Terrified (50 page)
No response. The line went dead.
He hoped the battery hadn’t died. Maybe it was the connection. Maybe if he got out of the damn SUV, he’d have better reception and get through to them.
Dan glanced over at the farmhouse again. Then he quietly opened the back door to the SUV. Stepping outside, he froze. He heard a hammering sound and a boy’s muted cries coming from the barn.
Dan had a feeling he’d just located Megan’s son.
He gazed at Monica, laid out naked in the coffin-like freezer. She looked so scrawny, like a dead little bird. There was nothing kinky about stripping her corpse. It was so much easier undressing her now—rather than later, when her clothes would be soggy from the thaw-out.
Another one of his pet peeves was when their eyes were frozen open. So he’d taped Monica’s eyes shut. He even folded her hands on her chest.
Lyle shut the freezer lid. He pulled the string to turn off the light overhead, and then closed the door to the freezer room.
That was when he saw some significant movement on one of the TV monitors outside Lisa’s bedroom. He stepped toward the console with the TVs, and saw what the infrared surveillance camera in the back of the U-Haul was picking up. Bathed in that eerie green glow, Lisa’s boy was banging against the van’s big door. It looked like he was screaming, too.
Lyle grinned. Down here in the basement, he didn’t detect a sound. But he wondered if the kid’s antics might have roused Sleeping Beauty in the SUV.
He glanced over at the other monitor—with the same grainy, green-hue clouding the picture. The SUV was perfectly still. But to the right of it, just past the elm tree, he saw a blurry figure skulking toward the barn.
The smile disappeared from Lyle’s face.
Swiveling around, he hurried toward the stairs. “Goddamn it,” he growled, racing up the creaky steps. His Glock semiautomatic was hidden in the back of a cabinet in the kitchen. “Goddamn it,” he repeated. “Goddamn it to hell …”
It wasn’t until he was upstairs and had the gun in his hand that he started to smile again.
Megan gasped. She saw a shadowy figure darting toward the barn. Hunched close to the wheel, she watched him suddenly stop in the middle of the driveway. He seemed to turn toward her.
She couldn’t see who it was in this distance. But it didn’t look like Josh.
He started to come up the driveway toward her.
Megan nervously clutched the gun. She checked to make sure the safety was off. When she looked up again, the man was closer—but he was still just a silhouette. It looked like he had something in his hand. Megan switched on the headlights.
“My God, Dan,” she whispered gratefully.
He was about a hundred feet way, hurrying toward her. She could see a cell phone in his hand now. He waved and shook his head at her. She realized he wanted her to kill the lights. Megan quickly shut them off.
Stashing the revolver in her sweater pocket, she opened the car door, and stepped outside. As his eyes connected with hers, Dan’s face seemed to light up. This close, she noticed the gash on his forehead. His hand was bleeding, too. “Megan, I—I think he has Josh locked in the barn,” he said, out of breath. “Someone’s definitely in there. We gotta—”
A shot rang out, then another.
Dan reeled back and fell into the bushes at the side of the driveway.
Megan screamed. She automatically started toward him.
“Don’t move, Lisa,” she heard him say. It was the voice of her ad date, Duncan Cassidy. But she couldn’t see him in the darkness. There was only the sound of gravel under his footsteps. “Stand perfectly still.”
Megan had the revolver in the pocket of her sweater. But if she went for it, he’d shoot her down. She knew he had her in his sights. And once he killed her, there was no reason for him to keep Josh alive. Megan swallowed hard, and did what she was told. Her hands at her sides, she stayed perfectly still. She glanced over at Dan, lying on his side by the bushes. She couldn’t see if he was breathing. The image of that dead deer in the road earlier tonight flashed through her mind. She felt sick. She couldn’t stop shaking.
Travis emerged from the shadows of the tall bushes along the driveway. He was wearing the same sweater he’d worn when they’d had their date. It was gray with blue and white fleurs-de-lis on it. He had a gun aimed at her. “Turn off the engine,” he said. “Leave your purse where it is in there. I’ll move the car later.”
Again, Megan obeyed him.
“Hand me the keys, Lisa,” he said, palm extended.
Wordlessly, she surrendered the keys to him.
A smile flickered on his face. “Do you know who I am now? Do you remember me?”
She nodded. “Yes, Travis.”
“Good. Let’s go in the house. C’mon …”
Megan started walking toward the farmhouse, while he stayed slightly behind and to her right. He took his gun off her for only a moment—to shoot at Dan’s crumpled form in the bushes.
Megan balked and let out an anguished cry. “No, stop! For God’s sake …” She started sobbing.
“Keep walking, Lisa,” he muttered.
She stole one last look over her shoulder at Dan, and grimaced. “Please, Travis,” she begged him. “You’ve got me. Now, stop all this. Let my son go. He never did anything to you. Please …”
He gave her a forceful shove, almost knocking her down. “Keep moving.”
Wiping her tears, Megan trudged on—closer to the farmhouse. She glanced over at the dilapidated, old barn. She could hear something knocking and banging around in there. It sounded as if someone was pounding on a car hood. “Listen to me,” she said, her voice strained. “You—you know Josh is a good kid. You’ve watched him grow up, haven’t you? You and I have that bond, Travis. You’ve watched over both of us all this time. The three of us are like a family. If you have any kind of feeling for me, you’d let him go… .”
“Mom?”
His muffled voice came from the other side of the barn door.
His muffled voice came from the other side of the barn door.
Megan stopped. “Josh?” she cried. Her arms suddenly ached for him. “Sweetie, are you okay?”
She wanted to run to him. But she felt Travis jab the gun in the back of her neck. “In the house,” he growled.
Josh continued to call out to her: “Mom? Mom, are you okay? What going on? Mom, are you there?”
She swiveled around. “God, please, let me see him,” she pleaded.
“Inside the house—now,” he barked. Then he slapped her across the face.
Megan staggered back. She could still hear Josh calling to her and pounding on something. It killed her to walk in the other direction—toward the house. She felt Travis tickling her earlobe with the barrel of his handgun.
“Keep moving,
Mom
, just keep moving,” he taunted her.
Mom
, just keep moving,” he taunted her.
She had her hand over the bulge in her sweater pocket as she walked through the front door.
“Most of my guests have never seen this part of the house,” he said, directing her through the living room. “Keep going straight ahead into the dining room. You’ll notice in the cabinet on your right a few familiar-looking items… .”
Megan hesitated and gazed with wonder at a whole shelf full of framed photos. They were of her and Josh through the years, pictures she’d never seen before. He’d taken them without her knowing. In a way, it was more complete than her own family photo collection at home, because she never wanted her picture taken. She had never seen so many snapshots of Josh and her together. The last fifteen years with her son were flashing before her eyes.
“That one of you holding him on top of the playground slide is my favorite,” she heard him say. “See, I have my sentimental side, too, Lisa.”
She stared at the photo of three-year-old Josh, with the sun in his golden hair. “How could you take these pictures—and then—and then treat us this way? How?”
He didn’t answer.
On the shelf below the photos, Megan recognized so many things she hadn’t seen in years: bits and pieces, plates, single earrings, tumblers, books, and so many other items she’d thought she’d misplaced.
“You wouldn’t let me into your life, Lisa,” he said finally. “So I had to come in and steal—everything from that snow globe on the shelf to those moments in time I captured in my pictures. For fifteen years, I took scraps. I settled for substitutes instead of you—starting with Willow… .”
“The Garbage Bag Killings,” she murmured.
“They were just imitations,” he said. “But I’m not
settling
anymore, Lisa. C’mon, keep moving. Watch it in the kitchen. The floor might be slippery. I spilled some champagne earlier.”
settling
anymore, Lisa. C’mon, keep moving. Watch it in the kitchen. The floor might be slippery. I spilled some champagne earlier.”
Megan glanced around the shoddy-looking kitchen. She didn’t see a phone anywhere. A Lucy and Desi salt and pepper shaker from her first Seattle apartment was on the range of the Harvest Gold oven.
“Downstairs,” he said. The gun muzzle touched the back of her skull.
Moving past the basement door, Megan took one creaky step at a time. She kept her hand over the sweater pocket with the revolver. She couldn’t use it, not yet. He’d had his gun on her ever since he’d taken that potshot at Dan. She wondered if there was any chance at all Dan was still alive.
She stopped at the bottom of the cellar stairs, and nervously clutched the banister. There was a faint stale cigarette-and-cigar odor in the dank basement. “I figured it out about Glenn and Cassie,” she said. She cleared her throat. “Travis, I know what he did to your sister. I know, firsthand. You tried to warn me, and I didn’t listen. For that, I’m very sorry. But I don’t think I’m any worse than your sister. Did Cassie listen to you? I’m sure you tried to warn her, too—at some point, when you realized what Glenn was doing to her. Did she listen?”
She turned to face him. Travis stared at her. For a moment, he lowered the gun.
“I remember in the hospital, you told me you hated her,” she said. “I think maybe you’ve never been able to forgive yourself for that… .” She slipped her hand inside the pocket of her sweater. “Maybe that’s why—”
He pointed the gun at her face. “Don’t,” he muttered.
Megan froze.
“Don’t you fucking psychoanalyze me,” he said. “Turn around. Keep walking. I have a room for you down here… .”
Megan turned away from him and felt the gun against the center of her back. She noticed a long, horizontal window into a darkened room. It looked like he had a bed in there, but she didn’t see anything else. There was a weak, green, flickering light up in the corner of the room. She wasn’t sure what it was. Beside the window stood a console with all sorts of audiovisual equipment, cables and wires, and four TV monitors. Megan stopped to gaze at them. One TV was on mute and tuned to the local news. But the other three monitors appeared to be picking up grainy, emerald-hued images from surveillance cameras around the property. She recognized the beginning of his driveway with the rooster weather vane at the roadside. She saw the SUV parked by the elm tree outside the house. And her heart ached as she stared at Josh, trapped in a windowless room—somewhere inside that seedy-looking barn. He pounded at the wall and cried out, but she couldn’t hear him.
“Travis, please, let me see my son,” she said. “I’ll do anything you tell me—”
“All right, I’m telling you to go into that room, right there.” He nodded toward a door beside the window, a few feet away. She noticed something that looked like an intercom just to the left of the window. He still had the gun pressed to her back.
Megan knew she didn’t stand a chance taking the revolver out now. “Have you ever even fired a gun?” Candy had asked her. She hadn’t.
He prodded her to the open door—and the darkened room with the faint, eerie green light flickering in one corner. Megan had a feeling if she stepped inside there, she’d never emerge again. She froze up, but he pushed her past the threshold. Before she could even reach for the revolver, she heard the door slam shut behind her. Then the lock clicked.
It was a horrible, final sound.
She wandered into the room, and noticed a TV on brackets high in one corner. The green flickering light was a nighttime security camera image of the SUV parked between the house and the barn.
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