Never Die Alone (A Bentz/Montoya Novel Book 8) (5 page)

Now there was a gate blocking her escape?

Damn!
Chloe couldn’t believe her bad luck. She stood on the brakes of the van and climbed out. She had to get away. Had to! It was her only chance. And Zoe, oh, Jesus, what about Zoe? She’d had to fight the urge to stay at the river and find her twin, but Zoe, always the bolder of the two, the planner, the leader, had ordered her to escape. And Chloe was not going to let her sister down. She’d get help, of course she would, and she’d return to the river to rescue her sister, and Zoe would be okay. She was cagey and smart and athletic and . . . Holy shit, why did there have to be a damned gate?

She scrambled out of the van, leaving the driver’s door open, the interior light glowing, the damned seat belt alarm dinging. Her headlights were trained on the aluminum slats of the gate, where she fumbled with the padlocked latch. A damned padlock.

With all her strength she yanked on the lock.

Nothing.

Again, she threw her weight against it and again she failed. Well, of course. What lock would give way to a girl?

But maybe he had a tool in the van, a hacksaw or . . . or a key! Maybe there was a key on the ring that held the van’s ignition. She ran back to the van and thought she heard something in the trees. Twigs breaking. An animal on the prowl? Or could it be him?

Leaping onto the driver’s seat, she fumbled for the keys, found that only a single key was attached to the ring. “Shit!” Quickly she searched around the front seat, the glove box, and the console, looking for another set of keys or a saw or—

A quick glance in the rearview mirror. Beyond her own image, she saw him. Huge. Naked. Covered in blood and dirt. Dark hair plastered to his head.

Hell!
She didn’t think twice but pulled the driver’s door closed, slapped on the automatic locks, threw the van into Drive, and hit the gas. Wheels spun, spitting dirt and gravel. The Dodge hurtled forward and crashed into the gate. With a groan the aluminum twisted and bent, but didn’t give. Damn!

Chloe rammed the van into Reverse and, spying the man running forward, didn’t hesitate. “Die, fucker!” she said through gritted teeth, and punched it. The van’s engine roared, the huge vehicle streaking backward.

Oh, God, she actually hit him!

Too bad
.

Or not.

Her stomach revolted and she fought the urge to gag. She had to hold it together now. Throwing the gearshift lever into Drive, she punched it, hoping there was enough distance for the acceleration necessary to break through the gate. Tires whirred as the Dodge spurted forward, hitting the gate and stopping so quickly Chloe was thrown against the steering wheel. “Ooof!” She caught her breath. Had to keep moving. “Come on, come on,” she moaned through her pain, and tromped on the accelerator again.

Whining, the tires dug deep into the lane.

Thunk!
That same awful sound she’d heard before when she’d run over the bastard. But the van wasn’t moving. No matter how hard she stepped on the gas. Frantic, she rammed the Dodge into Reverse again to take another run at the gate.

The passenger door window shattered.

Glass sprayed.

A beefy hand shot through.

Chloe screamed.

The door flew open.

The huge whack job stood in the frail light cast by an interior lamp.

Clutched in one of his massive hands was a heavy stick, most likely the branch he’d used to thump against the van.

“No!” Terrified, she scrabbled for the door lock. She had to get out. To run!

Cowering against the driver’s door, she tried to find the handle, but the evil smile that crawled over his bruised and bloodied face petrified her. He knew she couldn’t escape.

A weak, mewling sound slipped from her throat.

He yanked the key from the ignition and opened the glove box.

Her fingers found the door handle.

She pulled.

Her door gave way, but as she dove to the left to escape the van something closed over her arm. He had grabbed her with one meaty hand.

“Not so fast,” he muttered against her ear as she fought, flailing and clawing at him. She tried to wrench free, but the sound of a metal click matched the manacle he was tightening over her wrist.

Handcuffs. He’d taken them from the glove box.

Before she could react he yanked her over his lap and twisted her arms behind her. Over her own cries, she heard the horrifying click of the second cuff locking, and she knew it was over.

He would never let down his guard again.

She was as good as dead.

C
HAPTER
5

A
fter a fitful night’s sleep, Brianna showered, then scraped her curly hair into a loose, dark knot before throwing on yesterday’s faded jeans and her favorite cotton tee. While St. Ives preened himself, she went to the kitchen to make coffee and clean a few dishes that seemed to have multiplied on their own in her sink.

Last night’s dreams still lingered with their disturbing images, but in the predawn hours she had convinced herself that her dreams were hers to own, period. It was silly to think that skeletons in the desert had any connection to Tanisha’s nightmares. “It’s all just some weird cosmic coincidence,” she muttered as the doorbell pealed.

She glanced at the clock on her stove.

The sun wasn’t even up yet.

No one stopped by this early.

Wiping her hands, she made her way to the front door, peered through one of the sidelights, and spied Selma Denning on the front stoop. Selma stood in a cloud of smoke, pulling hard on a cigarette.

Brianna felt a chill deep inside. Selma had given up smoking years ago, and it wasn’t like her to drop by so early in the morning. Pale as death, her graying hair pulled back into a sloppy ponytail, Selma looked unkempt and stark under the porch light. Dawn was breaking, fingers of gray light crawling through the city streets, chasing away the shadows, but from the looks of Selma’s rumpled shorts, T-shirt, and cardigan sweater, Brianna suspected that she hadn’t slept a wink.

As Brianna unlocked and opened the door, Selma quickly squashed her cigarette.

“Selma?”

“It’s the twins,” Selma said before Brianna could ask any questions. “Zoe and Chloe. They’re . . . they’re missing!” Her face was twisted in pain, her eyes red behind her rimless glasses.

Brianna held the front door open. “Come in, come in . . . please. And start over at the beginning.”

“It was their birthday. I mean, it
is
their birthday and oh, God.” Selma didn’t budge from her spot on the porch as her eyes filled with tears. She dropped her face into her hands and hiccuped a sob. “I know it hasn’t been all that long, but I just know something has gone wrong. I can feel it in my bones, you know?”

Brianna nodded. Although she wasn’t a mother, she did understand the invisible connections between people. Now Tanisha’s call and her own dreams of a disturbance, a separation in the universe, took on a new significance. The soft ping of alarm deep inside her began to swell.

“Something’s happened. Oh, God.” Selma clamped a bony hand over her mouth for a second, then let it fall. “You don’t think . . . I mean, it’s impossible that the two of them together were . . .
kidnapped.
” Her voice trailed off as she considered the horrible possibility.

Brianna’s heart turned stone cold. “I don’t know what to think,” she said, half-lying. “But come in, come in.” She waved Selma inside and stepped out of the doorway, casting a quick glance to the still-dark street. Saw nothing out of the ordinary. She pulled the door firmly shut. “Let’s go into the kitchen.”

Sensing the dread in her new companion, Brianna ushered Selma past the living area to the back of the house where a pot of coffee was brewing, the last of the water gurgling through the grounds. St. Ives was stretched out on a rug near the French doors, which gave the tabby a view of the backyard. Brianna imagined the cat looking forward to the day’s activity in the yard, where birds would flit across the stone paths and splash in the fountain, and squirrels would tease from the twisted branches of the live oak trees that shaded a small café table. Such a simple life.

“Coffee?” Brianna offered, opening a cupboard and scrounging inside to locate a cup that wasn’t chipped. “Black, right?”

“Yes, that’s . . . that’ll be fine.” Selma struggled against tears as she dropped onto a bar stool at the counter.

“So why don’t you start over? At the beginning.” Ignoring the icy feeling seeping through her blood, she tried to convince herself that this was just a coincidence. That was all. Of course, Selma’s twin daughters were fine. Right?

“As I said, today is their birthday.” Selma’s voice was a dry whisper. “Their twenty-first.”

That was why the fear in Selma’s pale eyes was so real, so visceral.

Brianna tried to keep calm. “Just because they were turning—”

“Don’t!” Selma ordered, her voice surprisingly fierce, her blue eyes sparking. “Just don’t . . . don’t patronize me. Okay?” She sniffed and ran the back of her hand under her nose. “We’ve been friends too long for that.”

Fair enough.
“Okay.”

“Good. We both know what this could mean.” Her chin wobbled and she closed her eyes. “You, especially.”

That much was true. They both knew that Brianna had been studying the 21 Killer for years. Dubbed “21” by the press, the killer had terrorized Southern California a few years back. The police had finally arrested Donovan Caldwell, who had been tried and convicted as the killer.

But Brianna didn’t believe Caldwell capable of the ritualistic murders, and she feared that 21 was killing again, broadening his hunting ground. But here, in Louisiana? She held her tongue as she poured coffee into two cups. “Let’s not go immediately to the worst-case scenario,” she said, even as her mind was leaping ahead.

“Didn’t you go there? Sweet Mother Mary, they turned twenty-one and I can’t find them!” Selma’s voice cracked. “And what if . . . what if he’s out there? You’ve worked on this for years, right? You don’t believe that monster they call the 21 Killer is Donovan Caldwell. You’ve said as much.”

Brianna couldn’t argue the fact. Plenty of people knew that she had been studying the 21 Killer and pursuing the possibility of Donovan Caldwell’s innocence. A psychologist, she’d tried to “look into the mind” of 21, at least from a psychological perspective, based on any information she had found on the crimes. What most people did not know was that Donovan was her cousin. The Caldwells were on her mother’s side, a California branch of the family she had barely known growing up. However, when she had learned that 21’s first victims were her own cousins, said to be murdered by their brother, Brianna had felt a personal stake in the case. Over the years she had followed the developing details of the murders, investigating as a concerned family member and twin, and later a psychologist. She had always tried to hide her family connection to the murders.

That was about to change. It was time to go public with her concerns about his imprisonment and what she now knew. During her last visit to the California prison, she’d told him that she would take care of things. She was going to make sure the truth was known. But her campaign did little to bring Donovan out of his depression.

“No one will ever believe I didn’t do it,” he’d said morosely on the other side of the thick glass in the prison, the phone pressed to his ear. “It’s true, I didn’t like my sisters. I admit it. But I didn’t kill them. I didn’t!” For a second there had been fire in his eyes. “And the others that they think I murdered?” Phone pressed to his ear, he’d let out a bone-weary sigh. “No way. I didn’t even know them.”

“I know. I know. I believe you and I swear, I’ll help,” she’d promised, but the look in his eyes had been that of a doomed man, one without a sliver of hope. “You just have to be patient.”

“I can’t. I’m going crazy in here.”

“Please, just hang on,” she’d said, her heart heavy at the thought of leaving him penned up for God knew how long.

“I don’t know if I can,” he’d said before the guard had ended their short conversation.

With fierce disappointment, Brianna had left California without any real progress on Donovan’s case. The state bureaucracy seemed impenetrable, and the LAPD was not interested in reviewing the case against one of the state’s most notorious serial killers.

Now, Brianna chose her words carefully as she handed a cup to Selma. “Yes, I saw Caldwell in prison. I hoped to have his case dismissed, or at least appealed.”

“Because you think he’s innocent, right? And that means the killer is still out there. What if he’s out there and somehow he knew my girls were turning twenty-one and targeted them and . . . oh, God!
He
couldn’t have found them, right?” Her eyes hardened as she stared at Brianna for reaffirmation.

“It’s unlikely that the killer would have come here,” Brianna said, though the words seemed a lie. She went to the fridge and pulled out a half-empty carton of milk. “Come on, now. You were going to start at the beginning.”

“Yes, right.” Selma rubbed her eyes, as if lost for a few seconds. “As I said, it’s their birthday, you know, the big one and”—she cleared her throat—“I was hoping to celebrate with them this weekend, but they had other plans. They were going to meet up with friends, go out on Bourbon Street, and didn’t want their mother tagging along. I get that, and told them we could do the family thing later. Dinner and drinks out another night, you know. They seemed cool with that. Of course, I have no idea if they were going to see their father . . .” She pulled a face at the mention of Carson Denning, her ex-husband, then stared into her untouched drink. “I’m
not
in
that
exclusive circle.” There was a bite to her words.

The Denning divorce had been far from amicable. Though it had been five years since Carson and Selma’s initial split, Selma wouldn’t or couldn’t get over it. The scars, she said, just ran far too deep. Carson’s betrayal had been devastating; no coming back from that. Brianna understood; she knew all about heartache.

Sighing, Selma glanced out the window over the kitchen sink and focused on a middle distance. Brianna doubted that her friend noticed the morning light streaming through the branches of the magnolia tree, or the birds flitting near the fountain. No, Selma’s gaze was turned inward to her own private hell. Although Selma had spent years trying to heal from the broken relationship, she hadn’t been particularly successful. Since Carson’s remarriage to his girlfriend of a year had occurred less than a month after the divorce was final, Selma had been left reeling. The fact that Carson’s girlfriend had been Selma’s niece had amplified Selma’s pain and feeling of betrayal. Though Selma had been in therapy ever since the breakup, she was far from moving on. Every family event seemed to send her into a new level of emotional hell.

And now this.

“What happened?” Brianna asked again.

“I wish I knew.”

As Brianna took the stool next to her, Selma explained how Chloe and Zoe, students at All Saints College in Baton Rouge, had come to town with plans to spend the evening barhopping with friends in New Orleans. It was, after all, in between terms. Selma hadn’t liked the idea much, but they’d laughed her off, claiming as always that she was a super-controlling mother. They had ignored Selma’s suggestion that since she lived in New Orleans, they crash at her place, an apartment on Lafayette Street. Although she had promised they could come in late with “no questions asked,” her twins had declined to spend their first night as legal adults in their mother’s guest room. “But I did have them leave their car with me. They share a car. It’s in Carson’s name. He bought it for them a while back. I didn’t want them getting back behind the wheel, you know. I insisted they get a designated driver, one of their friends to drive them back to Baton Rouge. They were supposed to get a ride and come back and pick it up, but . . . the car is still there and . . .” She shook her head sadly. “I don’t think they made it back to the college.”

“But it’s only been a few hours,” Brianna argued, thinking her friend had jumped the gun on her worries. “And they were partying,” Brianna argued, feeling a little better. “Maybe they had a late night.”

“Why aren’t they answering their cell phones? Not even a text message.” Selma frowned, eyebrows pulling together behind her glasses, lips trembling a little. “No one has heard from them this morning, and I found out that Chloe didn’t make it into work. She was supposed to be at the coffee shop at five thirty. She didn’t show. Zoe is due at her part-time job at the accounting firm by seven, and you can bet I’ll be calling her there, but . . . but I have a feeling I won’t find her.”

In Brianna’s mind, it was still too early to be alarmed. “They’re young adults. I’d say this is most likely the result of a wild night out.”

“I want to believe that, but I just can’t. I know something’s wrong.” The cup started trembling in Selma’s hands and she set it on the scarred butcher block counter. “Christ, I’m a pathetic excuse for a mother.”

“Selma, quit beating yourself up. You don’t know that anything’s wrong, and you’re a great mom.”

“Didn’t I ask you not to patronize me?” she demanded, anger spiking only to immediately dissolve. Balling a fist, she placed her curled fingers to her lips as she struggled with tears. “I’m sorry. I know you’re just trying to help. The last I heard from them was last night, a text after I had dinner,” she whispered, guilt clouding her features. “And you know what they say about the first forty-eight hours after a crime has been committed?” Meeting Brianna’s eyes, she added, “After that short window of time, if the crime isn’t solved, if a person is still missing or the perpetrator disappears, the trail goes cold fast.” Tears slid down her cheeks and she angrily swiped them away.

“Whoa, slow down. You’re not sure there’s been a crime,” Brianna said, but even to her own ears her argument sounded patronizing. Placating. “Have they ever been out of touch with you before?”

“Oh, yeah. Sure. Of course. They’re always pushing me away, telling me that I’m a freak show because I worry about them. Once they turned eighteen and went off to school, they would go for days without letting me know where they were. They’re still in college. Seniors in the fall. So they resent my need to mother them.” She sighed loudly. “I guess . . . I guess I’m ultra-protective because I know what it’s like to lose someone close to me.” Her voice cracked a bit. “God, I wish Sandra were here,” she admitted, bringing up her own sister. Selma, like Brianna, was a twinless twin, part of the support group that included Tanisha.