My Sister's Grave (Tracy Crosswhite, #1)(94)

She was stalling. She was really not looking forward to a long walk in the rain.

She put on the Stetson as she stepped down from the cab, locking the door. As if to spite her, the rain increased in intensity, a rush of water that came with a roar. She walked along the edge of the pavement, hoping to find some shelter beneath the canopy of trees. Within minutes, water began to trickle down her back. “This is really going to suck, big time.”

She pressed on, singing to pass the time, the lyrics of “Born to Run” stuck in her head.

“Everybody’s out on the road tonight, but there’s nothing . . . I don’t know all the words.”

Sarah trudged on. After another few minutes, she stopped and listened, thinking that she had heard the sound of a car engine, though now she couldn’t be certain over the sound of rain beating on the canopy and trickling to the pavement. Sarah stepped farther onto the shoulder and looked back up the road, straining to hear. There. Headlights marked the pavement a second or two before the car came around the bend in the road. Sarah stepped to the shoulder, one foot on the pavement, leaning out and waving one hand overhead while using the other to cut the glare from the headlamps. The vehicle slowed and came to a stop in the road. Not a car.

A red Chevy truck.





[page]CHAPTER 59





Tracy opened her eyes but she remained in complete darkness. Disoriented, her head in a fog of confusion and pain, she fought to shake away the cobwebs and remember what happened. She lifted her head, which caused a sharp pain to radiate across the top of her skull. She winced. When the pain lessened, Tracy pushed herself to a seated position, bracing on her arm for support. Her head pounded. Her limbs felt leaden. She took several deep breaths, continuing to gather her thoughts and trying to orient herself. The images came back in pulses.

The ramshackle house as she had approached.

The flatbed truck partially covered in snow.

The door leading to the kitchen.

Stepping into the main room.

The crown of hair just above the back of the seat.

Parker House turning his head and opening his eyes.

You smell just like her.

Someone had hit her from behind. When Tracy raised her arm to touch the back of her head, her wrist felt weighted. She shook her arms and heard the rattle of chains. Her heart raced. She struggled to stand, but a wave of nausea overcame her and she fell back down, on one knee. She inhaled deep breaths until the wave of nausea passed and tried again, slowly rising to her feet, stumbling but managing to regain her balance.

Tracy felt the manacles clasped to each wrist and ran her hand along what she estimated to be a foot-long chain between them. From the feel of it, a second, thicker chain extended from the chain between her wrists. She followed the links hand over hand to what felt like a rectangular plate. Her fingertips traced the contours of the heads of two hexagonal bolts. She braced a foot against the wall, wrapped the chain around her hand and tugged on the plate, sensing a slight give, but another wave of nausea and throbbing pain overcame her.

She heard a noise behind her. A wedge of dull light pierced the darkness, slowly widening—a door was opening. Someone stepped into the light, a shadow, and the door closed, plunging her back into darkness. She braced her back against the wall, raised her arms, and prepared to strike or kick.

She tried to follow the sound of footsteps shuffling about the room, but in the darkness, they seemed to come from all over. She heard an odd whirring noise. A sudden, sharp flicker of light followed, momentarily blinding her. Tracy dropped her gaze, waiting for the black–and-white spots to clear. Then she raised a hand to reduce the glare and saw that the source of the light was a single bare bulb dangling from a wire hung over a wooden beam, one of two beams running horizontally across a dirt ceiling scarred where a shovel had scraped.

Beneath the bulb, a figure knelt with his back to her, cranking a handle that protruded from the side of a wooden box. With each rotation of the handle, there was a sound like the beating wings of a swarm of unseen insects, and the filament inside the bulb pulsed. Its color changed from orange to red and, finally, to a bright white that pushed aside the darkness, revealing her surroundings and her circumstances.

Tracy estimated the room she was in to be perhaps twenty feet long, twelve feet across, and eight feet high. Four weathered beams served as vertical posts bracing the two ceiling beams. As she had discerned, rusted metal manacles cuffed each wrist with a foot-long piece of chain between them. The second chain, perhaps five feet in length, was welded to the rectangular plate she’d felt with her hands. The plate was bolted to a concrete wall. Scraps of mismatched carpet covered portions of the floor. In a corner of the room was a wrought-iron bed with a tattered mattress and, beside it, an equally worn sitting chair. Crude shelves lined one wall—canned goods on one, paperback books on another. Beside the books was a black Stetson that Tracy hadn’t seen in twenty years.

Edmund House straightened and turned. “Welcome home, Tracy.”





[page]CHAPTER 60





A snow-laden tree limb slapped the windshield, exploding in a burst of white powder. Calloway didn’t slow. He followed the tracks around another bend, about to hit the gas, then quickly hit the brakes hard, bringing the Suburban to a sudden stop inches from the back of Tracy’s Subaru.

Snow covered the back window and the roof of the car, but it was only an inch or two thick. Dan looked ahead and saw branches sticking up from the snow, which had otherwise buried a tree that had fallen across the road.