Find Her (Detective D.D. Warren #8)(97)

I’ve got nothing better to try.

I wrestle with the mattress again, removing piles of foam and stuffing with my hands, releasing more musty, herbal smells. I sneeze several times but soldier on. The coils are tied together. I can’t see how in the dark, so I have to poke, prod, twist, and turn, with fingertips that are already shredded and bloody. Converting the top of one coil into a lock pick was a far easier operation. This, trying to remove an entire spring, proves nearly impossible. Again, my kingdom for a single beam of light. If I could just see what I was doing . . .

My bruised fingers start to feel heavy, numb. I’m tired. So very tired. I just want to lie down, get some sleep. I find my eyes dragging shut, have to force them open. The stress is catching up with me. I’m hungry again but, without any sense of time, have no idea how long it’s been since I last ate.

Hungry. Thirsty. Water somewhere. I should take a nap. Except, of course, I still have to extract the damn coil.

My eyes drifting closed . . .

Fingers latching on to my shoulders, suddenly digging in.

I jolt awake, twisting frantically, tossing back an elbow. But the girl, having finally roused herself, is surprisingly strong.

“The mattress,” she’s saying. “You have to get away from the mattress. Away. Away.”

I try to pull free, but my movements are too sluggish. Then, just as suddenly as she grabbed me, she lets me go. I collapse back, an ungainly beetle with my arms and legs in the air.

I have to blink my eyes, concentrate to right myself. Even then, I feel groggy and I still want to sleep.

“It’s in the mattress,” she says.

“What’s in the mattress?” I mutter.

“I don’t know. But the mattress . . . You’ll sleep. It makes you sleep.”

The mattress is drugged, or contaminated or laced with something. That’s what she’s trying to tell me.

I’d been right in the beginning. The room is booby-trapped, except it’s not sleeping powder in the bottled water or some kind of knockout gas in the ventilation system. It’s the mattress.

“We need the mattress spring,” I hear myself. “I got it out. Must be someplace near the top. We need it.”

The girl doesn’t answer. She moves, dragging her feet in the dark. Her side, of course. She’s still injured and walking must be painful. But she doesn’t complain as she shuffles back to the mattress, feels around with her hand.

Then she’s back. I feel the wire pressed against my arm.

“I don’t understand who you are,” she says.

“A girl, just like you. Except once upon a time, I escaped from the dark.”

“You can get us out of here?”

“Yes.”

“Far, far away? I don’t want to ever come back.”

“You’re a survivor,” I tell her, tell myself. “You can do anything.”

“I want to go home.”

“Tell me your name. You want to get out of here? You have to remember who you really are.”

It takes her a bit. I understand. I know how these things work. I’ve been there myself.

Because it’s one thing to survive. It is much, much harder to truly live.

“My name is Stacey Summers,” she whispers. “And I just want to see my parents again.”

I can’t comment. My throat has closed up. There are too many things I want to say, and none of them are enough.

Instead, I pick up the mattress coil. I work it with my poor bloody fingers, looping it around, folding it in on itself, until it’s a stiffer, spoonier version of itself. Then I find the door again.

It takes me a bit to wiggle out the pieces of broken wood. Then the edge is cleared, and it’s just me, a jury-rigged mattress spring, and two girls’ wildest dreams. Poke, wiggle, push, shimmy. Again, and again.

And suddenly, almost imperceptibly, I can hear it. The tiniest, softest click of the latch suppressing in the lock plate.

I push. Very gently. Almost timidly.

The door moves. The door opens.

I have no idea what will happen next.





Chapter 37


WE FOUND KRISTY KILKER,” D.D. informed her boss, Cal Horgan.

“How certain?”

“Ninety percent. Ben identified a butterfly tattoo on her right shoulder blade. Mother confirmed Kristy has the same. Dental records will be the slam dunk. But we’re fairly confident the remains are Kristy Kilker.”

“What about Stacey Summers?”

“I don’t know.”

“Wasn’t there a second girl? Another license you found in the Goulding kid’s bedroom?”

“Natalie Draga from Alabama. Don’t know about her either.”

“Flora Dane?” Horgan asked.

“So,” D.D. reported, “we found Kristy Kilker.”

“And one out of four ain’t bad?” Horgan arched a brow at her. She scowled. Her boss switched gears: “Any theories of the crime?”

“The perpetrator favors glittered hair gel.”

“Seriously?”

“Actually, I have no idea. We’re still waiting for the lab reports on our various samples. But we found gold glitter outside Flora’s apartment, as well as on Kristy’s hair, as well as in the bathroom at the nightclub Tonic.”