The Wrong Side of Dead (21 page)

Holding her weapon in a two-fisted grip, she stood inside, listening. The door shut behind her. And for an instant she heard Jessie breathing next to her, but soon that stopped.

“Jessie?” she whispered, barely loud enough for her to hear.

When the bounty hunter didn’t respond, Alexa knew she was alone.

Sam had a smile on her face when she walked through the front door to her suburban bungalow, basking in the afterglow of spending time with Ray Garza. Before heading home, she had met him for a drink after work, an impulsive invitation that she couldn’t resist extending. And like she had imagined, being with him only made her hungry for more. He had a way of respecting her as a cop while also reminding her she was a desirable woman—an irresistible combination in an intelligent man.

Working the job and being in a man’s world had given her tunnel vision. At times it felt like all she knew. She’d thrown herself into her career without a thought for the road not taken. But for a couple of hours, Ray had made her forget all that. And she hadn’t let anything get in the way of their time together; it wasn’t exactly
Mission Impossible
for her to focus entirely on him.

The man looked incredible by candlelight. Hell, by any light.

His dark eyes smoldered with need that she felt to her toes. And although she would have preferred to feast on his full lips, she allowed herself to touch him instead. A diversion. Her fingers stroked the back of his hand, feeling the warmth of his skin. An intimate joy. Resisting her urge for more had taken willpower. She wanted their first time together—really together—to be special and not following a drink after work.

Sam dropped her car keys on the console table near her front door and flipped on lights as she walked through her house. When she found the red light blinking on her answering machine in the kitchen, she hit the message button to listen while she took off her gun and hit the fridge for a short glass of milk.

She poured as she listened. A friend had called about getting together for dinner next week. And her mother reminded her of Uncle Larry and Aunt Joyce’s wedding anniversary. But the last message—the one from Jessie—stopped her cold.

“My God, Jessie.”

She looked at her watch and checked the time stamp for the message. She’d missed the call by only twenty minutes, but in Jessie’s world, that could be a lifetime. With a throttling heart, she tried her friend’s cell phone, but couldn’t get her—she only got a message that Jessie was unavailable. And beyond her cell phone, Sam had no other way to reach her.

“Damn it.” She hit her speed dial. And when Ray came on the line, she said, “Jessie’s in trouble, Ray. I need your help.”

Jess walked the jagged line between the twilight of bad dreams and the reality of what her life had become. She knew something was dead wrong—that her mind had snapped—but damned if she felt strong enough to break free of its control. The only thing that had kept her going was picturing Harper. He and his father needed help, and it was her turn to step up to the plate, no matter what it would cost.

Once she figured out where the van had been parked in relation to High Street—and vaguely recognized the neighborhood—facing her childhood tragedy had become the only option left for her and Seth. What had happened on High Street had to be the reason Seth’s van had been abandoned close by. Any other reason meant he was beyond her help, and she couldn’t force herself to consider that.

High Street was all she had left.

She chose to leave her car behind and walk to the house for a low-key arrival. On the side of good news, the location was close enough, and hiking there gave her time to think. But having time to think was also the bad news.

If the killer wanted to stage Harper’s suicide, what better way than to force him to come to High Street, hoping to rescue his father. The Millstone residence would begin and end his obsession with his father’s cases. In a bent and twisted way, it would make sense to the cops, who already thought he was guilty of being a murderer. His suicide note was as good as a confession. Case closed.

But dread took a firm hold, forcing her to doubt herself. Could she confront her shameful ordeal even for Harper? When she stepped through the threshold of the old mansion—the torture chamber of the serial pedophile Danny Ray Millstone—she was pulled into the chasm of her worst fears. She felt the man’s presence even though she knew he was dead. The windows were boarded up with only slivers of light leaching inside, but Jess saw through the eyes of a tormented child who would never forget what hell looked like.

Little had changed—not for her.

For an instant she shut her eyes. And she still heard the whimpering cries and the menacing footsteps that echoed down hallways and spiraled up stairwells. Those sounds had become a backdrop to her life, especially in the middle of the night. The tragedy she survived had become a part of her. The smell and taste of fear seethed from her pores, a vile reminder.

And by her leaving Alexa behind at the front entrance, anyone might have thought she was confronting her demons head-on and alone. In truth, she had fallen into the same debilitating terror that she’d felt years ago, when she was powerless to save herself. And she couldn’t face anyone witnessing her meltdown.

This time she wasn’t a child. This time she would walk into it with eyes wide open. This time she had to find the strength to do it for Seth and his father.

Gripping her Colt Python, she edged down a corridor, her back to a wall. She had to remind herself to breathe, but the dank, stagnant air made that tough. Splayed fingers along a wall guided her in the dark as she looked for any sign of movement…or light. And sweat trickled down her back, skittering goose bumps along her skin until…

Something brushed against her cheek. It nestled into her hair.

Shit!

She wanted to scream, but jerked a hand up instead. Her sudden move was fraught with a silent panic as she suppressed a cry deep in her throat. It took her a moment to realize she had stepped into a cobweb. Its tendrils clung to her skin and eyelashes. Shaking, she leaned against the wall and filled her lungs. With teeth gritted, she breathed through her nose to steady her heart.

She was losing it…
really losing it
. And Harper didn’t need her like this.

She made it to the back of the house on the ground floor, to a door she knew well. The basement. Millstone had kept her below. His special place.

Alexa would take the ground floor, but since the large basement needed to be searched, Jess would do that alone. She knew every corner of it, and the search was…personal. She reached out her hand until her trembling fingers touched the doorknob. Taking a shaky breath, she turned the knob and peered down narrow wooden steps. A shimmer of light pierced the gloom below, enough to trigger her curiosity. But she recoiled with a mix of hope and dread. Hope that she might find Harper, but dread that she’d already lost him. She’d be too late. Either way, she had to know for sure.

For Harper’s sake—and her own—she had to do this.

Sam drove to the intersection Jessie had left on her phone message, white knuckling her steering wheel and driving like a maniac—Code Three—to make up time she didn’t have. Jessie had always lived her life on the edge. And Sam fully expected one of these days that she’d get a notification that her friend had been killed, dying by the very sword she wielded in life. Jessie had been dealt cards no one should have to play, but Sam had always respected her underlying strength. Jessie was a survivor.

When she arrived on the scene, she found the blue van and two cars parked behind it, but Jessie was nowhere in sight. She parked her car and peeked into the windows of the other vehicles. The doors were locked, but she found an old case file on the driver’s seat in the van. And even looking through the car window on a dimly lit street, she recognized Millstone’s arrest photo. It jolted her. And she couldn’t imagine how it had made Jessie feel.

“Damn it.”

She didn’t like how this was shaping up. Ray was on his way. She’d asked for backup, and told him that Seth’s father might have been taken hostage. That meant a tactical team would be mobilized. So much for the good part, but she had a bad feeling about how everything else could go.

Max Jenkins was a retired detective, someone every cop had heard of and respected by reputation. She had no doubt they would get the help they’d need, but with Seth being a suspect in two murders, some might see Harper as the reason Max was in trouble. The situation could turn dangerous in a heartbeat if Seth was considered a threat to his own father.

And then there was the undeniable guilt she felt when it came to Jessie. Guilt had driven her to make mistakes in judgment. She knew it, but that didn’t stop her from taking risks for Jessie’s sake, trying to prove…something. No one took the burden of penance more seriously than a lapsed Catholic.

Most times when she thought of her friend, Sam saw her own failure. She’d ignored her cry for help all those years ago, not understanding what it meant, that tiny finger reaching out from a basement wall. And as a result, others were hurt and Jessie had to endure more at the hands of her sadistic captor. A child herself at the time, Sam had no clue monsters like Danny Ray Millstone existed. But in the end, that didn’t matter. She hadn’t forgiven herself and probably never would.

Now Jessie needed her again and frustration loomed heavy when she had arrived and her friend was missing. She had started their longtime friendship from a deficit—feeling wholly inadequate—and she’d been trying to make up ground ever since. Now this.

“No way…this isn’t happening. Not again.”

She paced the street, her eyes searching the shadows. She wanted to see Jessie walk into the light with Seth Harper at her side, but that wasn’t going to happen. Wishful thinking had no place in her line of work. A cop dealt in reality. She glanced at her watch, wondering if she should call Ray again, but something else stopped her. She turned to gaze at the houses and buildings around her, a sordid mix of run-down properties.

Not too long ago, things had been different. Her grandparents had lived near this intersection. Visiting them had been the reason her path had crossed Jessie’s in the first place. The memory of that fateful day stuck in her mind for a reason. It nudged her to think. And the Millstone file had triggered it.

Playing a hunch, she went to her vehicle and scrolled through her onboard computer to pull up a city map for the area. When she found what she was looking for, she stared at the monitor in surprise.

“Oh my God,” she gasped. She reached in her pocket and pulled out her cell phone, hitting a speed dial to call Ray again. When he picked up, she said, “I’ve got a new location for you to meet me.”

She gave him the address and told him what she suspected, but left out things too personal to tell him, not now anyway. At some point she might have to answer his questions on the subject of her and Jessie’s relationship. And that would mean trusting him with a whole new side of her, but now was not the time.

“Sam, I know you’re heading for the house on High Street,” he said. “And you’ve earned the right to see this through, but please wait for backup. Follow protocol. Promise me.”

A moment of silence seemed to last an eternity.

“I’m not sure I can make that promise, Ray. Just get there as soon as you can.”

Sam ended the call, not waiting for him to reply. She said everything she could and didn’t feel the need to lie, not to him. And like Jessie, she headed on foot toward High Street, weapon drawn. With any luck, Ray and his team would get there when she did. They’d arrive loud and proud, Code Three, using sirens and lights. But if she didn’t have company, she preferred a more stealthy approach.

Either way, Jessie would get help. Sam would see to that.

Returning to the basement had taken its toll, and Jess knew that any nightmares to come would be fueled by the vivid details of her terror revisited. She crept through the dark with the Colt Python aimed, but could her eyes be trusted? Could her brain assess any real threat?

Sweat trickled from her brow, stinging her eyes. And shadows undulated, playing cruel tricks on her mind. The incessant pounding of her heart kept pulse with her shallow breaths. And her body shook without her ability to control it.

But when a large rat crossed over her foot, she felt its weight and heard its high-pitched shrieks.
That sound. My God, that sound
. It hurled her into the past.

Nightmarish images came back to haunt her in a rush, triggered by that sound. She remembered the scratches of rats as they scurried in the dark basement years ago. As a child, she’d slept with one eye open, afraid the rats would bite her—that she’d wake to find parts of her missing. Fear gripped her like it had back then.

And the rat that darted for cover had triggered a panic attack. Dizziness set her adrift in the dark—her equilibrium challenged—and the nausea returned. She felt as if she were being smothered, unable to catch her breath. And her heart punished her ribs. She almost lost it. Her nerves were fraying, a slow torture.

If she was Harper’s last chance, God help him.

She stepped closer to the source of the dim light in the room, a spot behind a wooden post that had been a remnant of an old shelf. As she neared, she knew where the light was coming from, and her eyes brimmed with tears. A glimmer filtered through a hole, one she had dug many years ago. She ducked behind the post and knelt. Trash she’d stuffed into the cavity, to keep the man from finding it, had long since blown away or rotted.

Moonlight and the distant city lights streamed through it now. And a faint breeze touched her cheek as she peered through the crack. She remembered how it felt to see through it for the first time. Back then she’d worn down an old spoon and a few big nails that she’d used as tools to cut through two layers of cracked old brick. The simple comfort of fresh air on her face had made her cry then, as it did now. And images of her first encounter with little Samantha Cooper flooded her mind.

She thought she had been found that day, that someone would come to rescue her, but Sammie must not have understood. And when days went by and help never came, the setback crushed her spirit, finally and completely. She’d never told anyone that, especially not Sam. Hell, she hated admitting it to herself.