Ghost Town (32 page)

They went to the front desk. A clerk rang her room for them, but there was no answer. The two men moved away from the desk so they could speak in private.

“Maybe she unplugged the room phone so she could get some sleep?” Carrington ventured. “That could be why she didn't answer her cell, either.”

“I suppose.” Trevor was beginning to get worried. The longer they went without knowing what had happened to Jenn, the more his mind conjured all manner of dire possibilities. Normally, he might have chalked up his fears to his writer's imagination, but the Dark Lady was real, and so were all of the people she had killed.

Trevor continued. “She told me she's planning on staying with a cousin who lives in Evansville. I thought she wasn't supposed to get here until tomorrow, but maybe she arrived early and Jenn left with her. That doesn't explain why she didn't call or text me, though. Or why she didn't bother to check out of the hotel.” He didn't want to admit it to Carrington, but the idea that she might have left without telling him hurt.

“As I said before, it's not a normal day. The poor girl suffered a great deal of trauma. We all have. There could be any number of reasons she might forget to contact you. She might be talking with her cousin as they drive, telling her everything that happened. Or she might have been so emotionally exhausted that she fell asleep as soon as she got into the car. And with everything else, checking out might've simply slipped her mind. She might have just wanted
to get the hell out of this town as fast as she could. Can't say as I blame her for that.”

Trevor had to admit that Carrington made some valid points, but they didn't make him feel any better.

They got into the elevator, disembarked on Jenn's floor, and went to her room. Trevor knocked several times and called her name, but she didn't answer.

He turned to Carrington. “We need to go back down to the front desk and get security to let us in.”

“Trevor—”

“I agree that this is about as far away from an ordinary day as you can get. The Dark Lady has killed seven people so far. I hope to God that Jenn isn't the eighth, but I have to know. If she's in there . . .” Trevor trailed off, unable to complete the thought.

“All right. Let's go back to the desk.”

As they headed toward the elevator, Trevor said, “And on the way, you can start telling me what you know about Exeter—and especially about the Dark Lady.” He could feel his panic starting to build, and he hoped that listening to Carrington talk might help distract him from his fears. He told himself that he should hope for the best, but unfortunately, he knew better than to expect it.

Jenn was a
book person. That's why she had started her business in the first place. But even after spending all day and a good portion of each evening surrounded by books, when she locked the door, turned over the closed sign, and headed upstairs for the night, what did she do to relax? She read. She was omnivorous and voracious, reading fiction and nonfiction, as much of it as she could get her hands on. She enjoyed movies well enough, although she didn't watch more than a half-dozen in a month. Even so, she recognized that she was living a scene from a suspense film, one so common as to be a cliché: the victim of a kidnapping, tied to a chair and left alone while her captor was out running some kind of nefarious errand, giving her a golden opportunity to escape.

If she remembered right, in those films, the captive never got away. Whoever it was, man or woman, struggled to get out of their bonds, and finally, after a great deal of effort, they managed to untie a knot, cut the rope, or break the chair, winning their freedom at last. They would make a run for it then, only to be stopped at the last second by their captor, who had just returned, dashing their hopes for escape.

And the characters in those films didn't have to deal with the fact that one of their captors was a ghost who could, presumably, reappear at any moment and who might be watching her right then, invisible and unseen. And even if the Dark Lady wasn't present, would she somehow know if Jenn tried to get free? Did ghosts have some sort of psychic alarm system? She tried to remember
what she had learned about ghostly powers from all the books on the paranormal she had read over the years, but nothing came to her. Maybe it was because she was too frightened to think straight, but she had the feeling that she couldn't remember because no one had ever written about such things. Who knew enough about ghosts to write a field guide to them? Maybe Trevor could do the first.
Spooks, Specters, and Spirits: How to Identify, Classify, and Nullify the Predatory Dead
by Trevor Sloan. Not bad. She would be sure to suggest it to him the next time—

She broke off the thought. She was scared, and her mind was running wild. She needed to regain control of herself if she was to have any hope of getting away. And getting away was what she desired more than anything in the world. She remembered what the Dark Lady had told Mitch just before they left.
“When this is all over, if you still want her, you can have her, too.”

She had to escape.
Now,
while she had the chance, movie cliché or not.

She had no idea where her cell phone was. She had brought it with her in her purse when Mitch had tricked her into leaving the hotel, but she hadn't seen it since. Maybe it was still in his car. She had a land line though, and that phone was in the kitchen. If she couldn't get loose from the ropes, it might as well be on the moon. But if she
could
reach it, she could call 911 and Peter or one of his people would haul ass over there to help her. Better yet, she could hightail it out of there and make the call from somewhere, anywhere, else. Somewhere she would be safe. That was a plan she could get behind. A damned fine plan. But it all depended on whether she could get loose.

She tugged at the ropes that encircled her wrists and bound her to the chair back, strained at the ones binding her legs to those of the chair. But the knots were too tight, and Mitch had left her no slack. No escape that way. Mitch had gagged her before leaving, using strips of cloth torn from one of her favorite sheets, a cozy
blue flannel one she loved to sleep under in wintertime.
Bastard.
The fabric was moist and gummy in her mouth, the taste faintly musty, as if it had been stored in the linen closet too long. If she could wiggle enough to get her mouth free of the gag, she could yell for help, scream at the top of her lungs. Sure, she was upstairs, but someone out on the street might . . .

Forget it. It was Dead Days. Even if someone outside did hear her scream, they would probably chalk it up to a sound effect on a spooky album or something similar. They wouldn't kick down the door, rush upstairs, find her tied up, free her, and help her get to safety before Mitch and the Dark Lady returned. So even if she could get the gag out—which was doubtful; Mitch had tied it pretty damned tight—it wouldn't help.

What did that leave her? Besides just sitting there and giving in to despair, that is.

Could she somehow break the chair? This wasn't Hollywood. Chairs weren't made to fall apart at the first blow. But then again, she wasn't tied to a chair made of cast iron, either. It was just wood, held together with screws and glue. How hard could it be to break?

Just tipping over wouldn't do it, she was sure about that. She'd knocked over chairs before, and they hadn't broken. When she was a child, she'd had a habit of leaning back in her chair, especially at dinnertime. It had driven her mother crazy. She had always worried that Jenn would fall backward while she was eating and the impact would cause whatever food she was chewing to lodge in her windpipe, choking her. Jenn had indeed fallen a couple of times, but despite her mother's fears, she had never choked. But she had never broken a chair, either. Of course, she had been smaller then, but she didn't think she massed enough now simply to break a chair by pushing herself backward. And with her legs tied, she would have to rock back and forth until she built up enough momentum to tip over backward. She wouldn't be able to fling herself backward with any significant force, though. And her hands were tied behind the chair.
If she did manage to tip herself over, she would land on her arms, which would not only be painful but would cushion the impact on the wood. She might break a wrist before she broke the chair.

She wasn't far from the wall, though. About three feet. If she could manage to lean forward and stand on her toes, she might be able to shuffle backward and get closer to the wall. And once she was within a foot of it, she could shove the chair back against it with as much force as she could muster. And if the first blow didn't break the chair, she could try again and again—assuming she could manage to avoid tipping over. Once she was on her side, she feared she would be as helpless as a turtle flipped onto its shell. But she figured that if she could keep her balance, there was a good chance that if the chair didn't break right away, it would land on all four of its legs. Then she could lean forward and try again.

She sat for a moment and ran through the plan in her head, visualizing it as completely as possible, testing it for flaws. But in the end, she knew that, good idea or not, she was going to go through with it. What choice did she have? And if she ended up breaking a couple of bones, so be it. A shattered wrist or a fractured elbow would be infinitely preferable to what Mitch would do to her when the Dark Lady finally let go of his leash.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath to calm herself, and let it out slowly. Then she opened her eyes—

—and saw the Dark Lady standing before her.

Lips as white and bloodless as marble stretched into a smile.

“You're not going anywhere, Jenn. I still need you.”

Behind her gag, Jenn let out a muffled cry of frustrated rage, and the Dark Lady's dead smile widened.

“We need to
do something!” Trevor said. “And don't tell me we already are. Sitting around a hotel room reading through computer files isn't going to help us find Jenn!”

Amber had never seen Trevor so worked up before. But she
understood. She would have gone nuts if Drew had vanished. And while it was still possible that Jenn had left of her own accord, the fact that she'd gone without packing up anything—books, money box, overnight bag, clothes, toiletries—wasn't a good sign. Yes, she had been traumatized by the day's events, but she hadn't exhibited any signs of being that absentminded. And Amber couldn't imagine her leaving without letting Trevor know. They might not be a couple anymore, but she still had strong feelings for him. She wouldn't have departed without a word, leaving Trevor to worry about her.

“You've done everything you can,” she said. “You've tried calling her a dozen times, both on her cell and at the store, and you've reported her disappearance to the police.”

Amber, Drew, Trevor, Greg, and Carrington were camped out in Erin's room. Erin sat at the desk, her laptop open in front of her. Her face was drawn and expressionless, and she had said very little since they had arrived. It was obvious that she was taking Ray's death hard. Amber, Drew, and Greg sat on the bed closer to the window, while Carrington sat on the other bed, next to him a stack of manila folders filled with paper and Trevor's open laptop. As for Trevor, he paced the room with the wire-taut tension of a caged animal.

“And not to be too much of a downer,” Greg said, “but if either the Dark Lady or Mitch got hold of Jenn, there's nothing you can do for her now, anyway.”

Trevor stopped and spun around to glare at Greg. “If you weren't in someone else's—” He broke off and glanced around the room, as if just remembering that Carrington and Erin were there. “Well, if you
weren't,
I'd break your jaw right now.”

“Lucky for me, eh?” Greg's tone was flippant, but something cold moved in his gaze, and Amber was reminded that while he might be trying to help them—and in the process find some measure of redemption for himself—he couldn't entirely be trusted.

“She's alive, Trevor,” Amber said. “I can feel it.”

Drew caught her eye and raised an eyebrow. She knew what
he was asking. Did she really have a psychic sense that Jenn was all right, or was she just trying to reassure Trevor? In truth, Amber wasn't certain herself. She didn't want to give Trevor false hope, but neither did she want him to lose all hope.

“Really?” he asked. The pleading tone in that one word nearly broke Amber's heart.

She looked deep inside herself before answering. “Yes,” she said, and she meant it.

Trevor let out a long breath, and some of the tension left his body. He sat down on the bed next to Carrington. “All right. So . . . the Dark Lady.” He looked down at his computer screen and began typing. “I saved all my research on Exeter in one file. Give me a second to call it up . . . There we go. Now I'll highlight the phrase
Dark Lady,
go through the document, and check every mention of her.”

Several moments passed as Trevor skimmed the information.

“Not much here, I'm afraid. I did an article on the influx of ghostbreakers in the early days after the flood, and I mentioned the Dark Lady in it. She was one of the spirits they were hoping to exorcise. None of the attempts to get rid of her was successful, though, and she continued appearing periodically over the years. That's all I have.”

“I believe I can add to that,” Carrington said. “I did much of the research for Erin's film”—he patted the stack of folders on the bed next to him—“and I ran across a number of references to the Dark Lady. Enough that I tried to persuade Erin to feature her in the film.”

“She wasn't very interesting,” Erin said. Her voice was toneless, almost machinelike. “She'd show up, people would see her, she'd stand there for a few seconds, and then she would disappear. Not dramatic at all, and certainly not dangerous.” She paused, then added more softly, “Not until now, anyway.”