Midnight Exposure Read online

  He lowered the woman to the floor, grimacing at the filth she’d have to endure. Not for long, though. He only had to keep her confined for a few days.

  He removed her jacket, hat, and gloves. Her limp body slid in the dirt as he adjusted her position and clamped the handcuffs around her slender wrists. She was a marvel. Fine-boned and feminine, yet simultaneously long-limbed and strong. His palms stroked up her biceps, squeezed the firm muscle of her shoulder, then moved upward to cup her jaw. And now he knew exactly why she’d seemed so familiar the first time he’d seen her.

  His gaze moved to the tapestry he’d brought down and hung on the cinder-block wall. One of the prizes of his collection, it depicted the story of another tall, graceful redhead with creamy skin and a warrior’s bearing: the goddess, the healer, the Druidess, Brigid.

  Jayne was Brigid in the flesh. And, like the goddess, she’d been sent here to heal him.

  He turned back to his captive. Long eyelashes rested against skin the color of fresh cream. She was lovely. Absolutely lovely. And pure as the clean snow falling outside. His fingertip traced the scar on her cheek. A crude spiral. The symbol for ethereal power. Exactly what he needed to end his torment. The woman had been marked by the gods.

  He pulled her camera from her jacket pocket and turned it over in his hands. He scrolled through the digital images. His photo was not among them. She must have another. Perhaps she’d left it in her room at the inn. No matter. He’d get it. The picture wasn’t that important anymore. Not after the revelation had come to him.

  The winter solstice loomed just a few days away. Until then he’d pass the night hours awake and lonely. On the solstice, she’d be bound to him forever. Her life would flow from her body to his. Life and death would be mingled in the strongest earthly connection.

  Until then—

  He pulled his boline from his pocket. The white handle of the ritual knife fit comfortably in his palm; its curved, sickle-like blade sharp as a razor. He knelt by her side, the concrete floor unyielding under his knees. He turned her palm upward, drew the knife across her soft skin, and dipped a forefinger in the blood that welled from the shallow cut. Raising his hand to his forehead, he drew the lines of Brigid’s off-kilter cross on his flesh.

  Perhaps some of her power could sustain him until the solstice. Then, her sacrifice would be his salvation.

  John lifted his head from the mattress and listened. Thumping and the barely discernable murmur of voices echoed through the ductwork.

  The man was back. Terror coiled around John’s heart like a python and squeezed. His gaze darted to the open cardboard box next to the door. The usual bottles of water and meal replacement bars were still piled inside from this morning’s visit. Unless it was tomorrow.

  Had he blanked out an entire day? Or was this a new, unexpected visit? A steady dose of some sort of tranquilizer made days difficult to track, but a change in the daily routine could mean his time was up. Despite the man’s promises, John knew in his soul that death was on the agenda.

  A shiver passed over him, but this third-story room wasn’t as cold as the basement prison he’d occupied those first few weeks. His heavy wool sweater and jeans were filthy but warm. The heat register gave an occasional puff of warmth. They’d taken his boots, though, so his feet were always cold.

  With a groan, he rolled to his side, then slid off the mattress onto his hands and knees. The chain that attached his ankle to the iron bed frame clanked to the floor. Limbs stiff with disuse trembled. The impact with bare wood amplified the aches in his dehydrated joints. Unnaturally loose muscles protested and threatened to let his face flop onto the hardwood. Again.

  Mustering energy from fear, he crawled toward the window. The tether played out before he was quite to the wall. Stretching, his fingers grasped the sash and he heaved to his knees. He closed one eye to peer through the half-inch gap between the trim and the plywood sheet screwed into the frame.

  Lazy white flakes swirled across his field of vision. The overcast sky gave no clues as to the time of day.

  The rough grate of wood on swollen wood paralyzed him. He knew that sound well, the scrape of the door to the basement. He couldn’t prevent the tremors that seized his limbs any more than Pavlov’s dogs could’ve stopped salivating.

  Panic pulled at his remaining sanity. The strange symbols drawn in the cellar flashed through his mind in a terrifying montage.

  The door rasped again. John’s bowels pinched. Memories of gut-searing hunger and debilitating blows received in those first days flooded his brain. Days when he’d hung on to life with both hands. Now he almost wished he hadn’t. A quick death would sure beat this slo-mo dying routine he had going on now. But he hadn’t known that then. And even if he had, he wasn’t sure he could’ve made a different decision.

  Survival dominated all other instincts, hijacked the body and brain when necessary. He’d learned that the hard way. Imminent death brought forth the animal in him.

  John held his breath and strained his ears for more sounds. Footsteps on the bare wood treads of the basement steps rang through the heat duct. More thumps. More footsteps. A vehicle passed beneath his window. Then silence.

  He wasn’t coming upstairs.

  John’s bones shook as relief swept through him. Then he stiffened.

  Those noises meant one thing. Someone else had been imprisoned in that cold and dank cellar. Someone else was chained like an animal, ready to be beaten and starved into submission. Someone else was going to be left with no options but to obey or die.

  Bile surged into his throat. Helplessness drained his soul like a parasite. But what could he do? Escape attempts were futile and resulted in more pain. He couldn’t withstand any more pain.

  A yearning was fanned inside him. He should shout down the register to the new prisoner. Just thinking about contact with another person other than his kidnapper sent a wave of giddiness through him. But terror muted any sound that vibrated in his throat.

  Bad things happened when he disobeyed.

  He turned and looked across the few feet of space to his mattress. So far. Too far. His body curled into itself, wrapped in the fear of an unknown fate. As his eyelids drifted shut, he felt his humanity slip further away.

  In the back office of the diner, Nathan looked up from his invoices at three sharp raps on his door. “Come in.”

  Chief Hugh Bailey stood in the doorway “We have a serious problem.”

  “What’s up, Hugh?” Nathan set aside his paperwork and straightened his spine. Unease whispered along the back of his neck.

  Hugh swept his red knit hat from his head. A few snowflakes drifted to the commercial tile. “Just got back from the Black Bear Inn. Mae had a tourist check in earlier today. Went out this afternoon. Never came back.”

  Grease from the hamburger Nathan had eaten for dinner rose into the back of his throat. “Was she tall, with long red hair?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She was in the diner today,” Nathan volunteered. No doubt Hugh already knew the girl had eaten here.

  Hugh whipped out a pocket-sized notebook and clicked open his pen. “What time?”

  Hugh probably knew that too.

  “I’m not sure exactly. Toward the end of lunchtime.”

  “Anything seem odd about her?” Hugh asked.

  “Not really. City girl. Pretty. Looked out of place. Other than that, nothing.”

  “You talk to her?”

  “Sure. Introduced myself.” Nathan fiddled with a paper clip. “We talked for a few minutes. She expressed some interest in local artists. I offered to take her to see Mark’s ducks and Martha’s quilts in the morning, weather permitting of course.”

  Hugh flattened his mouth and gave his head a curt shake. “While you were chatting her up, someone slashed two of her tires in your parking lot.”

  “Really?” Indignation laced Nathan’s voice. “No one told me about that.”

  Hugh looked down at his notebook. “The tow truck
picked up the car around three.”

  “Oh, I had some errands to run. Did you check inside the vehicle?”

  Hugh’s nod was far too casual. “Nothing unusual in it.”

  “This is a small town. Where could she have gone?” Nathan followed Hugh’s gaze as it shifted to the window. Outside, snow-flakes danced in the glow of the rear parking lot light. A spare inch coated the asphalt.

  “It’s damned cold out,” Hugh said. “She had hot chocolate with Reed Kimball at the bookstore. She bought a book and left the store at four forty-five. Hasn’t been seen since. We found a Styrofoam cup and her purchase in the hedge outside the inn.”

  “Not good.”

  “No. Definitely not. Doug and I did a drive around. No sign of her. With this storm gearing up for tomorrow, I want to dispense with the usual wait and start looking for this girl in a major way. I need volunteers. Appreciate it if you could handle organizing them. Doug’s already started making calls.”

  “Sure thing.” Nathan rose. “I’ll see how many people I can scrape up. Maybe she fell or something. Hit her head. I can’t think of any other possibilities.”

  “If she fell outside the inn, she’d still be outside the inn.” Hugh tugged on his cap and rose. “I don’t like this one bit, not after that body turned up last week.”

  Nathan rose to his feet and splayed his palms on the desk. “Hugh, we talked about that. Do not go starting any rumors unless the medical examiner officially rules that death a homicide. Chances are that kid died of exposure.”

  “Don’t you think it’s odd, having two strange events in such a short period of time?” Hugh cocked his head.

  “No. Pure coincidence. There’s nothing unusual about someone getting lost and freezing to death. Happens every year.”

  “But now we have a missing kid and a missing tourist.”

  “Christ, Hugh. That kid disappeared over six weeks ago. You can’t possibly connect the two events. This town can’t afford bad publicity. This was the slowest hunting season on record. One more like that and this town’ll shrivel up and die.”

  A rap on the door frame cut Nathan off before he could threaten Hugh with town council intervention. A uniformed Lieutenant Doug Lang stood in the hall, a black knit hat clenched in both hands.

  “The Rotary Club is going to help.” Doug’s gaze passed over Hugh and settled on Nathan. “Do you want to use the diner as a base?”

  “Good idea, Doug,” Nathan answered.

  Doug flushed.

  “I’ll get on the phone to the state and county boys, but I doubt we’ll get any help yet.” Hugh grunted and stepped into the hall. “We need to find her. Before we have another body on our hands.”

  Doug’s eyes followed Hugh’s exit.

  “So how many volunteers do we have in the Rotary?” Nathan pulled paper and a pencil from his desk drawer.

  Doug pulled a small notebook from his pocket. “A dozen. We’re calling the volunteer firemen, too.”

  “Good.”

  Doug scratched his head with the tip of his finger. He glanced at the door and lowered his voice. “Just so you know, Hugh’s been talking to Reed Kimball about that dead kid.”

  Nathan snapped the pencil in two. “Has he?”

  “Yeah. Hugh isn’t telling you everything about this Jayne Sullivan. I think it’s a huge coincidence that one of the last people to see her alive was Reed Kimball, considering.”

  “Considering what?” Other than that Hugh wanted Reed to take over as chief. Really, Hugh wanted anyone but Doug to take over as chief. Nathan couldn’t blame Hugh. Doug was an idiot, but his daddy owned the local bank. Nathan found the lieutenant easily manipulated and therefore useful on occasion.

  Doug expression went smug and mean. “You didn’t know?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Jayne raised her eyelids and immediately squeezed them shut again. Her head felt like a bowling ball mounted on a Popsicle stick, with her neck not nearly strong enough to support its bloated burden. Pain and nausea competed for top billing as she clawed her way out of a drugged stupor. A weak shiver coursed through her limbs.

  Had she been at a party? Had someone slipped her something? Her memory was a deep dark hole. The fact that she couldn’t remember the previous night washed over her consciousness like an ice-cold shower.

  She tried to raise a hand to her head. A tug on her other wrist and a metallic jingle made her eyelids snap open. Pain shot through her left hand. Her vision blurred in the dim light. She blinked hard and focused as the images in front of her sharpened.

  Handcuffs linked her wrists. A thick chain fastened her bound hands to the stone wall four feet away. She stared at them as if they were figments of her imagination. She turned over her left hand. A fresh cut was just beginning to scab over. Adrenaline pushed the first twinge of terror through the drug-induced haze.

  This can’t be happening.

  Ignoring the pressure behind her eyeballs, she scanned her surroundings. Four walls of irregular stone. Dirt floor. Low ceiling. A bare lightbulb was attached directly to a rough-hewn beam. A steep wooden staircase rose in the center of the space. High on the opposite wall, faint gray light filtered in through two narrow, rectangular windows. An ancient furnace hunkered in the far corner.

  OK. She was in a basement. But where? And how long had she been down here? She glanced toward the closest small window. With the heavy cloud cover, it could be dawn, dusk, or anywhere in between.

  She forced herself to a sitting position. The room spun briefly, and she closed her eyes for three slow breaths. A gentle probe with her fingertips found the egg-size lump behind her ear. When she pressed on it, pain bounced through her head like a pinball.

  Jayne blinked hard to sharpen her focus. The walls were covered with hundreds of those strange symbols. As her head cleared, Jayne connected the dots. She sucked a shaky breath into her lungs, controlled the exhalation.

  She’d been knocked unconscious, drugged, and kidnapped by whoever was following her around town. This sort of thing happened to other people. She heard it on the news, read about it in the newspaper. She watched CSI with the same morbid fascination as everyone else.

  But this sort of violence didn’t actually strike the average person. Twice. And how had he grabbed her without making a sound? She was always vigilant.

  Fear swept the remaining fuzz from her brain. Her situation crystallized. If she couldn’t find a way to escape, she would die here. She refused to contemplate that option. There was always a way out, a counter to every attack. She just had to find it.

  She would escape.

  But how?

  Both windows were barred. No bulkhead doors. The only way out was at the top of the staircase. It was also the only way in, and the way that her captor would enter when he came back.

  Because whoever he was, he would come back. The faces of the men she’d met in Huntsville flashed through her mind: Nathan, Jed, Chief Bailey, Bill. She forced herself to add Reed to the list. Her attraction to him didn’t alter the fact that he was essentially a stranger.

  What if Reed wasn’t R. S. Morgan? Could one of the other men be the sculptor? Could the sculptor be mentally ill? How desperate was he to keep his identity a secret? She hadn’t heard from Chief Bailey, so she didn’t know for sure that Ty Jennings was still in Philadelphia.

  Jayne drew in more stale air and refocused with a quick, painful shake of her head. Next to her, directly under the place where the chain was fastened to the stone, three bottles of water tempted her. It looked like her captor wouldn’t be back right away, and that he wanted her alive—for now.

  Jayne licked her chapped lips as she picked up a bottle and examined it. The seals were broken; the water was probably laced with a sedative. She set it back on the floor. Like she’d drink anything supplied to her by a kidnapper who’d already drugged her once.

  A faint moan sounded from above.

  Jayne held her breath and strained her ears for sounds. Only silence greeted he
r ears. No footsteps echoed from overhead. No squeaking of floorboards. No hum of appliances. Nothing.

  Must have been the old house above her settling or the wind through the trees outside.

  Scooting back to lean against the rough wall, she squinted at the tiny window across the room. Through it, she could see the edge of the forest. Fat snowflakes fell against a colorless sky. From the lack of other visible roofs and the silence, she doubted she was still in town. The vastness of the wilderness surrounding Huntsville flashed through her mind. Didn’t matter. She’d take her chances out there over what was in store for her in this basement.

  She didn’t want to die, but she really didn’t want to be tortured, then die.

  Jayne pounded a fist on her knee. Death wasn’t an option. Not only did she have plenty of living to do, she couldn’t do that to her brothers. They’d never be able to cope with losing her, especially Danny. He’d already sacrificed enough. His mental state was far too fragile to cope with another loss.

  Time to get off her butt and out of this prison.

  The room was cold but not as freezing as outside. Jayne felt the dampness seep into her bones. She was dressed exactly as she’d been when she left the bookstore: wool sweater, jeans, and boots. Her jacket, hat, and gloves were missing. No doubt to discourage an escape attempt.

  Jayne examined the handcuffs. Too tight to slip out. There was a tiny keyhole in each, and Jayne wasted a few minutes searching her pockets and the surrounding dirt for anything that would fit into the hole. She was no angel. She’d picked a few locks in her day.

  Finding nothing useful, she tucked her feet under her body and rose to a kneeling position. Whatever drug she’d been administered was wearing off rapidly, because she only wavered for a brief moment before getting to her feet. Her legs felt steadier than she’d expected.

  She tested the length of chain with a yank. It didn’t give, but a few minuscule granules of gray dust trickled down to the floor to accumulate in a hopeful pile. Jayne pulled harder. The metal cuffs bit into her flesh. Blood seeped from the thin skin over her wrist bones.