Web of Lies (28 page)
Chelsea watched him go, stunned. Stephen threw a curse at his back. I couldn’t move, couldn’t
think
. I pressed a hand against my forehead, staring at a pebble at my feet.
“Mom
— ” Stephen grasped my arm — “forget him. There’s no oval window back there. Neese may be in that house, but I don’t think Kelly is.”
I raised my head, feeling the weight of it, the weakness of my neck. Logic had abandoned me. Vaguely I focused down the road at Milt Waking. He was talking with animation on his cell phone, Jenna leaning in close to him. He said something to Jenna, then fished wildly in his pocket for pen and paper. She took them and wrote something down. Milt flipped shut the phone, grabbed Jenna’s elbow and propelled her in a run toward us.
“Guess what,” Stephen sneered as they pulled up beside us. “That cop doesn’t even think the spider room exists.”
Jenna’s eyes widened. Milt waved a hand, his expression tight with anticipation. “It doesn’t matter. I just got the address of the building plans for that house with the oval window.” He read off the piece of paper: “2378 Scander Lane. Jane — that’s the woman at the department — said the rendering of the rear view clearly shows the window. I convinced her to take a close-up picture of it with her camera phone and send it right over. We should get it in a minute.”
“Scander Lane.” Dave’s eyes roved. “That’s outside of town on the west side.” He looked straight at Chelsea. “You still absolutely convinced we need to look for that window?”
“Yes.” She didn’t hesitate. “I’m certain.”
A tone sounded from Milt’s phone. “There it is!” He flipped open the phone. “Okay, wait a minute.” He punched a few buttons, ogled the display, then thrust it in Chelsea’s face. “Is that the window?”
Chelsea took the phone and focused intently on the picture. I leaned in for a look, saw the upper half of the window above ground, the top of a semicircular retaining wall made of stone.
Oh, God, please tell us something.
Chelsea pulled in a breath. She looked into my eyes, her face pale.
“Annie, this is it. This is where we’ll find Kelly.”
K
elly stood in the middle of the room, shaking violently. The awful man had come back. He was staring at her — and smirking. Any minute now her legs would give out and she’d fall to the floor. How many spiders would she land on? She couldn’t bear to look.
The man sniffed. “You get bit yet?” He spoke in that raspy whisper.
Yet.
How long before that happened? Nausea ate at Kelly’s stomach.
I’m still standing, I’m still standing.
She shook her head.
He swatted at a fly. “Well, only a matter of time.”
Kelly whimpered. “Please, let me out.”
“So you can do what? Run home and tell Mommy all about me?”
“I – I won’t tell anyone. I promise. Just let me
go
.”
“Don’t you
get
it, girl?” He shook his head. “You’re here till you die.”
No, God, please.
She swallowed hard. “Why are you doing this?”
He scowled at her. “I’ll ask the questions, got it? Is Chelsea Adams still hanging around with your mom?”
Chelsea?
How would he even know her? “I don’t know. I think so.”
“You’re going to have to do a little better than that.”
Kelly’s breath shuddered. Her brain felt so twisted, she could barely think. “She was at the house when I left for school. Her car was supposed to be ready sometime today. That’s all I know.”
He blinked slowly at her feet. “Was she supposed to leave after she got her car?”
“Yeah. She was going home.”
His shoulders tensed. “Really.” He pulled the door open.
Fresh terror seized her throat. “Please don’t leave me in here!”
He gave her a long look, his face like stone. “Sorry I had to use you for bait. You’re a pretty girl and you don’t deserve it.” He took a step, stopped, then turned back. “By the way. That spider near your toe?” He pointed. “It’ll kill ya.”
She jerked her head down and screamed.
C
helsea’s words stabbed through me. I clutched Dave’s arm, a dozen questions zinging through my mind. Was Neese not here, then, trapped in the house behind us? Or had he left some accomplice to guard Kelly in the oval window house? Was she locked in there — by herself? Could we
save
her?
Sights and sounds blurred around me: Blanche calling through the megaphone; the
thwap, thwap
of the helicopter; the sea of official cars and officers; Jenna and Stephen and Chelsea all talking at once. “We have to call the Sheriff’s Department,” I blurted. “They have to help us get Kelly.”
“Let’s go.” Dave barked the words, his expression hardened with determination. “We’ll call for help on the way.”
We scrambled for our cars. Stephen ran back to Milt’s car, the reporter yelling for his cameraman to “Leave the truck and come with us!” I hurried into the SUV with Dave, Chelsea, and Jenna, my sister driving again. She smacked the car into gear, surged into a U-turn. As we passed the other media, I caught a glimpse of their suspicious faces, as if they worried we were on to a major part of the story they would miss.
Jenna bent over the wheel, shoulder blades jutting beneath her shirt. Dave twisted around toward me. Sweat shone on his forehead, his fingers gripping the back of the seat. “Annie,
you
call the Sheriff’s Department. We have to explain how we know Kelly’s not in the Boyle Road house with Neese. If they’ll listen to anybody, it’s you.”
I fumble-punched the number, prayers filtering through my head. Dispatch put me through to Ed Grange, one of the few deputies who hadn’t been called out to capture Neese. I tore through the information, voice frantic, until he told me to slow down and start over.
“It’s Kelly, my daughter.” My words shook. “She’s locked up in this horrible little room and we know where it is now. She’s
not
in the house with Neese. She’s in another house to the west of town. We’re on our way there now and we need help.”
“You mean that room with the spiders?” Ed, an older deputy, spoke so infuriatingly
slowly
.
“Yes. We know that room has an unusual small oval window, and now we’ve found the house where it is.”
A pause. “How do you know it has an oval window?”
Oh, God, please.
“Chelsea Adams saw it in her vision.”
“Oh.” Another pause. “Wait. I thought Ms. Adams said Orwin Neese had taken Kelly.”
I gritted my teeth, explanations tumbling crazily. “Chelsea didn’t say that, but Kelly called and said, ‘He put me in the spider room,’ and we know Neese had the spiders, but now Neese is surrounded in a house on Boyle Road, and that house doesn’t have an oval window, and we know Kelly’s in a room with the window, and now we know where that room is!” I gulped a breath. Surely I sounded like a blabbering idiot. “Look, we
know
she’s there. Maybe the house belongs to some accomplice of Neese’s who’s guarding her. We need help getting her out! We
can’t
go into this situation alone.”
“Okay, okay; what’s the address?”
My mind went blank. I asked Jenna, who spouted it immediately.
We flew around a curve. I hit the door, bumping my elbow. “It’s 2378 Scander Lane.”
Silence.
“Say again?”
I repeated it.
Come on, come on.
Dave was still half turned toward me, listening. Chelsea perched forward, pasty knuckles wrapped around the back of Jenna’s seat.
“Annie,” Ed said, “careful now. Tell me that address — one more time.”
What was
wrong
with him? I spat it out.
“There’s no way.” His tone dropped. “You have to be wrong.”
“We’re not wrong! Ed,
please
.” Tears scratched at my eyes.
“Look, I want to help you. But
that
address? I can’t send a bunch of armed deputies out there just because it has some window your friend claims she saw in a vision. I’d lose my job for sure. How do you know the window’s in that house anyway?”
“Milt Waking found — ”
“Doesn’t matter. I can’t do it. Not unless a supervisor okays it, and right now everybody’s busy capturing Neese. Who’s
supposed
to have your daughter, by the way.”
I gripped the phone, disbelief closing my throat again. After all the work I’d done with the Sheriff’s Department, they didn’t
trust
me?
“Annie, you listening? Please don’t go out there and do anything foolish. I tell you I know that house. It’s protected to the hilt. You so much as rattle a window, it’ll set off the alarm, plus buzz a pager in the owner’s pocket. Then you’ll have some
real
explaining to do.”
I couldn’t be hearing this. There had to be a mistake —somewhere. “Ed, I’m begging you to believe me.
Whose
house is it?”
He cleared his throat. “Not house, Annie. More like an estate. And it belongs to Ryan Burns.”
S
o Chelsea Adams thought she’d skip town, huh? Go back to her Bay Area house, where she could dream up more visions about him. A little more time and she’d get it all right.
Think again, Mrs. Adams.
He perched on the top basement step, Kelly’s cell phone in his hand. He’d turned the thing off long ago; its incessant ringing was driving him nuts. The megaphoned voice of Detective Blanche filtered into his ears. Guy had been on television half the morning — first interviews and now live coverage. His ego must be sky-high, with all those cameras on him.
“Mr. Neese! Please answer the cell phone you were using. We’ve been trying to call you.”
Fat chance.
He opened his palm, stared at the phone. With one finger he scratched his chin, thinking. This plan would be last-ditch, all right. But with all the chaos it was now or never. If he let that woman get away . . .
Abruptly he pushed to his feet and hurried to watch the TV. He saw more close-ups of officers and their cars, aerial shots of the whole mess. The entire world seemed to have stopped, the station showing nothing but the stakeout.
“Mr. Neese!” the megaphoned voice called.
How much longer would they wait before busting down doors?
Man, you better do this now.
I
lowered the phone and stared at it. Emotions unwound and writhed in my stomach — shock . . . disbelief . . . denial . . . fresh terror.
“What did he say?” Dave twisted in his seat to search my face, gripping the headrest for support as Jenna sped around a curve.
Slow down, stop,
I wanted to tell her.
We have the wrong house!
But my tongue lay like stone.
“Annie!” Dave’s voice tightened. “What did he tell you?”
My finger found the exit button on the cell phone. I clicked off the line, let the thing slide to the floor. My brain searched frantically for logic and found none. “Jenna. Pull over.”
She threw me a look in the rearview mirror. “Why?”
“Pull
over
.” I turned to motion to Milt’s car behind us.
Jenna veered to what little shoulder the road possessed and we slid to a halt. Milt followed. Dave, Chelsea, and Jenna all leaned toward me, faces tense.
I drew a breath. “We have the wrong address.” My voice sounded dry, dead. “That house on Scander Lane belongs to Ryan Burns.”
Silence. Jenna gawked at me.
“Ryan Burns?” Chelsea’s jaw went slack. “That man I met at the police station?”
“Yes. And the one who just put up fifty thousand dollars for Kelly’s safe return. He’s out somewhere right now with an officer, trying to find her. He told me that on the phone.”
Dave blinked hard, as if searching for any detail that made sense. “The deputy just told you it’s Ryan’s house?”
“Yes.”
“He’s
sure
?”
“Yes.”
We all breathed, in and out, in and out. Chelsea stared hollowly at her lap. Behind us car doors slammed.
“Chelsea?” Dave said. “You
knew
that oval window was the one. Right?”
She nodded.
Stephen skidded up to my door, tugged it open. “What’s the matter; why did we stop?”
My brain threatened to burst open. Time was ticking. My daughter still prayed for rescue in some horror-filled room, and once again we didn’t know how to find her. “Everybody out!” I pushed Chelsea toward the door, wrapped my fingers around Dave’s arm. “Right now! We have to talk about this; we have to figure out what to
do
.”
We scrambled out, huddling off the road like pursued convicts. Ed Grange’s words tumbled from my mouth. “Now what do we do? Kelly can’t be with Ryan. I
know
him; he wouldn’t do this to me.”
“You’ve been wrong before, Mom.” Stephen stood beside me, his expression dark, sweat trickling down his temple.
“But not this time.”
“I agree.” Jenna dug fingers into her hair. “It can’t be Ryan. We’ve gone off somewhere.”
I leaned toward Milt, grasped his wrist. “Maybe there’s a local builder who uses that oval window as a sort of signature. Maybe there’s five, ten, a dozen homes in the area with windows exactly like it.”
“Could be.” He surveyed the ground, looking miserably disappointed.
“The builder’s name should be on those plans,” Dave told him. “Call your friend at the department, ask her who it is. Maybe we can track him down.”
Maybe, but how
long
would it take? I rubbed my forehead, pleading with God for something, something . . . Chelsea hadn’t said a word. One hand lay at the back of her neck, her brows knit. I touched her arm. “Please
tell
us something! You’ve got to know. Is Kelly back at that house with Orwin Neese after all?”
She looked at me, pain in her eyes. Slowly she shook her head. “Not unless there’s — ”
A cell phone rang. Muffled, from inside the SUV.
Whose?
I jerked around, head cocked, listening. Another ring. “It’s mine.”
I sprang for the car door, threw it open. Half fell upon the seat, fingers scrabbling toward the floor for the phone.
God, let it be Kelly. Or Chetterling, with good news . . .
I felt the cell’s rectangular hardness, snatched it up to check the ID — and read my daughter’s number.
