In Her Tracks (Tracy Crosswhite #8)(42)

Franklin carried the groceries from the car to the cabin. The temperature had dropped in the canyon. He’d have Carrol throw blankets in with the women so they didn’t freeze to death . . . though that could take care of his problem for him.

The inside of the house smelled of mold, dry rot, and disuse. He left the door open, despite the cold, hoping to air out the smell. He made a sandwich and drank a beer at the kitchen table while he contemplated his next move.

He’d miss the regular visits with his girl while she was here at the cabin, but Evan hadn’t left him much choice. Evan had compounded the problem by bringing the runner into the basement and letting her see the two other women. If he hadn’t, Franklin might have had a chance to find a way out of this situation. He could have just turned the girl loose somewhere and hoped she didn’t remember what had happened to her. The blow to her head had been significant enough to draw blood.

But now she knew about both the cellar and the other two women. The stairs leading down to the cellar were hidden behind a door their daddy had cut in at the back of the pantry. He had the three boys dig out a room below the foundation and reinforce it with railroad ties and four-by-four pressure-treated posts set in concrete. They’d dug for nearly a year, carting the dirt out by wheelbarrow at night and dumping it into the ravine at the back of the property. They stopped when they’d dug roughly six feet deep and eight feet square. Their daddy said they was building a wine cellar, but Franklin had never seen him buy so much as a single bottle of wine—he was a Jim Beam man, always had been. ’Til the day he died. Franklin didn’t know what his daddy used the room for. Not back then. He had forbidden the boys from entering the basement, just like the room at the back of the barn, and he’d beat the hell out of each of them with his belt buckle just so they’d know what would happen, the pain they’d be in, if they ever disobeyed him. They hadn’t. Not even when he’d gone into the home for people with Alzheimer’s. Not ’til the day they’d buried him in the ground and covered him with six feet of dirt.

It had been the perfect spot to keep the two women. Franklin had thought through his plan for a long time. He had to be careful. The judge had made it clear after his second arrest that Franklin would do serious time if he got caught again, and that meant losing his job. Same for Carrol, who’d also been pinched once. Neither could afford the prostitutes anyway, not on a regular basis, not with the money they each brought in. Franklin figured that had been his daddy’s rationale as well. Why pay for what you could take? And nobody was going to miss a couple prostitutes. They were . . . what the hell was that word? Sounded like “fungus,” but that was a mushroom. Fungible. That was it. The prostitutes were fungible. They could be replaced. Nobody cared. Shit, the Green River Killer got away with it for decades. Franklin figured he could simply dump the two if he and Carrol tired of them, someplace far away. Yeah, they’d seen his face, but they didn’t know where he lived. They hadn’t seen anything but the basement. He’d put the fear of God in them. Scare them so bad they wouldn’t say a word.

But Franklin hadn’t prepared for something like this, for his brother being a dumbass and disobeying him.

There was always the alternative—though Carrol kept reminding him otherwise. “We . . . we . . . we ain’t killers, Franklin.”

Not yet.

As Franklin put his plate in the sink and his bottle in the garbage, Carrol and Evan came into the kitchen. “What do we do now?”

“Now?” Franklin pulled another beer from the fridge. “Now you and Evan are going to take them cutting shears in the barn and cut them branches narrowing the road, but not too much. Just enough so they don’t damage the car.”

“Wh . . . wh . . . what are you gonna do?” Carrol asked, clearly not happy.

“Is that any of your business?”

“J . . . j . . . j . . . just asking.”

“Well, since you’re j . . . j . . . just asking. I’m going to make myself busy in the barn for a bit. I think I earned it. Any objections?” Neither Carrol nor Evan said a word. “I didn’t think so.”



The one they called Franklin had walked to where Stephanie Cole sat on the scrap of rug and undid the belt buckle of his pants. When Stephanie pulled away from him, as far as the chain allowed, he’d laughed. Then he’d walked to Angel Jackson, unlocked her chain from the post, and took her to the back of the room like a dog on a leash.

Stephanie hated to admit it, but she was just so scared . . . She’d prayed, prayed that he wouldn’t take her, that he’d take one of the other two, Angel or Donna, and she’d been relieved when he chose Angel. Still, she knew it was just a matter of time. She figured that’s why she was there.

Half an hour after he had walked in, Franklin rechained Angel to the post. He looked at Stephanie with a scowl, his eyes dark and hardened. Then he walked out, without uttering a word.

Stephanie had done her best to listen when they’d put her in the van, hoping maybe to learn something, where she was or where they were taking the three of them. She knew the men were brothers from the conversation they’d had in the dirt room. She knew Franklin was the brother in charge and that Evan had disobeyed him, though about what exactly she did not know. She’d watched in horror as Franklin beat his brother with a belt buckle until she thought he might kill him. She’d almost felt sorry for Evan, whom she suspected was slow. Almost. Mostly she was afraid. If Franklin could inflict so much injury on a blood relative, what could he do . . . What had he already done to Angel and to Donna? What would he do to her?