Exposed (Rosato & DiNunzio #5)(82)

Mary heard what he said. The little one. She must be the little one. She was little. She couldn’t remember her height exactly. She knew she was little. That meant there was a bigger one. She didn’t know who the bigger one was. She must’ve been with somebody bigger. She tried to remember who was bigger. The answer was everybody.

“You and your plans! Your plans got us into this mess! Now what are we going to do?”

“I told you I’ll figure it out.”

“You better figure it out fast. Somebody is going to be looking for them. She’s half-dead already.”

Mary realized he meant her. She was half-dead. She felt half-dead. She felt warm and wet. She knew there was blood on her and it was hers. It was hard to breathe through her nose. She couldn’t smell anything. She realized there was blood in her nose. She was congested with blood. She couldn’t breathe through her mouth because of the cloth. She realized she was panting a little, trying to get air.

“We can’t kill them until we figure out what they know and what they told the cops.”

“You want me to go ask her? I have a way with the ladies.” The man chuckled.

Mary shuddered, involuntarily. She realized what he meant. She didn’t want to think about it. She felt a bolt of fear, less muffled. She was a little one. This was very bad. They were going to kill her. She didn’t know why. She couldn’t remember anything. Except that there was a big one. She remembered that she had been with somebody bigger when something had happened. She had been grabbed from behind. It was coming back to her now, in bits and pieces. It was a memory just out of reach.

“Is that supposed to be a joke?”

“Lighten up.”

“Help me get into this laptop. They have everything under password. The phones too. I took the batteries out of their phones.”

“Why do you wanna get in the laptops?”

“I wanna see if they sent that email they were talking about.”

“How did you even get wireless up here? My cell gets no reception.”

“You don’t need wireless to check sent emails. Plus if we got wireless, then anybody could track these laptops. Without wireless, they can’t.”

Mary lost track of which man was speaking, Ray or not-Ray. But what they said made her remember something. A laptop. A phone. She had those things. She could almost visualize them but not quite. And there was an email. Something about an email. It was so hard to think. She couldn’t summon up a single image in her head. She couldn’t form a sentence. Maybe the bigger one was another woman. They had been together. Mary felt the answer just out of her grasp. She could almost see her hands reaching for it, her fingers trying to pull it from thin air.

“You heard ’em. They’re onto us. We can’t finish ’em until we know what they told the cops.”

“Who’s doing the honors?”

“You are, like before.”

“Why me?”

“Why not you?”

“She’s a woman. Two women.”

“Oh please. They’re not women. They’re lawyers.”

Mary could hear what they said but couldn’t react. She was terrified but back in the fog. She couldn’t feel her own fear. She started falling asleep again. The pain took over, obliterating everything. She wasn’t strong enough to resist it. She tried to breathe, but her nose bubbled blood. She was losing consciousness.

She let it go. If the men were going to kill her, she couldn’t stop them.

She was half-dead already.





CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Bennie figured out where she was, by smell. She’d been put in a small building that had to be a smokehouse. It reeked of smoked meat. She sensed it was primitive or very old. The floor was dirt, which felt cool against her cheek. The air was filtered with ashes from a dormant fire that smelled close by. She was alone and she didn’t know where Mary was.

She lay on her side, blindfolded and gagged. Her hands were duct-taped behind her back, but her legs were not. She’d been too big to be carried like deadweight. They’d made her walk from the car to the smokehouse. She’d been beaten on the head and arms, but the pain was tolerable. She was keeping her emotions and her terror at bay. She had to be on top of her game to stay alive.

Bennie sensed she was in the country, not only because it was a smokehouse but because it was so quiet. She assumed there was a house or a cabin near the smokehouse, some distance apart. She knew there was a lot of deer hunting in central Pennsylvania. It would make sense to have a smokehouse to smoke venison near a hunting cabin. So either it was a cabin or house, but Bennie was praying that Mary was safe and alive.

Bennie swallowed hard, worried. She had been driven here alone in the trunk of a car, filled with tools that jangled, so it wasn’t Mary’s car. There had to be at least two men since she and Mary had both been abducted at the same time. She had no idea if there was a third man here. Her working theory was that Ray and Ernie had taken her and Mary. Mo was an outside possibility. Either way, it was proof that she and Mary had been right. The conspiracy had killed Todd.

Bennie tried not to panic. She figured that they had driven Mary separately. She didn’t know if Mary was here or in a different location. They couldn’t risk leaving Mary’s car in front of Simon’s house. Sooner or later somebody would notice and call the cops.