“Ah, yes, here it is, far superior to that other book,” Miss Etta said. Pointing, she made room for Tess to pass her in the narrow, single aisle.

As she moved farther into the bookmobile, the smell grew stronger and Tess was overwhelmed by a memory. She was in the big, tall room where she was allowed to draw pictures if she was good, the room with all the books along the walls, the room where Mr. Mean lived and terrible things could happen.

Tess gasped and turned. She had to get out of here!

The paper bag crinkled loudly as Miss Etta took something from it and jabbed Tess’s neck with a needle. Just like that day in the cornfield.

“No!” Tess shouted, and tried to shove her away, but she was so strong, the rows between the corn so narrow.

“It’s all right,” Miss Etta said in a crooning voice. “It will be all right....”

Tess felt pain. Had she been stabbed or cut? She swung a fist at the woman but missed. She bounced off a shelf of books, kept in place by a cord in case the road was rocky. Tess grabbed for it to keep from falling, pulled it loose with several books and fell to her knees. Would she be smacked with Mr. Mean for messing up the books?

“I’m sorry,” Miss Etta said, in a calm voice as if she were reading to children who had to listen or they would be punished and hurt. She helped lower Tess to the soil in the cornfield. “I needed to do that before you remembered more, my dear. A drink of wine would have been kinder, but you gave me no choice. I must risk taking you now.”

Tess tried to hang on to her thoughts. Didn’t the drugs in the wine tie in to Dane? She could see the needle on the floor. It had blood on it. Maybe it would explode, because something was exploding in Marva’s kitchen and in her brain. However hard she fought it, Tess knew she was going under....

* * *

If the leaves hadn’t been off many of the trees, they might not even have seen the cabin before they were right on top of it. Gabe was amazed the decent-sized building had no view of the creek, distant waterfall or valley below. But then, he realized, Reese Owens hadn’t built it for the view outside but the one inside.

He held up his hand to halt Vic’s progress. Instinctively, they both lifted their rifles, despite the fact that they’d found no vehicle parked nearby.

“You go around back,” Gabe whispered.

“Roger that,” Vic said. He limped toward the upside of the hill.

Gabe was grateful to have Vic with him. He still missed his father. If they had both been law officers at the same time, going out on a dangerous call, it might have been like this. And without Vic, he would have had to pull Jace away from the search for Sandy. But what if he could find her first, bring her back...?

Vic glanced at him before disappearing behind the cabin. Gabe bent low and moved closer to the front door. There was no porch for sitting out, nothing fancy or fine. It was a far cry from the mayor’s mansion in town, more like the small house where Reese had been reared.

His rifle ready but pointed down, Gabe put his back against the exterior front wall, crept along and twisted his neck so he could peek in a front window. Blackout drapes of some kind blocked his view. His gut twisted. He was going in.

Vic came around the front. “No back door or windows,” he said to Gabe.

Gabe nodded. “Police!” he shouted. “Come out with your hands in the air!”

Nothing. No sound but the birds and wind in the tree branches.

“That door looks pretty sturdy,” Vic said, pressed to the wall between the window and the door. “But I say we go in. We’ve got cause. The heck with waiting again for a search warrant. He’ll find a way to stop it. If it turns out to be nothing, that’s the breaks.”

“Literally. I’m going to bust out this window,” Gabe said.

Vic shrugged. “That or get a downed tree limb for a battering ram.”

Gabe broke out the window with his rifle butt. There was no sound but shattering glass, still no reaction from inside. Shoving the heavy curtain aside, he stuck his rifle barrel through, then his head.

“Clear,” he told Vic. “I’ll climb in, unlock the door. There’s all kinds of stuff covered by black drapes in here. On the back wall, I see newspaper articles and pictures of girls, some in strange poses.”

“Bingo, if he’s still into molesting. And the articles—maybe he likes to read his own press,” Vic said, holding Gabe’s gun while he climbed through. Gabe tried to avoid slicing his legs up on the jagged glass still caught in the frame.

When he unlocked and opened the door for Vic, in the light, they both stopped and stared. Vic started to swear, and Gabe felt sick to his stomach.

The newspaper articles were all about a TV show called The Biggest Loser, where contestants tried to lose a lot of weight. Before-and-after weight-loss pictures were posted. Charts on the wall tracked Reese’s weight—down, then up again. The pictures of girls were really of a thin woman who was giving all kinds of tips on losing weight. Wearing tights and a tank top, she was in various poses, demonstrating squats, lunges, scissors kicks on her back with her legs in the air.

And the machines under the drapes included a tread climber, a stationary bicycle, a running track, a rowing machine and a stack of weights.

“Talk about dumbbells and big losers, huh?” Vic said. “Skunked again. There’s no evidence of girls here, only a poor, fat sap who wants to get his boyish figure back and isn’t going to.”

“And now I’ve got to replace that window, explain to him. He’ll really try to get me defeated next month in the election. And maybe he should,” Gabe said.

Vic started shuffling broken glass around with his foot, shoving it toward the door. “I suppose he’d never know it wasn’t some hunter or that bunch of kids with the graffiti habit. Personally, I can’t stand the guy.”

“Me neither, but I’ve got to live with myself. Let’s board this up. I’ll have to tell him. We need to get back. Thank God Tess is safe at the station and people are pitching in to help with another search. Maybe I was nuts not to take that book from the librarian about stress on the job.”

* * *

Were the cords the woman was wrapping around her wrists the same ones that kept the books from falling when the library truck made a sharp turn? Ropes around her ankles too, and a neatly ironed linen handkerchief stuck in her mouth. Tumbling, turning, Tess fought the darkness. Gabe. Gabe had gone somewhere green when she needed him here in this creeping blackness that was going to drown her under a waterfall.

“You just take a nap right there,” a voice said. “We’re going on a little ride back home.”

It wasn’t her mother’s voice, was it? Or maybe Char was counseling her to get more sleep.

“It will just take me a minute to completely close up, and you just rest while I drive. You should never have run away, you know, you bad girl! Did you think you could hide from me? Remember, Teresa, if you aren’t good, I’ll put you underground with the bones.”

At those words, at the shift in voice to an even lower pitch, total terror came screaming back at Tess. She saw it all, tried to run, tried to shout for help, but black night covered her.

28

Tess felt groggy, but she was finally getting a good night’s sleep. Still, the bed was so hard, and now someone was moving her, dragging her out of bed. Was it Gabe? Was she at his house? She wanted to stretch her sore arms and legs, but they didn’t move. The cut on her wrist hurt so much, she was afraid she was back in the meth lab, tied up again. She tried to cry out, but there was something in her mouth, and all that came out was a choking sound.

“Almost there now,” a woman’s voice said. “Home again, home again, jiggetty jig.”

A nursery rhyme about the five little piggies. Oh, she was back at the day care center in Michigan, home again. But no, wasn’t Cold Creek home?