Dakota (24 page)

A
T LEAST
Dawg didn’t accompany her into the bathroom. But he stood just outside the door, which he left slightly open, foiling her plan to search the medicine cabinet for something that could be used as a weapon. Which she had nowhere to conceal, anyway. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but it occurred to her that her nakedness might have been a precautionary tactic instead of a prelude to rape.

Dawg rapped at the door with the gun, shoving it open a few inches farther. “C’mon out of there, now. I know you’re done. Unless you’re poopin’. Are you poopin’?”

“Jesus,” Lola muttered against the gag. She raised her voice. “Uh-uh,” she shouted against it, hoping he got the gist. She stood from the toilet and flushed and pumped liquid soap onto her hands and ran water over them, eyeing the soap dispenser. Maybe she could remove the pump and jab him in the eye? But before the thought had time to gel, Dawg pushed open the door and took her by the arm and dragged her back to the room and threw her onto the bed.

“Now, you listen,” he said. “I’m gonna leave you here. I can even take that gag out if you like.”

Lola nodded so hard it hurt.

“Can’t no one hear you scream in here, anyhow.” Lola remembered what Charlotte had said, about how the insulation left the room practically soundproofed. Dawg reached for her. It took all her strength not to cringe away. He fumbled with the back of the gag until the binding loosened. Lola spat the wad of cloth from her mouth and sucked in air in great rasping breaths. “Thank you,” she forced herself to say. And then, “What time is it?”

“About nine.”

“What day?”

He told her she’d been out since the previous afternoon. Dawg picked up the cloth from the gag, and untied the ropes that had bound her to the bed, and tucked them into his vest pocket and put the vest on.

Damn, Lola thought. She had thought the cloth and rope might have proved useful in some way she had yet to figure out. Now she wouldn’t have to. Dawg stood in the doorway. “You done good,” he said. “Nice and quiet. Not all of them are so smart. That’s when things get ugly. It’s a shame. You just sit tight. Mama’ll be lookin in on you in a bit.”

Them, Lola thought?
Them?

Which was nothing compared to the other thought short-circuiting the wiring in her brain, making her forget she was naked, that she was trapped, that it was well within the realm of possibility that she’d be killed. Twice within the last few minutes, Dawg had called Charlotte “mama.”

Charlotte, with that indefinable spicy scent lingering beneath her powder and perfume, the one Lola had never been able to place because it didn’t belong, the one she finally—too late, too late—recalled. Fried chicken. Charlotte was Mama. She threw back her head and screamed and screamed within the soundproofed room, hurling herself at the locked door until her bare skin was a mass of bruises and she fell back onto the floor, drained of breath, of strength, of all hope.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

I
ncredibly, Lola slept.

Which gave her a blessed moment, upon awakening, of forgetting. She yawned. Lifted her arms above her head and stretched. Pain flooded her muscles, bringing memory with it. She fought the urge to leap from bed, to fling herself once more against the door’s unforgiving surface. Instead, she sat up slowly. Took stock. She hit the light switch beside the bed and held out first one arm, then the other, inspecting the bruises along their sides, the raw circles where her wrists had been bound. She bent, forward and then back, to one side and the other. The muscles in her back rebuked her. She cursed herself for the useless assault on the door, which had only added new bruises atop the old ones. She’d need all her strength for whatever was to come.

She stood. On tiptoe, she could press her hands against the skylights’ surface, no more yielding than the door. The light fixture was likewise impenetrable, a hard plastic cover screwed tight against the ceiling. Lola had thought to remove the lightbulb, shatter it, use the jagged remainder as a weapon. Somebody else apparently had thought of that first. She circled the room, running her hand over every surface, then knelt on the floor and did the same, seeking a loose board. None. The Raggedy Anns smirked their uselessness. She inspected the bed and end table, the only pieces of furniture. Maybe she could dismantle them, wield a leg as a club. But the pieces were fastened so tightly together that the screws were embedded in the wood. She wound the corner of the top sheet, worn and soft, around one hand and gave it a quick yank. It pulled free from the bed. She took an edge between her teeth and another between her hands and tore. Then again. In short order, she had a pile of neat strips of torn cloth. She braided them together until she had a passable rope. She tugged at the ends. It was strong, not too long—just long enough to wrap around someone’s neck if, that is, she had the advantage of surprise. She made the bed and tucked her makeshift rope beneath the mattress, leaving one end dangling, concealed by the bedspread. Then she sat and thought awhile.

She considered lurking behind the door and jumping Dawg from behind when he came in, wrapping the braided sheet around his neck, pulling with all her strength. It could work. Maybe. She looked at her bruised arms, her battered legs. Dawg probably had close to eighty pounds on her. She imagined him shrugging her off with those massive shoulders, one of his lug sole boots coming down on her bare feet. She glanced down at her body, ruing the bruises anew. Dawg hadn’t tried to rape her. But he’d looked at her naked body for a good long time. Maybe, when he returned, she could get him to look again. Rattle him by seeming willing. Distract him with soft words, her lips to his ear, her arm around his neck—and then, before he knew what was happening, the rope, too. She remembered Joshua telling her that his sister was named for the biblical Judith, for her courage in beheading Holofernes. Lola wondered if she’d have the same sort of strength. She considered the fact that she’d apparently stumbled across a lucrative and highly illegal side business run by the man who was supposed to represent law and order in Burnt Creek, and imagined the only fate possible under the circumstances. She’d need to have the strength—if only she didn’t get herself killed in the process.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

F
ootsteps sounded before Lola was ready.

She fell back onto the bed, seeking a languid pose, as though she were just waking. She turned on her side, bent one knee, crooked an arm beneath her neck. Her other hand crept beneath the blanket, along the side of the bed, and fastened to the tail of the braided length of torn sheet. She tried to still her breathing as she heard the tumblers clicking within the lock, watched the knob turn. “Back so soon?” she’d planned to say, her voice pitched low and husky. But it came out in a squeak.

“Charlotte?”

The Raggedy Anns smiled their witless grins.

“ ’Fraid so, Cupcake.” Charlotte could have been talking to her across the kitchen table, so casual was her tone.

Lola curled away from her, scooting into the far corner of the bed grabbing the quilt as she went, pulling it around her. She tightened her grip when Thor loomed behind his wife, stepping into the room and pulling the door shut behind them. Lola looked into Charlotte’s—Mama’s—eyes and wondered how she’d managed to miss their reptilian flatness. No wonder Thor and Charlotte had been so eager for her to leave. Or—fingers of dread crept along Lola’s skin as she thought of Charlotte stealing up behind her, butcher knife in hand—to have people think she’d left. But something had saved Lola from a bloody, slashing end. Maybe Charlotte had never killed anyone before. But she’d been willing to try. Lola was going to need a plan, one that took that fact into consideration. Problem was, she had no idea what that plan would be.

Charlotte folded her arms across her chest and shook her head. “Lola, Lola, Lola. What are we going to do with you?”

“Give me my clothes back and let me go?” Lola showed her teeth in what she hoped was a grin. If she was out of ideas, the least she could do was try to unsettle them with feigned confidence.

“Not going to happen.” Thor’s lips barely moved as he spoke.

“One out of two? Under the circumstances, I’ll take either one. Clothes in here or naked on the street. Come to think of it, I’d prefer the latter.” She tried the smile again. Given the utter lack of reaction by either Charlotte or Thor, she wondered if her face had even moved.

“You’ll get your clothes back. Maybe,” Charlotte said. “We’re going to have to keep you awhile.”

Never had Lola invested a simple word like “awhile” with such hope. Charlotte’s next words made her more hopeful still. “Unfortunately, we can’t just kill you.”

“Unfortunately is in the eye of the beholder,” Lola said. “Out of curiosity, why can’t you? Not that I don’t think it’s a fine decision.” Somehow, the words came out exactly the way she’d intended them, relaxed, a little flippant, no shakiness at all. She wondered how long she could keep it up. A tremor ran through her legs. She wrapped her arms tighter still around them.

“Because we’ve already got too goddamn many dead people floating around,” Charlotte snapped. She looked at Lola, but Lola got the feeling her words were directed at Thor. “Somebody thought it would be a good idea to send that idiot Dawg after that one girl when she ran. Which she wouldn’t have been able to do in the first place if that lunkheaded fool hadn’t fallen asleep on the job.”

“She turned up dead all the way over in Montana. So she doesn’t count,” Thor said. Lola held her breath right along with him, awaiting Charlotte’s comeback.

“Doesn’t count? Well, let’s think about who does count, starting with that slut of a stripper. For some reason it seemed like another stroke of genius to go after her, too, in case she started blabbing around about whatever she talked to Lola about.”

“I didn’t get a chance to talk to her about anything—”

Charlotte spoke past her. “At least Dawg didn’t screw that one up. Besides, who misses a stripper?”

Thor’s head jerked up and down in emphatic agreement. “You said it yourself. Who misses a stripper?”

Scarlet washed high and unhealthy across Charlotte’s face. Lola thought of the blood pressure medicine she’d seen in the downstairs bathroom. “But then those two guys—that kind of put things over the top. Anybody else turns up dead, people are going to get all het up, wondering what the hell’s going on out here in Homestead County. Next thing you know, we’ll have folks from the attorney general’s office up here sniffing around. But somebody didn’t think about that, did he? Same way he didn’t think to make sure this one had actually left town.”

By the time Charlotte finished her diatribe, Thor’s head was bowed, his shoulders hunched around his ears. Lola had barely adjusted to the fact that Charlotte was Mama. Now this. Lola wondered if the whole downtrodden wife business had been an act. Or, if Charlotte had been referring to this very same reversal of roles when she’d lectured Lola on the complications of marriage. Thor got to needle Charlotte about her weight in exchange for Charlotte running a whorehouse? Lola’s head ached all out of proportion to the lingering effect of whatever drug they’d given her. She couldn’t arrange her thoughts in any way that made sense of her current situation.

“She was supposed to be gone,” Thor said. “She should have been well on her way to Magpie by now.”

Lola sat up straight, forcing herself not to fling out her hands as though to catch the gift Thor unwittingly had tossed her.

“Yes, I should have. And that’s a problem.”

Charlotte swung back toward Lola. Thor raised his head. “How’s that?”

“They were expecting me. They’ll wonder where I am.”

“Bullshit.” Lola blinked. It was one thing for Charlotte to drug her, to strip her, to stuff her in a locked room. But the cursing? She hadn’t thought Charlotte capable.

“It’s true.” Lola no longer had to feign the certainty in her voice. “Check my cellphone. The last call on there is from my friend, wondering if I’d left town.”

Charlotte spoke to her husband without turning her head. “Get the goddamn phone.”

The room fell silent as they waited for Thor. Lola worked at keeping her face blank as her thoughts raced. What could she say to Jan that would tip her off? Thor returned far too soon. He held out the phone to Charlotte. “She’s right. There’s the call.”

“How do we know it’s from her friend? What if it’s from that sheriff?” Charlotte held the phone close to her face. “Who’s PITA?”

“That’s my nickname for my friend,” Lola said. That part, at least, was true. She’d changed the name on Jan’s listing in a fit of pique one day, deriving childish satisfaction from showing Jan her new designation.

“What’s it mean?” Charlotte challenged.

“Pain in the Ass. Because she is.”

Charlotte screwed up her face. Powder sifted from her pores. “Looks like you’re no better at being a friend than you are at anything else.”

Entirely possible, thought Lola, who’d spent the past few moments wishing that she’d worked harder, much harder, on her friendship with Jan.

Charlotte checked the phone again. “You’ve got a bunch of incoming calls from that number.”

“No surprise. Like I said, I was supposed to be back by now. She’s been working all kinds of overtime while I’ve been out here. I’ll tell her I had car trouble. We can forget any of this ever happened.” Lola made the impossible offer as though she had every expectation of seeing it accepted.

“Get your gun,” Charlotte commanded Thor.

“Jesus.
No
!” Lola lost all pretense of calm.

Thor drew his service weapon and regarded it thoughtfully, then leveled it at Lola’s head. Lola scooted backward across the bed. Charlotte laughed. “Where do you think you’re going? If he decides to shoot you, you’re stuck in this room. You’ll just end up with more holes than necessary, and I’ll end up with a big mess to clean up.”

If.
She’d said if. Lola unwound by degrees from her fetal position. Charlotte held out the phone. “Take it. Call your friend. Tell her that story about the truck. And make her believe it. Or—” She glanced toward her husband. He obligingly waggled the gun. “Or,” he said, “big damn mess, just like Mother said.”