Whispers at Midnight (55 page)

Round, pale, plump, unremarkable. Blue eyes. Pale blue. Lashless.

Looking at her.

Carly’s heart exploded into what felt like a thousand beats a minute. Her blood ran cold. Her stomach knotted. She wanted to scream, but all that emerged was a strangled squeak.

The Donkeyman. And also … also … She knew him, not well but vaguely, knew his name—but she was so sick, so terrified, she couldn’t think.

“I see you’re awake.” His voice was low and pleasant, with an unmistakably
southern intonation. It made Carly’s skin crawl. She struggled to move. Her arms were pulled uncomfortably behind her back and secured at the wrists with—it felt like more duct tape. Her ankles were similarly bound. Her arms tingled, that pins and needles sensation that means they’ve fallen asleep. Her legs were better. They didn’t hurt. He leaned closer, bending over her, and she realized that he was leaning in through the door of a vehicle, a truck, a pickup truck, realized that she was on the floor, in the front passenger footwell, wedged in, and he was trying to get her out. She struggled frantically, but it didn’t help. He wrapped his arms around her waist, and heaved her up and out, then let her slump to the ground while he closed the door of the truck.

Rain hit her face, her hair, her skin. Big fat drops. It was raining. Warm rain, and it was dark, night, moonless, and she was lying in short grass, the smell of wet grass filled her nostrils, there was gravel in the grass, she could feel it digging into her cheek and arm. She was lying in short grass near a gravel driveway, the truck was white, there was a small house nearby, a cabin really, some kind of dark wood.

Carly realized that she was still feeling the effects of the chloroform he had used on her. Her head whirled. Her thoughts were fuzzy. Her limbs felt leaden, heavy.

It was then that terror, true icy terror, flooded her veins. Her stomach cramped. Her chest heaved as she fought to breathe.

She was going to die. He had brought her to this place to kill her.

He was a big man, stocky, strong. He bent over her, wrapping his arms around her middle, trying to pick her up. He should have been able to do it easily, but she resisted. Heart racing with fear, almost suffocating in her desperate effort to breathe, Carly struggled frantically, writhing and thrashing until he cursed and fumbled with something and thrust that cool wet cloth over her face again. She gagged, smelling it, smothered by it, that hideous sweet scent that had haunted her dreams for years, the scent of terror; the scent of horrible drugged sleep; for her, tonight, the scent of death.

When she regained consciousness again, she was slung over his shoulder, blood pounding in her temples as she hung upside down, her head bobbing against his back, his arms clamped around her legs.
He was walking downstairs, carrying her down into what looked like a basement, gray concrete walls, a single bare lightbulb in the center of the room, dark shadows crowding the walls. She could feel his hand, meaty and warm, through the fragile nylon of her pantyhose, pressing against her thigh. She was wet, wet with rain and cold. Her dress had ridden up. She realized that she was wearing her red dress, the sexy one, that she was still dressed for Erin’s rehearsal dinner, except her shoes were missing.

Matt. Matt. She wanted Matt.

She was shivering, trembling, her bones had turned to jelly. Her stomach cramped from fear. Her heart thudded in her chest.

“Well, now, here we are.” He reached the bottom of the stairs and took the few steps necessary to cross the room. There he lowered her to the ground, quite gently really, considering that he was going to kill her so it shouldn’t matter if he banged her up a little first. She thought about struggling, but she was so sick, so woozy, all she really wanted to do was close her eyes and sleep, and anyway, what was the point? There was no possible way she was going to escape.

She was helpless. At his mercy. And he had no mercy, none at all. Not for her.

She was going to die.

And he was looking forward to it. She could tell from his smug little smile.

Her worst nightmare had come true: the Donkeyman had her. Carly shuddered in horror. Cold sweat poured over her in waves.

Please God Please God Please God I don’t want to die.

“I’ve been thinking about this,” he said as he moved to stand in front of a big white metal chest, really big, about the size of two washing machines pushed together. He lifted the lid and she realized that she was looking at a freezer.

Another burst of terror, fresh and sharp and new, raced down her spine like an icy finger.

“We’ve got a couple of options here.” He turned toward her, walked toward her, stood over her, put his fists on his hips as if he were considering. Looking up at him, Carly knew that he was toying with her, he already knew how he was going to do it, how he was
going to kill her, and that it was going to happen soon, within minutes,
now.

He bent over her, and she saw that he had a knife in his hand.

Her eyes went wide. Panic almost overwhelmed her. God, she had felt that knife. She cringed as he waggled it in front of her face, remembering the quick surprising pain of its cold blade slicing through her skin.

“I could cut your throat.” He touched the tip of the knife, oh so delicately, to the soft spot just below her ear, then stroked it very softly across the front of her neck. Carly held very still and closed her eyes. Her heart slammed painfully against her breastbone. She held her breath. Any second now, she was going to feel the blade going deep—

“But that’s too messy,” he said, sounding cheerful. “I’d have to clean up afterwards. Anyway, I like the second option better.”

He bent down and scooped her up. Carly cringed and shuddered, but he picked her up and held her in his arms and looked down at her and smiled.

Then he carried her to the freezer and lowered her inside. There were packages of frozen food on the bottom. They were hard and cold and uncomfortable against her back. The sides of the freezer were thick with frost.

She could feel the cold blast of it caressing her skin.

Then he straightened. Carly’s breathing suspended as she realized what he meant to do.

“At your size, there’s probably enough air for you to survive about forty-five minutes. And I’ve turned the temperature down to zero. So the question is, will you suffocate or freeze to death first? It will be interesting to find out, don’t you think?”

Carly whimpered, a small terrified sound, and his smile broadened. Then he shut the lid.

She was left all alone in the icy, nearly airless dark.

41

“I
S THIS IT?
” Matt swung around in the front seat to glare at the passenger in the back.
“I said, is this it?”

“Yes, yes. For God’s sake, Matt.” Bart Lindsey was nervous, shaky, intimidated, as well he should be. Matt had grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and practically thrown him into the back of the cruiser as soon as the vet had admitted that, although his brother had lived a hundred miles away in Macon for the last twenty years, he did still own a house relatively nearby, a hunting cabin he rarely if ever used, nestled in the thick piney woods about fifteen miles west of town. Jeanini8—Marsha’s friend Jeanine LeMaster—had known instantly who DingDong the Donkeyman was when Matt got her on the phone: Hiram Lindsay, who twenty-two years ago had owned the vet practice that his brother now operated and had gone out to the County Home for Innocents one blazing August to tend a sick donkey.

Hiram Lindsey had Carly. She’d been missing for over an hour now. Matt’s driving fear was that she was already dead.

He was out of the door and running through the pouring rain toward the cabin with his gun drawn before Antonio, who was driving, had done more than pull off the road. A light was on inside, glowing feebly through the small square front window. There was a truck in
the driveway—a white Silverado. Raindrops sounded like BB’s as they rattled off its roof.

“Open up! Sheriff’s department! Lindsey, I know you’re in there! Open this goddamn door!” Heart pounding, the metallic taste of fear in his mouth, Matt hammered on the flimsy wooden door as two more cruisers pulled up behind his and his deputies jumped out, guns drawn.

They raced toward him, backing him up as he got tired of waiting and kicked in the damned door.

“Carly!”

There he was, the bastard, scuttling toward a back room like a frightened crab, looking over his shoulder as Matt came after him.

“What … what …?” he sputtered, face white, eyes wide, still trying to run.

“Where is she? You sick bastard, where is she? If you’ve hurt her …” Matt collared him, literally wrapped his hand in his collar and spun him around, spun him against the slick plastic paneling covering the wall. Lindsey didn’t even try to resist. He leaned against the wall, panting, sweating, while Matt dug his fingers into the back of his neck and cuffed him. Behind him, his men had already spread out, searching the place.

“Carly!”

Nothing. No answer.

“What’s the meaning of this? What are you doing?” Lindsey’s pathetic bleats were a bad waste of good air.

“Where’s Carly?”
Police brutality be damned. Matt slammed the flat of his hand down on the side of the bastard’s head and ground his cheek into the wall. He was pumped with terror, fueled by it, practically jumping out of his skin with it. The bastard was here. Carly was not.

That was enough to make cold sweat break out all over him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Carly who? Sheriff, whoever you think you’re looking for, you’ve got the wrong man.”

“Like hell.” Matt was panting. He could hear his deputies taking the house apart. They weren’t finding her. “Listen, you slimeball, it’s over. I know about Marsha, Soraya, poor little Genny. I know about
the lottery. I know about Marsha blackmailing you. I know
everything,
do you hear me? What I don’t know is where Carly is. And you’re going to tell me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Matt could feel and see and even smell Lindsey’s sweat. The man was lying. He did know. He had her. Oh, God, was he too late? Was she dead?

“Matt, look at this.” Antonio ran in from outside, through the door that hung on broken hinges now letting in the sound and smell of rain. Matt glanced around to see what he’d found. His heart almost stopped. Antonio was dangling one of Carly’s spiky red shoes from one hand.

“Where is she?”
he roared, slamming his shoulder into Lindsey’s back. “Damn you, you …
Where is she?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lindsey said again, sounding less frightened now.

Icy calm suddenly possessed Matt. He drew his pistol out of the holster and wedged it nice and tight against Lindsey’s temple. Then he got right up in the bastard’s face.

Behind him, he could see Antonio’s horrified expression. Mike came in from the back of the house and stopped dead.

Neither of them even tried to interfere.

“Here’s how this works,” Matt said through his teeth, barely able to speak through the panic that was welling like gorge in his throat. He ground the pistol in a little harder. His grip on it was so tight that his knuckles showed white. “You tell me where she is, or I blow you to hell. I’m going to give you to the count of three.
One.
”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Two.”

“You’re an officer of the law. You can’t do this.” Fear sharpened Lindsey’s voice.

“Watch me.
Thr—
”

“Hiram, if you know where Carly is, you’d better tell him,” Bart Lindsey said softly. Matt felt the bastard sag.

“She’s in the freezer in the basement,” Lindsey said, and closed his eyes.

Matt pulled his pistol back and thrust the bastard toward Antonio.

“Get him out of here,” he said. Then, heart pounding, he raced for the basement.

By the time he reached the freezer, he was sweating buckets. His deputies were still pounding down the stairs in his wake when he threw up the lid.

Looking down, he felt cold stark terror grab him by the throat. There she was, bound hand and foot, huddled in a little ball, a strip of duct tape covering her mouth. She was white as death and unmoving. Frost had already started to rim her nose and mouth.

Jesus, Jesus, was he too late?

“Carly.”

He snatched her out of there, reached down and grabbed her up and into the warmth, and Mike reached in and pulled the duct tape off her mouth even as he put her down and knelt beside her so that he could start CPR.

She was so cold, so limp, had been so cold and limp in his arms.

“Carly.” His voice broke. Behind him he could hear somebody radioing for an ambulance.

Then, miracle of miracles, he felt her stir. Her chest expanded and her lids fluttered up and she looked up at him, dazed and disoriented, but alive.

“Matt,” she said.

Matt drew in a great, shaking breath and let his head fall to his chest in profound thanks for an answered prayer. Then he gathered her up in his arms.