Chapter 33
thirty-three
A hand over her mouth…
Greta jolted awake from the nightmare and reached for Bear.
But he wasn’t beside her.
And she wasn’t in his bed. Or even her bed. She was face down on concrete, shivering.
What the…?
She tried to lift her head, and pain spiked through her skull, made worse every time she tried to move. So she didn’t move. Didn’t lift her head. Just focused on lying there, pressed flat against cold stone, and tried to piece together how she ended up here.
Atlas barking, waking her.
Getting out of bed, finding him—
Her breath caught, and tears burned in her eyes. Her dog. Her puppy. Hurt and bleeding in the hallway.
She had to press her face harder against the concrete to keep from making a sound.
Someone had hurt her dog. Someone had broken into her house, hurt Atlas, and taken her…
Where?
Where the hell was she?
She forced herself to breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth, like she taught herself to do on high-altitude climbs when panic started to claw at her chest. The pain in her head pulsed with each heartbeat, but she pushed through it, taking inventory.
Her left wrist hurt. She moved it, testing, and metal clanked.
She cracked her eyes open.
A bare bulb hung from a cord overhead, the filament buzzing faintly. The chain ran from a cuff on her wrist to a steel ring bolted into the concrete wall three feet behind her head. She yanked on the chain. The ring didn’t move. The bolt didn’t shift.
She sat up slowly.
The room swam, then settled. Ten by twelve, maybe less.
Concrete floor, concrete walls. A single wooden staircase climbed to a closed door at the top.
A rectangular window set high in the wall near the ceiling—frosted glass, dark beyond it.
So it was still night, or pre-dawn. Or something blocked the light.
A cot was pushed up against the far wall. A wooden table stood beside it with one leg propped on folded cardboard. A Bible sat on the table, the cover warped. A dirty plastic bucket was tucked in the corner near the stairs, and she could guess what that was for.
A thin blanket lay crumpled on the cot. The mattress was stained in places she didn’t want to examine too closely. The whole room smelled like mildew and an unwashed body.
She slowly pushed herself to her feet. Thankfully, though a little shaky, her legs held. The chain was long enough to reach the cot, the table, the bucket, but didn’t allow her to climb more than one step of the stairs.
Okay. Think.
By the looks of the place, whoever brought her here planned to keep her for a long while.
She was not about to let that happen, so she needed a weapon.
The cot was metal-framed but bolted to the wall. The table was wood and might come apart, but slowly, and she’d need tools she didn’t have. The bucket’s metal handle had been removed, and it was empty.
So the table was the only option. If she could break off a leg, she could wait by the stairs and slam it against the skull of whoever came down.
She crossed to the table. The chain rattled behind her. She tossed the Bible aside and reached for the table to flip it, but froze when the book landed against the wall with a thunk and a metallic clink.
She turned.
On the floor next to the splayed-open Bible was a necklace. Or, no, a bracelet with its cheap gold finish rubbed to silver in places.
Two interlocking hearts.
Just like the one she’d worn for fifteen years.
Just like the one she’d put in Alice’s casket.
No.
She dropped to her knees as her vision blurred. The room tilted. She closed her hand around the bracelet and pressed it to her chest.
Alice had been here. In this room. This basement. This prison.
She’d worn this bracelet. She’d read that Bible. She’d slept on that cot. She’d used that bucket.
She’d been here.
Greta looked at the room again, and this time she saw it through different eyes. The wear patterns on the concrete floor. The scratches on the wall near the cot. The way the blanket had been folded at one corner, like someone had tried to make a space that felt like their own.
Alice had done that.
Alice had been alive.
She didn’t know when. Didn’t know how long ago. But Alice had been in this room. She had slept on that cot, had been chained to that same ring in this same wall, and had hidden the bracelet in the Bible so her captor wouldn’t take it from her.
Greta’s legs stopped holding her. She sat down hard on the concrete floor with her back against the wall and the chain coiled in her lap and the bracelet in her fist.
She couldn’t breathe.
This was where Alice had died.
Not the creek bank. Not in the mud. Here. In this concrete box, on that cot, chained to this wall, while Greta was looking for her in truck stops and cities, in mountains and rivers and woods.
She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes.
She couldn’t fall apart. She couldn’t. Whoever had killed Alice would eventually come down those stairs for her, and she needed to be ready.
She forced her breathing to slow. Forced her hands to open and shoved the bracelet deep in her front pocket, where she wouldn’t lose it.
Stay alert. Make a plan. Get out. Grieve later.
She stood.
The door at the top of the stairs creaked open.
No. Shit. It was too soon. She still needed a weapon. Still needed to plan. Still needed—
Footsteps came down.
She backed up until she hit the wall farthest from the stairs and waited for the monster to reveal himself.
But… it wasn’t a monster.
Cody Simms stepped into the light at the bottom of the stairs.
“Cody?”
For a half second, she stupidly thought she was saved because Cody Simms was a good man.
Well-liked, a respected member of the Solace business community, married to and still wildly in love with his high school sweetheart.
He’d sat beside Greta at every missing persons committee meeting for ten years.
He’d squeezed her shoulder at the candlelight vigil on the fifth anniversary.
He’d brought her coffee at the SAR base on bad weather days and told her, “We’ll find her, Greta. I know we will.”
He’d given Logan a job.
And he’d told Logan yesterday afternoon that he was closing the shop and heading up to his cabin to check on flood damage.
His cabin.
Oh, God.
This was the cabin.
Her stomach turned.
Cody looked like he hadn’t slept. His jacket was buttoned wrong over a belt that jingled with a heavy keyring. His hands opened and closed at his sides and his eyes were too bright.
“Where is she?” he demanded.
She shook her head. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t.” The word came out like a whip. “Don’t pretend. Don’t do that.”
“Cody—”
“Where’s Alice?”
“What?” she breathed.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t understand. She’s… she’s dead. They found her bones on Evander Cole’s land. I buried her. You were at the funeral.”
“That wasn’t her!”
Her heart hammered so hard in her throat she could barely squeeze words out. “The… bones… weren’t… hers?”
“No, of course not! Those bones were someone else. From before. They weren’t Alice, and you know it.”
From before.
Oh, God. How many other women had he kept here before Alice?
“She was here.” His voice had gone rough. “She was here for fifteen years, and she was safe, and you came up here during the flood and took her away.”
Fifteen years.
Fifteen years in this basement.
Greta’s knees almost buckled.
She locked them. She had to stay standing. “I don’t know where she is, Cody. I thought she was dead and I buried her, and you’re telling me—”
“I know it was you!” he screamed, spittle flying from his mouth. His face had gone so red, the veins on the side of his neck so prominent, she expected him to burst a blood vessel. “You and that big ex-con boyfriend of yours came up here during the storm and took her!”
Greta’s brain couldn’t process it. Alice had been alive for fifteen years. Locked in this basement. And now she was gone. She’d escaped.
A wild, hysterical, unstoppable laugh bubbled up from somewhere deep in her chest. It came out as a sob at first, then a choked sound that was both crying and laughing. She pressed her hand to her mouth, but it kept coming.
“Stop it!” Cody shouted. “Stop laughing! This isn’t funny!”
But it was. It was the most horrible, beautiful, devastating thing she’d ever heard. Her sister had been alive this whole time. She’d survived. She’d gotten out. She’d escaped on her own terms.
“Where is she?” Cody demanded again, taking a step closer. “I know you’re hiding her. I know you helped her run. She couldn’t have gotten out on her own.”
Greta wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
Her voice came out steadier than she expected.
“She did, though. She got out on her own. You kept her locked up for half her life, and she still found a way out.” She looked around the room again, seeing it differently now.
“She outsmarted you, Cody. After fifteen years, she finally beat you.”
Cody’s face twisted, and he crossed the room in three strides. His hand came up—he was going to hit her. She could see it in the way his arm cocked back, in the way his eyes went flat and dead.
She braced herself.
A crash came from upstairs, drawing his attention to the ceiling.
Something heavy moving fast. Glass shattering.
Greta’s head snapped toward the stairs as a massive, shaggy shape came barreling down and landed on the concrete with a heavy thud.
“King!”
The Leonberger looked at her, then swung toward Cody, teeth bared and dripping frothy drool.
“Get him, King!”