To Darkness and to Death (22 page)

“I’ll swing by the hospital after I drop you,” Clare was saying. “Poor woman. God, who would do something like that?”

“That boyfriend they were talking about? Maybe someone from that group that sent her the brochures?” Lisa shuddered in her seat. “I just hope her brother’s not around when they catch the guy.”

“Mr. van der Hoeven? Why?”

Lisa’s eyes widened. “You saw him this morning, didn’t you? With the rifle? I swear, I think if you hadn’t yelled, he would have shot that girl. If he was willing to do that to someone delivering bad news, just think what he’d do to someone who hurt his sister. He really loves her.”

“He’s never been violent before, has he?”

Lisa shook her head.

“Then it was probably a onetime thing. His sister was missing, he was stressing about the land sale, and he acted irresponsibly with a firearm.” Lisa gave her a jaundiced look. “Okay, very irresponsibly. I don’t condone it, but that doesn’t mean he’s about to go out and act like Dirty Harry.”

“Who?”

And Russ thought he was getting old. “It means to be a vigilante.”

“Whatever. I’m just saying. He looked like he was ready to get medieval all over that woman. If he hadn’t had that shotgun, he would have been all over her anyway.” Lisa pointed to where a sign announced the intersection of Muddy Brook Road with Highway 53. “Turn right there.”

“From what I’ve seen of him, Eugene doesn’t seem like the type of man who’d let himself get physically close enough to anyone to assault them.” Clare signaled and turned onto the road. “He’s carrying around a load of baggage from that fire he was in.”

“No lie. You know, his mother died in that fire.”

“Good God, really?” Clare slowed down as Muddy Brook Road approached another narrow blacktop.

“Go left here. Yeah. I guess she and his father had been divorced for a while, but she was up at the camp visiting. From what I heard, she was looking for stuff to take from the old building, you know, to use in her new home? Mr. van der Hoeven—well, he was Eugene then, wasn’t he? Only, like, fourteen years old. He was helping her.”

“How did the fire start?”

“I dunno. I wouldn’t have known all that about his mother, except the lady who used to clean for them, she filled me in when I took over for her.”

“Had they had a bad divorce? Eugene’s mother and father?”

“According to her, it was all smiles and roses. Whatever fucked him up, you can’t blame it on a bad childhood.” There was a beat. Clare waited for it, and wasn’t disappointed. “Sh—” Lisa clapped both hands over her mouth before she could swear again. She looked at Clare with enormous eyes. “I forgot you’re a minister. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t sweat it. I’ve heard the word before. Even said it a time or two.”

“Really?” Lisa jerked her gaze away from Clare. “There. There’s our drive.”

Clare turned into a rutted dirt road remarkably like the one to Haudenosaunee, complete with kidney-jarring bumps and exhaust-scraping potholes. It never ceased to amaze her, the number of country residents in the Adirondacks who had driveways longer than the average suburban street.

There were several cars in the side yard, none of them looking remotely drivable. She pulled in close to the forlorn steps leading up to an unadorned front door. The house, set in the middle of a bare expanse of dying grass and dirt, seemed unspeakably lonely. No flowers, no bushes, nothing but the limitless forest stretching away in all directions. Lisa climbed out of the car.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay all by yourself?” Clare asked.

“Sure.” She smiled crookedly. “I don’t know who did it, but I can guarantee you whoever worked over Millie van der Hoeven isn’t coming after me.”

1:00 P.M.

Millie never would have guessed fear for her life could be washed away by sheer boredom. At first she had waited, her heart pounding with a combination of fear and rage, next to the door. Later, she hobbled around and around the circumference of the walls, peering as best she could out of the arrow slits, going over and over her plan in her mind. As time slipped past and the sunshine disappeared from the wooden floor, she found it harder and harder to focus—on her planned attack, on her anger, even on her fear of what was to come.

The adrenaline that had spurred her to action earlier burned away, leaving her cold and shaky and tired. She had used the bucket twice more, each time successfully. She tried to ease the cramping pain in her shoulders by leaning into the stones, by sitting, finally by lying on her side on her remaining blanket. She came close to drifting off, only to be snapped awake by the distant cawing of a raven.

The boredom was as painful as her shoulders and wrists—nothing to do, nothing to look at, not even her own voice to keep her company. She began to yearn for her captor to come back, not so much so she could escape but so the endless, monotonous waiting would be over.

Plus, she was hungry. And thirsty. Her stomach had started rumbling at least an hour ago, and beneath her duct-tape gag, her mouth was tissue-paper dry.

What if no one came?

What if she wasn’t being held for ransom but had been snatched by someone who wanted revenge? Although it was difficult to imagine who, or who the target of the revenge might be. Once in a while her mother offended some other Palm Beach matron with whom she played bridge, but those ladies were more likely to spike her mother by tittle-tattling on her face-lift than by kidnapping her daughter. Eugene’s poor mother, who might have held a grudge against the woman who stole her husband, was dead. And Louisa’s mother didn’t give a damn about anything except her horses.

Millie rolled from her side to her back, wincing, and rocked herself into a seated position. Her lower back twinged, and her stomach growled. Stones, bucket, blanket, floor. Nope, nothing had changed. The thinnest line of sunlight striped the floor beneath the western window. Must be past the noon hour.

What if no one came?

There was a scrape at the door. A bolt drawn back. A shock of amazement surged through her, and for a split second all she could do was stare. Then her head caught up with the rest of her senses, and she kicked against the floor furiously. She scooted across the planks, desperate to reach the wall and get on her feet. The door swung open.

It was a man. The brilliant blue sky framed in the open gallery arches behind him cast him into shadow, making him hard to see. Boots, dark pants, a dark sweater, and a blaze-orange jacket. Face hidden by an olive green balaclava. All of it straight off the floor of an army-navy surplus or hunting supply store. In his hand, a dark backpack, just large enough to hold a lethal explosive. Weapons. Surgical tools. A video camera.

He stooped over to set it on the floor. She thrust against the wooden planks once, twice, and fetched up hard against the solid stone. She raised her knees, planting her boots on the floor. With aching thighs, she heaved herself into a standing position.

Her captor stood as well. He held up his hand, one finger raised, as if to ask,
Can you wait just a moment
? He reached into his pants pocket, pulled out a horn-handled knife, and unfolded it.

Some remote part of her stood apart, amazed that she didn’t fall on the floor in a dead faint. Instead, Millie braced herself against the wall and let the iron hinge pin slide from between her wrists into her palm. She felt clearheaded, weirdly calm, like a shock victim before the pain sets in. She prepared to fight for her life with both hands tied beneath her back.

The man paused. Looked behind him. Then she could hear it, too, a rhythmic creaking noise. She was utterly incapable of placing the sound until the man flipped his knife shut and ducked back out the door, closing it. Of course. The stairs. The winding stairs between the galleys were wooden, and old, and a memory fell into her head, entirely complete, of climbing them, her father’s big hand holding hers, letting her peep over the railing at the mountains rolling away on every side. Her father’s step made the stairs creak just like that.

The man had gone. He had shut the door.

But not locked it.

Was it a trick? Was there a whole gang of them out there? Maybe arguing over what to do with her? She gripped the pin, her only weapon, more tightly. Swaying forward, she hobbled toward her cell’s single flat wall. Not toward the door itself. Next to the door. Where someone whose eyes were filled with the bright November sky would find it hard to see her, if only for a moment. She knew what she had to do.

1:05 P.M.

Shaun didn’t like the stairs. They were lit only by the residual light from the galleries, so that in the very middle of their wall-hugging curve, he climbed in darkness. The stone walls pressed suffocatingly close on either side, and decades of raw weather blowing in from the open arches had left far too many steps half rotten, the tread sagging beneath his weight.

It was hard maintaining forward momentum under circumstances like that. The higher he got, the slower he climbed, at every turn wondering who—what—awaited him at the top. His head and shoulders felt hideously vulnerable. Every instinct for self-preservation shrieked at him to turn around and go home and never look back, but an imperfect, unarticulated thought kept him climbing. He couldn’t put it into words; it was more of an equation. Secret+van der Hoeven=leverage. Or perhaps IF van der Hoeven’s actions=illegal, THEN opportunity. Whatever it was, it was enough to spur him slowly upward, despite his skin shrieking that something bad was about to happen.

“What the hell are you doing here?” The shape looming over him was much too big to be van der Hoeven, and Shaun knew a strangled instant of panic. Then the man yanked his balaclava over his head, and Shaun realized it was van der Hoeven’s angle, above him on the stairs, and his oversized sweatshirt that had made him appear larger than life.

“This is private property,” Eugene hissed. “Get out now, before I call the police and have you arrested for trespassing.”

Why was he whispering? Shaun’s glance flicked past van der Hoeven to the gallery just visible beyond his shoulder. What was he hiding? “This is a very interesting place you’ve got here,” Shaun said loudly.

Eugene’s head whipped around to look behind him. That was all Shaun needed. He charged up the stairs, slamming bodily into van der Hoeven, and kept going.

The younger man let out an outraged cry and grabbed him by the shoulders. Shaun bent forward, breaking van der Hoeven’s grasp, and stumbled up another step. “What do you have up there?” he asked. “What’s going on, Eugene?”

“Get out! Get out!” van der Hoeven’s voice was almost shrill. He lunged at Shaun, but the heavier man squared his shoulder and absorbed the blow before knocking van der Hoeven back. The younger man stumbled, caught himself, but retreated a step.

Shaun almost smiled. Lightweight. This was what not having to work did to a man. “C’mon, Eugene,” he said, lowering his voice. “I want to be your friend. Just tell me. I won’t blab it around.”

Eugene’s face was a stark divide: the unscarred half bright red, the scarred half ice white. He lunged for Shaun, who danced up three steps and avoided him. Eugene’s outstretched hands slapped against the wooden tread.

“What’s going on, Eugene?” Shaun glanced over his shoulder. He was almost at the gallery. The light from the open arches showed, instead of the wide and empty circular rooms of the first and second floors, a wall. And a door. With a keyhole. “Is there something in there? Shall I take a peek?”

“It’s my sister.”

The voice was so low Shaun wasn’t sure he had heard what he thought he heard. “Your sister?”

Eugene bent over, hands on his knees, nodding.

“Bullshit,” Shaun said. “I spoke with one of the search and rescue team. Your sister’s been found.”

Eugene shook his head. “No. That’s what I told him. To get rid of them.”

“The ambulance passed me on the road! Don’t tell me the paramedics were hauling ass to the hospital because you told them to.”

“I don’t know who they actually found! Somebody they mistook for my sister!”

“There was another woman, hurt and unable to tell anybody who she is, who just happened to be found on your property. And you’ve got your sister, who everybody thinks is this injured woman, locked up in a tower.” Shaun stared at van der Hoeven, amazed that he had sweated bullets over pitching a partnership deal to this guy. “You are one sick freak,” he said, and strode up to the gallery.

“Wait!” Eugene scrambled after him. “Goddammit, wait!”

Shaun reached for the iron door handle. Eugene knocked him out of the way. Shaun stumbled back. The door swung open, and a blond battering ram exploded from out of nowhere, head-butting van der Hoeven in the gut, sending him flying into the next level of stairs.

Shaun caught a glimpse of wild, panicked eyes and a mass of hair before the woman’s unchecked momentum sent her sprawling on the floor. Her hands and feet were bound, and she was squalling loudly, in a horrifyingly voiceless way that made him wonder if she was a deaf mute—or worse, if her tongue had been cut out.

“Christ,” he said. “Holy Christ.” He turned, ready to hammer van der Hoeven into the floor. The younger man’s blow caught him by surprise and sent him reeling. He clawed at thin air, desperate for a purchase to stop him from a fatal tumble backward down the stairs. He twisted, grabbed the edge of the archway, and stumbled forward.

Eugene pounced on the woman, seizing her ankles and dragging her back into the room. Shaun lurched toward them, knocking into van der Hoeven, but the other man was ready for him this time and rolled back with the blow, sending Shaun sprawling onto the floor inside the room. Eugene tried to grab the woman’s ankles again, but she twisted and kicked so violently that he gave up and shoved his hands beneath her torso instead, shoving her with enough force to flip her over.

Shaun staggered to his hands and knees, shaking his head to clear it. The woman—the girl, she looked young enough to be his daughter—grunted and groaned as van der Hoeven shoved her even farther away from the door, but he could see the gag preventing her voice from spilling out. She was still fully dressed, so the bastard hadn’t molested her yet—