“Come on, Eli. Where are you?”
The house was getting colder by the second. Through the upstairs she went another time and there, in the third bedroom, she saw a crack, heard the whistle of air seeping through a window that wasn’t quite latched. She tried to slam it shut, but it wouldn’t catch.
Throwing her weight into it, she heard… what? The skin on her scalp crinkled as she caught her breath and listened.
Another noise. From the floor below! Footsteps?
“Eli!” She slammed her knee against and old cedar chest as she raced to the hallway, then flew frantically down the stairs. The flashlight’s faint beam bobbed and wobbled, casting shadows.
Around the corner and into the living area she ran, where the fire crackled and hissed and the corners were cloaked in darkness.
“Eli?” she said, her voice sounding loud, even echoing as the wind battered the house. “Honey?”
But she saw no one on the main floor.
Not Eli.
Not Trace.
Not the dogs.
But she felt a presence… Something different, like the scent of fresh, night air clinging to the darkness.
Don’t do this. Don’t freak yourself out.
In a flash, the night she was attacked in the parking garage, sizzled through her mind. Brutal images of pain and fear.
Pull yourself together! Keep searching!
Where the hell is Trace’s son?
Bracing herself, nearly wincing as she passed gloomy corners, she pushed herself through the kitchen and into the stairwell. The steps to the cellar squeaked and her nostrils filled with the dry smell of dust that had collected from years of neglect. Whispery fingers tickled her cheek. “Oh!” She nearly stumbled down the remaining steps as the cobweb brushed against her face and clung to her hair.
Quieting her racing heart, she scraped the barest of light from her flashlight over stacked firewood, the scent of raw cedar faint in the cold space where more old furniture and tools had been left to gather dust.
The flashlight was fading but she forced its thin stream of light under the stairs, and across shelves where old canning glassware and boxes of insecticides hid.
Scccrrratttch!
She nearly dropped the flashlight as a mouse, its eye catching the fading light scurried quickly into a crack in the concrete wall.
“Oh. God. . damn! Eli!” she called again, but heard nothing other than the pounding of her heart and somewhere far off, the sound of chains rattling in the wind and that nerve-stretching thunk, thunk, thunk of a branch pummeling the house.
She hated dark spaces, had all of her life. No, that wasn’t true. Her real fear of the dark had come after the attack, when her assailant had sprung from the shadows.
Again, a horrid memory flashed through her mind and in that instant her knees nearly buckled. She grabbed hold of a post bolstering the stairs for support and in so doing dropped her flashlight. It rolled away, the light drunkenly spinning across forgotten chairs, exposed beams overhead and a wall of ancient, dirty cement.
Don’t think about him. Push the attack out of your mind! It’s over.
But now that the image was planted, she couldn’t forget her assailant, how his hard, angry body had been as it pressed her to the concrete, how he’d smelled of some faint aftershave mingled with sweat and a trace of cigarette smoke. He’d been so big and strong… built like… the men she’d met today, her brothers! Some of them had that same strong, athletic build. Hadn’t she thought of Judd as a football player, and even Lance, Clarissa’s husband, had that same primal, nearly jungle cat — like quality?
The others?
What about Robert or Thane or the twins?
And they all had those cold blue eyes.
Heart pounding, breathing in shallow gasps, feeling the taste of fear in the back of her throat, she slid down the post, then crawled to the flashlight, scooped it up and after giving herself a quick mental shake, struggled to her feet.
You have to find Eli!
Shaken, she pulled herself together. Up the stairs she climbed.
Maybe he’d gotten out of bed and followed Trace to the barns. Perhaps he’d been disoriented. . hadn’t he called her “Mommy”? There was a chance the medication had caused him to sneak downstairs and outside…
How?
Wouldn’t you have seen him? Heard him?
This was ridiculous!
She needed help!
She threw on her coat, gloves, and boots, took the time to light the one candle she’d seen in the living room with an ember from the fire, then, with her phone clutched in her hand, she walked to the door and punched out Detective Alvarez’s number.
What would she say? She’d lost the kid? Trace hadn’t come back from the barns?
That was foolish.
She didn’t care.
“Better safe than sorry,” she said, looking through the windows, feeling the seconds ticking by as the snow continued to pile and drift. When the detective didn’t answer, Kacey hung up, didn’t leave a message.
Not yet.
She’d find Trace first, she thought, pocketing her phone and opening the door to the cold, dark night.
As she stepped outside a wall of cold air hit her so hard it seemed to strip any warmth from her body. Her skin chilled immediately and she wished she’d taken the time to grab a scarf and hat. Over the keen of the wind, she thought, again, she heard chains rattling, like those on an empty flagpole, or the clinking sound of shackled prisoners walking.
All in your imagination. Keep moving.
Swallowing back her fear, she followed the trail of footprints she’d seen earlier that were nearly covered now, but she kept after them, not toward the barns, but around the corner of the house, past a snow-covered rhododendron bush to the side of Trace’s home where more footprints had clustered.
It was impossible to confirm, of course, to make out anything definitive with the snow blowing over the area. Over the wind she heard the branch still battering the house. Looking up, forcing the dying flashlight beam skyward, she not only saw the pine slapping at the siding, she noticed one of those fire-escape ladders hanging from the window of the extra bedroom.
The ladder moved with the wind, its chains rattling like the bones of the dead.
Her heart plummeted.
She knew in a heartbeat that Eli, with his broken arm, had somehow slithered down this ladder and disappeared into the frigid, unforgiving night.
CHAPTER 35
Noreen Johnson had sunk onto the piano bench, her shoulders hunched together, but, Alvarez observed, hadn’t yet given up the fight. “For the love of God, Gerald, why couldn’t you keep your pants up! First Robert, with that awful Lindley woman… and of course you had to hire him so that I could be reminded every single day of your betrayal and now… now another one? How could you?” Her cheeks flamed red.
“What’s done is done,” Gerald said wearily. “We can talk about this later. For now, I think the detectives have some questions they want answered.”
“It’s over!” she whispered. “Our life, the one we knew is over.”
Gerald cleared his throat and kept his tense gaze toward Pescoli and Alvarez. “What can I do for you, detectives?” he asked, leaning forward, hands clasped between his knees.
Alvarez took the lead, asking him a series of questions. Gerald Johnson swore he’d never met the victims, hadn’t known they could be sired by him, hadn’t even guessed it until Acacia had shown up earlier in the day. He had no idea if any of them had any enemies, but he was certain from his children’s reaction earlier that they were as surprised as he.