The Wrong Side of Dead (20 page)

A rush of guilt swept over Jessie as she stared into the shadows of the empty van. She should never have let Harper go. Not without a plan. Her breaths came in shallow pants, and rage stirred hot in her belly. She was just as mad at her own failure as at the bastard who now had Seth.

“This is my fault.” She struggled for air, lowering her weapon. “I never should have let him go alone.”

Alexa kept her silence for a moment, but eventually said, “Harper made his choice. He did what he had to do…for his father’s sake.” She let that sink in before she added, “And besides, he wasn’t really alone, not with a tracking beacon on the van. Whoever did this made a quick…” She stopped and turned around, not finishing her thought.

Instead, she searched the area behind her, peering into the shadows for a closer look. Jess watched her move until her eyes gravitated to the eerie shadows of houses on the block, and a familiar sinking feeling roiled in her stomach. The street gave her the creeps.

“What are you looking for?” she finally asked.

Before the woman replied, Jess felt her heart lurch in her chest. She knew the answer before she said anything. Being more objective, Alexa’s judgment wasn’t clouded with the emotion she felt. If she had distanced herself, she might have done the same thing.

“If they only intended to kill him,” her friend replied, “they wouldn’t have to take him far.”

The idea of Harper being hauled from the van with his body dumped nearby sent a cold chill down her spine. Needles pricked her skin with newfound cruelty. She’d seen far too many ghastly images to last her a lifetime. Picturing Harper’s dead body came too easily.

Alexa’s attention moved back to the van, and Jess breathed a sigh of relief when she didn’t find his lifeless body. But until she found out what had actually happened to Seth, the waiting game would be a miserable gut-wrenching ride of speculation.

Alexa probed the vehicle’s interior, and said, “There’s a backpack on the floorboard.”

“Throw me his bag,” she insisted, leaning through the driver’s side. “He had it with him at the nursing home. I gotta see what was so important for him to carry.”

Harper’s bag got tossed onto the driver’s seat, and Jess tore into it, searching for any clue where Seth had been taken. The canvas knapsack was damp from the rain, and the main compartment held something heavy, covered in white plastic to protect it. She unrolled the outer covering to see what he had inside, but Alexa’s voice distracted her.

“Seth left his cell phone. Why would he do that?” she questioned. “If he’d left an open line, we might have had another way to track him…unless he didn’t want a crowd.”

Engrossed in her own find, Jess barely heard what Alexa said, but from the corner of her eye, she saw that Harper’s cell had been left open and illuminated a small spot on the floorboard. Alexa had picked it up and punched buttons until something caught her eye.

“Jessie, you better see this. Maybe this is why he didn’t want a crowd.” With a grave look on her face, Alexa held Seth’s phone toward her. A text message came up on his display, the letters all in caps.

“What the hell is that?” Jess hadn’t realized that she’d spoken, her outrage finding voice.

“He sent it to you and others.” Alexa hesitated. “You think he’s suicidal?”

“No way in hell,” she insisted. “You didn’t see his face. At the nursing home, he was scared shitless about Max. And he didn’t kill Mandy or Jade. You don’t know him like I do.”

“Relax. I believe you.” Alexa narrowed her eyes. “That means someone is covering their ass…to make it look as if he’d take his own life and confess in the process. A nice tidy package for the cops.”

Jess returned to rummaging through Harper’s bag. Plastic crinkled under her touch as a flurry of drizzling rain pelted her neck and damp hair. Everything was conspiring against her, even Mother Nature.

She pulled out the contents of the plastic bag and laid it on the driver’s seat. But when she got a good look at it, shock gripped her, and she gasped. Air sucked into her lungs with a harsh sting.

“Oh, God. No.”

“What is it?” Alexa raised her voice. “What did you find?”

Jess couldn’t make herself speak. Repulsed by what she found, she pulled back her hands as if she’d touched a hot stove. Her skin tingled with heat. And time stopped. Everything around her faded to nothing. A face that had haunted her past came back from the depths of her shame. And the overwhelming feeling of being powerless rushed from her memory, too easily reborn. The sensation had swallowed her, suffocating her in its vacuum.

She had opened Max Jenkins’s case file, the one Seth had told her about.

“No…this can’t be…happening.” Her own voice sounded as if it came from a long, empty tunnel—the voice of a stranger.

And staring down at the old booking photo of Danny Ray Millstone triggered a surge of images from her past, shadowy memories that were just as threatening as if they’d happened only yesterday. His dead eyes stared back with the same menace.

She felt hands on her and jumped.

“Don’t…touch me,” she pleaded, cowering against a hard surface. Her body shook, and the nausea returned.

“Are you…” a woman’s distant voice.

But she couldn’t shake her deeply rooted fog until strong hands gripped her shoulders and shook her. That’s when the voice returned.

“Jessie, are you okay? What’s wrong with you?”

She blinked, and the blurred face of a blond woman emerged from the dark. It took a moment for her to recognize Alexa Marlowe.

“Oh, God.” She winced. “What happened?”

“You zoned on me, Jessie. What’s going on?” Alexa asked, standing next to her. “And what’s with this? It looks like a cop’s casebook?”

Jess looked down where the woman pointed.

“Yeah, it is. Max Jenkins’s case file. Seth’s father.” Jess shut her eyes tight and took a deep breath as she said, “But we don’t have time for a trip down memory lane. We gotta find Harper.”

Seth had told her about his father’s casebook, but actually seeing it had an impact she never could have imagined. She couldn’t afford to let that happen again, yet she knew that would be impossible. It would be no different than telling her body to stop breathing.

Slowly, her brain started to function again as Alexa said, “We should canvass the neighborhood. See if anyone saw anything.”

“Not sure we have the time for that either,” she muttered. “Besides—in the ’hood—everyone is visually impaired when it comes to being a witness. But maybe Sam can help. I’ll give her a call.”

She punched the speed dial on her cell, and while it rang, she turned toward Alexa, and asked, “You have the nearest street address or intersection on your laptop? I’ll need that.”

She followed the woman to her rental car and looked over her shoulder as Alexa worked the keys on her laptop. A map of the area enlarged on the computer monitor as Sam’s recorded voice came over the line.

“Damn it. It’s rolling into voice mail.” Jess left a message, giving the location of the van and what she could share over the phone. She tried Sam’s home and work numbers, but had no better luck, so she left similar messages.

“I noticed you left out the suicide text message,” Alexa said. When Jess glared at her, she shrugged. “Hey, I just wanted you to know I’m keeping up.”

“This isn’t about suicide,” she explained. “I don’t want the cops to think they have a confession and get the wrong idea.”

“Sister, we blew past wrong a long time ago. What now?”

Good question. The thought of hitting a dead end left a hole in her heart. Whoever had done this had played it real cagey. Someone had Harper drop the van at a different location and taken him where they would have more privacy…and no trail to follow. Frustration wedged a lump in her throat.

But as she stood in the middle of the street, she stared at the houses down the block, and déjà vu hit her hard. Why hadn’t she seen it before? She rushed to Alexa’s laptop to confirm what she suspected while Seth’s words at the nursing home replayed in her head.

Trust me. It’s best to leave the past buried
.

At the time, she thought the past he’d been talking about had been his own, but maybe he had given her a clue without her realizing it. She knew that she was grasping at straws, but that was all she had. Jess clicked and scrolled through Alexa’s laptop until she got her answer, staring down at the street map on the screen—the tracking beacon dead center.

“Unbelievable.” Jess took a jagged breath. “I think I know where Seth is.”

She stared into the deep shadows on the east side of the street, a narrow gap between two buildings. The moment she did, her heart hammered a staccato beat—an undeniable reaction she couldn’t stop. She didn’t know if she was ready to do this. But it wasn’t about her now—at least it helped her to believe that.

Seth needed her and that’s what mattered. And trusting her instincts was the only way to go. She didn’t have a choice. With eyes fixed, and without a word, she headed into the darkness and didn’t look back. If she explained things to Alexa—and heard the words herself—she might not have the courage to do what must be done.

So she followed a path she’d never been—with dead certainty—that she’d taken her first steps toward a waking nightmare.

“Jessie?” Alexa called. “What’s going on? You’re scaring me.”

Jessie hadn’t said a word. She only walked away and got swallowed by the dark. Drizzle sent a shiver crawling over Alexa’s skin, but Jessie had more to do with that. The bounty hunter had looked dazed and shaken, channeling demons Alexa knew all too well herself. She locked the vehicles and took off after her, gun in hand.

A nasty feeling nudged her gut, instinct telling her she was going into this blind. More was at play, and she didn’t have a clue how to help, but sticking close and keeping her mouth shut felt like the right thing to do.

The darkness and the dying rain made it tough for her to follow, but she kept the bounty hunter in sight, staying a few steps behind. They squeezed through cyclone fences, trespassed over stone walls, and crept down alleys with Jessie making a beeline toward something only she could see. Many houses and converted apartments were lit and occupied, but some were boarded up and overgrown in the rougher section of the neighborhood.

A dog rushed a fence and jolted her heart, a pit bull on a chain leash. They had to run to avoid the owner’s curiosity. Alexa took it as a bad sign.

“Damn it, Jessie. How much farther?” she demanded.

If Jessie replied, she didn’t hear it. Alexa’s heart was still thrashing in her chest. And to make matters worse, the pit bull had set off a reaction in the neighborhood, with other mutts howling in unison—a reminder they didn’t belong.

“Just great,” she muttered.

The rain had stopped, but the humidity had ramped into high gear and made her sweat. Steamy hot, she felt the steady heat on her cheeks as she straddled another brick wall, staying tight on Jessie’s heels. She was pleased to see the bounty hunter stuck to the shadows and avoided being silhouetted by light.

But the farther they went, the more worried she got.

She’d hoped they wouldn’t stray far from the cars. Once Sam got Jessie’s message, she’d come ready to help. But how would the cop find them now? Alexa had a bad feeling things were about to get worse—and all she’d be able to do was watch. Jessie vanished behind another house, and Alexa quickened her pace to catch up. When she came around the corner, she found Jessie had stopped.

The bounty hunter stood under the bluish haze of a cloud-streaked moon, in the shadow of a deserted three-story mansion. Shattered and boarded-up windows looked more like eyes on an ominous face. And the wide front entry became a gaping mouth. A wall made of stone boulders surrounded the premises. And the grounds—which must have been grand in the day—now were gnarled with brush and weeds. Cracked and uneven cement led to more steps and a massive front door nailed shut with two-by-fours, “X” marking the spot. Vincent Price would have been happy to call this place home, but not Alexa.

She peered at Jessie. Even under the pale light, she saw the look of recognition on her face. The old house was the place she’d been looking for, but why? Had Seth known about this place, or had the killer brought him here?

“I gotta do this,” Jessie whispered, a mantra spoken more for her benefit. “For Harper. I gotta do this.”

“I’m here, Jess. I’m right here.” She wasn’t sure Jessie heard her. “You and me…we’re going in together.” She gripped her weapon and waited for the bounty hunter. “But I swear to God, if you shoot me by mistake, I’m gonna be real pissed.”

When Jessie didn’t respond with her usual smart-ass remark, Alexa knew that something more was going on than Seth and his father, Max. She wished she had Sam’s number, knowing Jessie’s longtime friend would know more. But the woman needed her help, not her questions. Now was the time for trust.

Without hesitation, Jessie squeezed through a chained wrought-iron gate hinged to the stone wall, and Alexa followed, sticking to the shadows to avoid being seen. If Seth and his father were being held inside, the last thing she wanted was to draw attention.

Once they got to the perimeter, they circled the old house, looking for an easier way in, but only one seemed the path of least resistance with fewer obstacles.

The front door.

Standing under the portico of the main entrance, Jessie took something from her pocket. By the sound, Alexa knew it was a lock pick. She worked the keyhole, hampered by the wooden barrier that had been nailed over it. The door finally creaked opened—the sound grating like fingernails on a chalkboard.

The noise would alert anyone inside that they now had company, but that couldn’t be helped. Alexa gripped her weapon and crawled through the boarded entrance, her eyes suddenly blinded by inky black. The stench of mold, stifling humidity, and something more struck her. It was like walking into a wall she hadn’t seen coming. She waited for her night vision to kick in, but that didn’t help much.