Obsession (14 page)

Pull it together, Andrea
.

One step at a time, she kept going until she reached a small landing. The stairs resumed in the opposite direction. A door waited at the top.

“Don’t be afraid,” she whispered as she climbed to the top.

If she turned the knob and they heard her…if she opened the door and they were waiting on the other side…

Andrea grasped the worn brass knob and twisted.

It was locked. She held her breath and released. The knob whined. Fear punched her in the chest. She froze.

She didn’t know how much time passed before she could move. No one came busting through the door or screamed or anything.

Going back down the stairs, she stumbled but caught herself. At the bottom the basement stretched out in front of her. The prison with its wall of wood was on her left. The brick wall to her right. The far end lay in near total darkness. Probably wasn’t a way out down there. But maybe she could find a weapon. Her lips tightened. Something to beat the hell out of those crazy people with.

She moved cautiously in that direction. It was hard to see, the farther from the stairs she got the darker it was. Glass jars lined rows of rustic shelves. She got close enough to make out the contents of the jars. Beans. Peaches. Canning jars. Her grandmother on her mom’s side canned fruits and vegetables.

These looked old. She touched one. A thick layer of dust coated the jar. Really old. She searched the darkness with her eyes, trying to see. No tools or pieces of loose wood that could be used for a weapon were visible.

Andrea moved to the far end of the basement. Definitely a basement. She could see the wood joists that supported the floor above. The basement walls were all brick except the part that divided their prison from the rest of the space.

At the farthest end from the steps there were more shelves and a big wooden box. Something dragged across the top of her head. She ducked. A string hung from a small round light fixture that held a bare bulb. Andrea reached up and pulled the string. The light came on and she blinked to adjust her eyes before starting forward again.

She stalled a few feet away from the box. Not a box. 
A coffin
. Andrea stumbled back. Hit the ground on her bottom. Her lungs seized, refused to allow air inside.

Was this the box the others talked about?

“What’s out there?” Callie whispered from the hole.

Andrea found her voice. “Junk.” She swallowed back the fear. “Just junk.” She didn’t want Callie screaming like Andrea had that morning.

She got back to her feet and made her way to the box…the coffin. The wood looked rough and old. Maybe it was just a coffin-shaped handmade box for storage. On the wall above it there were pictures of angels and crosses and pages from the Bible. Parts of one of the verses were highlighted in yellow. Andrea squinted to read the highlighted words…
fallen…one is…not yet come.

Andrea drew back. Shook herself.
Freaks
. She stared at the coffin-like box. Something was written on the top. Hand shaking, she reached out and cleared away the dust. 

Loser
.

Andrea snatched her hand back.

Run
. Just run.

Her feet felt mired in the hard-packed dirt.

No
. She needed to know what was in the box. So far these nutcases hadn’t hurt them. Not bad enough that anyone was dead. What about Reanne? a tiny voice argued. And the baby? Andrea squeezed her eyes shut.

She had to do this. She needed to know as much as she could to make an intelligent guess what these freaks might possibly have planned.

Finding her courage, she reached out again and lifted the lid.

Clothes. Girl clothes. Pinkish or purple flowers. At first nothing besides the faded dress registered, then the rest trickled through the denial in her brain.
A skeleton
.

Andrea slapped her hands over her mouth to hold back the scream that surged in her throat.

Noooo!

She collapsed into a squat, afraid to move her hands for fear of the sound of horror escaping.

Her heart hurt from the pounding. Her stomach felt as if it had risen into her throat and clumped there.

A creak overhead jerked her gaze upward.

Oh God.

Andrea closed the lid, her entire body shaking so hard she could hardly stay upright. She rushed back to the hole.

Above her footsteps echoed.

They were coming!

She got down on her hands and knees at the hole. “Shove some of that dirt into the hole,” she whispered to Callie.

“What’s happening?”

“Hurry, Callie, they’re coming!” she urged as quietly as the fear would allow.

Dirt poured into the hole. Andrea leaned closer to the wall. “Put the toolbox back in and cover it up. Okay?”

“What’re you going to do?” Callie’s voice trembled.

Andrea listened. Didn’t hear the footsteps now. “I don’t know.”

As Callie pushed more dirt into the hole, Andrea smoothed the pile on her side of the wall. She rushed back to the light and tugged the string. With that light out it was really dark. She prayed they wouldn’t notice the loosened dirt.

“It’s done,” Callie whispered.

What now? What now?

More footsteps. Stumbling or dragging.

Andrea had to do something. “Get back in your bed,” she whispered. “I’m going to hide.”

But where? There was no place to hide.

The sound of steps overhead progressed toward the other end of the house…to that locked door that led down here.

Shit!

Andrea moved to the steel door that separated her from Callie and Macy. It was locked, she knew. She damned sure couldn’t crawl under or over it.

There was no place to hide!

She was fucked.

She smoothed her hands over the cold steel, searching for a hidden latch. Anything! Her fingers bumped something above the top of the door. Wait. A big key hung on a nail. She grabbed it, shoved it into the lock and twisted. The door opened. 

Her heart pounding, Andrea hung the key back on the nail, eased into their prison and closed the door. She checked the hole Callie had filled. Raked her foot over the dirt to smooth it.

“What’re you doing?” Callie cried softly.

Clomping on the steps warned the bad people were close.

“Lie down and close your eyes.” Andrea sat down at the end of the bunk bed and grabbed a piece of tape. She pressed it against her mouth. It fell off. Hands shaking, she grabbed another piece and pressed it hard across her mouth. This time it stayed. She flattened pieces around her wrists as best she could, then felt around for any strips she had missed.

The key rattled in the lock.

Andrea hung her arms around the bedpost as they had been before and rested her forehead against the cold metal. She prayed they wouldn’t notice the tape wasn’t as tight and thick as before. She prayed they wouldn’t notice the loose dirt. Or the unlocked—

“Did you leave the door unlocked?” the woman demanded.

“I’m not stupid,” the man groused. “I locked it.”

The door creaked open.

Andrea squeezed her eyes shut, pretended to be asleep. She prayed the others would, too.

The light swept over her as they checked their prisoners. 

“You didn’t lock it,” the woman accused.

“Next time lock it yourself. What do you want me to do with Dana?”

“I don’t care what you do with her.” The woman was mad. “I told you she’s not fit for him. She’s like the other one, a loser.”

“He likes her and that’s what matters. Besides, you started this with her.”

“I had my reasons,” the woman said with a funny kind of ugliness in her voice.

“You always have your reasons.”

The man was close, almost on top of Andrea. She shook so hard inside she was terrified they would see her vibrating. The man grunted and the bed frame shook.

“Maybe she’ll fall off that top bunk and break her neck and save me the trouble of fooling with her. Little whore,” the woman sneered.

The man stepped away from the bed. Andrea found the courage to breathe.

“You hurt her and I’ll tell him what you did before. You hear me?”

“You don’t control me.”

“No,” the man agreed smugly, “but
he
does.”

“You’re just jealous,” the woman taunted.

The man didn’t say anything else. The door slammed shut.

“I’ll lock it this time,” the woman smarted off, her words muffled by the closed door.

“It’s time for his walk,” the man said. “You want me to bring the other one back down here first?”

“I’m not done with her yet. She has more tests.”

Still grumbling at each other, they stamped up the steps.

Andrea threw off the tape and shot to her feet. She braced her foot on the bottom bunk and hoisted herself high enough to check on the girl they’d put on the top bunk. This one smelled fresh, like flowery perfume.

Reanne was upstairs, the woman had said. Testing. At least she was still alive.

They called this one Dana.

She was unconscious. Andrea couldn’t see what she looked like but she could hear and feel her steady breathing.

Andrea hopped down to the floor.

“They brought another one.” Callie’s voice sounded small and tired.

That Macy was still sleeping worried Andrea. She checked her breathing. Slow and steady.

“Reanne was here when I got here,” Callie said. “Macy came next and then you. What’re they going to do with us?”

Andrea thought about the skeleton in the coffin outside that door.
Loser
. But she wasn’t saying anything about that. Callie and Macy would be hysterical. Andrea turned and peered through the darkness at the new girl. The woman had called her a loser, too.

Would the new girl be the first to die? Were the tests some kind of competition that would determine who lived and who died? Had the girl in the handmade coffin failed her tests? What about the baby?

Andrea put her arms around Callie and hugged her. “None of us are going to die,” she promised.

She closed her eyes against the images of the evidence that at least one girl and a baby had died here already.

Please, God,
she prayed,
help Dan find us.

Chapter Eleven

Warrior, 5:50  p.m.

Dan watched as Jess worked her magic with Steve and Elaine Sawyer. Her ability to put people at ease under the worst of circumstances was uncanny. Not even the family’s concerns and questions about the department’s failure to find the other missing girls had prevented Jess from drawing the interview into focus. She was a master at getting what she wanted from the families and friends of victims.

Yet, put her in a room full of cops and the foreplay was over. 

Dana, the Sawyer’s daughter, had gotten into an older model blue Ford truck at approximately eight-forty-five last night. A witness, Jeremy Thompson, had been fueling up his Dodge truck next door at the Mini-Market convenience store. He might not have noticed her except that the girl was really hot, he’d stated. He’d said the same thing to his buddy, who worked at the convenience store, when he paid for his gas—which was the only reason they now had a witness.

The windows of the Ford were darkly tinted so he couldn’t have seen the driver even if he’d looked. Unfortunately, the convenience store’s security cameras’ range didn’t reach beyond the first parking slot of the floral shop.

Sergeant Harper was running down the trucks registered in Jefferson County, as well as the surrounding counties, for a list of ones matching the witness’s description. When pushed and shown photos, Thompson had narrowed the age of the truck down to something between ‘69 and ‘74 which was a damned wide gap to try and fill.

Detective Wells was in the missing girl’s bedroom exploring her laptop with the help of Ricky Vernon from the lab.

Dan eased into the conversation with the parents by taking the chair next to Jess. Steve and Elaine were huddled together on the sofa. Their minister and family attorney had been called, but the couple insisted that the latter’s presence was for peace of mind, while the former’s was for peace of spirit.

It worried Dan when folks felt compelled to call their attorney at a time like this. Crime shows had damaged law enforcement’s relationship with the public to some degree. Everyone thought they needed to invoke their rights and lawyer up to even sit in the same room with a cop.

“She’s in the top of her class at Birmingham-Southern College.” Mr. Sawyer managed a vague smile. “Full scholarship.”

“I know you’re proud,” Jess said with a full blown one of her own.

Dan hadn’t seen her smile like that once since she arrived. That it disappeared so quickly suggested the expression had been for show.

“Your list of her friends is quite extensive. Dana is a popular girl.”

Elaine swiped at her tears with a wadded tissue. “She has always been very popular. Everyone loves her. She’s a good Christian girl. She teaches the preschool Sunday school class.”

Jess studied the list. “Are any of the boys listed here former boyfriends or maybe present romantic interests?”

Elaine shook her head adamantly. “No. Dana prefers to focus on her studies. She had a long, painful relationship in high school and she decided that college was going to be different.”

“She’s a really smart girl,” Jess agreed. That she shot a look at Dan from the corner of her eye telegraphed loudly and clearly that she was recalling their tumultuous high school years.

“Is there any contact with the boy from high school?” Dan asked. 

Steve shook his head. “He died in a car accident right before graduation. The whole community was devastated.”

“No contact with his family? Siblings, perhaps?” Jess asked, pursuing that angle with obvious interest.

“He was an only child,” Elaine answered. “Like our Dana.” She looked to Steve. “I haven’t seen the Murrays in ages.”

“Chief?”

Dan turned to his detective. Wells waited at the doorway that divided the living room from the foyer. She gave a succinct nod toward Jess. Dan lifted his chin in approval.