Close to Home (17 page)

And while he waited, not one car came down the lane.

This would be an ideal place to nab them and far enough away from the stable to be safe.

Slowly he scooted away from the log, packed up his gear, and began jogging back to the spot where he'd hidden his vehicle on a forest service road. Through the brush and around a small, fenced-in plot was a cemetery, complete with overgrown headstones and a bigger tomb. The fence was falling down, nearly useless in places, but he skirted the graveyard anyway, not out of any respect for the dead, but because he didn't want to disturb any lingering spirits. He told himself ghosts didn't exist, that demons and witches and the lot were all created to keep people in line, but deep down the idea of spirits frightened him, and he wasn't certain they weren't real. How many times had he thought he'd seen a wraith or ghost, here, on this property? Hadn't the people in town insisted that Blue Peacock Manor was haunted? And hadn't his own mother warned him that malevolent spirits were about, existing among the living, and, of course, collecting in boneyards? Lucifer himself, she'd insisted, had visited the wooded plots surrounding the old house with its peculiar family. “Take a look at them,” Mother had advised. “Everyone who lives there. They're touched in the head, I tell you. All a little bit off, and it's because of the demons within.”

So now, as always, he gave the ancient cemetery a wide berth and made his way to his waiting truck.

It was time to step up his plans.

 

Rosalie's eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep when finally the first streaks of dawn filtered through the grimy windows high overhead. Shivering from the cold, her body aching, she felt as if she would never escape.

So it was another day.

Rosalie silently prayed that this was the day that somehow her family would find her.

As if.

Her heart sank, and despair clutched at her as she stared at the dusty rafters supporting the ceiling. She'd seen the bruise developing beneath a long scrape on her side and abdomen where she'd fallen on the fence during her ill-fated escape attempt.

If only she'd gotten away!

She'd spent the hours since then lying on her cot, replaying the scene over and over again, wondering how she could free herself.

It was impossible she decided, tears filling her eyes. Whatever the jerk wanted to do with her, she was doomed. Yanking the sleeping bag closer to her chin, she couldn't stop herself from shaking with the cold. Sniffing and angry with herself, she dashed the tears from her eyes as she recalled the ignominy of being hauled over the dickhead's shoulder like a damned sack of potatoes.

If she could, she'd kill the bastard.

Instead she was stuck here, lying on the stupid cot, feeling sorry for herself, watching as morning light chased away the shadows and gloom of this sorry barn.

Get up, Do something, Anything, Do not let yourself become a victim! You're not dead yet, but you damned well will be if you let this goon do what he wants to do to you!

Sniffing back the last of her tears, she tried to think. To plan. To find a way out of this horrible place, away from the monster—no, make that monsters, plural. The dickhead had Scraggly Hair, a man whom Rosalie instinctively knew was weaker, the follower. Maybe she could get him alone, plead with him . . .

Stop it! Neither of these jerkwads is going to let you go! Get real, You've seen their faces, could ID them, Haven't you watched enough cop shows on cable to know that criminals, at least those with any brains, leave no witnesses?

Her stomach tightened, and fear crawled through her blood. Just because they hadn't killed her yet didn't mean they weren't planning it. And not just her; they'd mentioned others.

Do something, Rosalie, Don't count on Mom or stupid Mel or even Dad to show up, This is on you,

Her bladder was about to burst, so she had to get up. With an effort, she kicked off the sleeping bag and rolled off her cot, only to wince as she straightened. Lifting her sweatshirt, she viewed the bruise. Bluish with green edges, it had spread along one side under her ribs. What if she were bleeding internally? Is that what this meant? Oh, Jesus, that sounded really bad.

Gently she touched the darkened skin and flinched when pain shot through her. Not a good idea to poke it much, especially since the shallow scrape was still raw. She decided to just take care of her bucket business and lie back on her bed of sorts to plot her escape. There had to be a way out of here.
Had
to.

First things first.

She used the damned bucket; after emptying her bladder, she straightened and pulled her pants over her hips with difficulty because of the handcuffs. Working the zipper was worse, and when it was finally up, she let out her breath and scanned the room again, catching a glimmer of something on the floor, something that shined briefly in the weak rays of light. “What the hell?” She took a step forward, saw the glimmer tucked deep into the corner near the doorway to the stall. Across the tiny room in an instant, she bent down and discovered a bit of metal wedged into the crack between the wall and floorboards.

Quickly, she tried to pry it from its resting place, digging with her already-broken nails, attempting to loosen the slim, flat piece with her cuffed hands. “Come on, come on,” she whispered. What the devil was this metal strip that she could barely get her finger under? Biting her lip, she dug at the thing and eased it slowly and gently from its resting spot. Finally, it came loose and slid into her palm. A tiny little nail file, no longer than her pinkie, it had a hook on one end and a minuscule hole on the other. She turned it over in her hand and wondered where it had come from. Surely she would have noticed it before now.

Wait! Suddenly she remembered her struggle with her captor's sidekick, Scraggly Hair. This must've fallen out of his pocket during the fight. It wasn't much, but . . . used the right way, into an eye or ear or voice box, the little strip of metal could do some serious damage.

Revived, she started looking around the floor, hoping that something else had fallen out of the little man's pockets and was rewarded with the actual clippers, in pieces, and a tiny chain. Again, they weren't the best weapons, not much really, but they would have to do. For now.

With the element of surprise on her side, the clippers might just be enough for her to get in one good shot and wound her abductor long enough to get free. Next time she wouldn't run blindly, but jump into his truck and drive like a bat out of hell. She remembered that when he'd brought her to this godforsaken place, he'd hauled her inside and left his keys in the truck. He hadn't made that mistake when she'd tried to escape, but hopefully it was his habit to leave the keys in the ignition.

If so, she'd damn well take advantage of it.

Slipping all the metal pieces into the front pocket of her jeans, she felt slightly better than she had since her thwarted run for freedom.

For the first time since she'd been thrown back into this horrid prison, Rosalie felt a tiny ray of hope.

T
hough it was obvious that Mary-Alice loathed her as much as Jade detested the two-faced “angel” she'd been assigned, Mary-A was impossible to shake. No matter which corridor Jade used at Our Lady of the River, the blonde appeared, always with a cheery, pasted-on smile, and she hung out with Jade as much as possible between classes. It was enough to make Jade sick, so she decided they needed to have it out.

“Look,” Jade said as Mary-Alice tagged along while Jade was on her way to her next class. “I don't need a babysitter.”

“It's not like that.”

“Sure it is.”

“I don't know why you have to be so nasty all the time.”

Here we go,
Jade started down the stairs toward the math wing, where all the classrooms faced the student parking lot. “I'm just used to having my space, that's all.”

“No, that isn't all. You're rebelling because you think it's cool.”

Jade thought about it half a second and decided maybe honesty was the best policy with Mary-Alice, who was just half a step behind her. “Maybe, but having you puppy dog after me is creepy.” From the corner of her eye, Jade saw Mary-Alice's lips tighten at the corners and her eyes flare a bit. “So you can just leave me alone and we'll be cool.”

Mary-Alice kept up with her as they wended their way down the staircase teeming with kids hurrying to the second floor, the clatter of footsteps echoing in the stairwell. “I can't. You're my assignment.”

Ugh, Of course,
They'd reached the first floor and were near the restrooms outside the auditorium. “You mean like you get an ‘A' or something if you hang out with me?”

“If I introduce you around and, you know, get you interested in extracurricular activities or clubs or whatever, it goes on my permanent record, and so it's something I can refer to when I apply for college.”

“Are you insane?” Jade demanded. “Clubs? No! I'm not—oh, for the love of God!” Before she could think, Jade wrapped her fingers around the other girl's skinny arm and dragged her into the women's washroom.

“What the hell do you think you're doing?” Mary-Alice gasped.

Jade propelled her around the privacy partition blocking the doorway to the area around a row of stainless steel sinks. Paper towels littered the floor. One sink dripped. Hastily written crude comments and/or vows of love covered the back side of the partition and the walls around the mirrors. Cozy, it was not. Jade didn't care. It was time for Mary-Alice to hear her out. “Permanent record? Really?” She dropped Mary-Alice's arm. Mary-A quickly took a step back, rubbing her upper arm and glaring at Jade as if she were the devil incarnate. “I'm not joining any clubs or going to be on some stupid dance committee or whatever it is you think I might get into. I don't like one thing about this school, and I
really
don't like being someone's ‘project, ' so don't start talking up drama club or pep band or whatever it is you do around here. I'm not interested, and it's not happening. I'm
not
your project, so get over it. Find someone else to mold into a little mini-you, cuz it's not gonna be me.”

Mary-A crossed her arms under her chest. Her cheeks were flushed a vibrant angry red. “You have a horrible attitude.”

“That is a fact,” Jade agreed.

“You just don't care!”

Jade took a step closer to the popular girl, and though she knew she should shut up and quit while she was ahead, she was so irritated and frustrated and just plain mad that she couldn't stop her tongue. “You know what else is true? You're a fake, Mary-Alice. A back-stabbing, smile-to-your-face fraud.”

For a second Jade thought the other girl might slap her, but Mary-Alice gathered herself.

“You'll be sorry you ever said that,” Mary-Alice hissed in true drama queen fashion.

“Yeah?”

“I can make your life miserable here at Our Lady.”

“You mean more miserable?” Jade didn't doubt it, but lifted a shoulder as if she didn't care. “Bring it on. I don't give a shit.”

“You're dead at this school.”

“Dead. Okay. That sounds sort of like a threat,” Jade observed.

“I mean it. I can . . . I can . . .”

“What?” When Mary-A couldn't seem to complete her thought, Jade said in a tight voice, “So, here's one back at 'cha. I have friends in low places.”

“You're threatening
me?
” Mary-Alice squeaked.

A toilet flushed, and a stall door swung into the sink area. A plump, worried-looking girl Jade didn't recognize stepped into the area near the sink. She had to have heard the entire exchange.

“Not a word of this, Dana,” Mary-Alice warned her with a deadly smile.

“Of what?” Dana blinked innocently. “I didn't hear anything.” She ran her fingers under the hot water, stripped a paper towel from the dispenser, and stared into the mirror, where she caught Jade's gaze. For a second she seemed anxious and ready to shrink away, but somehow she managed to get her case of nerves under control. Flipping her streaked hair over one shoulder with forced confidence, she twisted pink lips into a photo-ready smile that was as practiced and phony as Mary-Alice's. “No,” she assured the more popular girl, “I didn't hear one thing.”

After tossing her towel into the overflowing bin, Dana hastened around the graffiti-laden partition to the swinging doors to the restroom.

In those few moments Jade's irritation had cooled slightly, and she realized she'd said more than she should have; that was the trouble with her temper. “Okay, let's not get crazy. Just back off. Your duty, or whatever you call it, is over. I can find my way around the school by myself, and I don't need your help making friends.”

“That's where you're wrong.”

“Don't care.” Jade hiked the strap of her bag over her shoulder.

“I was just trying to help,” Mary-Alice insisted and, like a chameleon, changed her colors, going from fury to contrition.

“You were just hoping to make yourself look good.”

“You're seriously twisted,” Mary-A said angrily.

“Probably.” Jade lifted a shoulder in indifference.

“I don't know why I bother,” Mary-Alice said.

“For your permanent record,” Jade responded, but Mary-A, as if deciding another second with Jade was too much, had already rounded the partition and shoved through the doors.

Jade figured that the minute she stepped into the hallway Mary-Alice was probably texting all of her friends, maybe the whole damned student body about what a loser Jade was.

Who cared?

You do, More than you want to admit,

Closing her eyes, Jade leaned on the counter where the sinks were mounted. What was she doing? It was one thing to avoid her “angel,” but making an out-and-out enemy of Mary-Alice Eklund was just plain stupid. She let out her breath slowly and opened her eyes to catch her uniformed image in the mirror. She just wasn't cut out to be an Our Lady Crusader. She just didn't buy into the whole allegiance-to-my-school thing. Never had. Never would. Didn't her mother know that? Why did Mom insist on punishing her?

Leaning over the leaky faucet, she splashed some water over her face and told herself to cool off, to not let Mary-Alice get to her. She yanked down a paper towel and for the first time noticed posters on the walls inside the restroom urging the football team to win the big game this weekend.

Really?

In here? So that as you came out of the stall or were combing your hair or adding lip gloss or whatever you'd feel some sense of rah-rah for Our Lady's football team.

Jade leaned closer to the mirror and brushed a bit of fallen mascara off her cheek. Another poster caught her eye, black and white with a picture of Rosalie Jamison front and center, a reward offered for evidence leading to her safe return. Fleetingly she wondered about the missing teenager, who, according to what she'd heard in the hallways, hadn't gone to Our Lady.

“Lucky,” Jade said, then regretted the word the minute it slipped out because it seemed that this was serious.

Bracing herself for the rest of the day, Jade hiked her backpack higher on her shoulder and was starting to text Cody again as she pushed open the swinging door of the restroom. Head bent, she ran into a tall dude who was talking to his friend while half running in the other direction. “Hey!” she cried as her cell phone slipped out of her hand to skid across the polished floor and smash into a radiator. “Watch where you're going!”

“Me?” He swung around, skidding to a stop, and she was about to lay into him when she recognized him. Liam Longstreet. Of all the rotten luck! Mary-A's boyfriend and a jock with an athletic swagger and killer smile.

Perfect.

His friend was shorter, thicker, with red hair and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose.

Other than these two idiots, the long corridor was empty.

“Whoa,” Liam Longstreet, who needed to shave or get serious about that beard shadow, stared down at her from somewhere around six feet two inches. He held out both his hands, fingers splayed, and took a step back. “Sorry. Didn't see you.”

She scrambled for her phone, but it had slid closer to him, so as she reached for it, her boots slipping a little, he snagged it from the floor. “Give me that!” she ordered.

In a second her life flashed before her eyes. What if he kept it? Saw her pictures and her texts to Cody? Read everything she'd ever written? Saw her in various states of undress and posted those pics on Instagram or Twitter or wherever? What if he called or texted the friends on her contact list? Panic crawled through her as she realized that, with her phone, he could do to her what Mary-Alice, his girlfriend, had threatened.

“Said I was sorry.” But he still didn't release the phone.

“So prove it.” She held out her hand defiantly, palm up, while inside she was crumbling. Desperate. There were photos of her and Cody kissing and touching and . . . oh, crap! “Give it back.” Oh, God, was her voice actually trembling?

She hadn't even noticed that Liam's friend was taking in the exchange with a twisted smile on his face and a glint in his eye.

“Let's take a look,” the friend suggested, “See what she's got in there.” He took a swipe at the phone, but Liam's fingers curled around it.

Jade said, “That's private property.”

The tardy bell rang loudly, echoing down the empty hallway. Great, she was late. Again. “If you don't give it back to me, I'm going to tell Father Paul that you stole it from me.” The threat about going to the priest had worked with Mary-Alice, so maybe . . .

“Don't do it, man. She's fuckin' freakin'! Doesn't want us to see what she's got on it,” the friend advised. “Oooh, this could be good.”

What a Neanderthal!
Jade's stomach curdled. “You steal private property, you're off the team and probably expelled from school,” she said, lifting her chin. “Now, give it back.” Her arm was still outstretched, and somehow she wasn't visibly shaking, even though she was trembling inside.

“Don't do it,” Redhead advised again.

Liam shook his head. “I said I was sorry.” Without so much as a glance at his friend, he placed the phone in her open palm.

Relieved beyond belief, Jade wrapped her fingers over the phone and dropped it quickly into her bag, but to add insult to injury, she felt her cheeks flaming. The big dumb-ass. His friend, shorter by three or four inches, still had a stupid smirk plastered across his freckled face. “What're you laughing at?” she demanded, bristling.

“You. Who the hell are you?” he asked.

“No one you need to know.” Jade started to move away from them.

“You got that right,” he agreed, shaking his nearly shaved head. “Jesus, Longstreet, that was a mistake. You
had
her, man. You had her.” Throwing another superior glance at Jade, he sneered, “But, hell, what would you want with her? Come on, Longstreet. Let's roll.”

“Good idea,” Jade said and turned on her heel, feeling two sets of eyes watching her backside.

“Crazy bitch,” the shorter guy muttered, and Jade wanted to turn and face him, yell back that he was an A-one dick, but decided she'd done enough damage for the day.

“Grow up, Prentice,” Liam muttered.

So now he was playing the nice-guy role? Oh, sure. The guy who was hooked up with “Angel” Mary-A? Not likely. Really, could life really get any worse?

“You're a fuckin' asshole, Longstreet,” Prentice retorted. “Just an observation. Don't take it personal.”

Jade caught a glimmer of why her mother hated it when she let an f-bomb fly. Maybe she'd quit swearing. Or at least try to, though it was hard not to swear a blue streak at dicks like Longstreet and Prentice. At the stairs, she cast one curious glance over her shoulder and saw Longstreet's friend catch her eye, only to flip her off.

Grow up,
she mouthed and if looks could kill, she'd already be six feet under. Prentice looked positively psychotic, but Liam was already walking away, rounding a corner, probably having already forgotten the incident.

“Losers,” Jade said under her breath and hurried quickly toward her next class.

Longstreet couldn't be that great if he hung out with that jerkwad of a friend. From the corner of her eye she saw that the red-haired dirtbag was laughing now. She knew that she'd made another couple of enemies.

So far she was batting a thousand.

 

“What's that?” Scottie asked when she and Gracie were walking to the cafeteria for lunch and she caught a peek inside Gracie's backpack. She was looking at the journal Gracie had found in the basement. Gracie had slid it into a plastic freezer bag to protect it and kept it with her all the time.