Shattered (42 page)

Detective Watson shrugged. "That's another question for the lab."

"Boy or girl?" Scott was looking past Detective Watson toward the hole. Following his gaze, Lisa could see that they were lifting out a tiny skull. She suddenly felt faint.

"Girl."

"Scott." Lisa's knees were threatening to give way. "I'm going to go sit down on the wall for a minute. I'll be right here."

He glanced at her and nodded, his expression faintly abstracted. His hand dropped away from her arm, and she turned thankfully away from the terrible sight and walked toward the lowest part of the wall, which was near the entrance. Dusk was moving on toward full night now, and the sun had set, although pink and orange streamers still shimmered just above the western horizon. It was hot and steamy, and mosquitoes and lightning bugs alike were out in force. A few stars had already popped into view, looking like diamonds glittering in a purple velvet sky. Reaching her destination, Lisa sat on the warm brick, took in the familiar, beloved surroundings, and wanted to drop her head into her lap and weep.

Mother.

She clenched her fists and firmed her lips and concentrated on the here and now. On the baby in the garden, which was a terrible alternative but at least kept her from collapsing with grief. She was dizzy and sick. Her stomach heaved, and her head was starting to pound. Glancing back at Scott, she saw that he and Detective Watson had moved. They were now looking down at the open box the skeleton was being placed in, piece by careful piece, and appeared deep in conversation.

Lisa, shuddering, looked back toward the house.

And saw Robin through the kitchen window. Her red hair was unmistakable.

Lisa glanced around again, with the intention of alerting Detective Watson to Robin's presence. But he was still talking to Scott, and instead she decided that the thing to do would be to go tell Robin that Detective Watson wanted to talk to her.

She got up and headed toward the house, waving at the construction workers who were apparently giving statements one at a time to the cop, glancing to the left as she felt someone watching her, only to discover a TV camera turned her way. She hurried then, up the steps and across the porch and into the kitchen. Opening the back door and walking inside the house felt wholly familiar and at the same time almost obscene.

Her mother wasn't there.

If there'd been any kind of food inside her at all, she would have been in danger of throwing up.

You just have to keep going.

"Robin?" Lisa called, walking determinedly across the kitchen as a glance made it obvious that Robin had left the room. "Robin?"

Inside, the house was gloomy and still, as if it, too, mourned its mistress. Lisa went through the dining room--no Robin--and headed for the TV room, both of which were still relatively intact. Fortunately the curtains were open, so a good amount of light was available. Glancing around, Lisa was sad to see a layer of dust on every surface. And the smell--the house was starting to smell musty.

As if it, too, was dead.

She was just closing her eyes against the sudden onslaught of another wave of grief when she heard a sound behind her and opened them again.

"Robin?" Forcing a smile, she started to turn around--and then was knocked back into nothingness as something crashed with brutal force into the back of her head.

33

"Lisa?"
Scott's voice was sharp with anxiety as, holding a flashlight he'd borrowed from a construction worker, he walked quickly through the parts of the house that were still accessible. It was dark in there, not so dark that he couldn't see, but shadowy and gray as the last vestiges of daylight faded away outside. A dozen or more people had seen her go in, they'd told him so when he'd turned around in the garden to discover that she was gone, but nobody had seen her come out. He'd followed her as soon as he'd realized where she was. Not more than ten minutes could have elapsed from the time he'd last seen her.

But he couldn't find her.

"Lisa!" He was yelling now, his voice echoing through the empty rooms, shouting for her with real panic as the flashlight beam darted into every last nook and cranny with no luck. "Lisa!"

Something was wrong. He could sense it, and a terrible fear seized him. His gut clenched, and cold sweat popped out on his brow. The house was silent. Too silent. If she'd been inside it, and able to hear and respond, she would have heard him by now and answered.

"Lisa!"

Heart pounding, he turned and sprinted out of the house, bellowing for Watson.

Lisa's head hurt so much
she was woozy with it. She was also hot and cramped--suffocating, almost. Whatever she was on, or in, lurched and rattled. The surface beneath her was hard. There was no pillow, no support for her head: It bobbed painfully with every jolt. She was wedged in the most uncomfortable position imaginable, and when she tried to move, tried to stretch out her legs, she couldn't. There wasn't room even for her to turn onto her back. She drew in a shuddering breath of stale, dusty air and opened her eyes.

It was dark. Pitch-black. She could see absolutely nothing. She was lying down, on her left side, with her knees wedged tight against her chest and her arms drawn behind her back. She couldn't open her mouth--she tried--because something was plastered over it. Her wrists were strapped tightly together. So, she discovered, were her ankles.

Her heart began to slam in her chest.

Where am I? What's happened?

A series of quick impressions made her think she was in a box of some sort. A metal box, barely large enough to hold her folded body. She could feel its lid against her right shoulder; her bound hands were tight against its back, and her knees and shins strained against its front; her head was touching metal, and so were her--bare, she realized--feet.

Her blood ran cold. A scream gathered in the back of her throat as the truth burst upon her:
I've been kidnapped.

The sheriff's department
cordoned off the area, as everyone who was present was blocked from leaving. They searched the house from top to bottom, doing what they could to go into the sections of the house the fire had rendered inaccessible or even downright dangerous. They searched every vehicle on the property. They searched the barns, the grounds, the outbuildings. Within half an hour the place was crawling with sheriff 's deputies and state police and even some of the Lexington cops who were Scott's friends. They searched everywhere, and they found nothing.

Ten p.m. Ten-thirty. No trace of Lisa.

Scott was sweating bullets.

Watson had suggested that maybe she had simply gotten tired of waiting for him and caught a ride home. Scott had roared his rejection of that, but as a result he'd called his apartment so many times that his answering machine was now full. Ryan, who had gone by to check Scott's apartment at his request, just to make sure Lisa wasn't in there and for some reason not answering the phone, called back with a negative and then showed up in person, Chase in tow, to help in the search. Nola and Joel came after Scott called them both to check if Lisa could possibly be with either, only to get the answer he had expected: no. They were working the phones, going down the list of practically everyone Lisa knew. No one had seen her. No one had a clue where she could be. A number of the people they called came rushing to Grayson Springs. Outside the house, the atmosphere, despite the deadly desperation of the situation, gradually took on the air of a macabre carnival. The TV stations, cameras still in place, were having a field day. Not only was there a dead baby but a missing woman who was young, beautiful, the heiress to one of the world's most famous horse farms, and the recent survivor of a terrible accident that had killed her socialite mother. Breaking news, live at eleven!

Scott was going quietly insane. His blood had turned to ice in his veins and his pulse hammered relentlessly at his temples. It was all he could do not to pant with fear. Wherever she was, she was in trouble. Bad trouble. He knew it, with a gut-churning certainty that was tearing him apart. It required a tremendous effort of will to stay focused, to try to think. But he had to ride herd on his panic, for Lisa's sake.

There were only two real possibilities, as far as he could see. Either she was trapped somewhere in the house or someone had taken her.

He was putting his money down on taken.

That being the case, he had a pretty damned good idea about who had done it.

Whatever she was in--a truck,
Lisa thought, a metal box in the back of a pickup truck--stopped. Her heart lurched as she heard the grinding of gears, the muffled slam of a door.
One door. One assailant.
She made the assessment automatically, with the part of her mind that had gone into ice-cold survivor mode. Which was how it had to be, if she was going to make it. Because the object of what was happening to her was for her to die. She harbored no illusions about that.

She'd been hit over the head and snatched from the TV room. Bound quickly with duct tape--because that was what, she had concluded by dint of rubbing her tongue around the sticky stuff covering her lips and straining against the bonds confining her wrists and ankles, had been used on her--and thrust into this horrible box. Driven away from Grayson Springs, and Scott, and any possibility of help. Now she guessed--feared--they had reached somewhere sufficiently remote for her to be killed.

Oh, God, will I vanish like the Garcias? Suddenly I'm just gone and nobody ever sees me again?

Terror washed over her at the thought. Her heartbeat went ragged. Her breathing became scarcely more than a shudder in her chest. Her hands and feet were numb, cold, dead--just like she would be dead soon if she didn't do something to save herself. Feverishly, using her nails, she clawed at the slick layers of tape around her wrists. Her shoes with their stiletto heels were in the box with her, although unfortunately not within reach of her hands. If she could just manipulate one of them into the right position, maybe she could use the heel to punch a hole in the tape around her ankles.

A loud rattle from the direction of her feet was followed by a pronounced bouncing of the truck.

Someone just jumped into the truck bed.

The knowledge galvanized her. Her heart slammed against her breastbone. Her body turned clammy with sweat. Nails scrabbling at the tape around her wrists, she shifted her legs as best she could, trying with savage intensity to loosen the tape that bound her ankles.

Too late, too late, too late . . .

A clanging blow to the box she was in made her jump. Her stomach cramped. Her heart stopped. She froze, not even daring to breathe. Not the right response but the instinctive one, like a scared rabbit staring into the teeth of a fox.

The lid opened with a loud creak. Sick with terror, Lisa found herself looking up at a dark, faceless figure that loomed over the box, blocking out the night.

Nostrils flaring, she drew in air through her nose.

Then she nearly jumped out of her skin as something came hurtling down at her, a fist holding something, a weapon, shiny silver metal in the moonlight. . . .

Heart thundering, cringing, trying uselessly to move or duck or somehow get out of the way, she felt a whoosh of air and then the blow fell, slamming hard into her skull.

She saw stars and then, for a while, a short while, she thought, nothing.

She thought the time that had passed was short because when she came to she was hanging, head down, over a man's shoulder. He was carrying her like that, in a fireman's carry, and for a moment she imagined that it must be the night Grayson Springs had burned. It took her a second to remember that it was not, to fully grasp what was happening, because she was dizzy and sick and disoriented, and her head hurt so much she wanted to cry out with pain, only she couldn't, there was still tape on her mouth, and on her wrists and ankles, too.

It was the presence of that tape that snapped her back into the present.

Bound and gagged, she was being carried through a dense woods by a man who was at any minute probably going to put her down and kill her.

At the realization, she was suddenly so terrified that her brain refused to function. Her heart went into frantic mode. She could taste the fear in her mouth, salty and acidic. Her instinct was to struggle, scream, try to escape. But she managed to clamp down on it in time.

If he knew she was awake, he would hit her again. She didn't think she could survive another blow like the last one. Her skull felt like it was broken now.

Think.

Oh my God, is this
Barty
?
was the question that came to her.

The pain that thought caused her was almost worse than the pain in her head. How could he do this? Whatever else he was, he was her father.

He had to feel something for her, didn't he? Somewhere deep inside? So, maybe if she could get him to look at her, get him to listen, and she begged . . .