CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MAGGIE HELD HER breath as what seemed like hours later, she heard footfalls. As they stopped on the other side of her door, she opened her eyes.
She fought the remaining effects of the drugs as she stared at the doorknob. It slowly turned and the door began to open. Her gaze shot up and she flinched in horror. She’d been so sure she was going to see Celeste’s face that she reared back at the sight of a man she’d never seen before.
He was big and easily filled the doorway with the kind of muscles and tattoos that shouted former prison inmate. He was strangely handsome, almost boyish, with short blond hair and big brown eyes fringed with dark lashes. He stepped into the room carrying a shopping bag. It wasn’t until he drew close that she realized he was older than she’d first thought, closer to his midfifties than forties.
“I see you’re awake,” he said, smiling at her.
“You have to let me go. You’ve made a mistake. I don’t know who you are, but I shouldn’t be here.” Her voice sounded strange even to her ears. “Please, let me go.” The words came out on a sob.
“Don’t be silly,” the man said. “This is where you live now.”
No! She thought of news stories about abducted women who’d spent years being locked up in shacks behind some crazy’s house or trapped in a basement. She looked past him and saw that he’d left the door standing open.
“Help! Help! Someone help me!” she screamed.
He moved so swiftly that she only caught his image out of the corner of her eye as he reached through the bars. She didn’t stop screaming until she felt the slap. It knocked the air out of her. She fell back, banging into the metal bed rail. Her head swam.
“I won’t hear any more of that,” he scolded. “Now you behave, young lady, or I will turn you over my knee. You have this beautiful room all to yourself. You should be more thankful. I don’t want to have to spank you, but I will if you make me.”
She stared at him, his words filling her with horror. Spank her? He was talking to her as if she was a child. His words echoed in her head, making her heart race with terror. This is where you live.
“I brought you something pretty to wear,” he said as he dug in the shopping bag. “But promise me you’ll keep your dress nice. If you do, then you can come into the kitchen and eat with us.”
Us? She again looked toward the door, remembering that she’d thought she’d heard a woman crying before. How many other people were here in this house? Was it a house, though? Was it a basement apartment? It didn’t feel like it. It felt as if someone had tried to make it look like a real house. To fool her? To fool the others? If there really were others.
“Promise?” he asked.
All she could do was nod, her cheek still stinging from where he’d hit her.
He reached through the bars with an item of clothing. She thought about grabbing his arm, jerking it through the bars and...and then what? Even if she broke his arm, she couldn’t see how that would get her out of the cage.
She took the clothing he handed her, all the time her mind racing. What did this man want from her? “Please let me go.” It came out almost a whimper.
“I’m warning you. Unless you want to go to bed without any dinner...” Her stomach growled in answer and he laughed. “That’s what I thought. Now get dressed. Just call when you’re ready, and if you behave like the sweet girl I know you are, then you can sit at the table.”
She could get out of this cage? It was the only way she would ever stand a chance of escaping. “I will,” she said in a small, timid voice that seemed to please him.
The moment he left she looked down at the items of clothing he’d brought her and felt a shudder move through her. The dress was something for a six-year-old but in her size and the shoes were saddle oxfords. Had anyone worn those in the past fifty years?
“Is there a problem?” he asked from the doorway, startling her.
She shook her head.
“That’s my girl.” He smiled. “Daddy doesn’t want to hurt you.”
Daddy? Maggie fought the tears that burned her eyes. She swallowed and nodded because she was too scared to speak. Too horrified.
She waited until he left the room again before she took off her jeans and shirt and put on the dress. It was pink and white with pink bows and clearly secondhand. It looked ridiculous on her. The socks he’d brought her were white with pink lace around the top. She sat down and pulled them on with trembling fingers, terrified of what would happen next. She’d just finished lacing up the shoes, which were also used but in her size, when she sensed him in the doorway again.
“Good girl. Ready for your surprise?”
* * *
HARP KNEW HE’D broken every law in the book by taking Gary Long the way he had. Except, he hadn’t acted as a sheriff’s deputy. He’d merely taken the man home, immobilized him for a while so he could get the truth out of him. He liked to think of it as a citizen’s arrest.
More to the point, Gary Long wouldn’t be filing any charges against him, given what he’d found in the bedroom.
It was easy to rationalize what he’d done. If the man had kidnapped Maggie, it would probably be hard to get a conviction and he’d be in hot water again.
But if he’d saved Maggie, he really doubted the sheriff would have cared. As it was, he had found some crucial evidence. That had to account for something.
He took Gary Long’s statement about what happened the day Maggie disappeared, warned him not to leave town and, after cutting him loose, headed back to Gilt Edge. Gary wouldn’t call the cops on him for his “unusual” style of interrogation.
He had been feeling good as he drove north, his headlights cutting through the darkness. Turning on his radio, he’d rocked out. He had even looked forward to seeing Vicki. With luck, she would be up for sex. He’d be gentle. He had to think about the baby now.
Harp had been about fifteen miles outside of town when a pickup with Gilt Edge county plates went past on the other side of the road. It had looked vaguely familiar, which was why he’d glanced in his rearview mirror as it tore by. With some concern, he’d seen the driver hit his brakes, pull off and swing back onto the highway headed in his direction.
He’d watched with growing apprehension as the pickup had come roaring up behind him a few minutes later. He hadn’t been able to see the driver behind the wheel, not with the pickup’s headlights on high beams.
The jackass had stayed right on him all the way into town. It wasn’t until they’d reached the town limits that the fool had roared up beside him. Harp had glanced over as the truck had come alongside him. Behind the wheel, Larry, the pawn guy, had flipped him the bird and then had taken off.
Harp had felt his heart racing. His hands had shaken as he’d driven the rest of the way to the apartment. Was that about the other day at the pawnshop? He had cursed himself for flipping Larry off. It had been childish. Or was it about years ago? He’d had a bad feeling from the look on Larry’s face that it went deeper than a simple hand gesture a few days ago. He should have known that Shirley couldn’t keep her mouth shut.
He’d thought that, being the law, it would keep Larry from doing anything stupid. But he should have known that a guy like Larry Wagner wouldn’t have any respect for a badge. He hated to think what would happen if he met Larry Wagner in a dark alley.
Instead of going home last night, he’d gone to a motel, too shaken to even think about dealing with Vicki. This morning, he’d put Larry out of his thoughts and gone straight to the sheriff’s department.
* * *
AFTER HE MADE the call that had awakened the sheriff, Mark waited until Flint arrived before he ushered him into his office, where Deputy Cole was waiting. He still couldn’t believe what Harp had done. If he’d had his way he would have fired him on the spot. But he was leaving that to the sheriff.
Harp told his story, no doubt leaving out parts of it that would make him look even worse. As soon as he finished, Mark could tell Flint was as incensed by the deputy taking things into his own hands while on medical leave.
“I talked to the bartender this morning,” Mark said. “You hit Long with a bar stool.”
Harp nodded. “He’s a big dude and he would have gotten away if I hadn’t. But the bartender tapped him with a baseball bat. That’s really what took him down.”
The undersheriff shook his head.
“But I got important information out of him as a private citizen—not as a sheriff’s deputy because I was on medical leave. Come on—you know we have to find Maggie Thompson as quickly as possible. If I hadn’t done what I did, how long would it have taken to clear the ex-boyfriend and narrow down the search?”
Flint groaned. He’d always gone by the book, but Mark could see that the sheriff just wanted Maggie back—whatever it took. “How do we even know that Gary Long didn’t lie to you?”
“He was telling the truth. He didn’t know Maggie had disappeared. But he admitted to having a confrontation with her about three weeks ago at Bud’s Bar—and again at your house. He admits to pushing her, but he swears she was fine when he left.”
“And he says there was a brown van parked in the woods behind my house?” the sheriff said. “You didn’t feed him that information accidentally?”
Harp shook his head with impatience. “I’m not a fool.”
That was debatable, Mark thought as he rubbed a hand over his face. “I’m going to have Gary Long picked up and questioned by the Billings police. I won’t mention the meth you found in his house. If he wasn’t smart enough to get rid of it... We’ll see what they get out of him.”
Harp shrugged. “Whatever. But the person we’re looking for drives a brown van, right? It isn’t Gary Long.”
Mark got on his computer for a minute. “The only vehicle I can find registered to Long is a 1979 Ford two-wheel-drive small pickup.”
“That’s right,” Harp said. “White where it isn’t rusted out.”
“And Long has no idea who might have been driving the van?”
“Nope,” the deputy said. “He knew Maggie was dating a cowboy,” he said, flicking his gaze at Flint before turning back to Mark. “And he knew where Maggie lived. He admits he was there, followed her from her house to Flint’s and had gone in to try to talk her into coming back to him. They argued. He pushed her...” He waved to the document he’d submitted this morning. “It’s all there.”
Mark looked over at the sheriff. “I’ll have Billings law enforcement check to see if Long has been at work since Maggie was taken. You say he’s a roofer?” he asked Harp.
“When he came into the bar, I noticed the tar on his boots and jeans,” Harp said. “He’d come straight from work. Also, I found a pay stub in his wallet.”
Flint raked a hand through his hair. He looked as if he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since Maggie disappeared almost four days ago. He also looked like he wanted to fire Harp. Mark was glad to see Flint was still acting like a lawman instead of a vigilante.
“You do realize that we’d have played hell getting a conviction because of the way you handled this?” Flint demanded of the deputy.
Harp attempted to look chastised. “I cleared him as a suspect. You said the clock was ticking. I had to take things into my own hands.”
“We’ll talk about this when Maggie is found,” Mark said. “Also, so much for the theory that Celeste and Long had thrown in together.”
“I wouldn’t be that quick to clear Celeste,” Flint said.
The undersheriff shook his head. “I don’t know, Flint. Celeste and Long both told the same story about the brown van. We have everyone looking for it. Once we find the van...”
“But as many people have reportedly seen this brown van, how come one of them didn’t get a plate number? Even one?”
“This time of year most cars are dirty from the winter roads—including the license plates. It wouldn’t surprise me that the driver made sure it wasn’t easily noticed.”
* * *
MAGGIE FELT HER heart rate soar. “Surprise?” She hated the way her voice cracked. Waking up underground in a cage had been enough of a surprise. She couldn’t bear to think about what the man had planned for her.
“Didn’t I tell you? Your mommy is joining us for dinner. She hasn’t been herself but I know she’s looking forward to seeing her little girl.”
“My...mommy?” she repeated, feeling as if she’d fallen down a rabbit hole. This had to stop. She’d done everything the man had asked her to do. She had to try to get through to him, even if it meant being slapped again.
“My mother is dead. She died in childbirth. My father was killed in the Gulf War. I was raised by an aunt.”
He smiled at her as if she was a child. “You look like her. I wondered who you’d taken after. But I can tell by your stubbornness that you take after me a little too.”
Maggie couldn’t speak. What kind of sick joke was this? He wanted to pretend that he was her father? And now her mother would be joining them? She felt as if she might throw up. Where had he brought her? How far underground were they? Was that why he hadn’t been worried that someone would hear her screaming earlier?
“You want to see your mommy, don’t you?”
She looked down at her shoes and reminded herself that the only way she could escape was if she was out of the cage. She mumbled a yes. But told herself to be very careful. This man was clearly insane—and mean. She’d seen it in his eyes when he’d hit her. He wouldn’t hesitate to hurt her—if she crossed him.
It was imperative that she found out as much as she could about her situation before she risked an escape. She hated to think who he’d chosen for her “mommy.” She didn’t think she would be getting any help from whoever it was. All her instincts told her she was on her own, and yet she couldn’t help thinking about the woman she’d heard crying.
Her own birth mother was dead. She had the sudden frightening thought that there would be a mummified body at the table with them. She shuddered, afraid of what she might be facing when he let her out of the cage.
She reminded herself to play along until she knew what she was up against. Raising her gaze, she looked the man directly in the eye and felt herself shudder. Her chances of getting out of there seemed to diminish when he struggled to open the latch that had her locked in. Even more when he picked her up and lowered her to the floor.
He was too big and strong. How could she ever hope to get away from him?
“That a girl,” he said.
It felt so good to be on solid ground again, but her fear of what she would find waiting for her in the next room had her feeling light-headed—that and the effects of the drugs he’d given her.
“I know you always wanted your mommy and daddy to be together as a family and now we can be. But if either of you misbehave...”
He didn’t have to finish. She had a pretty good idea what misbehaving could get her—and probably worse than she could imagine. He pointed to the door, indicating he wanted her to go first. She braced herself as she walked slowly, feeling him within reach behind her. She sensed he was dangerously close to the edge of sanity.
As she came around the corner, she saw what looked like an old apartment kitchen and an open doorway that appeared to lead out into a dark and dirty unfinished basement. It gave her little clue of where she was. But in the darkness, she thought she had made out stairs that led up to the next floor.
Her gaze moved from the door and possible escape to the woman bound and gagged at the table, and she felt her heart drop.
* * *
FLINT’S CELL PHONE BUZZED. He pulled it out to check the screen. “I need to take this,” he said, excusing himself as Mark tore Harp a new one. Not that Harp would be fired. He’d actually been trying to help. It was definitely something new for the deputy who’d been trying to do as little as possible since taking the job.
He wondered about the change in Harp as he took the call.
“We think we know who is looking for Jenna and why,” Frank said into the phone without preamble. “Jenna was raped by a friend’s older brother and had a child when she was fourteen.”
Flint swore under his breath.
“She was pulled out of school, kept on the farm outside of town until she was shipped off to an aunt in the middle of North Dakota. The whole thing was kept a secret by parents who apparently blamed her and weren’t about to make it public.”
“And the baby?”
“Mother swears it died but we have reason to believe the infant survived. The father of the child is trying to find not just this offspring—but Jenna. Apparently he hadn’t known the rape had resulted in Jenna becoming pregnant all those years ago. He’s spent most of his time in one prison or another.”
“Let me guess. He’s out of prison now.”
“Afraid so. His name is Clark Terwilliger. He was last seen driving a brown van with Missouri plates.”
A brown van. Flint felt his pulse go into overdrive. He glanced at the undersheriff. “Just a minute, Frank. I’m at the sheriff’s office. I’m going to put you on speakerphone. Mark, can you see if there is a brown van registered to a Clark Terwilliger? Missouri plates.”
Mark moved to his computer, tapped on the keys and said, “A Clark Terwilliger doesn’t own a brown van. In fact, I couldn’t find any vehicle registered to him.”
“Could be stolen,” Flint said.
“Try his mother,” Frank said on the other end of the line. “Nancy Terwilliger. Apparently she gave him anything he wanted, including Jenna.”
“Bingo,” the undersheriff said. “A Nancy Terwilliger of Lake City, Missouri, owns a brown Chevy van.”
“He’s driving his mother’s van,” Frank said. “Makes sense. Missouri is the last place he was locked up. According to his sister, he’s furious that Jenna kept her pregnancy from him and now he is bound and determined to find not just her—but his kid.”
“So the friend thinks he wants to hurt Jenna?” Flint was asking.
“Sounds like a love-hate situation,” Frank said. “Clark has apparently been obsessed with Jenna since she was really young. Probably looking at a variety of mental problems, from what I’ve learned.”
“So the baby could have died and he just isn’t accepting it,” Mark said.
“Possibly, but what is interesting is that Jenna was also looking for her child at one point, so it makes me doubt the baby died,” Frank said. “If the infant survived, Jenna might have found her.”
Flint thought of the man Jenna had been with in Wyoming and Frank’s theory. If Frank was right and Jenna had contacted her rapist wanting to end this, then... “You think she might have made a deal with Terwilliger?” He swore. “Wait—did you say maybe found her?”
“The baby was a girl.”