Shattered Secrets (Cold Creek #1)(84)

“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?

She knew that voice, but whose was it? Was there an emergency? Had something bitten her, and she needed shots for rabies?

“You should never have run away, you bad girl. And you owe me for that broken window all those years ago. Broke it out with Mr. Mean, then stacked books to get high enough to crawl out, didn’t you? That’s no way to treat books! Mama Sybil was so angry when you were gone she hit me with Mr. Mean.”

Then Tess knew. Jumping out of the dark doors of her mind, pictures poured at her. She remembered Mama Sybil in her wheelchair. She was the one who was mean. She said she loved Tess, but she beat her, scared her every time she cried for home, every time she didn’t cuddle up to be read to. Tess breathed slowly and deeply and her gaze cleared. Miss Etta was dragging her from the bookmobile into a building and room she remembered well. Miss Etta had called it the book barn. Yes, that’s where she’d broken a window to escape and was found wandering on a road several miles away because she didn’t know how to get home.

Tess tried to talk again, hoping Miss Etta would pull the gag from her mouth. It was hard not only to swallow but to breathe because her nose ran and she was starting to cry. She forced herself to continue listening to the woman.

“All I’d done was run to the bathroom the day you got away, but you were so quick, both in movement and in thought. Surprising, since you didn’t like to read as your sisters did, but I know you learned a lot hearing books read to you while you were on Mama Sybil’s lap. I was hoping to improve your reading. That’s partly why I chose you when I drove the bookmobile past your house that day and saw you running wild in your backyard by the cornfield, you naughty girl. Believe me, it was a long trek through that corn to fetch you and get you past that big mower making its passes. I had to carry you clear to the bookmobile parked on the road!”