Chapter Four – Liam #2
Her eyes slowly met mine. “I want to tell you yes, but I can’t.” She started to cry again. “His laugh…it was so evil. I feel like it’s burned into my brain, and I’ll never be able to forget it. I don’t know, Liam. I just…I don’t know!”
She broke down crying, and I quickly stood and drew her into my arms again. “Shhh, it’s okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you upset.”
Mallory pressed her face against my chest. “I’m so sorry!”
I gently rocked her as I held her. She was apologizing because, deep down inside, she knew Emily wasn’t alive…and I knew it as well, somewhere inside of me. This whole time, I never truly felt in my heart that she was still with us.
Walking Mallory over to the sofa, we both sat down. It wasn’t long before she’d cried herself to sleep. I carefully lay her on the couch and covered her with a blanket. Piper laid down on the floor in front of the sofa.
“Watch over her, girl, okay?”
Piper looked up at Mallory with a soft bark and then put her head between her paws.
After writing Mallory a note, I grabbed my jacket and phone and headed out the door. Pulling up a number, I hit send and started for the barn.
“Bubba, I need to see you right now. Can you meet me in the main barn?”
“I’m already in the barn.”
“Good, don’t move. I’m on my way.”
A few minutes later, I walked into the barn and saw Bubba cleaning a stall.
“How’s the girl?” he asked.
I glanced around. “Is there anyone else here?”
“No, not now.”
“You haven’t told anyone about her?”
He shook his head. “You asked me not to, so I haven’t said anything.”
The night Bubba had helped me with Moonshine, he’d waited in the kitchen until I had taken care of Mallory.
He’d made coffee and was pacing the floor when I made my way back downstairs.
Something in my gut told me to ask him to keep Mallory a secret, until I could figure out who she was.
He had even told Billy and the guys I had a stomach bug, to cover for me staying with Mallory the last two days.
“What I’m about to tell you, I need it to stay between us.”
“You have my word, Liam.”
I rubbed at my aching neck. “Shit, Bubba…I don’t know what to do. She was kidnapped and escaped.”
His eyes went wide. “What?”
“It has to be somewhere local, because she said once she hit the guy over the head, she took off running and ran almost nonstop for two days.”
Bubba started to pace. “How many miles do you think she would have gotten in two days?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Was she running the whole time? Which way was she coming from? She said she went through creeks and climbed over fences. Went up steep hills. She also didn’t have on shoes, so that would have slowed her down considerably.”
He stared at me. “Liam, she had to have been kept fairly close by. That means there’s some psycho out there who kidnapped a woman.”
“Women. Mallory said he told her he liked to scare his victims first. She said there was a mattress on a dirt floor in a basement under a building, maybe a barn. That’s where she was kept. There was blood on it, and she didn’t think it was all from her. It was older stains.”
Bubba stumbled back and sat down on a bale of hay. “Holy crap! We have to go to the police, Liam.”
I shook my head. “She begged me not to go to the police. She’s terrified this guy will find her…and she said he told her he knew everyone around and if she got out, he’d find her. I think she believes if she goes to the police, she won’t be safe.”
“I can see her being scared, but we need to tell someone there’s a nutcase out there.”
“That’s not all.”
His brows shot up. “You mean there’s more?”
“She found this.”
I held up the locket. Bubba reached for it, studied it, then his gaze whipped back to me, a horrified look on his face. “No,” he whispered as tears built in his eyes.
“It was in a corner of the room, she said, hidden in the dirt. She put it on for some reason; I didn’t ask why. Bubba…I think whoever kidnapped Mallory, that same person also took Emily.”
“Oh my God. Liam, we need to go to the police! You can’t keep this to yourself. If there’s a guy out here kidnapping women, my sister, we have to find out!”
“Listen, I know how you’re feeling—believe me. I want to find this bastard. But we also can’t be sure if he is the one who took Emily.”
Bubba stared at me in disbelief.
“I can’t force Mallory to go to the police. And if I go, they’re going to want to talk to Mallory, if she won’t talk...”
Bubba shook his head. “If you tell them, you found her and she told you what happened, that would surely make them look.”
“And if this guy finds out we’re snooping around? He’ll know she is on the ranch, and what if he does come for her? No, I think we need to find him. Take this fight to his front door.”
Bubba’s mouth dropped open. “How in the hell do you think we’ll find him?”
“Well, for starters, we’ll get a map of the area and figure out how far she could have run.
The place where this guy kept her must be in the middle of nowhere.
She said she could see light coming from the floorboards that made up the ceiling of the basement, so maybe it was an old barn that had holes in the roof that allowed light in. ”
Bubba ran his hand down his face. “Should we check here, on the ranch?”
I spun around and glared at him. “What?”
“The original ranch house barn has a root cellar.”
My entire body shivered at the idea that Mallory—and possibly Emily—could have been kept on the ranch.
“I know every single one of my ranch hands, and they wouldn’t hurt anyone. You know that. We all grew up together.”
Bubba stood. “I do know that, but what if someone else uses some abandoned place on the ranch? That barn hasn’t been used in ages.
We were kids the last time we went into the root cellar.
I haven’t even laid eyes on it in years.
Have you? We have creeks on the ranch. For all we know, she was running in circles.
You’ve got thousands of acres, Liam. It’s very possible that’s what happened. ”
My stomach turned. “Let me go check on Mallory, then you and I can ride over there. I want this to stay between us. The fewer people who know about Mallory, the better.”
“What about Randy?”
Randy Sanders was my cousin and a cop in Lewistown. I knew I could trust him…but would he feel obligated to report Mallory’s kidnapping?
“I’ll talk to him, but I’m leaving Mallory out of it for now. I promised her no cops, and I don’t intend on breaking that promise.”
He took hold of my arm. “Can we trust this woman?”
I swallowed hard. “Yes. You didn’t see the fear in her eyes, Bubba. She’s terrified.”
He nodded. “I’ll get the horses ready.”
“Great. Give me time to get back to the house and check on her. I’ll meet you in my barn. I’m taking Moonshine.”
I tried to ignore the sick feeling I had building in my stomach. If there was a spot on my ranch where women were being held—where Emily spent her last days—I would never forgive myself.