Chapter Twenty-Six
Hunter
“Hunter,” Linc says.
“I know.” We both know this could be a bad idea, but if Jim brought Dylan here... If he’s waiting for us now...
I rush to the opening and down the narrow staircase into darkness. Linc follows. The wood creaks under our weight.
Once in the cellar, cold air, only slightly warmer than the frigid temperatures outside, wraps around us, heavy with the smell of damp earth and something else. Thick. Rotted.
Linc pulls out his phone and clicks on the flashlight. The faint yellow beam cuts through the dark, illuminating rough stone walls and a cracked concrete floor.
“After you.”
I nod. Eager for a sign of Dylan.
The basement is larger than I expected. Boxes line one side of the open space, and old furniture, coated in dust, is piled up against the opposite wall. As quiet and forgotten as the cellar appears, something feels wrong. It’s too still. Then I hear it. A voice. Faint. Muffled.
Linc freezes beside me. “You hear that?”
“Yeah. Come on.” We move forward slowly, careful with each step not to make a sound.
The voice grows clearer as we move through the dim space. It leads us toward a small room at the back of the basement, partially hidden behind a row of storage shelves.
My pulse pounds as we approach. The voice is clearer now. Male. Strained.
A pale glow flickers through a gap in the doorway, and I peer through the narrow opening, holding my breath. On a desk against the far wall, a computer monitor glows in the darkness. The video playing on the screen turns my blood cold. I know that voice.
A man is tied to a chair, wearing only his underwear. His face is bruised and swollen. Blood runs from a gash above his eyebrow, streaking through dirt and tear tracks.
Someone stands just outside the camera frame, taunting the man, promising him an agonizing death. A fist swings into the shot, striking him hard. The man groans in pain. I go still.
“What the hell?” Linc breathes.
I take a step closer to the screen. The video quality is grainy, as if it was filmed on an old camcorder.
The man in the chair sobs something unintelligible. Then the voice off-camera speaks again, calm and cold.
“I told you,” the unseen person says, “no one is coming to save you. You belong to me now, and the sooner you accept that, the better things will go for you.”
My chest tightens. It’s Jim.
“Are you ready to accept who you belong to?” Jim asks. The man in the chair coughs weakly and shakes his head.
“Please,” he gasps.
Jim chuckles, mirthlessly. “Stubborn boy. Time for something serious, I think.”
The video cuts to static. I swallow hard. Was this some kind of sick message? Was he doing this to Dylan right now?
“What the hell is this place?” Linc whispers.
“We need to get the cops here,” I say, taking a step back. My foot sinks into something soft.
“What the—” I stumble forward, catching myself on the desk.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Linc asks, voice rising an octave.
“My foot hit something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Something. Shine your light over here.”
I already know I don’t want to see what’s there. I step back quickly, and the beam of Linc’s flashlight swings across the floor, stopping on a body half-hidden in the shadows.
Jim.
He’s crumpled on his side, one arm stretched toward the desk.
His skin is gray. His lips blue. His eyes open and empty.
He’s dead.
Something cold locks in my chest. If Jim is here, dead, where’s Dylan? He’s still out there.
Linc crouches next to the body.
“Don’t touch anything.”
“I know.” Linc leans closer, studying Jim’s face. “Do you think it was his heart?”
“I don’t know.” The idea that he dropped dead of natural causes at the same time we connected him to a long list of missing men seemed like an unlikely coincidence.
I stare down at the man who had been killing for decades.
Now he’s dead.
There’s a bottle of whiskey on the desk with a nearly empty glass beside it. Was he drinking while watching this... then dropped dead? Or could someone have discovered him playing his torture videos in the basement and killed him?
A chill crawls up my spine. There were no obvious signs of injury.
“Hunter,” Linc says slowly.
I drag my gaze away from Jim’s crumpled body. “Yeah?”
“You thought Jim had Dylan?”
I nod. “Maybe not if he was dead down here, though. How long do you think he’s been here?”
“Not long. His body looks as if it’s still warm.”
If he wasn’t involved in whatever happened to Dylan, then who? I don’t have an answer.
“We need to call the police.” But it’s the last thing I want to do. I want to look for Dylan, and if we call the cops, they’ll hold on to us, forcing us to answer questions for hours and waste time.
What if he’s already dead?
No.
I don’t go there.
A horrible thought pushes into my brain before I can stop it.
Matthew.
Could he have still been alive, tied to a chair like the man on the video. Bruised. Begging. Tortured.
Could he have escaped somehow? Come back here and killed Jim? There are no obvious signs of trauma on the body, but I can’t really be sure without moving it, and I’m not willing to risk contaminating evidence.
Besides, the idea is insane. Matthew has been missing for two weeks now. He had to be dead. So who killed Jim? And where the hell is Dylan?
“We’re not going to solve anything standing in a basement with a dead body,” Linc says. “We need to think.”
I drag a hand through my hair, forcing myself to focus. “If Jim took Dylan somewhere, he’s not the one holding him now.”
The thought makes my stomach twist. My brain is racing now. Jim picks up Dylan. They leave together. Then Jim ends up dead in the basement.
Could Dylan have killed him, panicked and run? Unfortunately, the possibility made sense.
Something happened.
“If Jim brought Dylan back to the house—”
“He’s not here,” I cut in. “Jim would have probably tried to use him as leverage to find out how much we knew. He wouldn’t have left him accessible to me.”
“Unless he’s somewhere else on the property.”
The words hit me like a jolt of electricity. On the property.
I close my eyes and remember looking out the window from our room a few mornings ago and seeing the old outbuildings on the other side of the woods.
My eyes snap open.
“There are some sheds through the forest,” I say quickly. “Old buildings.”
Linc nods slowly. “If Jim needed somewhere private, but close...”
“That’s where he’d take someone.”
My pulse starts hammering again. “Let’s go.” I’m already moving.
“You’re thinking Jim took Dylan to one of those buildings,” he says.
“It’s the best lead we’ve got.”