Dead Right (41 page)

She tried again to speak, but the gag was back. She hadn’t felt it a moment before but now the cotton fabric cut across her mouth, making it impossible to move her jaw. It must’ve been there the whole time.

Groan! Scream! Anything!

The door to the closet slid open. Madeline prayed that some part of her was showing, that Ray had left a strange object behind, something that would make the sheriff or whoever had come from his department search more thoroughly. But the door shut almost immediately.

“Find anything?” someone else cal ed from the doorway.

The floored creaked as the man who’d opened the closet walked away. “An empty bed and a bunch of bedding.”

No!
Madeline was hyperventilating now and sweating profusely. She’d never felt more helpless or vulnerable in her life. She couldn’t move or speak. She could only hear.

And getting upset wasn’t helping. Her panic brought unconsciousness drifting toward her again. The harder she tried to move or speak, the closer it came.

The last thing she remembered was a man saying,

“Someone’s been here recently, but everything looks fine.

No kidnap victim.” He repeated those words into a radio that hissed and sputtered.

Then a single tear rol ed down Madeline’s cheek and the darkness swal owed her whole.

Hunter sat in the passenger seat of Clay’s truck and tore the package off the magnifying glass he’d just bought.

“What’s that for?” Clay had been mostly silent ever since they’d left Harper’s trailer. Determined to make the seven-hour drive to the string of cabins in about half that time, he was speeding and weaving in and out of traffic, but Hunter didn’t mind. The more he thought about Ray, the more frightened for Madeline he became. He was even becoming suspicious of Bubba Turk’s death. It was one thing for Bubba to die of a heart attack. But who kil ed the cat?

How bad was this guy? He wouldn’t
kill
Madeline, would he? It was Barker who’d probably kil ed Katie, Barker who might’ve kil ed Eliza, too. He’d had so much to lose if the truth ever came out.

But what about Rose Lee? She’d committed suicide in
Ray’s
trailer. And she’d been naked when she was found, which hadn’t made sense to Hunter from the beginning.

Now he was afraid he knew why….

“Are you going to answer me?” Clay asked, impatient when Hunter didn’t respond.

Hunter retrieved the pictures from his coat pocket. “I want to take a closer look at these.”

Clay switched lanes. “What’re you looking for?”

“I don’t know yet. Anything that might tel me more about what was going on and who was involved.”

“I can tel you where most of them were taken.”

“Where?”

“My stepfather’s office at the farm, or his office at the church.”

“And the rest?”

“They don’t show the background. They’re too close to the subject.”

That was true. The distortion in those photos suggested that Barker had held the camera out and snapped the pictures of himself. Others he’d stood back and taken of each girl or both of them together—al in various compromising positions. The pictures made Hunter so angry he found he couldn’t blame Irene or Clay if they’d done something to stop Barker. He couldn’t even ask Clay what had happened because he suddenly didn’t want to know the details, didn’t want the burden of tel ing Madeline the truth, if she asked him, or the burden of deciding whether or not he should go to the police with the whole sordid tale.

“Have you known Ray since you moved here?” He tried not to imagine where al of this could end, with Maddy terribly hurt or even dead, and the Montgomerys in prison.

No one had forced Clay to come forward with these pictures. Revealing them risked everything he’d been trying to hide, and yet he’d done it right away, for Madeline’s sake. Without them, Hunter would never have gone to Ray’s trailer, found the cat, found the pages from Barker’s sermons or known where to search for clues about where Madeline might be. Madeline would just have disappeared and no one would’ve known where to look.

That redeemed Clay in Hunter’s mind. He’d sacrificed himself for his stepsister. But there were those who might not view the past so kindly….

“I know him. But obviously not wel enough,” Clay said.

“Otherwise…”

He let his voice trail off, leaving Hunter to wonder what he meant. Otherwise he would’ve been able to protect Madeline? Or otherwise he would’ve made sure Ray could never hurt anyone again?

Here he was, with someone he was almost positive had been involved in a murder, and yet he considered Clay one of the most ethical people he’d ever met.

It was more than a little ironic. But he didn’t have time to consider al the nuances. He needed to concentrate, despite his fear and the various questions running through his head. The photograph he was examining showed the edge of a window cooler. It’d probably been taken in the office at the farm. Madeline had mentioned an air-conditioning unit being in the window at one time. Since Hunter had visited that very room, he could easily picture the setting. But that was it. There was no visible object to tel him anything more than he already knew, so he switched to another picture. “What’s Ray like?”

They passed a car and slipped in between two more.

“Pretty nondescript,” Clay replied. “Always minded his own business before. Or so I thought. I felt sorry for him because of his daughter.” Clay shook his head as if he blamed himself for missing signs that no one else had seen. “I never expected him to be dangerous.”

“I don’t think anyone did.” Hunter pul ed out another picture. This one had been taken elsewhere. He could see part of a desk in the background. “Where’s this?”

He handed it over, and Clay glanced at it while he drove.

“At the church.”

“God, was there no end to his hypocrisy?” Hunter asked in disgust.

“No,” Clay said simply.

Hunter began to examine the third picture. It looked like it had been taken at the church, too. There was the same desk. But in this photo, Katie was performing a sex act on Rose Lee and Barker wasn’t in the picture at al . Hunter almost set it aside when he saw something near the edge that made him pause.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.

“What?” Clay said.

Disbelieving, Hunter shook his head. “Your stepfather wasn’t alone when he tortured those girls.” He glanced over at Clay, but Clay didn’t return his look. The muscle that flexed in his cheek was his only reaction.

“What are you talking about?”

“I can see part of him in the corner of this picture.”

“Part of him?”

“His knee or something.”

“How do you know?”

“If you look closely, you’l see that he’s wearing the same pants he had on in the other picture.”

“I saw a lot of skin, but no pants,” Clay said bitterly.

“They were on the bottom edge of that photo of him and Katie—down around his ankles.”

A scowl etched deep lines in Clay’s face; Hunter guessed it wasn’t easy for him to talk about these pictures.

It’d be impossible not to think about what’d happened to his own sister—and what had probably occurred as a result.

There was no tel ing how horrifying that must’ve been for a sixteen-year-old boy. “He’s in a lot of those pictures,” Clay said.

“I know, but in this one, he’s not close enough to be holding the camera since he’s in the picture—or his pant leg is, anyway. Someone else had to be taking it.”

Clay’s eyes, hard and glittering, were final y riveted on Hunter’s. “You think Ray would do that to his own daughter?”

Hunter set the magnifying glass aside.
Mad-dy, it’s your
dad-dy. Spread your legs for me, okay, baby? You’re the
one I wanted all along.

The idea of incest excited Ray Harper.

“Yes.” Staring straight ahead, Hunter watched the little dash lines in the center of the road. They flew past in a blur, but not fast enough. What was Ray doing to Maddy?

He could only hope the deputies from the sheriff’s department had already found them. He’d cal ed to check, but a woman with a nasal voice had said, “We’re looking into it.”

24

W
hen Madeline regained consciousness, the cabin was completely silent. She sat stil for several seconds, listening

—and praying that the officers from the sheriff’s department hadn’t left. She was feeling slightly more clearheaded, could even move a little. But they were gone. As far as she could tel , she was alone.

How long had she been unconscious? The thought of Ray returning sent a spurt of fear-induced adrenaline through her blood. If he wasn’t here now, he’d be coming soon. Surely, he hadn’t planned to be gone very long.

Which meant she had to get out of the closet, out of the cabin and somewhere safe. Right away.

But how? Ray had retied her hands and feet. Although he hadn’t connected the rope between them, forcing her into a crouched position as he had before, her hands were behind her, where they weren’t much use. And she was so terribly weak….

Fighting the effects of whatever drug he’d given her, she managed to wriggle into an upright position. The blankets on top of her felt like a thousand pounds of wet sand, weighing her down, burying her. They were so heavy she almost couldn’t move. But she had no choice. If she didn’t take action now, she might not get out alive.

She used her head to push the bedding from side to side until she could feel the cold air of the cabin on her skin.

Then she took a few seconds to suck fresh air into her lungs, trying to clear her mind and bolster her strength.

The col ar and gag made it difficult to breathe, and she had to mental y override a constant sense of panic. But the sudden chil after the heat of her own breath against the blankets helped.

Freedom. She had a chance. If she hurried. But it was so dark she couldn’t see anything. Even after she slid open the warped closet door with her shoulder, she couldn’t distinguish even the general shape of the furniture.

She’d have to be very careful to keep her bearings. This far from the lights of the city, the night was far blacker than any she’d ever known. She needed to make her way as unerringly as possible straight to the front door. Then, maybe she could find a neighboring cabin or a road where someone might drive by and see her. She wouldn’t last long out in the cold, but she preferred to take her chances there rather than face what awaited her here.

Fortunately, she recal ed the basic layout of the cabin.

She thought about trying to stand, but knew she’d never be able to remain upright. Ray had tied the ropes so tightly she could no longer feel her feet. They were so numb and swol en that, had they not started hurting again, they wouldn’t have felt like part of her body anymore.

Come on.
She couldn’t get up and she couldn’t crawl.

Her only option was to use her head, shoulder and left hip to scoot across the floor. But she didn’t make it far before she banged into the closed door of the bedroom.

With a silent groan, she rested her head on the floor and concentrated on breathing. The exertion made it that much more difficult. And now this. Why couldn’t the sheriff’s men have left the door open?

Don’t cry. Don’t get upset.
She needed her energy, and her air, for more constructive endeavors. Maybe the police hadn’t even come. Maybe it had al been a dream. She’d original y thought she’d been entombed with her father, hadn’t she? There were so many echoes in her head right now she couldn’t decide what she’d heard and what she hadn’t. But, either way, the door was closed—that was real enough—and she didn’t know how to open it.

The only way was to get to her feet and to stay there long enough, with her back to the door, and use those thick, unwieldy things currently tied behind her back. Those things she’d once cal ed hands…

Taking as much of a breath as her gag and col ar would al ow, she slid up the wal . The pain in her feet made her head swim. She fel twice. But, determined, she eventual y succeeded in standing.

“I did it,” she breathed, but it came out as a low, guttural moan. She couldn’t form words with that gag in her mouth.

She’d managed the first step toward escape. That was good. She had to think in terms of smal victories, couldn’t consider the whole situation at once, or she’d give up before she got anywhere.

Now for Step Two. She closed her eyes, trying to remind herself what it was. For a few seconds, she lost touch with reality, seemed to float through the air, to dip and twirl.

Think. Focus.
She needed to open the door. That was it.

But she had a problem. She was leaning against it and didn’t want to fal again or she’d lose the progress she’d gained.

You won’t fall. Not if you’re careful. Slide over. Inch by
inch. That’s it.

She edged to the left until she could feel the doorjamb against the ridge of her spine. The handle was where she could reach it with her bound hands, but she knew she’d probably fal when she opened it. There wasn’t enough room for her on the left side of the door because of some bureau she wasn’t strong enough to move, and she couldn’t slide back to the right or she’d be in the path of the door again. To get any momentum at al , she’d have to hop out away from the wal after she turned the knob—yet she stil couldn’t support her own weight. Even if her feet were free, she doubted she’d have the balance. The drug Ray had given her had left her nauseous and dizzy.

She had to try.

Be careful. You only have one chance,
she told herself and turned the knob.

Now!
Hopping forward, she tried to fling the door open with her wrist while she fel . The metal of the bed frame scratched her back as she crumpled to the floor, but she was pretty sure she’d managed to stayed out of the door’s path. It didn’t slam against the opposite wal but, judging by the ascending pitch of the noise, it drifted open.

A sudden creak terrified Madeline. Was Ray there, sleeping on the couch? If so, he would’ve heard al the bumping and scraping. And she couldn’t think of anything more frightening than what would happen if he caught her trying to escape.