Chapter Seven
Ten Years Later
Crystal Rock, Wisconsin
As she rode along with him in his cruiser, Shanna Weldon glanced at the aged face of Wes Montgomery as he steered the vehicle through the murky shadows of dusk. Lately, he’d been deeply worried about something, and all his late nights of drinking were starting to catch up with him.
She’d settled into a strange sense of complacency about her life. If only she could run.
But Shanna had long ago given up on the idea of escape because of the price that would be paid if she did. Besides, where would she go?
And, for the most part, he was leaving her alone except for when he needed her help stocking and cleaning out cellars and warehouses. Occasionally, he hired a few extra men at his marina—she suspected that they were homeless—and since there were very few people he trusted, Wes had tried using a few of them as his assistants to help do his dirty work during the past several years.
After a certain amount of time, Shanna would never see any of those men again. She should feel lucky that Wes felt that she was valuable enough not to get rid of her.
After gradually allowing her some freedom after about five years in captivity, he’d moved her from the rooms where he’d kept her locked for most of her teenage years. She’d never been able to figure where those rooms were located while she’d been held captive, although she was sure it wasn’t close to where she was living now.
At least he expected nothing from her physically anymore, which was the best thing that could have happened.
Now she was simply his slave.
And more than likely some other poor young teenage girl had taken her place in those rooms.
She was allowed to paint because Wes had been easily able to sell her work on commission. Although she went along with him in disguise to push her artwork because of the detailed questions that were asked by shop owners about the types of materials and specific paints she used to achieve her unique effects.
And strangely, she was allowed to live here on her own in isolation, not far from her former hometown of Crystal Rock. Using her maiden name, Wes’s mother was listed as the owner of the property out here, which actually belonged to him. But he’d never applied for a title change, and the maintenance costs and property taxes were always paid with cash. He’d explained all of this to her five years ago when he’d moved her out here.
It was a windy August day, and she shivered as Wes approached the weathered pier located along the edge of the overgrown property. No one in a vehicle on the lake would even know that the cabin was standing there in the woods, built less than twenty yards away from the Pebble Lake shoreline, slightly elevated so that it overlooked the lake. In fact, in its state of disrepair, even the rickety weathered dock was barely visible from the lake.
“It’s a good thing we got a warning that someone bought that house,” Wes said, shutting down the engine and coasting into the dock. “There’ll be a shit load of workmen snooping around that place while they’re remodeling.”
Shanna nodded because she’d learned long ago that she should always agree with Wes. He had a volatile temper. At least he used to have one. She’d been puzzled by the changes she’d seen in him during the past five years.
“Someone who doesn’t know that the tunnel’s there probably wouldn’t stumble on the entrance very easily, but it’s better to be safe than sorry,” she replied mechanically.
“They’re not going to be able to use that basement anymore after they did all that remodeling work down there,” Wes muttered under his breath.
She’d always been pretty sure that she knew what was going on in that location, but Wes kept her out of the loop. She suspected it was because he didn’t want to humanize the women and kids they were probably trafficking and possibly even auctioning off right there inside the underground cavern that had a hidden passageway leading from the house.
Not letting her in on the plans of his trafficking gang was another excuse for him to be able to keep her alive. Weirdly, she suspected that he’d formed some kind of an attachment for her.
And not just because of the amount of money that he’d paid to own her ten years earlier.
But he answered to someone else, and it was that person who had been hanging something precious over her head during the later years of her captivity to keep her in line.
“We’ll finish power washing and restocking the other locations next week. Maybe we can deliver a few more of your paintings if you have some ready? Someone bought two of them yesterday,” Wes said, stacking the bags of groceries they’d purchased on the dock so that she could carry them into the cabin.
He never went into the cabin, and she suspected it was because he wanted to keep any traces of his connection to her from appearing inside in case she was ever discovered. She knew that he had a huge home and marina in Rice Lake, but she’d been held underground somewhere, and was pretty sure that she hadn’t been anywhere near his home during all the years she’d been held captive.
She had a limited amount of freedom here. When Wes dropped her off, she was sure that he assumed that she locked herself up in the cabin at night and never left the property during the day. What Wes didn’t know was that she’d discovered an old canoe and had patched it up. Since she used a lot of strange materials in her artwork, it was easy to sneak in a few extra items for Wes to purchase when they went into town to go shopping.
It was kind of a long haul to get to town in the canoe, but she did it occasionally, always making sure to bring along the burner phone that she was supposed to have on her night and day. But most of the time she headed toward the old family cabin on Crystal Rock Lake that her grandparents had owned. It had fallen into a state of disrepair, but hopefully her sister Anya would return to town someday and see that it was restored. Shanna’s best memories were of the summers she’d spent time at the cabin with Anya and her grandparents.
Besides, she had no spending money, so going into town was more dangerous than productive, although wearing her dark-haired wig and frumpy clothes, she was positive no one from the past would recognize her anymore. She was sure she was forgotten.
Although a pair of deep green piercing eyes occasionally came to mind. If it hadn’t been for Rick O’Neill, Shanna would have never confessed everything to her mom. They’d become so close for a while. Now that she was forced to remain in hiding, all Shanna did was worry about Mom, who was obsessed with finding Shanna. Shanna was scared to death that something awful would happen to Mom if she didn’t ease up.
There was no such thing as a pay phone anymore. And she couldn’t take a chance and use her burner phone since Wes monitored the minutes available closely. Besides, someone might somehow trace him back to the number.
And then she had an idea.
It could work, she realized after thinking about it for a moment.
She reached for the last sack of groceries, resting it on the dock before climbing from the speedboat carrying her rack of cleaning items by the handle so that Wes could be on his way.
“I can probably have a few more pieces of artwork ready by the middle of next week,” she said.
“I’ll give you a call,” he muttered, starting up the engine. “We need to finish making the rounds by October.”
“I’ll be ready,” she replied, waiting as he put the boat into gear and quickly sped away.
As usual, she breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that she’d probably be able to be on her own for the next four or five days.
Grabbing a couple bags of groceries by the handles, she carried them up to the cabin along with her cleaning supplies.
Entering the cabin, she rested everything on the table before rushing back outside and grabbing the other two bags.
Wes had been in a strangely generous mood today. He’d insisted on purchasing a lot more groceries for her than he usually did.
Come to think of it, he’d seemed very happy about the sale of her paintings. Last week he’d ordered several different sized canvases for her from an online source. When she said that she’d prefer using older frames because of the subject matter of her artwork, they’d gone to some second-hand stores so she could find what she wanted, and sometime or another, he’d taken the time to contact someone who hosted auctions so she could have her choice of what she thought would work with what she was painting. Maybe that’s why he’d bought her extra groceries, including fresh chicken and hamburger meat. Not just the microwave items that he usually scooped up for her.
The interior of the two-bedroom cabin had surprised her the first time she’d seen it. Sure, the appliances weren’t up to date, but everything was neat and clean—the original wood flooring was buffed, and the furnishings matched.
Wes had noticed how surprised she was. Supposedly, he’d intended to rent the place out at first but had changed his mind.
She’d made sure not to let her excitement show. Wes had begun letting her have more freedom in stages, taking her with him on numerous business-related outings. But he’d always been around to keep an eye on her.
Once she’d been alone and had felt the taste of freedom for the first time in six long years, Shanna had searched everywhere for cameras. As far as she could tell, there was no surveillance, even outdoors. It was if he was trying to distance himself from every bad deed he’d ever done.
And then a thought had come to her—maybe he suspected that someone could be on to him. Wes knew that she would never risk running for the sake of what they were holding over her head. He’d probably been concerned about moving her so close to her hometown, but the authorities more than likely didn’t know about this place, because of what Wes had told her.
Shanna had lived here, relatively content. Real happiness was something she’d never dared dream about.
But after she’d caught a glimpse of her mother one day, definitely a shadow of the woman she’d once been, Shanna had realized that even if she couldn’t do anything about her own situation, because it would endanger the lives of those she loved, she owed it to the families of other victims to try to do what she could to lead them on a path to find them, whether those victims were alive…or not.
After putting away all the groceries she’d laid on the table, Shanna decided to get started on her new series of paintings. Although she wasn’t allowed a computer with internet access, or even cable TV, she had a radio she listened to all the time. She was able to get a couple of channels on the small television that was here, and Wes had provided her with a DVD player and some second-hand movies he’d been picking up for her. It had been the same where she’d been held captive before, and he’d transferred many familiar items over here before he’d told her she was being moved.
Every minute for two straight weeks, she’d been scared to death that he was intending to get rid of her.
One thing Wes had never minded providing for her were books—especially those he knew that she intended to use for reference for her paintings. When he’d realized how good she was, he’d brought her a huge selection of picture books, featuring painting techniques, which had included a very detailed account of how to paint not only landscapes and still-lifes, but detailed parts of the human body as well.
He’d been dragging her around with him for the last five years. When she’d assisted him with cleaning several unconventional storage areas located in many different locations throughout the county, Shanna had finally realized what all the storage spaces had been used for some time in the past, a few more recent than others.
Wes had said it was a good idea when she’d started bringing along cleaning products for use at the storage locations. Many of them had actual cooking facilities with refrigerators and counter space.
Little did he know that one of the containers of antibacterial wet wipes was empty.
Pouring over those art books had made her exceptionally skilled at identifying body parts, and when she’d seen the thin bones caught up in the corner of one of the underground storage areas Wes had been ready to begin power washing, Shanna had been horrified to recognize that they belonged to a human hand.
A very small human hand.
She’d gently picked up the bones, wrapping them in a tissue and hiding them in her sweatshirt pocket. After that, anytime that she’d accompanied Wes to other sites, she’d brought cleaning supplies and a broom, coming up with constructive ways to hide anything suspicious in an area of the room where Wes wouldn’t notice her quickly scooping everything into the empty wet wipe container before he began power washing.
Now it was a regular routine, and Wes dropped her off many times on her own while he went off for a while and let her work while he got them something to eat.
So far, she’d only gone along with him to the storage areas located around the area. But Shanna knew that Wes sometimes traveled for days and worked out of state occasionally. Every now and then, she wasn’t sure if he realized how much he was revealing to her about the trafficking locations. He didn’t drink as much during the day. Either he trusted her more, or his superiors didn’t know that she was accompanying him on his rounds.
Or maybe there was just no one else besides her that he trusted.
She’d thought long and hard on how to handle this, and each time she returned to the cabin from one of their rounds the first thing she did was remove what she’d found that day and bag it, labeling the location and town. She’d clean and bleach the container afterwards, letting it dry so that she could use it again for the next time out.
The tricky part was preparing the materials so that she could use them in her oils. Oil paint took a long time to dry. But it was necessary with the layering she did to preserve the integrity of the bone and hair and other materials which could be used by authorities to identify the victims’ DNA.
Wes told her stories of how long that he and his ancestors had been using each of the locations for their operations. Who knew how old some of the materials she was discovering were? But in the scheme of things, power washing hadn’t been around for very long.
Eventually, when the first series of oil paintings was complete, she would have to find a way of revealing the secrets of her paintings to someone she could trust. Because what she was doing had the possibility of bringing closure to the families of those who’d been trafficked without putting her own family in danger. She was careful not to sign the paintings.
Shanna didn’t think she could live with herself any longer if she didn’t at least try and do something.