caught in one of these cells and found he could do it all too easily. He wondered if his father and his uncle knew about this room. It had an air of disuse, as if no one had been in it for a long time.

Little-boy Lance had imagined one day being old enough to investigate the mystery and find out who had built the bomb shelter, but as an adult? It didn’t even matter anymore. Someone had built it for him, that much was obvious, even if they didn’t know it at the time. The room fit his needs in this lifetime perfectly.

As Lance walked through the barn and remembered that first trip into the bomb shelter, he wondered again if anyone in his family had ever made use of the bomb shelter in any way, including what appeared to be its intended use of some sort of interrogation chamber or homemade jail cell. And if so, who? It seemed unlikely that his father or uncle ever had. They had both been nothing but alcoholic losers. He wondered if they even had ever even known about it and thought it unlikely. 

His family had a long history in California, and supposedly this farm had been built in the 1800s. Lance had never looked deeply into the history of the farm or of his family; such matters just weren’t important to him. All that was truly important was his goal. His bomb shelter was just another example of the help he received along the way. Another piece of the puzzle that he had somehow weaved for himself before setting himself off on this grand adventure.

Lance picked up the trapdoor and lowered himself onto the ladder, then pulled the trapdoor shut above him. He made his way down the 126 rungs, counting each one so he knew when to step off in the darkness. He pushed his way through the small door, definitely having to crouch this time, and immediately started lighting the lanterns.

Everything was in its place, all the doors were shut, and nothing was disturbed. Perfect. Not that he expected anything to be disturbed. No one knew about this place and there was no way the women could get out of their cells. It smelled of course, but that was to be expected. He hadn’t been here in three days.

He walked to one of the counters and rummaged in the equipment neatly laid out on top. It was time for his shot. He had his needles set up everywhere so he never had to go without one. Lance drew up a syringe and dropped his pants. He wiped his leg with alcohol, and gave himself the shot, imagining he could immediately feel its effects. He pulled up his pants and dropped the needle into the garbage can under the counter, then turned to the day’s chores. No one had made a peep yet, and that was good. He hated when the women cried and begged. It didn’t happen anymore with this group. They knew the ropes. There hadn’t been a new addition to their happy family for two months now. Zippy had been supposed to go and pick someone up at the San Francisco airport last week, but Zippy was unavailable for now. Briefly, Lance wondered what Olga had done. Had she gotten back on a plane and gone home? Or was she still wandering around San Francisco, looking for Frank Phillips? She had gotten off easy, and she didn’t even know it.

Lance turned his attention to the containers outside each one of the cell doors. He passed the ancient chairs that were still exactly how they had been forty years ago, with barely a glance. The only thing that was different in the room these days was the shower he and Zippy had added, plus all their supplies. Oh, and the fact that the cells were in use.

He grabbed a large black plastic bag off a counter and began to gather bags of human waste. A few years ago, he and Zippy had briefly experimented with composting toilets inside the cells, but that had been a big disaster. The smell had been so bad inside the room that no one could stand to be in there, so they’d adopted this system instead. The women knew to go inside the bags and then seal them and push them out the food slot. When either he or Zippy came, they piled the waste bags into a plastic bag and hauled it up the ladder, then dumped it at a far point on the farm. It was a lot of work, but better than the alternative.

Lance noticed immediately that there were no bags outside of cell number four. He quickly gathered up the rest of the containers and took the trash bag out to the base of the ladder, then returned to figure out what was wrong with Svetlana. He crouched, then opened up her food slot and looked in, careful to keep his face well away from the door. He wasn’t too worried about an attack though, the women knew they would die without him tending to them.

A smell hit him in the face immediately. A different smell than the bags of waste. Fuck. There was no questioning that smell. She wasn’t playing possum. She wasn’t sleeping. Svetlana was dead, and had been for at least a day or two. But what could have killed her? Did she get sick? She had seemed to have been eating and drinking normally the last time he had come. Maybe she had been pouring her water on the ground. But could a person do that? Keep themselves from drinking water even if it was readily available? No, she must have been sick, or had an infirmity he didn’t know about.

Lance swore and crossed the room quickly. Now he was down to five women. And what a waste! He hadn’t even been able to use her the way he wanted. He didn’t think it would take five bodies to push Katerina over the edge, but he didn’t know for sure how things were going to play out. Damn! And Svetlana had seemed to be in perfect health.

Lance paced quickly back and forth across the room. He needed to think.