Ashes, Ashes, They All Fall Dead (35 page)

He rolled his eyes like she’d lost her mind. “The
names
were the clues. He knew you’d recognize the names on the letters. The ones he’d already killed, at least.”

“But I don’t—”

He waved his gun, cutting her off. “Get inside the house.”

Tessa didn’t hesitate this time. She couldn’t risk Owen shooting Matt. Apparently he felt the same way because he grabbed her arm and hauled her inside. But instead of waiting for Owen to follow them in, Matt kicked the door shut and pulled Tessa to the floor. The gun boomed outside and a hole appeared in the front door. Matt flipped the lock.

“Go, go, go.” He practically dragged Tessa with him in a low crouch toward the hallway on the other side of the main room.

Another shot cracked through the door. Sheet rock exploded in a cloud of dust, raining white powder down on them.

Twenty feet away was the back door, with little glass squares that showed the woods beyond.

“You can’t get away,” Owen taunted from outside.

“He’s laughing,” Tessa said.

Another shot zinged through the house, narrowly missing Matt’s head.

He cursed and pulled Tessa with him toward the back door. The bright red throw rug in front of the door made an obscenely cheerful contrast to the rest of the dreary-looking room. Tessa blinked and looked around. Everything else was old, dusty, as if no one had been in the house for years.

Everything except that bright red rug.

Shadows of memories shifted through her mind.

Daddy, what are all these shiny cards?

No, Daddy, I don’t want to go down there again.

Don’t lock me in here. I’ll be good. I’ll be better. No, Daddy. Please!

Matt pulled her toward the door.

Oh God no.

“Wait! Stop!” Tessa clawed at his arm, desperately trying to stop him.

He half turned in question as he stepped onto the rug.

The floor collapsed beneath their feet, plunging them both into dark nothingness.

M
ATT TWISTED IN
the air, trying to protect Tessa, but they fell so fast there wasn’t time. They both landed hard on the cold, earthen floor beneath the house.

Tessa groaned.

Matt’s head throbbed from cracking it against the ground. And his injured arm hung loosely at his side, but he fought his way through the haze of pain to check on Tessa. He crawled to where she lay on her side, her teeth clenched, her eyes squeezed shut.

“Talk to me. Tessa?” He swept her bangs back from her face. “Baby?”

She groaned again. “That—bastard,” she gritted out. She slowly opened her eyes. “Don’t call me baby.”

Matt choked on a laugh. “Okay. I’ll just call you sweetheart then.” He ran his good hand along her arms, searching for injuries.

“I didn’t say you could call—” She sucked in her breath and jerked her arm back. “Ouch.”

“Since you’re moving your arms, I’m assuming they’re not broken. Where else does it hurt?”

“Everywhere.” She tried to push herself up.

Matt helped her into a sitting position.

“I’m okay. I’m okay. Bruised, but I think that’s all. What about you,
baby
?”

He grinned. “I have a headache a giant bottle of Tylenol couldn’t touch right now.” He looked up at the rectangular opening cut into the floor above them, the opening the rug had covered. “How did you know about the trapdoor?”

She looked around even though Matt was certain she couldn’t see any better than he could. The basement, cellar, whatever they’d fallen into, was pitch-black except for the light shining from directly above them.

“I remembered right before you stepped on the rug.”

“Remembered?”

Her green eyes turned suspiciously bright. “This house. This is where I lived when I was a kid.”

He frowned. “I thought the other shack, the one where Hargrove got the drop on us, was where you lived.”

She shook her head. “That must have been a front to fool everyone else. The mining company assigned those shacks and that’s the one they gave my . . . that’s the one they gave Hargrove. No one knew about us. He kept us here.”

He stilled. “What do you mean,
here
?”

She cupped his face in her hands. “No, no. I didn’t mean here, in this basement. Not always, anyway. We lived in the house most of the time. But sometimes . . .” She shivered again and stared at the blackness surrounding them.

“What exactly
do
you remember?”

The tears she’d been trying to hold back fell down her cheeks. Pain twisted her face. “
Everything
.”

He pulled her to him and cradled her against his chest. If Hargrove hadn’t already been killed, Matt would have followed the man to his last breath to make him pay for whatever horrors he’d put Tessa through.

Dull echoes pounded on the wooden floor above them. Someone was walking through the house.

Matt cursed. Hargrove Senior wasn’t the problem right now. Hargrove Junior was.

He pulled Tessa back into the darkness until he bumped up against a wall.

The yellow beam of a flashlight shined down through the darkness. Owen crouched over the opening above, searching until he saw them.

“Ah, there you are.” He snickered. “You might notice I tore down the ladder steps Pa used to have down there, sis. Remember all the fun times we used to have—you, me, and Mom—sitting in the dark, huddled together, waiting for Pa to come home?” His voice had turned hard and cold by the time he finished. “Of course you don’t. You don’t remember me at all, do you? You blocked me completely out of your mind. You and that bitch of a mother abandoned me.”

Tessa pushed against Matt, but he wouldn’t let her step any closer to the trapdoor.

Thankfully she didn’t fight him, because there was no way in hell he was letting her get any closer to that maniac.

“Owen,” Tessa called out, “I do remember you now. I remember it all. And I’m so sorry I left you. Please believe me. If I’d known I had a brother, I would have come back for you years ago. I’m so, so sorry.”

“I don’t believe you,” he snarled.

“It’s true. You have to understand.” She looked over her shoulder at Matt, then back at Owen. “The night before we left, Mama woke up and heard me crying. She . . . came into my room and Daddy was . . .”

The blood drained from Matt’s face. Had she remembered differently than what she’d told him before? Had her father . . . hurt her?

He clasped Tessa back against him, wrapping his arm around her, as if he could somehow protect her from her past.

She covered his arm with her own and squeezed his hand.

“Nothing happened.” She was facing Owen, but Matt knew she was talking to him, reassuring him.

He shuddered in relief.

“But only because Mom stopped him. You know what he was going to do, Owen. The same thing he did to Mom when she was a little girl, when he kidnapped her.”

“Shut up.”

“But Mom stopped him from hurting me,” she continued. “For the first time in our lives, she fought back against that monster. She fought for both of us, but he was too strong. She hit him over the head with a lamp. It cut him. He was bleeding. He would have killed her for that. She told me to run to the car while she got you. She ran down the hall toward your room while I—”

“Shut up. You’re lying. That’s not what happened.”

“It
is
what happened. I remember. And you were just a toddler. There’s no way you could remember—”

“Pa told me what happened later, when I was older. You both just left. She didn’t care about me. Neither of you did.”

“You’re wrong. I did love you. And she loved us both. She tried to get you, but he chased her. She couldn’t get you, and when she ran to the car he was right behind her. We barely made it. She tried to get you, but she couldn’t. She swore she would come back for you. She was crying the whole time we were driving away. She hated leaving you, but he’d only been dazed and he was too strong. He would have killed—”

“You’re lying! Stop it! Stop it!”

“No. You have to hear the truth. He had never let her drive a car. She didn’t know what she was doing. She could barely keep the car on the road. She didn’t even know which way to go. The whole time she was crying and saying your name. She hated leaving you. She was going to take me somewhere safe and get help to come back for you. But Daddy followed her. I didn’t know that back then, but I do now. He must have stolen one of the mining trucks. He had his rifle. He caught up to us.” She wiped at the tears flowing down her face. “She didn’t come back for you because she couldn’t. He killed her. He shot her and the car crashed, and I hit my head and that’s why I forgot you. Until now. I remember now.”

Matt wanted to shove Tessa behind him, but she resisted when he tried to move her. He couldn’t clearly see Owen because he was shining the light down at them. Any second now Matt expected a bullet to come slicing through the air.

“Tessa, for God’s sake, get behind me,” he whispered.

“No. I have to make him understand.”

She was far too close to this if she thought she could reason with him. Owen may have been innocent in the beginning, but his mind had been twisted by living with his father. There was no reaching him now. Tessa should have known that, but she wasn’t thinking clearly right now.

“Owen? Did you hear what I said? Mom and I didn’t abandon you, not on purpose. Please. Let Matt and me go. We can help you.”

The boards creaked.

“Owen?”

The flashlight switched off. A metallic squeak sounded above. The trapdoor slammed shut, plunging the basement into darkness. The unmistakable sound of a latch bolt sliding into place echoed in the room, followed by the sound of footsteps on the wooden floor as Owen left them locked in the dark hole.

Matt turned Tessa in his arms. He gently ran his good hand up her arm until he reached her face. He wiped the tears off her cheeks and kissed her before letting her go.

“I wish I could give you the time you need right now, and keep holding you,” he said. “But we have to get out of here before he comes back.”

He stepped forward, slowly, feeling for walls or furniture. Three more steps and he bumped against what felt like a desk.

The basement flooded with light.

He whirled around.

Tessa was standing on the opposite side of the room with her hand on a light switch.

She gave him a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Told you I remembered everything.” Her smile faded. “And now I remember why some of the names on those letters seemed so familiar, and where all the faces in my dreams came from.” She nodded her head, looking past him.

He turned around. Sure enough, he was standing in front of a desk. And on a corkboard hanging on the wall above the desk was a collection of laminated driver’s licenses, each one with a red plastic thumbtack impaling it to the board.

Each one showing a name that matched a name on one of the letters.

He counted the faces of the dead, one by one.

Tessa stepped to his side, quietly staring at the wall of horrors.

The sheer number of trophies on the wall had Matt feeling sick inside. He looked down at Tessa. Her face was pale, but she looked surprisingly composed.

“There are a lot more than twenty-three.” Her voice sounded desolate, lost.

“He showed you these, didn’t he? Your father. That’s why the names were so familiar.”

She nodded. “I didn’t understand back then. But I believe my mother did. Whenever my father locked us up down here, to make sure we didn’t run away when he had to go somewhere, my mother would tell me not to look at the faces. I think she wanted to protect me, in her own way, but I could tell those pictures scared her. I think that’s why I looked at them even when I wasn’t supposed to. I wanted to understand what was so scary.”

Matt reached past her and opened one of the cabinets. A stack of blank paper sat neatly on one side, envelopes and stamps on the other. An old box of crayons sat on the shelf above, along with some children’s books. A fine layer of coal dust coated much of the cabinet.

“Looks like we found the paper he used for his letters,” he said.

He opened another cabinet.

Tessa gasped beside him.

Taped to the insides of the cabinet doors were newspaper articles from all over the South, detailing the horrific deaths or, in some cases, disappearances of many of the people represented by the driver’s licenses on the corkboard. In the middle of all the other stories was the colored photograph from
USA Today
, with the title,
SIMON SAYS DIE SERIAL KILLER CASE
SOLVED
. It was dated three years earlier, right before the first letter had arrived.

Tessa pulled the newspaper clipping down. “You were right. This is how he found me.”

“The photographer must have loved you,” Matt said “He put you smack dab in the middle and seemed to focus on you. I bet when your father saw all that red hair, your green eyes, and that your name was Tessa, he put everything together. It must have been quite a shock to find out you’d gone into law enforcement.”

Footsteps echoed across the wood floor above them. Not directly overhead, farther away, as if Owen was in another part of the house, pacing back and forth.

Matt ran to the far wall. “We’ve got to find a way out of here. Look for some kind of weapon while I look for a way out.”

Tessa began opening the other cabinets and drawers.

The walls were covered in old, rotten boards. The dampness of the basement had eaten away at them. Matt plucked one of them off the wall. Behind it was a solid wall of rock covered in dark dust. He ran his hand across the bumpy surface as understanding dawned on him. “This isn’t a basement. This is part of the mine.”

She turned. “Then there must be a tunnel entrance somewhere.”

He nodded. “Look for boards that don’t seem to belong, or are too perfect, straight like a door would be.”

She ran to the other side of the room. They both focused on the walls, lightly knocking on the boards, trying not to make noise that might draw Owen’s attention. They listened for hollow sounds that might indicate tunnels behind the walls.