Cold Sight (44 page)

Now she was wondering how many minutes she had left on this earth. She could hear a clock ticking away in her mind, each tick marking one less second of her life.

“He doesn’t want any witnesses.” Jack leaned back against the old plank wall and slid down it as if he couldn’t hold himself up anymore. He sat hunched, watching her. A shaft of moonlight shining through a broken slat high in the barn wall shone like a spotlight on his bony face. Tear tracks had cleared a path through the grime on his bruised cheeks and his swollen, bloodied, quivering lips. “He’s afraid you can identify him.”

“I can’t! I never even saw his face.”

That was true. She’d never gotten a glimpse of the man who’d grabbed her from her own bedroom. Liv had awakened from a sound sleep to find a pillow slapped over her face, a hateful male voice hissing at her not to scream or he’d shoot her sister, whose room was one door down from hers. Their parents’ room was on the other side of the huge house, and Liv didn’t doubt that the man would be able to make good on his threat before anyone could get to them.

A minute later, any chance of screaming had been taken from her. He’d hit her hard enough to knock her out. By the time she’d regained consciousness, she was already inside this old abandoned barn. Jack was the only living soul she’d seen or heard since.

“I’m sorry.”

“Let me go,” she urged.

He shook his head, repeating, “I’m sorry.”

“Please, Jack. You can’t let this happen.”

“There’s nothing I can do.”

“Just untie me and give me a chance to run away.”

“He’ll find you,” he said. “Then he’ll kill us both.” His voice was low, his tone sounding almost robotic. As if he’d heard the threat so many times that they had become ingrained in his head.

“When did he take you?” she asked, suddenly certain this boy was a captive as well.

“Take me?” Jack stared at her, his brown eyes flat and lifeless. “Whaddya mean?”

“He kidnapped you, too. Didn’t he?”

“Dunno.” Jack slowly shook his head. “I’ve been here forever.”

“Is he your father?” she persisted.

Jack didn’t respond, though whether it was because he didn’t know or didn’t want to say, she couldn’t be sure.

“Do you have a mother?”

“Don’t remember.”

“Look, whoever he is, you have to get away from him. We have to get away.” She tried to scoot closer, though her legs—numb from being bound—didn’t want to cooperate. She managed no more than a few inches before falling onto her side, remnants of dry, dirty hay scratching her cheek. “Come with me. Untie me and we’ll both run.”

If
she could run on her barely functional legs.

She thrust away that worry. If it meant saving her life, hell, she’d crawl.

“I can’t,” he replied, looking down at her from a few feet away. His hand rose, as though he wanted to reach out and touch her, to help her sit up. Then he dropped it back onto his lap, as if he was used to having his hand slapped if he ever dared to raise it.

“Yes, you can! My parents will help you. They’ll be so grateful.”

“I can’t.”

Again, that robotic voice. As if the kid was brainwashed. If he’d been a prisoner for so long that he didn’t even remember any other life, she supposed he probably had been.

He reached into the pocket of his tattered jeans, pulling out two small pills. “Here,” he said. “I swiped ’em from the floor in his room—he musta dropped ’em. I think they’ll make you sleep, so maybe it won’t hurt.”

A sob rose from deep inside her, catching in the middle of her throat, choking and desperate. “How will he do it?”

The boy sniffled. “I dunno.”

“Not a knife,” she cried, panic rising fast. “Oh, please, God, don’t let him cut me.”

She had a deep-seated fear of knives, of being stabbed, a fear that bordered on phobia. In every horror movie she’d ever seen, it was the gleam of light shining on the sharp, silvery edge of a blade that made her throw her hands over her eyes or just turn off the TV.

“He don’t use a knife. Not usually,” Jack said.

His misery didn’t distract her from the implication of Jack’s words: She wouldn’t be the first person to die at her kidnapper’s hands. He’d killed before. And this boy had witnessed those killings.

“Don’t let this happen, Jack. Please don’t let this happen.” Tears poured out of her eyes, and she twisted and struggled against the ropes. “Don’t let him hurt me.”

“Take the pills,” he said, his tears streaming as hard as hers. “Please take them.”

“You should have brought the whole bottle,” she said, hearing her own bitterness and desperation.

“If I could get to a whole bottle, I woulda swallowed them myself a long time ago.”

That haunted voice suddenly sounded so adult, so broken. The voice of someone who’d considered suicide every day of his young life. What horrors must he have endured to so easily embrace the thought of death?

It was his sheer hopelessness that made her realize she hadn’t given up hope. She was terrified out of her mind and didn’t want to die, didn’t want to feel the pain of death—oh God, not by a knife—but she wasn’t ready to give up, either. No matter what she’d said, if he had a bottle of pills in his hand, she didn’t think she would swallow them, not even now, with death bearing down on her like a car heading for a cliff.

She wanted to live.

“Where you at, boy?” a voice bellowed from outside.

Jack leapt to his feet, his sadness disappearing as utter terror swept over him. That terror leapt from his body into hers, and Olivia struggled harder against the ropes. Like an animal caught in a trap, she could almost smell her own destruction barreling toward her.

She tried to keep her head. Tried to think.

If her captor didn’t know the boy had warned her, maybe he’d let his guard down. Maybe she could get him to untie her, maybe she could run. . . .

Or maybe she really was about to die.

“Please,” she whispered, knowing Jack wanted to help her. But his fear won out; he didn’t even seem to hear her plea. He had already begun to climb over the side wall of the stall, falling into the next one with a muffled grunt.

No sooner had he gone than the barn door flew open with a crash. Heavy footsteps approached, ominous and violent like the powerful thudding of her heart.

Through the worn slats, she could see Jack lying in the next stall, motionless, watching her. She pleaded with her eyes, but he didn’t respond in any way. It seemed as though the real boy had retreated somewhere deep inside a safe place in his mind, and only the shell of a human being remained.

Her kidnapper reached the entrance to the stall. Still lying on her side, Olivia first saw his ugly, thick-soled boots. She lifted her eyes, noted faded jeans pulled tight over powerfully muscled legs, but before she could tilt her head back to see the rest, something heavy and scratchy—a horse blanket, she suspected—landed on her face, obscuring her vision.

Confusion made her whimper and her heart, already racing, tripped in her chest. She trembled with fear, yes. But there was something more.

Hope.

He didn’t want her to see him. Which meant he might have changed his mind. Maybe he knew she couldn’t identify him and he was going to let her go.

“Up you go, girl,” he said, grabbing her by the back of her hair and yanking her to her feet, holding the small blanket in place. He pressed in behind her, and she almost gagged. The cloth over her head wasn’t thick enough to block the sweaty reek of his body or his sour breath—the same smells she’d forever associate with being startled awake in the night.

Forever?
Please, God, let there be more than just tonight.

“Looks like your mama and daddy aren’t sick ’a you yet. They paid over a lot of money to get you back.”

“You’re going to let me go?” she managed to whisper, hope blossoming.

“Sure, I am, sugar,” he said with a hoarse, ugly laugh.

Olivia forced herself to ignore that mean laugh and allow relief and happiness to flood through her. She breathed deeply, then mumbled, “Thank God. Oh, thank you, God.”

Ignoring her, he kicked at her bare feet so she’d start moving. She stumbled on numb legs, and he had to support her as they trudged out of the stall. His grip on her hair and a thick arm around her waist kept her upright as they walked outside into the hot Georgia night.

At least, she thought she was still in Georgia. It smelled like home, anyway. Not even the musky odor of the fabric and her attacker’s stench could block the scent of the night air, damp and thick and ripe like the woods outside of Savannah after the rain.

Maybe she was still in Savannah. Close to her own house, close to her family. Minutes away from her father’s strong arms and her mother’s loving kiss.

Despite everything—her fears, the boy’s claims—she was going to see them again.

Suddenly he stopped. “Where you been at?”

A furtive movement came from nearby. Jack had apparently scurried out of his hiding place. “Watchin’ the road.”

Suddenly Olivia was overwhelmed with anger at the boy, fury that he’d scared her, even more that he hadn’t helped her escape. Over the past few days, there had been any number of times when he could have released her, but he hadn’t done it.

Then, remembering the blank, dazed expression, the robotic voice, she forced the anger away. He was a little kid who’d been in this monster’s grip for a whole lot longer than three days. She couldn’t imagine what he had endured. Once she got home, she was going to do what she could for him. Help him to get free, to find out who his people were. She had to; otherwise that blank, haunted stare and bruised face would torment her for the rest of her life.

“Good. I’m gonna need your help in a li’l while. Once I take care of this, I want you to get some plastic and roll her up good and tight to bury her. You know what to do.”

And just like that, her fantasy popped. He wasn’t hauling her into the woods to let her go. Jack had been right all along. Olivia shuddered, her weak legs giving out beneath her as the world began to spin and the faces of her parents and little sister flashed in her mind.

“Get me my hunting knife.”

Every one of her muscles went rigid with terror. A scream rose in her throat and burst from her mouth. He clapped a hand over it, shoving the fabric between her split lips. “Shut up, girl, or it’ll go worse for ya.” Then, to the boy, he snapped, “Well? Get goin’!”

“Knife’s broke,” Jack mumbled. “I was usin’ it to tighten up the hinges on the barn door and the blade snapped.”

Her kidnapper moved suddenly, the hand releasing her mouth. A sudden thwack said he’d backhanded the boy. Jack didn’t cry out, didn’t stagger away, as far as she could hear.

“What am I supposed to do now?” the man snapped. Jack cleared his throat. For a second, she thought he had worked up the courage to beg for her freedom, that he would try, however futilely, to stand up for her.

Instead, in that same brainwashed voice, he made another suggestion. And her last hope died.

“Why don’t you drown her?”