Night Tides (23 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

E
THAN
?” M
ARTY SAID
,
his voice slurred from sleep. “Where the hell are you? You said you were going home. I assumed you’d have sense enough to stay there.”

“Never mind,” Ethan said breathlessly. He sat in his truck, wet beneath his clothes; he’d dressed quickly and rushed back to his cell phone. He started the engine and said, “I’m on my way to your office.”

“Whoa, calm down, I can’t understand you.”

“I’m on my way to your office,” he said distinctly, and backed the truck out from behind the shrubs. He pulled out onto the street with a
thud as
his undercarriage bounced on the curb. “I think I have something.”

“Besides a hole in your head?”

“About the case, Marty.”

All the sleepiness left his brother’s voice. “Did Rachel contact you?”

Like you wouldn’t believe
, he thought to himself, but he said, “No, but tell me: Did all the girls that disappeared have tattoos?”

“Tattoos?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, son of a
bitch!”
Marty yelled. Ethan heard the sound of bedsprings as his brother jumped up. “Goddamned son of a
bitch!”

Ethan pulled the phone away and looked at it, just to verify he had, in fact, called his brother. When he put it back to his ear, Marty was saying, “… goddamned clue was right in front of me and I missed it all this time!”

Marty seldom lost his temper, and when he did it was usually a situation exactly like this, with all the fury directed at himself. “What are you talking about?” Ethan asked.

“Ling Hu!” Marty bellowed. “She had a fresh tattoo on her back! I mean
really
fresh, with scabs and everything. I should’ve fucking
seen
that! The only way she could’ve gotten it was if whoever kidnapped her
gave
it to her!”

“Okay, okay, calm down,” Ethan said. It was just like when they were in high school and Marty belatedly realized he missed an easy question on a test. “I think that’s what the connection is. Can you check to see if the other girls had tattoos and, if so, where they got them? Helena can tell you where Rachel got hers.”

“Oh, so you’re the detective now?” Marty snapped. Ethan could tell by the banging and rustling that his brother was frantically getting dressed. “Well, you couldn’t do a worse job than I have. I’ll meet you at my office. Hopefully I’ll have the answers by then.
Goddammit
, I’m an idiot!”

“You’re not an idiot.”

“Yes, I am. Now shut up so I can call the station and get all this checked out.”

Ethan closed his phone and shook his head. And to think he’d been worried that
he
would sound like a lunatic.

“I
T HURTS
,”
Patty rasped, her breath shallow. She squirmed stiffly against the wall, and her face drew into a grimace. “It’s getting hard to breathe… .”

“That’s just panic,” Rachel said, knowing it wasn’t. She rubbed her hands up and down the girl’s arm for reassurance; the touch of skin on skin helped her work through the last of her post-tryst shakes too. “Try to stay calm. You’re not alone, I’m right here.”

“Why did you… What made you…” Patty couldn’t find the words she wanted.

Rachel leaned close. “When we get out of this, I’ll tell you all about it.”

“What if we don’t?”

“We will, sweetie. And that’s the only way you’ll believe me.”

Patty nodded at Rachel’s fresh tattoo, which had bled anew in places, leaving black streaks down her belly. “Does
that
hurt?”

Rachel smiled wryly. “I’d forgotten all about it, actually. Thanks for bringing it back up.” Truthfully, the splinters driven into her hips and buttocks hurt far worse, especially when her weight pressed on one.

“And that’s why he kidnapped us? To give us tattoos?”

“Apparently. I think we all turned him down at some point when he wanted to get fancy on us, and we hurt his feelings. Now he’s terminally ill, so this is his last hurrah.”

“When I got mine done, he wanted to do more, to do wings on my shoulder blades. I told him no.” Her lip trembled. “The design was beautiful, though. Really. I just felt like
I
wasn’t pretty enough for it. Maybe I should’ve said yes.”

“No,”
Rachel said firmly. “None of this is your fault. Don’t ever think like that. What he’s done to us is awful, disgusting, and wrong.”

Patty smiled. “You came to my show the other night, didn’t you? I gave you a CD.”

“That was me,” Rachel agreed.

“And… this is weird to ask: Did you follow me home?”

“Actually, yes. And when I explain the other thing, it’ll explain that too.” She added dryly, “But I’m really not into girls.”

Patty managed a small, hollow laugh. “I’m not either, but under the circumstances, if we get out of this, I’d feel like I owed you.”

“Just try to stay still,” Rachel said, and turned toward the door at the top of the stairs. No light showed underneath it. “The more you move, the faster the poison will spread.”

At the
word poison
, Patty’s smile vanished. “Are you a nurse?” she whimpered. “Is that how you know?”

“No, I… I run a diner.”

“You’re a cook?”

“
Head
cook. And bottle washer.”

“Then how do you know about spiders?”

“Honey, you’ll just have to trust me on that. It’s the land of the blind and I’m the one-eyed man.”

Suddenly Patty winced and arched her back as much as her bonds allowed. The dim light fell across the bite, now dark and swollen.

Rachel turned to the others. “She’s going to die if we don’t do something,” Rachel said.

“Help,” Carrie called mechanically. Faith said nothing; she just continued to glare at Rachel.

Rachel spat her disgust, but truthfully she had no other ideas. She looked around the dark room one last hopeless time. No doors, no reachable windows. Nothing to cut their bonds. Nothing to throw or use as a weapon. And no sign that her desperate Hail Mary to the lake spirits had done anything at all, except that she was sure she’d somehow connected, however faintly, with Ethan. But was it enough?

Just then a distant door slammed, and the floor above them squeaked beneath someone’s steps. Rachel’s heart pounded in her ears. If she was going to do something, she’d have to do it now. But what?

Only one idea came to her. She looked back at Patty. “Hang on. Try to stay calm, no matter what happens.”

“I will,” Patty sniffled.

Rachel crawl-scurried across the floor to the steps and began working her way up them again. Her desperation and fury overrode all the pain. Above her, someone moved through the house with the slow familiarity of a resident.

W
HEN
E
THAN
entered the police station, he found Marty waiting in the lobby. His brother’s jet-black hair stuck out at odd angles from beneath a baseball cap, and his khaki pants were wrinkled. “Come on,” he snapped with no preliminaries. “We’ve got a name.”

Ethan followed his brother through empty hallways toward the garage. “Who?”

“A guy named Arlin Korbus did Rachel’s tattoo, Patricia Patilia’s, and at least one of Ling Hu’s. I don’t know about the other two, but three out of five is enough to justify talking to him.”

“Now?”

“Yes. I have a spider sense, and it’s going off like crazy. He lives out in Fitchburg, so I’m going to pay him a visit.”

“I’m coming too.”

“Have I tried to stop you? Just promise me you’ll stay back and let us handle it.” He paused outside the garage door and frowned. “Why are you
wet
?”

“Er… I fell in the lake.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

In the garage, Marty unlocked the unmarked cruiser and they climbed inside. Before he started the engine, he turned to his brother. Marty knew what Ethan had seen in Iraq and would have given an eye to spare him a second experience like that. Quietly, he said, “There’s no telling what we might find there, Ethan.”

Ethan nodded, looking straight ahead through the windshield. “I know.”

Marty roared out of the garage, simultaneously calling for two other patrol cars to meet him at the address.

R
ACHEL REACHED
the top of the stairs again, careful not to lose her balance this time, and drew breath to yell. Then she stopped. Even if Korbus had told the truth about the Asian girl’s death, he wouldn’t dare summon medical help for Patty. The girl would die in the same slow agony that had almost claimed Rachel’s uncle.

She heard his footsteps on the other side of the door. His shadow blocked part of the line of illumination along the bottom of the jamb. She waited for him to open it, but nothing happened. He was listening, she realized, to see if they were moving around.

She licked her lips and, in a ragged voice she hoped sounded like a whisper, said, “Hurry, keep digging! We have to make the hole big enough to get out! He’ll be back any minute.”

Below, Faith looked puzzled and Carrie opened her mouth to speak, but Rachel quickly put her finger to her lips. She hadn’t heard Korbus walk away. Faith sat up straighter, watching with wide eyes.

“Are you out?” Rachel hissed. “Good! Now you, go out after her!”

The light came on downstairs, blinding the three captives below. Rachel winced, but the stairwell protected her from the worst of it. The bolt slammed aside and the doorknob turned.

Her perception of time entered the adrenaline-fueled slow motion of a car wreck. As the door began to open, she reached blindly forward and grabbed handfuls of Korbus’s baggy sweatpants and bathrobe. He cried, “Shit!” as he fell over her and tumbled the length of the steps, landing facefirst on the floor below. His skull made a sound like a thick melon smacking the concrete.

Faith found her voice and screamed.

Korbus rolled onto his back, wincing, and put a hand to his forehead. The impact had vertically split the skin between his eyebrows, and blood poured out. “You fucking
bitch,”
he said in disbelief.

Rachel sprang down onto him, driving both knees into his groin with all her weight. He tried to grab her, but his hands slipped on her sweaty skin. Then she took hold of thinning hair and smashed his head repeatedly against the floor until the solid
thunk
sound changed to something wetter.

She was speckled with his blood, and when she released him he did not move. She rolled off him, breathing hard, and tried not to slip into shock at what she’d done.
I killed him
, she thought in numb awareness.
On purpose
. She looked at her red-smeared hands. Was the blood hers, from where the plastic tie had cut anew into her wrists, or Korbus’s?

She forced herself back to the moment, glanced up the stairs, and froze. The door had swung shut behind him.

With all the speed she could manage, she crawled up and, balancing precariously on the top step, managed to reach the doorknob. It did not turn. She shoved against the door, but the wood merely creaked.

“No!” she screamed. “No no
NO!”
She pounded on the wood with her fists, and it sent her falling backward down the steps. Again she landed atop Korbus’s body.

“What happened?” Patty asked. Her voice sounded tight and slurred.

“We’re still locked in!” Rachel almost shrieked. She undid the belt of Korbus’s robe and began going through the pockets of his sweatpants, searching for the keys. She glanced at the watch on his wrist: It was after twelve. Midnight or noon? she wondered, then realized he was dressed for bed. They were lucky, she thought, that he couldn’t sleep.

She came up empty and turned her attention to the bathrobe. The only sound in the basement was Patty’s labored breathing.

Finally, Rachel held up the key ring she’d retrieved: easily a dozen keys, all unmarked except for numbers scratched onto some of them, all possibly the key to the cellar door. This would take a while, especially since, with her ankles and wrists tied, balancing to reach the doorknob was tricky at best.

“Can I help?” Carrie asked shakily.

Rachel nodded toward Patty. “Stay with her.” Faith stayed motionless, eyes wide. Her freshly tattooed legs and hips had scabbed over, but her sweat softened them in places and made tiny trickles of red.

Suddenly Patty moaned. Rachel turned in time to see her fall on her side. She breathed with a rattle in her throat, the raspy way people do when they can’t get enough air.

Carrie looked up helplessly. “You’ll never find the right key in time.”

“The hell I won’t,” Rachel said, and began worming her way back up the stairs.

Again, the ascent took forever. She would slip and freeze, praying she wouldn’t drop the key ring through one of the gaps in the steps. She was exhausted, and every movement took all her concentration. At last she reached the door and wriggled so that her legs were braced enough to hold her torso upright.

She began methodically trying the keys one after another. Her hands shook, and that made it harder. Time crept by, marked only by Patty’s whimpering below.

“Hang on, baby,” Rachel murmured. “Just hang on.”

She had three keys to go.

Then, like a scene from some teen horror movie, a hand grabbed her ankle.

She had no time to react. The keys flew from her hand, and Korbus pulled her inexorably toward him. She shrieked and tried to wrench free. They slid down the steps to the concrete floor together.

Patty moaned again. Rachel flashed to the inscription on Patty’s CD:
To Rachel, who stayed to the end
.

“I don’t think she’s breathing!” Carrie cried.

“You
bastard
!” Rachel cried, and suddenly she was again atop Korbus, again battering his head against the floor, lost in a red rage of fury that she’d failed to save Patty. Nothing else mattered: not the pain from her own injuries, not the humiliation of her nakedness or the violation of her flesh. She’d tried to do one thing, and this
asshole
had stopped her. That beautiful, sweet voice, that soul that was a treasure, was gone.