Into the Storm (24 page)

Nothing. There was silence, with the exception of the oddest sound. Like water lapping against a seawall.

“What’s down there?” Lindsey asked. “Some kind of swimming pool? But why isn’t it frozen solid?”

“I don’t know.” Dave peeled off his coat, handed it to her along with his hat and scarf. There looked to be a set of stairs heading downward, in the gloom of the far corner. How was he going to get over there without going through the floor? “But I’m going to find out.”

“Warm springs.” Jenk was a fountain of information. He, too, had taken off his jacket and even the sweater he wore. “There are several in this area.” He stopped Dave. “I’m going first. I’m lighter.”

“Do we have a rope?” Lindsey asked.

“Izzy’s carrying the pack,” Jenk said as he started around the edge of the cabin’s single room. He moved much faster than Dave dared. “There’s one in there.”

“What we really need is light,” Dave said, even as Lindsey started shouting, “Zanella!”

Her voice suddenly seemed to be coming from above them. “
Zanella!
He’s coming,” she called to Dave and Jenk. “Lopez, too.”

“What are you doing—Be careful!” Jenk was looking up at the roof above them, but he didn’t let it slow him down. He was almost near the stairs when his foot slipped and the bit of floor he was standing on gave way. Somehow he managed to cling to the wall. “Don’t you fall, too!”

“I’m good,” Lindsey told the SEAL, as suddenly there was more light.

She was peeling away the roof, making one of the holes bigger, hacking at the opening.

And then Dave heard it. From below. The sound of splashing, of coughing, of a huge, ragged breath being drawn in.

“Sophia!” he shouted. With the additional light, even dim as the afternoon was, he could see through the broken floor, down a full story beneath them to where, yes, there was water. It was some kind of man-made pool, no doubt constructed on the site of a natural spring, with this structure built around it. He could see Sophia’s blond hair, plastered against her head, her face pale as she looked up, searching for him.

“Dave.” It was barely a word, more like a gasp. She was holding on to Dan Gillman, his head lolled back, blood on his face.

Dave gripped the log walls with his fingertips. “We’re coming! Hold on!” He kept talking to her. He may not have been able to throw her a rope, but he could use his voice as a lifeline. “Jenk’s almost at the stairs. We’re moving as fast as we can. We’re coming. Sophia, hold on. Jenk’s almost there.”

“It’s solid here,” Jenkins called. “You should be able to jump over.”

Yeah, maybe if he were Spider-Man or a freaking Navy SEAL, then he could jump all that way from a stationary position.

But Dave didn’t have time for either a radioactive mutation or BUD/S training, so he just did it. He flung himself forward and miraculously landed without killing himself. He could hear Lindsey shouting orders to Izzy and Lopez. Start a fire. Not in here, in the other structure. Go, go, go!

Yes, there was rope that they could use to pull Sophia and Gillman up, but they were going to need to widen the hole in the floor, remove some of that rotting wood. No, the roof wasn’t stable enough to brace the weight of one person, let alone two. Time was of the essence. It was paramount to get Sophia and Gillman dry and warm as quickly as possible.

“I need Lopez!” Jenk shouted from below. Lopez had, among all of them, the most medical training. “Now! Gillman’s not breathing!”

The stairs down were made of thicker boards than the floor. Dave stopped testing them in his haste to get down. But then the floor beneath his feet was concrete, and he ran to where Jenkins was pulling Gillman out of the pool.

Sophia had somehow managed to push him halfway out, and she now clung to the side with fingers that were white.

“Lopez!” Jenk shouted again. “Get Sophia,” he ordered Dave, who was already doing just that.

“Nuh-nuh-nuh-t…” Sophia was trying to speak, but she gave up and touched her mouth and nose, shaking her head, as Dave grabbed her.

“Gillman’s not breathing,” he interpreted as he pulled Sophia from the water with one enormous heave. “Jenk knows. He’s working on him, Soph.”

She was freezing to death. Literally. Her lips were already blue.

“I’m helping Izzy rig the rope,” Lopez shouted down to Jenkins. “Check for a pulse, man. You know what to do.”

“Come on, come on, Danny,” Jenk muttered, already fumbling with the prone SEAL’s jacket and scarf, trying to get to his throat. “Got a pulse, thank you, Jesus. Starting mouth to mouth.”

“Lindsey, status of that fire!” Dave shouted up to the roof as he tried to peel Sophia’s wet clothes off of her.

But Sophia pushed him away. She crawled over to Jenk who was breathing into the mouth of his unconscious teammate. Gillman must’ve knocked himself out on his way through the floor. He had a nasty gash on his forehead.

“Come on, come on, come on, come on,” Jenk muttered in between breaths.

“Watch your heads!” Izzy shouted as, holding on to a rope that was somehow anchored outside the cabin, he used himself as a wrecking ball, stomping in the rest of the rotting floorboards.

Jenk shielded Gillman with his back, as Dave tried to do the same for Sophia. Chunks of wood fell into the water, breaking through the thin sheet of ice that had already formed. Splinters and leaves showered onto them.

As Dave looked up, he could see Lopez peering down at them from the doorway. “Fire’s started,” he reported, as Dave brushed the debris from Sophia’s head. “Lindsey’s getting it good and hot. Jenk, keep it going. Don’t stop. Sophia, can you hear me?”

She didn’t look up, her full focus on Gillman.

“She’s pretty out of it,” Dave called back to Lopez. He had to wrestle her out of those freezing, wet clothes. “Come on, Soph, you can’t help Jenkins, but you can help me.”

But Lopez stopped him. “Wait, Dave, if she’s wearing wool, she’ll be warmer with her clothes on, even soaked.”

Sophia was shaking. “She’s wearing flannel-lined jeans and a down jacket, a coupla sweaters,” Dave told the SEAL. He touched her sodden sweater, reaching beneath to what felt like a turtleneck shirt. Her skin beneath was icy. “Definitely not wool. Cotton maybe.”

“Get ’em off her,” Lopez commanded. “Why isn’t she wearing wool?”

She heard that, which was a good sign, wasn’t it? “I’m…aller…aller…” Still, she couldn’t even pronounce the word
allergic.
She barely even had her eyes open as Dave struggled to pull her wet jacket off of her.

“Yes!” Jenk shouted his triumph. Sure enough, Danny Gillman gurgled and coughed and spit out what seemed like gallons of water as Jenkins rolled him onto his side.

Alleluia. Maybe now Sophia would focus on saving her own life. She may have been out of the water, but she wasn’t out of the woods. Neither of them were. Not in this cold. Not yet.

“Come on, Sophia, help me,” Dave told her again, working on getting her out of her jeans. He had to peel them off, one leg at a time—not an easy task, since they stuck to her wet skin. “Gillman’s okay. Jenk’s got him breathing. Let’s do some work on you. Can you help me?”

But she was shivering so hard, she couldn’t even hold her head up.

And there came Lopez, sliding like Tarzan down that rope through the wider hole in the floor that Izzy had cleared. He was carrying Dave’s and Jenk’s jackets. But Dave was already ahead of him. He’d pulled off his own wool sweater—too bad if it made Sophia itch—and was ready to step out of his pants.

Lopez swore in Spanish at the sight of her, but he didn’t slow down. “Mark, help Dave,” he ordered, and then it was Jenkins who was gaping at Sophia’s nearly naked body.

“Shit, are those scars?” he asked, but like Lopez, he didn’t stop moving. He helped Dave feed her limp arms into the dry sweater.

“Yeah,” Dave said tersely.

“What happened to her?” Jenk asked. “Did she, like, go through a plate glass window a few years ago?”

“No.” Dave was wearing long johns, and he kicked off his boots to strip down to them, giving Jenkins his socks to put on Sophia’s pale feet.

In the time it took him to put his pants and his boots back on his now much colder legs and feet, Jenk had wrestled Sophia into the long johns, wrapped her in Dave’s jacket, put her over his back in a fireman’s carry, and taken her up the rope.

Lopez had done not quite the same with Gillman because he
was
wearing wool, but they were gone, too.

“Hurry up,” Izzy admonished in the fading light at the edge of the hole.

Dave had barely grabbed the rope before Izzy, using plain brute strength, just hauled him straight up. Dave hit the frozen ground like a landed fish, the wind temporarily knocked out of him. As he caught his breath, he smelled the sharpness of smoke from a wood fire.

It was terribly cold without his many layers. He could only imagine how Sophia must’ve felt.

“Let’s go,” Izzy said, coiling the rope as he hurried toward the smaller structure.

Dave followed.

L
OCATION
: U
NCERTAIN
D
ATE
: U
NKNOWN

The first thing he’d do to her was cut off her eyelids.

He’d told Beth that, back when he’d trapped her inside of his car.

Her eyes felt gritty and hot, but only from her fever. She could still blink, still close her eyes. He hadn’t cut her.

Not yet.

He was coming toward her, though, the hall light behind him making it hard in the room’s dimness to see his face. Or to see what he was carrying in his hands.

“Unchain me, you son of a bitch,” she rasped, pulling with all her might against the iron bedframe to which she was tethered. Lord, she was weak.

She knew where he kept the key that would release her. It was on a hook on the wall in the kitchen, right by the basement door. He’d told her where it was nearly every time he left the house, laughing because he knew how much it frustrated her to hear about a key that she could never use, never reach.

The chain that bound her now was too short for her to wrap around his neck.

Although she did have one hand free. One arm and one leg.

Beth lay still. Best to let him think she was helpless. To let him come closer.

“You don’t really want me to unchain you, do you, Number Five?” he asked. “To bring you into my kitchen? Wouldn’t you rather stay and fight?”

He wasn’t holding his carving knife. He was holding a glass with a straw. He’d brought her something to drink. He held it out to her, putting the straw against her dry, chapped lips.

Was it drugged? Possibly. Sometimes the food and water he gave her made the world fade away. She’d awaken to find herself chained up again. Sometimes he stripped her naked and posed her in provocative positions. She’d wake up chilled, with a stiff neck or back. She didn’t think he’d ever had sex with her, though—she didn’t think he was capable.

She suspected he was afraid of disease. Or maybe he got everything he needed from the power he held over her, combined with his own practiced hand.

“You’ll never get better if you don’t drink something,” he coaxed her, and she took a sip.

It could have been anything in that glass. Blood. Urine. Her own vomit. But it wasn’t. It was water, cool and fresh.

She drank more.

“That’s my girl.” He actually reached out to stroke her hair. Her horribly dirty, matted hair. His hands were gentle—hands that cut and mutilated, but didn’t kill.

Hers were the hands that did the killing.

He smiled a gentle smile, a loving smile, as if she were a child or a favorite pet.

He might’ve been considered handsome—if it weren’t for his eyes. His eyes were cold. Empty. Dead.

And very blue.

D
ARLINGTON
, N
EW
H
AMPSHIRE
S
ATURDAY
, D
ECEMBER
10, 2005

“You were great back there.”

Jenk glanced at Lindsey. “We don’t have to talk.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said as she easily kept up with him on the overgrown and potholed road leading back to the SUV. He’d made it more than clear, with his body language and swift pace, that he didn’t want to have a conversation.

They’d been given the relatively simple task of going to get blankets and warm, dry clothes for Sophia and Danny. It was matter of height and weight. As the two smallest members of the group, they were not particularly helpful in providing either extra body heat or spare clothing. Although Jenk
had
given up his jacket to the cause. He was out here, in the growing darkness, in just a sweater.

“I just…thought you were great back there,” Lindsey told him.

“Thanks,” he said. He didn’t seem cold, but his voice wasn’t very warm. “You were, too.”

And
that
was quite possibly the least-sincere-sounding compliment she’d ever received.

“It was good teamwork,” Lindsey acknowledged. “Dave was impressive, wasn’t he? And Izzy and Lopez were pretty amazing with that rope.”

“Yeah, will you do me a favor?” Jenk said. “If you’re planning on screwing them, too, will you please not do it in the next five days? You know, at least not until we leave New Hampshire?”

If the rudeness of his words hadn’t stopped her short, the anger and hurt in his voice would have.

Jenk’s hurt stung her more than anger or rudeness ever could. The idea that
she’d
hurt
him…?
How had she hurt him? He was the one who ran off to save Tracy, with his bed still warm from Lindsey’s body heat.

Yet
she’d
hurt
him
because, why? Because she didn’t want to be his generic bride? Because even though she was lower maintenance than Tracy and damn good in bed, she wasn’t willing to help him achieve a headache-free substitute version of some planned-out perfect life?

Because he wanted a minivan, and he’d thought Lindsey would look good behind the wheel?

She ran to catch up. “That was totally uncalled for.”

“Was it? Like you said, I don’t really know you. Maybe that’s how you get your kicks. One-night stands—a new guy every night?”

Yeah, right. It was more like a new guy every few years, with long, dry periods in between. Because usually after she made the mistake of becoming intimate with some fool, it took her months to recover, and then many months more to be willing to take such a risk again.