The Wildwood Sisters (37 page)

‘Actually, who am I kidding, no I wouldn't have. I've had my eyes on you since you were ten years old, and I was patiently waiting until you turned sixteen, so you were legal.' He chuckled cynically. ‘I know what they do to child molesters in prison. But when you were sixteen I couldn't have been charged with anything if you blabbed.' He huffed. ‘I'd waited six long years…but then Dylan got to you first and ruined my chances, the selfish bastard. The only reason you've lived this long is because you fucked off outta town after I put that note telling you that you were next on my list under your windscreen wiper…but now I got ya.' He grunted, as if pleased with himself. ‘I can't wait to have my way with you. I've fantasised about this for close to sixteen years now.'

Annie was sobbing beside her as the bag was ripped from Renee's head. It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness before they finally came to meet with the sadistic eyes of her sister's killer once again.

She would never have believed for a second that the man standing before her was capable of murder.

Jumping from the shower, Dylan grabbed his mobile phone that was now ringing for the second time in a row. He was going to wait until he was finished and ring whoever it was back once he was done but it was clearly important, especially seeing it was almost ten o'clock and most people would be in bed by now. He checked to see what the number was but it was a private.

‘Hello.'

‘Dylan, it's Stanley. Are you with Renee at all?'

Stanley's voice was uneasy, almost desperate.

‘Oh, hi Stan. Nope, I'm at home. Why? Is everything okay?'

‘I've been trying to call her mobile for the past half an hour and I can't get a hold of her. She was supposed to pick me and Pearl up from Shirley and Tom's place. She was meant to be at Hayley Gregory's tonight, and I've tried ringing there too but it keeps giving me the engaged signal. I just thought there might have been a chance that she'd finished at Hayley's and headed out to your place.'

An extremely bad feeling settled in the pit of Dylan's stomach. ‘No, she's not here, Stan. Have you tried Hayley's mobile number?' He tried to keep his voice casual, not wanting to alarm Stanley any more than he already sounded.

‘I don't have it. Do you?' Worry laced Stanley's every word.

‘Yup, I've got it. How about I give her a quick ring and see what's going on?'

‘I'd appreciate it, Dylan. Thanks.'

‘Righto, I'll call you back as soon as I've spoken to her.'

‘Please be quick, Dylan. Pearl and I are getting extremely worried.'

Hurriedly, Dylan searched for Hayley's number in his contacts list. Finding it he pressed call, his hands clammy. Something wasn't right. It rang out and he called it again. After several rings he was diverted to her message bank. A sense of desperation washed over him.
Fuck it.
He was going to keep ringing until Hayley answered. It went to message bank yet again. He left a message.

‘Hayley, it's Dylan. I want to know where Renee is. Answer your goddamn phone or I'm driving over there.'

He tried Greg's mobile number, but it, too, went to message bank.

Dylan tugged a pair of jeans and a t-shirt on, readying himself to drive over to Hayley's. He was going to have to ask his mum to come over and watch Annie. But in less than a minute, Hayley was calling him back, bawling uncontrollably. Dread filled him. ‘Hayley, what's happened? Where's Renee?'

‘I don't… She ran off…after she…found…the scarf.' Hayley was hysterical, her words fractured between her sobs.

‘What scarf? Ran off where?'

Hayley was crying so hard she couldn't speak.

Dylan fought to control his own panic as he tried desperately to calm her. ‘Hayley, take a deep breath. You have to calm down so you can talk to me. I can't help you, or Renee, if you don't tell me what happened.' He could hear Hayley trying to breathe at the other end of the phone.

After a few moments, Hayley began explaining, her voice trembling. ‘He told me not to tell anyone until he'd sorted it out, but if I don't tell someone I'm going to lose my fucking mind. He went looking for her, but it was hours ago and I haven't heard from him since, and now his mobile is switched off. I don't know what to do.'

‘Who told you not to tell anyone, and about what? Who's gone looking for her?' Dylan demanded, his patience wearing thin as he began to seriously worry about Renee's safety.

Hayley began rambling hysterically. ‘I had a Maroons scarf in the box upstairs. When Renee saw it she flew into a panic and went running out my front door like I was a murderer or something.'

‘I don't understand. Whose scarf was it?'

‘Craig Campbell's. It was out of the boot of his car.'

Dylan fought to keep his voice calm, needing Hayley to try to do the same. ‘I'm really confused. Hayley, what in the fuck is going on?'

‘Craig and I slept together years ago, when he and Louise broke up once for a few weeks. I'd had too much to drink one night and one thing led to another, and it shouldn't have. It makes me so bloody sick just thinking about it. I took the scarf at the time to remind me of the night we spent together, but apparently it wasn't his and by the look on Renee's face it might have belonged to her…or someone she knows very well.' Hayley gasped as though she'd been drowning and just resurfaced. ‘Oh my God, Dylan. It's just come to me. I think that scarf must have been Scarlet's. That's why she was so terrified when she found it here.'

Ignoring the million questions in his head, Dylan asked the most important one, everything dangerously making sense now. ‘Is Craig the one out looking for her?'

‘Yes, I rang him as soon as Renee ran off. I wanted to find out why the scarf had upset her so much. Craig told me he had no idea, but to leave it to him to sort it out. He told me not to say anything. Oh my God, Dylan, what have I done?'

‘Hayley, lock all your doors and don't let Craig anywhere near you. Okay? I'll call Jake at the cop station in town and let them know what's going on.'

‘Okay, Dylan, please let me know as soon as you know anything. I'm so sorry—'

But Dylan was already hanging up and dialling the local police station. As he spoke to Jake, he instinctively dashed down the hallway to check on Annie. Halfway through explaining the dire situation, the phone dropped from his hands and crashed to the floor. Annie's bedroom window was wide open, and his little girl was gone, her favourite teddy bear the only thing left lying in her ruffled bed.

His entire world caved in on him. Wherever Craig had taken Renee, he intuitively knew Annie was there too. Everything was adding up now, all the things going wrong around his place and Craig so conveniently unable to find out who was responsible. Dylan had found it a bit odd that Craig hadn't wanted to watch the video footage when he'd turned up at the station earlier today, instead saying he'd rather watch it without distraction and then he'd let him know his findings. He'd put it down to it just being the way Craig liked to work…but it was because it had been him all along. He obviously had it in for him, for fuck knows what reason, not that it mattered right now. Bossy would never have let a stranger near the house, especially near Annie's window, Craig only got away with it because Bossy trusted him, like they all did. He was a cop. You were supposed to trust him.

Falling to his knees, Dylan pulled the teddy bear to his lips and cried out Annie's name, over and over, the tinny voice calling out to him from the phone not registering with him at all. And in that moment of utter despair and horror he remembered Craig's words at the dam only days ago:
You just do your job, Dylan, and let me do mine, and it'll all pan out just the way I expect it to.

His blood ran cold as he snapped out of his shell-shocked daze, fortitude now storming to the forefront. Craig was the one man the Opals Ridge township should be able to trust, the person responsible for upholding the law and catching the bad guys, and somehow he had fooled them all. Everything now pointed to the fact that he was behind Scarlet's disappearance, because why else would her scarf be in the boot of his very own car?

It made Dylan sick to the core to think that he now had Renee and Annie holed up somewhere, doing God knows what to them. Was he planning on making them disappear, like Scarlet? A flood of pure rage engulfed him. He felt like killing him with his bare hands, but he wouldn't let the bastard get off that easy. Dylan was going to find his two girls, now, before it was too late, and make sure Craig went to prison for life for what he had done.

Grabbing his mobile phone from where he'd dropped it, Dylan raised it to his ear and hurriedly explained to the copper the situation as he raced to his desk to grab the keys to his gun cabinet. Jake told him he was calling for backup from the neighbouring town and then heading straight over to the Campbell property. Knowing that would take at least twenty minutes, Dylan said he was heading out to start searching now, and hung up before the copper could oppose his decision to take matters into his own hands.

Where the hell would Craig have taken them? And then his phone vibrated—a text notifying him that Annie had pressed the alert button on her locator watch. He opened the GPS locator's map application, and a beeping red dot on the map showed that Annie, and hopefully Renee, were only a short distance away—somewhere on Craig's property to be exact.

Her puffer
… Dylan took off to Annie's bedroom to grab it from her bedside table, his heart wrenching out of his chest as he imagined her having an asthma attack without her medication—it would kill her. ‘Hang in there—I'm coming…' he whispered.
Lord, I beg you, please keep my little angel safe
.

Swallowing the lump in his throat and blinking back tears, Dylan reprimanded himself for wanting to crumble. He had to keep it together. He'd be no good to either Annie or Renee if he fell in an emotional heap right now.

Racing to his gun cabinet, he retrieved his shotgun. Then, sprinting out his front door and towards the back bushlands of his property, he dialled the number Stanley had given him—Shirley and Tom's house number. He dreaded making this call, but he had to.

Stanley answered the phone in one ring. ‘Dylan, Shirl has you on loudspeaker…any news?'

Dylan's throat squeezed tighter. ‘Yeah, Stan, and I'm afraid it's not good.'

He kept running as he explained the dire situation, adrenaline filling him. He could hear Pearl screaming in the background and Shirley trying to console her. Stanley was crying too, the man's wracking sobs tearing at Dylan's heart. ‘Stan, I promise, I'm going to get your girl back. The cops are on their way. I'm sorry, but I gotta go…I'm almost at Craig's boundary now.'

‘I'll see you out there, Dylan. I'll borrow Shirl's car and be on my way.'

Stanley was gone before Dylan had time to tell him to stay put. He didn't want anyone else's life put in danger. But then again, what did he expect? Renee was Stanley's little girl, as Annie was his, and fathers protected their children with their lives.

What a fucking nightmare—his two most precious girls, in the hands of a murderer. He knew he had to get to them fast, because with a man as callous and coldblooded as Craig clearly was, time wasn't going to be on his side. It would take him about ten minutes on foot to get to where the screen was blipping, and the clock was ticking…

Pavarotti's ‘Nessun Dorma' pounded the walls of the underground cellar. Renee had worked out that this was the darkroom Craig had mentioned at the Studs and Fuds. It gave her some relief to know they weren't in the middle of nowhere, but instead right next door to Ironbark Plains, to Dylan. The famous song was so very out of place in the dank, cobweb filled space. Opera was meant to be glitzy and glamorous, but here a single blazing bulb hung from the low ceiling, illuminating the blackened walls and giving Renee a good view of where Craig was holding her and Annie captive.

A multitude of photos hung from wooden pegs, the ones of her and Hayley from the other night pegged to a thin rail above her, the smile on her face in such sharp contrast to the sheer terror she was experiencing now. There were also shots she hadn't been aware of Craig taking while she and Hayley had been dancing on the table, all of them from very compromising angles. It was repulsive to think he'd taken advantage of their personal space without them even knowing. Looking beyond the recent snapshots, she muffled a gasp as she spotted the back wall, photos plastering every single inch of it.

She slowly scanned the pictures, her disbelief growing by the second. There were recent shots of her outside the pub with Mick, walking into the hospital to visit her nan, coming out of the post office and the local grocery store. There were old photos of her and Scarlet swimming in the dam as teenagers, others of them playing at the hunter's shack, and a series of her running in the dark towards the Land Cruiser at the ball. So there had been someone following her—and the light she had caught a very fleeting glimpse of was no lighter, or torch, it had been the flash of Craig's camera. What would have happened to her if Dylan hadn't come to her rescue? And then her eyes came upon the most disturbing photos of all—she and Dylan making love at the hunter's shack as teenagers. The images were a little blurry, their naked flesh lit only by the many candles flickering within the shack, but it was unmistakably them. She felt utterly violated, one of her most precious moments now tainted by this monster who now held her and Annie captive. Anger surged throughout her. How dare he… And then everything about the note being left on her windscreen the following day made sense. Craig had lashed out in a jealous rage.

A snort-filled chuckle dragged her attention back to in front of her.