Shadow Creek (35 page)

When had her world gotten so small?

Val leaned against the wall, trying to figure out her next move. She checked her watch, then checked it again. Not even lunchtime and already she was exhausted.

“You’re not going to pass out, are you?” Carolyn asked, watching her from behind the counter.

“I’m not going to pass out,” Val affirmed. Haven’t you heard? I’m strong. I swam seventy-four lengths. I’m going to rule the world.

“SHE STILL ASLEEP?” Henry asked impatiently as Nikki returned from the bedroom.

“Snoring like a little piglet.”

“Shit. How many of those pills did you put in that tea?”

“I don’t know. Just a couple.”

“The point was to relax her, not knock her out.”

“Yeah, well, suppose next time you be a little clearer about
what exactly the point is,” Nikki argued, trying to put a lid on her growing anger. She’d never lost her temper with him before. Of course, he’d never given her any cause to lose it. Until now.

Until this girl came into the picture.

“Look. I didn’t mean to go off on you before,” he was saying. “It’s just really important we get our stories straight.”

“How was I supposed to know you told her this was your cottage?”

“What’d you think I was gonna tell her?”

“I don’t know. How do you expect me to know anything if you don’t tell me?”

“You should have seen the expression on her face when you said the cottage belonged to your grandmother.”

“Well, she got me all flustered when she said she recognized me from the lodge. And then you said we’d been there for dinner. I had to think of something.”

“You called me Kenny, for fuck’s sake!”

“It just slipped out.”

“You could have ruined everything.”

“Ruined what exactly? What difference does it make what I call you? We’re gonna kill her anyway.” Nikki paused. “Aren’t we? Aren’t we gonna kill her?”

“Of course we’re gonna kill her.” Henry ran an exasperated hand through his long hair. “Just not right away. We’re gonna have a little fun with her first. You know. Like we talked about.”

“Like
you
talked about.”

“What are you saying?”

“Kenny, please …”

“The name is Henry.”

“
Henry
. We don’t have time for this. You murdered a fucking park ranger. Sooner or later, they’re gonna come sniffing around here. We’ve got to get out of here.”

Henry’s gaze flitted nervously around the room, stopping on the door to the bedroom where Brianne lay sleeping. “Okay. Okay. You’re probably right.”

“I
am
right.”

“Okay. I know.”

“So what are we going to do with her?”

“We’ll take her with us.”

“What?”

“We’ll take her with us,” he repeated, as if he actually thought she hadn’t heard him.

“What are you talking about? That’s nuts.”

“Why is it nuts? She’s unconscious. We’ll throw her in the trunk of the car, drive up to Lake Placid, find an empty cottage where we can relax and take our time with her.”

“Since when do we take our time?”

“Since this is a new experience. Brianne’s young, she’s pretty. She’s malleable.”

“What’s that mean?”

He sneered.

Nikki might not have understood the word
malleable
but she understood the meaning of that sneer. It meant “dummy.” He might as well have screamed it.

“You never know,” Henry was saying. “She might even decide she wants to join us. We could form, like, this whole group …”

Oh, God, no. What was he saying? “So, what—I’m not enough for you anymore?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then cut the bullshit. I say we kill her now, and get the hell out of here.”

“Come on, babe. She’s unconscious. What fun would there be in killing her when she’s out cold?”

“A lot more fun than life in prison,” Nikki argued. “I’m telling you it’s not worth the risk.” Then, to placate him, “There’ll be other girls.”

A slow smile crept back onto Henry’s lips. “You promise?”

“I promise,” she said.

“WHAT’D HE SAY?” Jennifer asked as Val lowered the phone’s receiver back into its old-fashioned carriage.

“He said they went over Tyler’s car with a fine-tooth comb,” Val told the assembled group, “and there’s no sign that anyone has been hurt. No blood or anything …”

“Thank God,” James said.

“So that’s good news,” Melissa added.

“The bad news is that the storm washed away any footprints, so Brianne and Tyler could be anywhere. They’re going to start searching the surrounding woods, but …”

“But?” James asked.

“Well, he didn’t say it, but I don’t think finding Brianne is their major concern. They’re more interested in finding out what happened to Henry Voight.”

For a minute nobody said anything, no one giving voice to the thought they were all sharing: What if the disappearances were in some way connected?

“Val, can I talk to you for a minute, please?” Gary said. He’d returned to the office a few minutes earlier, while Val was on the phone with Mike Jones, and had been standing by the door, waiting.

Val followed him wordlessly outside, stopping on the bottom step when she saw Gary’s son, Hayden, sitting in the passenger seat of the white Buick parked a few feet away.

“I’m leaving now. Taking Hayden back to Connecticut,”
Gary explained before Val could ask. “There’s really nothing much we can do here at this point, and I want a doctor to check him out, make sure he doesn’t have a concussion.”

“Of course. I understand completely.”

“Hayden insists he doesn’t want to press charges …”

Val suppressed a deep sigh of relief. “I’m really so sorry about everything.”

“Me, too,” Gary said. Then, when both realized there was nothing more to say, “You’ll find her, Val.”

“Yes, I will.”

“You’re fearless.”

“Yes, I am.”

“I’ll be in touch,” he said.

“No, you won’t,” she whispered, watching him climb behind the wheel of his car and pull out of the parking lot, out of her life. And that was all right, she thought. Despite the way things had turned out, she was grateful for their brief time together. Gary had awakened something in her she’d thought was lost forever, shown her that not only could she be attractive to other men, but that she could be attracted to
them
. All she had to do was let it happen. All she had to do was let go of the recurring dream that was Evan.
The impossible dream
, she thought wistfully, imagining James belting out the song from the Broadway hit.

Except the dream had become a nightmare.

It wasn’t just time for a new dream, she decided, watching Gary’s car disappear in an explosion of dust. It was time to wake up.

Val turned around, about to reenter the cabin when the door opened and Jennifer stepped outside, her face flushed.

“What’s the matter?” Val asked.

“I just remembered Henry said he had a place in the area.”

“What?”

“The man I met last night, the man pretending to be Henry Voight, he said he had a place around here.”

“Did he say where?”

“No. Just that it was close by. Where are you going?” she called as Val began racing toward her SUV.

Val’s answer bounced off the gravel driveway and ricocheted off the nearby trees. She was through waiting. It was time to start swimming. “To find my daughter.”

D
O YOU REALLY THINK this is such a good idea?” James was asking from his usual place in the backseat. “I mean, didn’t the park rangers say that we should stay put and let them handle it?”

Val ignored the rhetorical question, speeding up the highway, her eyes on the alert for Tyler’s black Civic. Mike Jones had said it was only a few miles up the road from the campground.

“He’s right. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” Melissa said from beside James.

“Look,” Val said. “If you guys don’t want to come with me, that’s fine. I can stop the car right now …”

“We’re not leaving you,” Jennifer said firmly from the seat beside her.

“Of course we’re not leaving you,” Melissa echoed.

“I was just suggesting we let the park rangers know what we’re doing,” James tried to explain. “You know, in case we need backup.”

“I’m sure we’ll see some rangers when we get to Tyler’s car,” Val said, grateful her friends had opted for loyalty over common sense. She knew they thought she was being reckless and irrational, rushing off blindly, without a plan, without any idea where she was going or what she was going to do when she got there. She also knew they were absolutely right. Still, she couldn’t just sit around and do nothing when her daughter might be in jeopardy. Sitting around waiting for things to happen had gotten her precisely nowhere.

Still …

She should probably listen to her friends, turn the car around, go back to the camp. The rangers were doubtlessly already canvassing all the cottages in the area. Although if the man pretending to be Henry Voight had lied about being a ranger, he’d probably lied about having a place nearby. On the other hand, if he actually did own property in the vicinity, it was doubtless better to let the professionals investigate, instead of having a bunch of amateurs running around like chickens with their heads cut off. She wasn’t being fearless. She was being stupid.

“There’s the car,” Jennifer suddenly shouted, pointing toward the black Honda nose-dived in a ditch by the side of the road.

“I don’t see any rangers,” James said as Val pulled her SUV to a stop behind the old Civic and turned off the engine.

“They’ve probably sent for a tow truck,” Melissa said as they emerged from the car, four doors opening and slamming shut in unison.

Val approached Tyler’s car slowly, peering into the window of the driver’s side, hoping to spot her daughter curled up asleep in the backseat, then opening the car door when she saw nothing.

“Should you be doing that?” James glanced over his shoulder at the steady parade of oncoming cars.

“Probably not.” Val’s eyes scanned the interior of the car for any sign of Brianne, her nose sniffing at the stale air for traces of her daughter’s scent.

Nothing.

“So what now?” Jennifer asked.

Val pointed to the woods beyond the ditch. “We go that way,” she said, hurrying on before anyone could stop her.

“WHAT ARE YOU doing?” Nikki stood in the doorway, watching Henry rifle through the dresser drawers of the master bedroom.

“Just looking for a little extra cash.”

“We’ve already been through all the drawers.”

“We might have missed something. Like this.” He held up a red-green-and-blue rhinestone brooch in the shape of a butterfly. “Bet this is worth something.”

“It’s a piece of junk, like all the others,” Nikki said, knowing exactly what Henry was doing. Which was stalling. They should have killed the girl by now. They should have killed her and taken off. Instead, he’d found one thing after another that supposedly needed taking care of: first, he had to make himself a sandwich; then he had to take another shower, and then a “power nap” to get his strength up, not just for the kill but for the drive to Lake Placid; then he had to check the cottage for valuables, which was supposedly what he was doing now, although they’d already searched through every drawer in the
place at least half a dozen times and taken whatever cash and valuables they’d missed the first six times. There wasn’t even a television to steal, for shit’s sake. Just that stupid computer, which was old and wouldn’t be worth very much.

A vague memory intruded on her thoughts. Something about that stupid computer had been nagging at her since this morning, although she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. She had a hazy recollection of going through Ellen’s e-mails the other night when she was stoned on Percodan and weed. There was a letter from her son, she remembered. Something about not being able to come to some stupid party in the fall.

And something else.

Something else, she repeated, waving away the troublesome thought as if it were a mosquito buzzing around her head. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be very important. What was important was to kill the girl now and get out of here.

“We’re wasting time,” she told him, knowing that’s exactly what he was trying to do. He’s giving Brianne time to wake up, she realized. Why? So he could kill her, or have sex with her? And then what? Was he really going to try to persuade the girl to join them? Did he plan on forming his own little band of merry men and women to populate the forest, a modern-day Robin Hood, except they didn’t just steal from the rich, they killed them? More like a modern-day Charles Manson, she decided, thinking of the special on the murderous clan she’d seen recently on E! Admittedly, they’d seemed kind of cool, but she much preferred things the way they were now, with just the two of them. She didn’t want to have to fight for her lover’s attention or affection. She didn’t want to worry about who was his favorite or if she was in danger of being replaced. She wanted to go back to what they did best, which was ridding the world of useless old people.

Old people, she thought, glancing toward the computer. Something on that computer about old people.

“We gotta wipe down the place for fingerprints,” Henry was saying.

“We can do that after we kill Brianne.”

“No,” he said adamantly. “We’re saving the best for last.”

She was about to protest but thought better of it. Arguing with him just meant delaying things further.

“Maybe you should go get gas,” he suggested.

“You want me to get gas?” she repeated incredulously, wondering what he was up to now.

“Yeah. That way we don’t have to stop later.”

“Forget it. I’m not going for gas,” Nikki said. Was he still harboring hopes about taking Brianne with them? Was it possible he was actually thinking of letting her go?

“Suit yourself. It was just an idea.”

“If you want gas so much, you go get it.”

“You’re the one who’s in such a hurry to get moving,” he reminded her with a shrug and a knowing raise of his eyebrows. “Come on. We gotta start wiping everything down.”