Breaker's Reef (23 page)

His eyebrows shot up. “Your sister?”

“Yes. The girl Amelia. The one who hasn’t been found.”

He let out a long stream of smoke and grinned. “Shoulda known.”

“Are you the one she left with that night?”

He started to chuckle.

Sadie’s heart began to race. “I’m not trying to accuse you of anything if you were,” she said, keeping her voice level. “Just
because she got in the car with you and went somewhere doesn’t mean—” The words caught in her suddenly dry throat. “Look, I’m just trying to retrace her steps. The more I know, the closer I’ll get to finding her. It
was
you, wasn’t it?”

He drew in a deep breath and took a step toward her. She stepped back against the brick wall.

He came closer, until she could smell his breath—that hung-over, didn’t-brush-your-teeth smell of whiskey and smoke. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a switchblade.

With a flick of his wrist it came open, and she jumped.

He stepped closer, the sharp point on that blade pressing against her throat. She closed her eyes and swallowed.

“Don’t … please …”

“I think you and me need to go for a ride.”

“No! I’m not going anywhere.”

He moved the blade up, breaking skin. He’d kill her right here, in this parking lot. Maybe someone would see and tell, but it would be too late for her. Where was that police car? She prayed it would come back. “Please …”

He put his arm around her shoulders and moved the knife down to her side. “In my car. You and me, we’re gonna get real close, and I’m gonna walk you to my car. You’re gonna go like you’re willing, because you’ll know that if you don’t, you’ll have a knife through your ribs.”

He started to move, pulling her beside him. She touched the nick at her throat, smeared the blood beading out. As they walked, she could feel the blade at her ribs. It had already drawn blood there too. One move could cost her life.

Nate was in the mood for another murder.

He put her into the car on his side, shoved her over, and got in behind the wheel. His car rattled as he pulled out of the parking lot.

W
here are you taking me?”

“You’ll see.”

“Please … you can let me out. I won’t tell anyone.”

He laughed as his car picked up speed, heading onto Ocean Boulevard, toward the Tybee bridge.

She tried to inch over to the door. If she could get it open, she could jump out. Whatever injury she sustained from jumping from a speeding car had to be better than certain death at his hands.

“I wouldn’t do that.” He let her go long enough to reach under the seat … and come up with a gun.

Her heart caught in her throat. She tried to calculate whether he’d be able to shoot her if she flung the door open and threw herself out. They’d crossed the bridge, and he was only able to go about forty in traffic. If she jumped, could he drive and hit a target at the same time? And if he did, wouldn’t he have police surrounding him in seconds? A gunshot on Tybee Island wasn’t likely to go ignored, especially on such a busy street.

“Be still now, or I’ll kill you the same way I killed the others.”

Terror made its screaming ascent in her head. Amelia
was
dead. Dear God, her sister was dead. Rage exploded inside Sadie, and suddenly she didn’t care if he killed her or not.

She went for the gun, trying to wrest it out of his hand.

He kept one hand on the steering wheel as he fought her. The car yanked to the right. He cursed, grabbed her by her hair, and jerked her back, getting control of the wheel again. She reached for the door, but he jerked her again, ripping her scalp.

“Let go of me!”

“You wanna mess with me?” he grated through his teeth. He turned left, off of the busy street, and drove to the center of Tybee, where there wasn’t as much traffic. He kept up his speed as he flew through a residential section. “Nobody messes with me and gets away with it.”

Sadie kept fighting. “You killed her! You
murderer!”
She fought him for the gun or the steering wheel, and when he had to loosen his grip on her to get control of the car, she threw herself to the other side and got the door open.

He was going fifty, at least, down a shady neighborhood street. She hesitated, and he grabbed her hair again, trying to hold her back. She clawed at him, tearing her fingernails into his arm, trying to make him let go.

The car screeched to a halt, and Nate grabbed her arm, yanking it up behind her back. Sadie arched, feeling the strain on the same bone that had been broken before, the ripping of tissue in her shoulder. He shoved the gun up under her chin, its nose threatening to puncture her skin and come up into her throat.

“I’ll show you what it costs to fight me, just like I showed the others.”

He opened his glove box and got out a roll of duct tape. With his teeth, he peeled back the end, then slapped it over her mouth and wrapped it around her head.

Sadie fought with all her might, praying that someone would come out of their house to get the paper and stop this madness. She felt the binding of the tape as it came around and around her
face, and then he ripped it with his teeth again and bound her hands behind her. She bucked and kicked at him, trying to get her footing so she could get out the door, but he grabbed a foot and wrapped it with tape, then grabbed her other one, pulling her to her back, and bound her ankles together.

He stank with sweat as he reached across her and slammed the car door, sealing her fate. She tried to scream, but the tape muffled her voice, rendering her efforts useless. He sat there for a moment, catching his breath, watching her with those bloodshot eyes. She bucked and writhed, trying to break free of her bonds, but to no avail. Clearly satisfied that she was restrained, he slid back behind the wheel and drove the car to the end of the street where a grove of trees gave a little more privacy. He got out, and she prayed he would leave her there to be found.

But he walked around the car, opened her door, put one arm under her knees and the other behind her back.

As he lifted her, she jerked and kicked and twisted, sending out muffled screams into the tape.

He threw her into his trunk, and she fought to break her hands free or separate her feet or scream out for help.

“Who’s in charge now, baby?” he asked through sneering lips. The trunk slammed, encasing her in darkness, and Sadie squealed, trying to be heard. The car started again, the engine rattling …

Sadie closed her eyes. Was this it? Was this how it had been for Emily and Jamie and Amelia? Would he murder her too and walk away free?

She tried to reel her thoughts back from her panic and focused instead on the possibilities. God knew where she was. Maybe He’d orchestrated things so that someone saw the struggle on Ocean Boulevard or on Butler Avenue on Tybee. Someone in one of these quiet homes might have heard the screaming and screeching and looked out the window …

Scott or Cade would come after her, bringing a brigade of police to surround Nate’s car and stop him. He wouldn’t get far.

But that was unlikely.

Her hopes flattened into despair again. If no one
had
called them, would anyone even know she was missing for another hour or so? Realistically, it could be hours before anyone grew alarmed.

What had she done?

Why had she taken such stupid chances for a person she’d never even met? And now she knew Amelia was dead, so it was all worthless. She’d never meet her, never see how much alike they were, never know the pleasure of having a sister like Morgan had Blair.

Oh, God, help me!

Where was Nate taking her? Would he kill her wherever they stopped? Would he terrorize her first?

How would her mother ever survive this? Two daughters killed by the same hand. She would go back to drugs for sure, wind up back on the streets and go back to prison. Poor little Caleb would be abandoned once again.

Morgan and Jonathan would grieve for years. Blair would blame herself.

Oh,
why
had she done such a careless thing? So many people would be hurt.

Please, God, my refuge and my strength …

He would help her fight. He had to. Nate might kill her, but it wouldn’t be without cost.

S
adie felt the car turn off of a paved road onto an unpaved one. Rocks crunched under the wheels, and the car bucked and bounced, as if it weren’t meant to take such a path.

He was going to kill her and leave her body out in the middle of the woods. Or would he pose her like the others, in a boat or a cave? Was it all a game to him, or was there some sinister motive she couldn’t even imagine?

She felt the car come to a halt, and she held her breath, waiting for the worst. Several moments passed, and nothing happened, then finally the trunk swung open. Light bore down into her eyes, and squealing into her tape, she looked up at Nate.

He was holding rope, and before she could fight him, he began tying the rope around her waist. It was too tight, but she couldn’t stop him. She fought the bindings on her hands and feet, wondering if he intended to hang her. But wouldn’t it go around her neck if he did?

He lifted her out of the car, dropped her down hard on the ground. She groaned.

He got the switchblade out of his pocket, clicked it back open. She squeezed her eyes shut as he bent over her.

She felt him slashing the tape at her ankles, nicking her shin as he did.

“Get up,” he said. “I’m not carrying you. You can walk.”

Her feet were free! She pulled herself up, thinking that she could escape if she could just get far enough away from him. If she pretended to cooperate, to go where he told her …

He tugged on that rope around her waist. “Come on. This way.”

She looked around and saw a house a couple of acres away. Maybe someone there would see this and come to her aid. Maybe they would have a gun.
Please, God.

He dragged her beside him, using the rope, jerking on her and chafing her ribs and her waist. She fell down and he jerked her back up.

Finally, they came to a door in the ground that looked like the opening to a tornado shelter. He threw the door open and turned back to her.

“Get in there.”

She wasn’t sure which she feared more—staying with him or going into that dark place. And what if he came in with her?

She didn’t move, so he jerked on the rope, knocking her forward. She fell to her knees at the opening and looked in. There were no stairs, and it looked like a deep dark pit, too deep to be a shelter.

She turned back to him and looked up, her face pleading.

He kicked her then, knocking her off her knees. Bending over her, he grabbed her shirt, lifting and dragging her.

She fought as he got her over that hole, trying not to let him push her in, but her hands were still bound, and her feet weren’t enough.

Suddenly, she lost the fight and fell into the hole. She screamed in the back of her throat as she free-fell into the darkness …

The rope caught her before she reached the ground, jerking her to a stop before she shattered at the bottom. Her ribs cracked with the sudden halt. She hung there for a moment, terror radiating through her limbs, bolting through her like lightning.

“I ain’t going to kill you just yet.” His voice drifted down from the opening several feet above her. “There might be another use for you before that.” He laughed long and hard and let go of the rope. She fell the remaining few feet, landing flat on her face, her hands bound beneath her.

His laughter rang cruel and piercing above her. “You wanted to find your sister, didn’t you? Well, there she is.”

Sadie scrambled to her knees. Light from the opening kept the darkness at bay. She turned around, searching the dirt hole he had thrown her in.

And then she saw her.

A girl, bound hand and feet just like Sadie, hunkering in the corner, her eyes wide with rabid fear.

T
he girl screamed, and Sadie’s abductor laughed harder, then dropped the door shut. Sunlight razored in through the slats, providing a dim light in the hole.

The girl kept screaming, her heels digging into the dirt as she tried to back as far into the dirt wall as she could to get away from Sadie. Her face was scraped and bruised, and lines of scabs scarred her cheeks, as if duct tape had been ripped off of her.

Amelia!
It had to be her. She had blonde hair and a small frame like her own.

She was alive!

After a moment the screaming stopped, replaced by a terrorized whimper. Amelia’s bound hands balled under her chin. Sadie grunted through her tape and crawled closer, trying to make her see that she was no threat. Finally, the girl cried out, “Who are you?”

Sadie made a noise through the tape and raised her bound hands to try to work it free. But it was wrapped around her head, and she couldn’t find the seam.

She crawled across the floor to Amelia, and the girl pulled her knees up to her chest, trying to back further away. “Leave me alone! Get away!” She was crazed, terrified, and Sadie didn’t know how to calm her.

Sadie stopped, her hair stringing into her eyes and sticking to her wet face. The girl looked weak, pale, as if she was near collapsing, and Sadie wondered if she’d had anything to eat in all this time. Had he left her here to starve to death?

Sadie shook her head. If only Amelia would understand that she was as helpless as she, that she wasn’t going to hurt her. She held up her bound hands, pleading with her eyes for Amelia to help her.

Finally, Amelia seemed to calm down, and she sat there, staring at her. A vein strained against the skin in Amelia’s forehead, and she sucked in sobs, mucus running from her nose and tears streaking through the dirt on her face. She’d clearly been through a scuffle before being thrown into this place … or since. She’d been beaten, broken.

Sadie wanted to help her, but she couldn’t even help herself. She inched closer, careful not to set Amelia off again. Reaching her bound hands out, she touched the tape on Amelia’s wrists. Amelia seemed to understand and held out her hands. “Yes … p-peel me loose.”