Little Girl Gone (An Afton Tangler Thriller #1)(4)
*
THE kidnapping of Baby Darden was your basic piece of cake. Ronnie walked up to the front door, a battered Pizza Hut box balanced in his left hand, and rang the doorbell. Marjorie hung back in the shadows, watchful and listening. A few seconds later, a chime rang out deep inside the enormous house. Bing, bang, bong. Just like church.
Not thirty seconds later the babysitter opened the front door. Ronnie’s first impression was of a skinny blond teenager with a tentative smile and a thin band of blue braces stretched across her upper teeth. Puzzlement flickered in her eyes when she spotted the pizza box. Then she gave a disdainful snort and said, “Nobody here ordered—”
Ronnie didn’t waste a single precious moment. He straight-armed the girl in the face with his right arm, shattering her nose on impact, and sending her sprawling backward onto the Oriental carpet.
Terrified, screeching like a scalded cat, blood flowing copiously from her busted nose, the babysitter struggled to right herself. “Eee . . . pyuh!” she babbled as her feet paddled helplessly on the rug, unable to gain traction.
Ronnie was on top of her like a rabid pit bull. “Shut up!” he snarled as Marjorie slipped in behind him and kicked the door shut in one fluid motion.
“Stuff them socks in her mouth,” Marjorie ordered. “Then blindfold her and snare your rope around her neck.”
“I know what to do,” Ronnie cried. He was caught up in the moment now, feeling totally enraptured. His blood was pulsing hotter, his synapses were firing more crisply than ever before. Struggling with this little piece of quiff was really turning his crank.
Scared out of her mind, Ashley begged and pleaded with him as she blew gluts of snot and bubbles of blood out of her shattered nose.
Ronnie grinned at her and hooked a thumb into the waistband of her jeans. He felt the button pop, the zipper start to go down. A narrow piece of hot pink silk, the girl’s thong, stretched across her flat belly.
“Jesus Christ,” Marjorie said. She was a little surprised by the violence of his attack. “Don’t kill her. And don’t do . . . that.”
Illuminated under a French chandelier, Ronnie ground his teeth together in frustration and stuffed a dirty tube sock into the girl’s mouth. He slapped on a hunk of silvery duct tape, then wound a hunk of rope around the girl’s neck, stretched it tight, and looped it around her ankles. Hog-tied her nice and neat like a goat, just like he’d seen a 4-H guy do at the Pepin County Fair last summer. Good, he thought to himself. This feels so good and the bitch deserves it. He glanced around to see where Marjorie was. If only there was time to really have fun.
Marjorie took a few moments to scope out the downstairs, just in case there was a live-in housekeeper or a prowling dog. When she decided they were safe, safe enough anyway, she charged up the curving staircase. Expensive silk carpet whispered underfoot as she wondered what it must be like to live in a fancy house like this. A house with real oil paintings and custom leather furniture, and where you had actual carpeting instead of dirty, crappy linoleum. She gnashed her teeth, seething with unrequited envy as she climbed up to the second-floor landing. She hesitated for a moment, her hand stretching out to rest on an elaborately carved newel post, and glanced toward what she figured was the front of the house. Master bedroom located there? Probably, she decided. Which meant the nursery would be right next door.
Marjorie padded down the dim hallway, pushed open a door, and peered inside. And there, lying in a frilly white crib surrounded by a plush zoo of polar bears and penguins, was the baby. Elizabeth Ann. Just like some kind of grand prize in a box of Cracker Jack.
Peering over the railing of the crib, Marjorie whispered, “Hi, baby.”
The baby stirred and gurgled softly.
“Perfect,” Marjorie said, reaching down to gather up the child. “You’re a perfect little angel, aren’t you?”
3
WINTER always looked more pristine outside the city. And the small village of Taylor’s Falls, as well as the surrounding three hundred acres of state parkland and bluffs, sparkled like a glazed sugar confection after last night’s snowfall.
With basaltic cliffs that towered almost nine hundred feet over the winding Saint Croix River, the entire area was a climber’s paradise, offering frozen waterfalls, steep rock faces, and glacier-formed sinkholes. But ice climbing is both challenging and dangerous, especially with a diamond coating of fickle new ice and snow.
Arcing her right arm back, Afton Tangler swung her Petzl ice ax into the ice-coated cliff. She grimaced as the sharp metal bit in and her shoulder absorbed the harsh impact. Here we go, she told herself. Let’s carpe this friggin’ diem and show this big boy who’s boss!
Spits of cold ice chips stung her face as Afton repeated the motion with her left arm, drove in her toes, and found purchase with her crampons. Beginning her ascent up the cliff known as the Dihedral, she fell into the familiar ice climber’s pattern. Thwack, kick, pull herself up. Thwack, kick, do it again.
Recent snows and temperature drops had brought early season ice to the bluffs at Taylor’s Falls. It was good ice this morning, hard and resilient, shiny as glass, and Afton was the first one to take a crack at it. Lean and compact, just a shade past thirty, Afton had the piercing blue eyes of a Siberian husky and blondish hair that sprang into an artichoke-like assemblage if she wielded her blow dryer too enthusiastically. Right now, none of that mattered. She was just praying that she was tough enough to handle this cliff.