A Necessary Evil(35)

On the inside, everything had changed. She would never be the same again, and she knew it. Being kidnapped, chained to a wall, and mentally tortured for nearly two days would do that to a person. She wondered when and if she’d ever be able to enjoy her possessions again. Once, they had meant the world to her. She’d have died if she’d lost even one picture. But now, everything seemed so trivial and inconsequential.

Again, images of The Vault flashed before her eyes, and she tried to push them away with every ounce of strength she had left. Would she ever stop seeing him? Would she ever stop feeling those chains around her ankles? She didn’t think so. The images, the smells, the sounds, were all permanently etched in her brain, the way a farmer branded a cow. Was that what she was now? Just an animal with a scar that would never be human again? Would she ever laugh again? She couldn’t even imagine enjoying the things she once had. They all seemed so petty and pathetic. As if she’d aged ten years in two days. She could barely even remember what her life had been like before.

Then she remembered. Her journal. She had written it all down. Her most memorable life experiences, the good and the bad. All her secrets. She started a new journal at the beginning of every year and had recorded every single memory she never wanted to forget. She could read it now and hopefully recall the good times. Remember what it was like to be Mollie Cartwright again. Maybe if she could remember, she could slowly find her way back.

She leaned over and felt around underneath the bed. Her fingers felt a blanket, a paper plate, and a pen, but no journal. Not yet worried, she scooted off the bed onto the floor, got on her hands and knees, and flipped up the dust ruffle. But there was nothing there. Her journal was gone.





Chapter 18




Kurt



The SWAT team stormed the house first, even though Kurt knew there was no way Collin McAllister was holding Mollie there. As they searched inside from top to bottom, Kurt walked across the back yard to the big red barn he’d seen on the PVA website. He struggled with the doors, but after tugging on the handle several times, he managed to swing them wide open. With his gun held at arm’s length, he swept each stall on the bottom level, but they were all empty. No horses, no cows, no sign of Mollie.

He spotted the ladder to the loft, tucked his gun into its holster, and climbed the rickety wooden rungs until he reached the top. Again, nothing but straw and hay. No sign whatsoever that anyone had been there recently, let alone a kidnapped teenage girl.

Back on the ground, he searched again, this time scanning for any signs of a trap door that might lead down to a cellar. On Kurt’s family’s farm, they’d had a cellar underneath the barn where his parents stored canned vegetables and fruits between harvests. It had been built by previous owners during the Second World War to serve as a bomb shelter, but the Jamisons had found a more practical use for it. Sometimes he and Frankie would play down there and pretend they were at war, hiding from commies, or Indians, whoever the bad guy happened to be that day. Addie usually played a damsel in distress, and Frankie always insisted he’d be the one to rescue her. Looking back now, Kurt realized Frankie had probably always loved Addie.

After a good ten or fifteen minutes of searching every square inch of the barn, he came up empty. So, he’d been wrong. Collin hadn’t kept Mollie in the barn. But then where? With over forty acres of farmland that all looked the same, there was no way of knowing.

Kurt stepped outside in the cold and stood behind the barn with his hands on his hips, surveying the McAllister farm’s land. He tried to stave off more memories of him, Frankie, and Addie as children playing on his own family farm. Now wasn’t the time to reminisce about his childhood. He had to find Mollie before Collin McAllister hurt her any more than he probably already had. And before Franklin Cartwright found him. This was almost as important as saving the girl, in Kurt Jamison’s book.

Think, goddamn it. Think! He had to be somewhere on this property. Where else could McAllister hide girls away from the world and hurt them without anyone around him growing suspicious? And, of course, there was the fact that he’d stopped at the rundown grocery store for some unknown reason, and that store was on the way to the farm. There wasn’t much out past this property. They were nearly on the Madison County border, and if they traveled any further down DeLong, they’d run smack into the Kentucky River.

“Hey, Whiskey,” Lonnie said from behind Kurt, startling him.

Kurt turned around. “Please tell me you found something in there.”

“Didn’t find the girl, obviously. Or any trace of McAllister. But I found something after SWAT cleared the house I think you should probably come see.”

Intrigued and hoping Lonnie had found something that would lead them to Mollie, Kurt marched quickly toward the house in step with his partner.

The inside was conservatively decorated, and the air smelled of citrus and mothballs. What little furniture the room held looked like antiques that might be worth some money at auction. An orange cat meowed, jumped off the large wooden kitchen table, walked up to Kurt, and rubbed up against his leg. Lonnie chuckled, but before he could make a joke, Kurt gently kicked the cat away.

In the living room, a threadbare green couch and matching arm chair sat facing a wooden entertainment center, but the television was missing. Kurt noted this as a bit odd, but continued his visual scan of the room. On the wall above the couch hung a painting of Jesus Christ with several young children sitting at his feet. Given their reason for being there, the picture seemed a bit disturbing. Surely Collin McAllister wasn’t a religious man. Or maybe he was one of those overzealous, right-wing nuts who believed everything they did had been commanded and ordained by God. Kurt shivered at the thought.