He pulled her onto his lap and into his arms and rocked her as she’d done Hope so many times. “Sshh,” he whispered. “Don’t cry, baby. We’re almost there.” It made her cry harder, because they were going to die and she’d never get the chance to show him or anyone else what she could have been. They were going to die.
“We’re going to do this,” he whispered fiercely. “They’re moving things. Something’s happening. Close your eyes.” She did and he wiped her tears with his thumbs. “I think I made it worse,” he said lightly, then pulled her back to him for one more hard hug.
“Whatever happens,” she murmured, “thank you.”
He set her off his lap and rose, tall and strong despite his ordeal. He held out his hand. “We don’t have much time.”
She stood on shaky legs. “What are we going to do?”
He smiled again, approval in his eyes. His eyes were warm and brown. She’d remember that, whatever happened. He handed her what had been a chunk of rock, about four inches long, its edge sharpened to a razor finish. “This is yours.”
She stared at it, wide-eyed. “You made this?”
“God made the rock. I just sharpened it. You hold on to it. You may need it if we get separated.”
“What will you do?”
He went to the corner of his cell and brushed at the dirt until he pulled out a sharpened stone, easily three times bigger than hers. “Have you slept at all?” she whispered, and he smiled again.
“Catnaps.” He spent the next ten minutes showing her where and how to pierce an assailant’s body to do the most damage.
Then a door slammed open in the hall and her eyes flew up to his. He looked grim and she was suddenly more afraid than ever. “He’s coming,” she said, shaking.
Beardsley smoothed his hands over her arms. “Then he’s coming,” he said with finality. “We’re ready. Right?”
She nodded.
“Then go curl up over there in the corner. Make yourself as big as you can. You’re supposed to be me.”
“I’d need two of me,” she said, and one side of his mouth lifted fleetingly.
“Three, actually. Bailey, you can’t falter. And if I give you an order, you obey me without question. Do you understand?”
He was coming closer now, opening a door, then firing a single shot. She heard screams from where she’d only heard the weeping before. Horrified, Bailey met Beardsley’s eyes as more doors were opened and more shots fired. The screaming faded as the voices were silenced one by one. “He’s killing them.”
A muscle twitched in Beardsley’s jaw. “I know. Change in plan. You hide behind the door, I’ll stand on the other side. Move, Bailey.”
She obeyed and he took up position next to the door, his big dagger in one hand. A second later the door flew open and she covered her face to keep from being hit. Bailey heard a strangled cry and a gurgle and then a thump.
“Let’s go,” Beardsley said. She stepped over the body of one of the guards she’d seen one of the times he’d taken her back to the office. Beardsley wiped the dagger against his pants, cleaning off the blood, then he was running, dragging her behind him.
But her knees were weak and her legs so bruised she kept stumbling. “Just go,” she said. “You run. Leave me here.”
But he didn’t let go, dragging her past one cell, then another. Some were empty. Most were not. Bailey gagged at the sight of the girls, chained and bleeding. Dead.
“Don’t look,” he barked. “Just run.”
“I can’t.”
He picked her up and tucked her under his arm like she was a football. “You’re not dying on my watch, Bailey,” he gritted, running around the corner.
Then Beardsley stopped and she looked up. He stood in the middle of the hall and he had a gun. Beardsley tossed her and she landed on her knees. “Run,” he barked.
Then Beardsley plowed into him and knocked him against the wall. Bailey made herself get up and run while the two men grappled behind her. She heard the sickening sound of bone hitting the concrete wall, but she kept going.
Until she saw the girl. She was battered and blood oozed from a hole in her side and a second, glancing wound to her head. She’d clawed her way across her cell and had stretched out one arm into the hall. But she was still alive.
Weakly the girl lifted her hand. “Help me,” she whispered. “Please.”
Without thinking Bailey grabbed the girl’s hand and dragged her to her feet. “Move.”
Dutton, Friday, February 2, 2:35 p.m.
Daniel stood on the front porch of his family’s house, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu. It was here he’d stood, nearly three weeks ago, with Frank Loomis. Frank had told him his parents “might be missing.” Of course they were already long dead. But Daniel’s search for them had led him to Philadelphia and Simon and the pictures. His search for the pictures had led him right back here.
“Déjà vu all over again?” Luke asked softly and Daniel nodded.
“Yeah.” He unlocked the door and pushed it open and found his feet wouldn’t move.
Alex slipped her arm around his waist. “Come on.” She tugged him over the threshold and he stopped in the foyer, his eyes doing a sweep of the place. He’d hated this house. Hated every brick of it. He turned to find Susannah doing a similar sweep. She was pale, but as she had during the entire ordeal in Philly, she was holding up.
“Where?” he asked.
Susannah pushed by him and started up the stairs. He followed, holding Alex’s hand as tightly as he dared. Luke brought up the rear, alert and watching.
Upstairs, Daniel frowned. Doors he’d closed the last time he was here were opened and a painting on the hall wall was askew. He pushed open the door to his parents’ bedroom. The room had been ransacked, the mattress slashed.
“They’ve been here,” he said flatly. “Looking for Simon’s key.”
“This way,” Susannah said tightly, and they followed her into what had been Simon’s room. It, too, had been ransacked, but there had been nothing in the drawers or under the bed for them to find. Daniel’s father had disposed of that a long time ago.
There was, he thought, an evilness hanging in the air. Or perhaps it was just his imagination. But Alex’s face had taken on an uncomfortable cast.
“It has kind of a presence, doesn’t it?” she whispered, and he squeezed her hand.
Susannah stood at the closet door, her hands opening and closing into fists at her sides. She was still pale, but she squared her shoulders resolutely. “I could be wrong. There might be nothing here,” she said, then opened the door. The closet was empty, but she walked inside anyway. “Did you know this house has hidey-holes, Daniel?”
Something in her voice had the hairs rising on the back of his neck. “Yes. I thought I knew them all.”
She knelt, feeling around the baseboards. “I found the hidey-hole off my closet one night when I was hiding from Simon. I’d huddled up against the wall and I must have pushed the right way because the panel opened and I rolled behind the wall.” She steadily worked as she talked. “I wondered if all the closets had these hidey-holes. One day when I thought Simon was gone, I tried to see if I could open his.”
The flat finality with which she’d said it twisted his stomach. “He caught you.”
“At first I didn’t think he had. I heard him thumping up the stairs and I ran to my room. But he had,” she said, quietly now. “When I woke up with a whiskey bottle in my hand, it was inside my hidey-hole. He’d stuffed me in there.”
Alex smoothed her hand down his arm and he realized he’d been holding her hand too tightly. He let go, but she held on, comforting him.
Daniel cleared his throat. “He knew about your hiding place.”