Cold Silence (A High Stakes Thriller) (34 page)

Cody felt her stomach drop. "But we need to get to—"

The colonel touched her hand and she stopped talking. "We don't know where we need to get to. Let's take five minutes and find out what's in that picture."

She shook her head. "I don't know."

"Trust me."

She looked down at the image of Ryan, sprawled on the carpet. Without a word, she nodded.

The colonel pulled off the next exit and she could see Landon slow down and move to follow. They stopped at a well-lit gas station and the colonel pulled to the pump.

He got out and started to fill the gas tank.

Cody turned the screen into the light and examined the picture again. There was nothing else there.

Landon's Porsche pulled up beside them, and a flash of his headlights hit the inside of the car. Cody spotted something near Ryan's head. But Landon's headlights flipped off and it was gone.

She blinked and searched for the impression again but it was gone. Opening the door, she stood from the car, the laptop in her arms. She shifted the screen up and down and right and left, aiming the light at it from different angles in hopes of finding something.

Landon appeared beside her.

"What are you looking for?"

"It's a new image," she said quickly, still wondering what it was that she'd seen in the light of his headlights. Landon crossed in front of the light, and as it shone on the screen again, she caught sight of a tiny reflection in the surface of the metal bowl. She squinted but couldn't make it out. She would have liked to save the image to disk and work with a photo editor to blow it up, but she didn't have the right software on her laptop.

Landon peered over her shoulder, his breath warm in her ear against the cold night. He leaned into the screen and his breathing sounded erratic. "See anything?"

She didn't respond. Her own pulse was racing as she tried to make out the distorted reflection in the bowl. It was probably nothing, she told herself. And yet, as she stared at it, willing it to turn into something worthwhile, she couldn't help but feel some excitement. It was a mistake, something the kidnapper had overlooked. It had to be.

She shifted the screen back into the light, wishing he would be quiet. "Do you have a flashlight?"

"Sure. In the car," he said without moving.

"Can you get it?"

"What for?"

She looked up at him, fury in her eyes.

Landon paused and then turned toward his car, saying something she didn't hear.

Cody focused on the gray-brown reflection, trying to make it out. It was a distorted semicircle, but she couldn't get the image to crystallize.

Landon returned with a flashlight and handed it to her. She took it and pushed it on but it was dead.

The colonel screwed on the gas cap and walked to her.

"I need a flashlight," she told him.

He took the one from her hand and gave it a hard smack. "Probably dead."

"It's been in the car forever," he said quickly. "I don't know the last time I used it."

The colonel opened the flashlight's chamber. "I'll get batteries inside."

Landon remained over her shoulder, staring at the screen.

"Do you see something?"

He coughed and made a sound that indicated he didn't.

She glanced up at his face and she could tell something was wrong. "What?"

He shook his head. "I don't know."

She looked back at the screen and then up at him again. "Landon, spit it out."

"It looks familiar."

She stared back at the screen.

Just then the colonel came back with batteries and loaded them into the flashlight. He flipped it on and handed the bright light to Cody.

Landon stared at the screen and then seemed to collapse. "Oh, Jesus."

Ignoring Travis, she centered her full attention on the screen. "See the metal bowl?"

"Something reflected in it," the colonel said.

"Can you tell what?"

The colonel ran the beam of the flashlight back and forth on the image.

Landon pulled himself up. His voice was weak when he spoke. "I know what it is. I know where they are."

Cody opened her mouth to ask him what he was talking about when the colonel pointed to the reflection and said, "It's a fireplace."

Cody gasped.

The colonel ran his finger along the screen in a small half circle. "Do you see it? Big reddish brown stones."

Cody saw it and then immediately lost focus, fury swimming across her vision. When she regained it, she saw exactly what the colonel was pointing out. Reflected in the metal bowl was a large reddish brown stone fireplace with a heavy oak mantel.

She could see it perfectly because she'd seen it in a photo before—a photo at Landon's house.

Cody met his eyes.

"It's mine."

The colonel gave a sideways glance to Landon as he grabbed Cody's arm. "You okay? You look like you need to sit." He took the computer from her hand and set it down in the car.

She didn't answer. She couldn't. Her gaze was somewhere else, picturing that same fireplace as it looked in a photograph of Landon and his son that she saw in his house.

"Cody?" the colonel repeated. "What is it?"

She didn't respond to the colonel but met Travis's gaze.

Landon shook his head. "I didn't know," he said. "I swear, not until just now."

She saw the fear there. Words boiled to the surface but none were strong enough for what she felt. Her control dissolved and she moved like a robot, detaching herself from the colonel and launching herself at Travis Landon.

Chapter 32

Jennifer heard the voices around her. They were yelling. Everyone was yelling. Her father was there, yelling, and her mother. Tiffany. No, Tiffany wasn't yelling. Tiffany was crying.

"Fault."

"Blame." The words chased each other like little yellow and pink Pac-Men around a strange electric-blue maze.

There were other voices, too. "BP's seventy over fifty and dropping," a woman said.

"Damn," said a man's voice.

"She's going to code," said another.

A series of beeps played in the background of the game. A long bleat, then a short one, long then short. The big yellow Pac-Man chased the other.

"This is your fault," the yellow one shouted. She saw her father's face. "Your fault," he told Tiffany.

Finally something was Tiffany's fault, she thought.

"You're going to have to leave," someone said, and Jennifer heard her mother make a high-pitched sound.

"You're not allowed in here."

They were there. They had all come. She wasn't alone.

She felt cold and woozy, and the voices grew more distant, less clear. She shivered.

"Get them out of here," a male voice said.

"We're losing her," someone, a woman, shouted.

Jennifer thought about loss. She could see the perfect picture of her parents and Tiffany, the one framed on the mantel in the living room. Tiffany, perfect and blond, in her little gray dress and white pinafore.

"Draw up the epinephrine for an intracardiac injection," a man's voice said.

Intracardiac. The letters tumbled apart and drifted across her mind. N-A-R-C, D-A-N-C, T-R-A-I-N, they danced into different forms.

"At least Jennifer had some ambition. She did something with her life," her father shouted.

"Out," a woman yelled. "You're going to have to leave now."

Jennifer smiled at the image of her father's yellow Pac-Man face. "You can't tell me to leave. That's my daughter."

She tried to shake her head. She didn't want them to leave. She wanted them to yell, to scream and cry right there, right in front of her. Her perfect family, dissolved.

"Then you'll have to be quiet. We're trying—"

The bleating noise changed into a long, low whine.
Beep beep,
she thought.
Beep beep.
She was cold. Cold and tired. Suddenly she just wanted to rest. Yes, tell them to all go away.

"What's happening?" her mother screeched.

"She's fibrillating. Get the paddles."

"Set it at two hundred," someone called.

Jennifer felt pressure on her chest. "Step back," a man's voice called from above her.

The room grew silent and Jennifer felt a jolt run through her. Her body jumped sharply but she felt only a little rise, like driving over a speed bump.

"Increase to three hundred."

Jennifer watched someone turn a dial on a machine. Three hundred volts, she thought, staring down at her own body from the ceiling. The sounds grew softer, quieter. It was nice up there.

"Clear." She watched her own body jump and felt a distant, uncomfortable kick. Her loose hair tossed around her face. It was time to have it cut, she thought. Especially the ends. They looked ragged and unhealthy.

"Three-sixty," the man said.

She saw the paddles on her chest again.

Her body jumped. This time she felt nothing.

"No change," a woman reported.

"Jesus. What's happening? What's going on?" her father shouted.

Her mother dropped to the floor.

Her father pushed toward her.

I'm up here, she thought to her father. Still, he pushed toward her limp body.

"Damn. One more time," the man called. "Hold him back," he yelled as her father reached for her.

There was a surge of activity. More paddles, someone at her head, someone on her arm, holding her still. She wasn't moving anyway. Her father was crying, sobbing, ignoring Tiffany, who wept by herself. Her mother was on the floor. She watched as the man drove a long needle into her chest. She felt nothing.

Suddenly she was surrounded by heat. Like a warm bath, it enveloped her. She sank her head back, let herself relax. They weren't perfect. They weren't perfect either, and they did care.

She heard a long, piercing screech and everything went dark.

Chapter 33

Travis stepped back from Cody's angry gaze.

She lunged at him like a cat, every move as though she were ready to pounce.

Heat pooled in his gut.

"What's going on?" the colonel asked.

Cody moved closer. "Why don't you tell him, Travis? Tell him what's going on."

He shook his head. "I don't understand it either, Cody. It's my cabin, but I had nothing to do with it. I don't know who did this."

"The picture was taken at your cabin."

He nodded. "I know."

"You didn't recognize it before?" Cody screamed.

"What do you mean, his cabin?" the colonel shouted.

"I mean Landon knows where Ryan is. It's the same fireplace I saw in a photo at his house. The one you see reflected in the bowl."