Dark Series, The Color of Seven and The Color of Dusk (Books We Love Special Edition) (58 page)

Chapter Twenty

The voice thundered in the close confines of the Camaro. Dennis heard it rushing through his brain, not through his ears.

“White doctor! I know you out dere! We gots us some unfinished biz’ness,
white man
!”

Shockwaves ran down Dennis’ arms into his hands. That voice. He’d heard it before. The skeleton celebrating rebirth. The same voice. Jesus Christ. It was the same voice.

The car swerved across the center line of the highway. Dennis jerked the wheel to the left just in time. An outraged horn screamed a long protest as an oncoming car ran off the road onto the median, narrowly avoiding the Camaro’s left front fender. Dennis heard the driver’s roar through closed windows as the cars passed.

“You goddamn drunk! Get off the fuckin’ road!”

Paul reached over and grabbed the wheel to straighten up, issuing furious orders.

“Take your foot off the gas! Brake, damn it! Now, pull over. Right now.
Right now! Pull over!
”

Dennis concentrated. Foot off the gas. Don’t slam the brakes. Easy. Brake easy. Pull over. The car shuddered to a stop on the right hand median.

Paul leaned over and cut the ignition. Dennis gave a half-sob and leaned his head forward on the top of the steering wheel.

“That voice,” he managed to say. “I know that voice.”

“
I got her!
” The shout was loud and victorious in the small interior. “Yo’ new woman! I got her! Whut you goan do about it,
white man!
”

“But it’s me you want, Cain! Where are you? Me and you! Right now! Wherever you say! You don’t want her!”

“I gots her, I
do
got you, white doctor! Damn do-gooder Devlin, always stickin’ yo’ nose in my business! I knows you! Ain’t no way to make you hurt lik’ you suffer knowin’ she sufferin’! An’ she sufferin’, sho’ ‘nuff! Jest lik’ I did. Dat night. ‘Member whut you did to me, white doctor? I does! An’ I ain’t leaving
nuttin’
out!
Follow me, white man!
Iff’n you
dare!
”

Raucous, mocking laughter filled the car. Dennis clapped his hands over his ears. He’d go insane if he had to listen to that laughter another second. And then the laughter, too, died away into the dark, leaving no sound except the slow tick of the car’s cooling engine.

Paul reached up and grabbed Dennis’ wrist, jerking the protective hands away from the boy’s ear.

“Stay here!
You hear me?
Don’t you move this car an
inch!
”

Dennis tried to protest and bit his tongue hard as his mouth snapped shut. Paul was gone. Just gone. The door hadn’t opened. He was certain of it.

He leaned his head against the steering wheel. He moaned and struck his forehead, over and over, against the padded leather.

* * *

Johnny Bishop, frustrated and furious, damned all law enforcement protocol to hell and back. He’d butted heads with three police officers while taking Lori home. True to Dennis’s observation, they’d refused to consider taking a report.

“We’re sorry, sir, but we can’t take a missing person’s report on the basis of two or three hours. Maybe she had car trouble. Did you call all her friends?”

Now, heading back to the house, he dialed the Assistant DA assigned to Justin Dinardo’s case home number. Ted Dorry’s cavalier attitude didn’t help Johnny’s temper a damn bit.

“Johnny, calm down! Ria’s a big girl, she probably went shopping or something and lost track of time in the Christmas crowds.”

“Ted, goddamn it, she was having a dinner party tonight!”

“Maybe you got the date mixed up and it wasn’t tonight.”

“There was a goddamn
ham
baking in the fuckin’
oven
, Ted! She did
not
lose track of time and I
don’t
have the wrong date! And she
damn
sure didn’t grind the gears in that Mustang when she pulled out of the drive! Somebody else was driving that car!”

“Johnny, now listen—”

“No, you listen! Justin Dinardo—”

“
Skipped bail.
Nobody’s seen or heard from him since. He’s long gone, Johnny. Long gone.”

“
Bullshit!
Now you get somebody off their asses and get them out lookin’!”

“And where the hell you suggest we look?”

“Did you even
try
to find him when he skipped town? Did anybody even check the places he might have gone?”

“Johnny, that’s damned insulting!”

“He was small time! You got a big backlog of cases! I wanta know if y’all just put out an APB and forgot about him or whether there might be any notes somewhere about where he could be!”

Several seconds of silence ensued. Finally, Ted spoke again.

“Okay,” he said with a sigh. “You’re right. On ninety-nine percent of cases like this, we do just put out an APB. We just don’t have the manpower to do much else.”

“Ted, goddamn it, nobody’s pointing any fingers! I know your caseload. I just thought maybe—”

“But this time, since Ria was so insistent that Justin might be, well, abnormal, and since Dennis was the informant and his family’s sort of, well, you know—”

“His daddy’s a bigshot surgeon with a big bank account and friends in high places. So you checked a little harder.”

“Johnny, that’s not fair!”

“No, just accurate. I’m not yellin’ at you, Ted, I know you can’t help it, but it sucks anyway. So you got any ideas?”

“Not off the top of my head. But since it’s Ria and since you’re so worried, I tell you what. I’ll go back down to the office and pull the file—no, wait a minute. I brought a stack home to go through before we throw them completely into pending. Let me check there first. I’ll call you back.”

“Got my cell number?”

“There’s this thing called Caller ID now, Johnny. Records numbers. Surprised you haven’t heard about it,” Ted said, and hung up.

Damn. Johnny hated being one-upped. He pulled back in the yard to check the apartment in case anybody’d come back. His phone rang.

“Ted?”

“Johnny, I had the file at home. The Dinardos and the
Billings
have a cabin at Sinclair they own jointly. Do you know it?”

“Shit! Sure they do! Right down from Dr. Knight’s! Only been to the
Billings
’ place once or twice but I been to Dr. Knight’s a lot.”

“We had it checked out every couple of weeks right after Justin disappeared but when he didn’t turn up anywhere we gave up.”

“Okay, so how fast can you get somebody up there?”

“Johnny, are you totally crazy? Okay, scratch that, forget I even said it, of course you are. She’s not even officially missing!”

“I hope to hell that soothes your conscience when a couple of deer hunters stumble over her body in the woods! But I guess it won’t be an official body, so that’s all right!”

“I don’t have anything to connect Justin with this and even if I did, there’s no reason to think he’d do anything like that!”

“Sweet Jesus, Ted! Nobody hides out for weeks and then abducts somebody for nothing! You think he’s just going to let her
go
after he gets his jollies?”

“Wellll—”

“Do this unofficially. Surely to God, there’s some way you can get somebody up there!”

“In the morning, maybe.”

“In the morning!”

“Johnny, I can’t mount a manhunt on what we’ve got! Now, I tell you what—”

“No, I’ll tell you what! Get somebody up there as soon as you can if you don’t hear back from me by morning. And if I call you before then and say I need help, you better by God get me some!”

“You can’t just go chargin’ up there yourself!”

“Watch me!”

Johnny hit end call, regretting you couldn’t slam down a cell phone like a landline. He wanted to hurt Ted Dorry’s ears. He headed for the house to grab his pistol from his nightstand drawer and dialed the number Dennis left him.

Damn it! “Hi, this is Cindy! You know how this thing works!” Shit! Dumb-ass kid gave him the wrong number! He charged up the steps to the apartment doors, both left standing wide open, and heard the insistent ringing of Ria’s house phone. He almost didn’t stop to answer, but just maybe it was Ria. Or somebody that knew something.

He raced inside and grabbed the phone.

“Hello?”

“Johnny?”

“Yeah.”

“Charlie Knight. You got secretarial duty?”

Johnny danced impatiently, shifting from one foot to the other. “Well, I was closest to the phone.”

“Let me speak to Ria or Paul, please. Whoever’s handy.”

“Well,” Johnny hemmed and hawed. This was Ria’s father. Should he tell him? Did he have the right not to tell him?

“Johnny, do you mind?”

“Well, they can’t come to the phone right now.”

“Neither one of ‘em? They havin’ an orgy while company’s over?”

“They’re not here right now.”

“Then pardon my French, son, but what the hell you doin’ in her apartment if nobody’s home?”

“Dr. Knight, the thing is, we’re not sure where Ria is.”

“Say again?”

Johnny decided to come clean.

“The lake house? And you’re charging off by yourself?”

“No choice. Ted won’t call the Sheriff’s Office up there and Paul left with Dennis to see if he could come up with anything! And they gave me the wrong damn cell number! I don’t know where the hell they are!” Johnny exclaimed in exasperation.

“Bet I do. Smart kid, Dennis. He’ll hit on the lake house. They’re probably almost there already. You stay put by the phone. I’m goin’ up.”

“I am
not
going to stay put by the
fuckin’
phone!” Johnny shouted.

On the other end of the line, Charlie Knight grimaced. He’d watched Johnny grow up. Hell, he and Ria’d practically lived interchangeably in each other’s houses. And Johnny wasn’t about to stay put by the fucking phone. He’d charge up to the lake house and interfere with—what?

Dr. Knight thanked God for police procedure. He could just see a bunch of deputies surrounding the lake house where Justin Dinardo might have a gun pointed at his daughter’s temple, just as he could see Paul, materializing silently behind him. But Johnny was going no matter what, and he’d best not charge in alone. Especially if Paul was either there or on the way.

“Then meet me. Park at the barbecue place outside of Gray and I’ll meet you there. Ought to hit about the same time. You probably couldn’t find the road, anyway.”

“I’ve spent lots of time at your place.”

“Different road to get to that cabin, further down. Meet me. I’m leavin’ now. And Johnny, you goddamned well better wait on me! You got that?”

“Yeah, yeah. Just hurry!”

* * *

Paul soared over the nightscape, straining every sense to catch a lingering scent, an echoing sound.

Nothing. Goddamn it, there was nothing.

He’d spread too wide, too quick. He’d never done this before, never rushed forward in such furious haste without knowing exactly where he was going. His disincorporated molecules streamed too far apart. He concentrated, trying to bring the invisible particles of his being back together.

Too far. He’d spread too far.

He fought to correct his mistake, a pilot guiding a private airplane with frozen controls.

* * *

Cain strode furiously back and forth across the braided rug, much like he’d paced furiously across a cleared circle, waiting for a group of followers who’d never come. Where the fuck was he? Ought to be here by now.

“Damn!” He muttered under his breath. “Wouldn’t turn tail and run. Know he wouldn’t. So where the fuck do he be?”

Justin’s whining voice broke his concentration.

“You said she was mine,” he protested. “And you said I’d be the first. The first you took and made like you.”

Cain crossed to the boy and grabbed him by the throat with his enormous hand. The pressure caused the boy’s eyes to bulge forward. Cain saw traces of red as tiny capillaries burst.

“
Shut up!
” he roared, shaking the boy. “
Shut up, fool!
You do whut I say! You gets whut I
say
you gets!”

The smell hit his nostrils. The rich, heavy scent of pumping blood.

He was too close to the boy. Too close. During his assault on Ria, he’d almost given in completely to the overpowering blood lust commanding him to feast fully, to drain her completely. He’d had the barest taste of the ultimate orgasm, so powerful it had shaken his entire giant frame. Waves of sensation he knew would culminate in a brilliant burst unlike anything else he’d ever experienced. And he wanted to experience it again. Fully. Completely. From its beginnings through the end.