The Lonely Mile (15 page)

Carli knew he was waiting for a response but had absolutely no idea what to say. Instead she just nodded again.

“That’s it?” he said. “A nod? You have nothing to say? I open up my heart to you, let you know I see you as my special angel, and you have no response at all?”

“I—um—thank you?”

The man’s face flushed, and he shoved her hard. She stumbled backward, striking the backs of her calves on the bed and tumbling onto the mattress. The back of her head impacted the iron headboard. A bright flash lit up the room, and she fell onto her side, cradling her head in her hands. She wasn’t sure when she had started to cry again but the tears ran down her face, dripping onto the clean sheets the kidnapper was so proud of.

“You’ve got a lot to learn,” the creepy man said, his voice low and shaking with anger. “Since we’re just getting to know each other, I’m going to overlook your lack of enthusiasm for my efforts. I know you’ll try harder from here on out.”

Carli looked up at him.

“Well?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes…um…I’ll try harder?”

The monster smiled. “I’m glad we understand each other. Now, what do you like to eat?”

She shook her head, not sure she had heard him correctly. “Eat?”

“Yes, eat,” he said, spreading his arms in annoyance. “I want to give you something special. What do you like to eat?”

Carli tried to think, desperate not to anger him again, but the last thing she wanted to think about right now was food. All she wanted was to see her mom and dad again and hug them, and be back home in her room texting Lauren and doing her homework. “Uh…pizza?”

“Pizza.” The man laughed. “Typical teenager. Okay, we’ll have pizza. What would you like on it?”

Carli tried to answer, not having any idea what she was going to say, but instead of words, the tears came again with a vengeance. She flinched as her captor lowered himself to the bed next to her, expecting to be hit again or worse. And it
was
worse. He wrapped his slimy arms around her and held her tightly, like she was his girlfriend or something.

“If you’d rather,” he said gently, “we can start with your training now and eat dinner afterward. You know, if you’re not hungry yet. I’m certainly anxious to begin your training, and once we get into it, I bet you’ll even start to like it, too. “

“Veggies,” she said quickly. “I like veggies. A couple of slices of veggie pizza sound great.” She tried to put enthusiasm in her voice, hoping it didn’t sound as false to her captor as it did to her.

He held her for a moment longer, and Carli feared the man had seen through her pitiful attempt to put off her “training.” She didn’t know specifically what that meant, but she had a pretty good idea what was going to happen. Finally, he let go of her and stood. Carli wanted to brush the lingering sensation of his touch away but somehow managed to hold her arms steady.

“Veggie pizza it is,” he said, watching her closely. “I’ll be back in a little while with our dinner. In the meantime, make yourself at home.” He turned toward the stairs. “Oh, and by the way,” he said, looking back with one foot on the bottom step. “Don’t bother screaming. My nearest neighbor lives far beyond the sound of your voice, and you really don’t want to try my patience again.”

Then he climbed the stairs quickly and was gone.

CHAPTER 32

BILL FELT DAZED, DISORIENTED, like he had gotten disgustingly drunk last night and was now suffering from a massive hangover. He almost wished that was the case; at least then he could have forgotten about his entire life crashing down around him in the last few hours. He glanced at the little clock hanging over the kitchen sink. It was 5:20 p.m.

Carli was gone, and it was his fault. Sandra had said so, attacking him in front of the police and FBI personnel, and she was right. He had brought the I-90 Killer down on them by his actions. He didn’t regret saving that girl. Would it be any better for her parents to be suffering right now as he and Sandra were? Of course not. But he still knew he was directly responsible for Carli’s abduction by that monster.

He paced back and forth in his tiny apartment, wanting to do something,
needing
to do something. Canfield and her team of Feebs—an apt description if ever there was one—and local law enforcement had exited Sandra’s home at the same time as Bill. The agent had spoken quietly to him for a moment in the front yard in a vain attempt to take some of the sting out of his ex-wife’s words. “She’s just upset,” Canfield said, “and is taking her fear and frustration out on you. Try not to take it to heart.”

“I don’t care about any of that. I just want my little girl back. Besides, how can I even think about arguing with her when she’s right?”

Canfield shook her head and Bill thought she was going to try to press her point when she changed the direction of the conversation entirely. “We’re splitting up the investigative teams now,” she said. “The locals have been tasked with interviewing all of Carli’s schoolmates who were on the bus this afternoon to try to get a handle on this guy. Maybe he inadvertently let slip where he was taking her or made some other mistake we can use to our advantage.”

Bill nodded, glad to hear something, even for just a moment, to take his mind off Carli and the gruesome scenarios running rampant inside his tortured head. “Makes sense. And what are you going to do?”

Agent Canfield made a face. “I’m taking my people out to comb that poor bus driver’s property for evidence.”

That was two hours ago. Bill had walked back to his van and immediately called the office of his West Stockton store, putting assistant manager George Bentley in charge indefinitely. He had filled Bentley in on the situation and advised him he would not be returning to work for the foreseeable future. Then he called his other store and repeated the exercise with Stefanie Wilson, the manager of that location.

He couldn’t think about working while Carli was missing, but, until he could settle on a course of action, he felt caged, hemmed in.

The hot, dead air circulated listlessly through the apartment, affected only slightly by the single overmatched ceiling fan mounted in the living room. For the hundredth time, Bill considered how nice it would be to bring an air conditioner home from work and stick it in his window, but he had resisted doing that for the completely irrational reason that doing so would attach a permanence to this residence that he simply did not want to acknowledge. The idea that a man now well into his forties, a successful businessman at that—if you could consider the owner of two hardware stores barely avoiding bankruptcy to be successful—could live in such a bare-bones apartment was so depressing that Bill had been determined to avoid it at all costs.

The home he and Sandra had shared with Carli prior to the divorce was nowhere near as palatial as Howard Mitchell’s, but it had been warm and cozy, and comfortable. Three bedrooms, roomy kitchen, casual dining area, comfortable living room, and two-and-a-half baths. Nice. Nothing spectacular, but nice.

After Sandra left, Bill tried staying in the house for a while, but even though he had never considered himself to be any kind of sensitive soul, he quickly discovered the memories were too close and too overwhelming to allow him to stay. They smothered him. They were everywhere. Each square inch of the place reminded him of the life he had shared with Sandra and, of course, Carli back in happier days.

The weight of all those memories, plus the severely restricted cash flow from two barely sustainable businesses, convinced Bill Ferguson in short order that a change would do him good. He put the house on the market at a reasonable price and it sold quickly. His share of the profit from the sale went in the bank, and screw the IRS. They would tax the life out of the money in two years if he didn’t roll it into another home, Bill knew that, but he wanted to put it aside as a head start on paying for Carli’s college, which was coming up faster than he could believe.

Bill found this apartment after a brief search, and immediately rented it. It featured everything he was looking for in a residence—location. It was close to Carli. The building was ancient, with creaky stairs and cracked linoleum and crumbling plaster and undoubtedly substandard wiring, and Bill didn’t care about any of that. It was all irrelevant. The place was close to Carli, and that was good enough for him.

And now Carli was gone.

Bill sipped a soda, not because he was especially thirsty, but because he needed something to occupy his hands as he paced the kitchen floor, over and over, back and forth.

Carli was gone. It was his fault.

He had to do something. He looked at the clock. Five thirty a.m. Ten minutes had passed since he last checked the time. He was miserable.

He had to
do
something.

CHAPTER 33

CARLI SAT WITH HER right hand cuffed to the bed, trying to force cold, greasy, veggie pizza down her throat. She wasn’t hungry, but knew she should eat, if for no other reason than to keep up her strength. Her dad would be coming for her, of that she was certain, and she had to be prepared. Her kidnapper had confiscated her watch, so she had no idea what time it was. She slogged through the pizza and washed it down with water from a greasy plastic cup.

Carli guessed the kidnapper had been gone forty-five minutes to an hour before returning with their food. When he came back, he had been carrying a gigantic pizza box and a couple of paper plates, a big smile stretching his face. They had shared the pizza sitting shoulder to shoulder on the bed, awkward silences punctuating stilted conversation. The man didn’t seem to notice.

He hadn’t raised the subject of her “training” again, but Carli knew the time would come soon enough. She dreaded it, and tried her best to drag dinner out as long as possible. It wasn’t hard to do. Despite the fact her stomach was empty, she wasn’t hungry, and the thought of eating pizza made her want to gag. She managed to choke down most of one piece while her kidnapper wolfed down three or four.

Finally he stood and terror bloomed in Carli’s chest. “One piece?” he said, shaking his head. “You should eat more than that, my angel. You’re going to need energy for your training!” His smile was ghastly. “I’ll leave another piece for you to work on.” He lifted a slice of limp pizza from the box and plopped it down on her plate. Carli tried not to puke. Then, he picked up the box. “I’ll be back in a little while,” he said, “and we can begin getting to know each other better.”

He climbed the stairs and left her alone again. Where her kidnapper was right now and what he might be doing she had no idea and no real desire to find out. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good for her. She wondered how long her body could continue dealing with the sky-high stress level she felt before it finally crashed. Adrenaline coursed through her, not that it was doing any good.

As soon as her captor retreated up the basement stairs, Carli had set to work, twisting and turning the handcuffs, probing for a weak spot, searching for a way out. One side of the bracelets was fitted snugly around her slim wrist, and the other was attached firmly to the headboard of the bed frame, which was stark and depressing but made of iron and, as far as Carli could tell, very solid.

A short length of metal chain connected the two bracelets. The links were thick and solid, way too strong for her to break. She knew because she tried, yanking her hand insistently, succeeding only in tearing her skin and raising a painful bruise on her wrist.

She bent to examine the cuffs more closely, squinting, concentrating on those three metal links, certain that, if there was any weakness at all, it would be here. But there was nothing. The steel was shiny and strong, with no rusting metal or gaps that could be pried open.

Her cuffed hand, sweaty and throbbing from trying to snap the links, slipped suddenly off the iron post of the headboard and fell behind the bed.
Ow!
Her knuckles scraped the cement blocks of the wall and bruised her wrist even more as the cuffs snapped her hand back at the end of the chain.

Tears filled Carli’s eyes, and she pulled her hand reflexively, covering the scrape with her free hand. Blood stained her palm when she stopped. She would have to be more careful because the same thing would happen if her hand slipped off the heavy iron post again, that was how close the headboard was placed to the stupid cement wall. The scrape burned, and her skin stood no chance against that rough surface.

Then a thought occurred to Carli, and with it was the barest glimmer of hope: If the rough concrete surface could damage her skin so easily, why couldn’t it have the same effect on the shiny silver steel of the handcuffs? There was very little play in the bracelets, just a couple of inches, but she had already proven—painfully—that she could reach the wall. Now, all she needed to do to test her theory was to twist her arm so that her wrist faced the wall, then rub it back and forth, scraping the small round circle of steel against the cement blocks.

It was extremely uncomfortable, with Carli’s wrist bent at an unnatural angle, but she smiled as she felt the cuff’s metal ring come in contact with the wall. She eased her arm downward and felt friction, heard a tiny whispered scraping sound. In less than a second, the chain had been pulled taut, sending a pulse of pain radiating outward from her already injured wrist.

She hissed involuntarily between her clenched teeth and pulled her arm back through the bars of the headboard, looking down and studying the metal of the handcuff. Still strong, still shiny. But—there! A little scratch, almost invisible but definitely there, on the steel ring where Carli had run it along the cement. It was tiny—nowhere near enough to allow Carli to snap the cuffs apart.

But it was a start.

Carli took a deep breath and tried again, then examined her right wrist, the one trapped inside the handcuff. It throbbed in time with her heartbeat and already had begun turning the greenish-purple color of the sky just before a thunderstorm. The wrist looked sore because it was, but that pain was nothing compared to what she knew she could expect from the twisted lover-boy upstairs. She eased her right hand back through the space between the iron bars and continued scraping the inside of the handcuff up and down against the cement. Scree…scree…scree. The noise was minimal, so she knew there was no possible way the crazy man could hear it unless he was standing right next to her, but the thought of him catching her was terrifying.