Dealing with. She made a choking noise, swallowing blood and finding a loose tooth with the tip of her tongue. Be honest, Lucy. Killing its owner.
She'd killed before-been forced to during the Zapata cartel's attack on Pittsburgh last month. But that was at a distance, through the scope of a long gun. Nothing like what she'd done tonight.
The man's final shriek tore through her memory, jarring her. She froze, imagining he wasn't dead, had somehow pushed himself free of the combine blades and now followed her, intent on finishing what he'd started. Killing her. And her family.
If her captor had lied, if he'd been working alone, then she could relax. After all, he was dead, which meant no one left to threaten her loved ones.
If he was working alone. He'd made a big show out of sending texts and talking about others taking orders from him, talked about coordinating everyone to get everything done by seven o'clock, but she'd seen in him a hubris that matched that of the child predators she hunted. Men ensconced in worlds of their own creation, worlds where they held all the power, didn't easily delegate to others. Wouldn't risk losing control over any aspect of their lives.
Her instincts said he was working alone. But she couldn't risk her family on a gut feeling. She needed to know they were safe.
She reached the front wall of the barn, tugged the door open, and was rewarded with the sight of a Jeep Grand Cherokee. She would have shouted for joy if she could've still felt her lips. Victory, though, quickly turned to ash.
The dog, a large rottweiler, trained to kill, was in the Jeep's rear compartment, kenneled inside a crate. It saw her-or smelled her blood, tasted a second chance to finish what its master had started-and began to bark and lunge against the steel walls that trapped it beyond the reach of its prey.
She hated the dog, but she couldn't waste time dealing with it, as long as it was locked up, safely out of her way. She had to overcome a bigger obstacle: the dead man didn't have car keys on him.
She limped to the SUV and opened the door. Climbing inside brought new waves of pain-pulling her weight up onto the seat, twisting to raise her left foot inside, setting it down again as gently as possible. By the time she finished, her jaw was clenched so tight it felt like hot needles driving into her eardrums. Didn't help that the dog, which outweighed Lucy, was throwing its weight back and forth, rocking the Jeep as it howled for release.
The Jeep was an older model. No nav system, no OnStar, no phone. At least not within eyesight.
But-thank you, Lord!-the man had left his keys dangling from the ignition. Guess he didn't think killing her would take him more than a few minutes. For some reason, the thought made her want to howl in concert with the damn dog.
Her fingers trembling, she turned the key, holding her breath, expecting this to be some kind of trick, a trap.
The dash lit up with bright lights, the radio startling her as it belted Christian death metal, joining with the dog's howls to create a bone-jarring cacophony. But all of her attention was on the dashboard clock.
5:37 it read in blood-red digits.
Lucy added her own whoop of joy to the noise filling the Jeep. Time. She still had time.
If her captor was a man of his word.
She rammed the vehicle into drive, and sped down the dirt lane. Leaving behind the barn and the man she'd killed, she pushed the accelerator, skidding out onto the paved road the farm lane intersected, without even checking for oncoming traffic.
The dog protested from the rear, where its crate shifted and tilted, then thumped back down. She stabbed the radio off, needing all her energy to block out the pain and figure out where the hell she was.
There was no traffic. The road was two lanes, blacktop, twisting and winding with trees on one side and barren fields on the other. No lights, no signs of civilization.
Then she spotted a road sign. Route 51. So close to home. She could have died-body never to be found-and she would have been just a few miles from home. She forced the thought aside. She had to get home, to save Nick and Megan …
No. She shook her head, her brain foggy with pain and adrenaline. No. She didn't know for sure where Nick or Megan were, much less who her captor had targeted.
A phone. She needed to reach a phone.
The January night was clear, stars cascading across the sky. They'd bought their Christmas tree from a farm not far from here, she remembered. Nick dunked homemade doughnuts into hot cider at the farmer's stand while she and Megan slurped hot cocoa topped with dabs of marshmallow whip.
She stomped her good foot onto the accelerator, the wind shaking the Jeep. Up ahead a familiar red-and-yellow sign lit up the night, obscuring the stars. Sheetz. A roadside mecca for weary travelers throughout Pennsylvania, promising hot coffee and clean restrooms, but most importantly to Lucy, a phone. She could get help to Nick and Megan.
An eighteen-wheeler coming from the other direction suddenly cut her off, turning left into the Sheetz parking lot ahead of her.
Didn't the idiot driver see her? There was no room to maneuver around the tractor-trailer. She slammed on the brakes, kicking her useless left foot and sending pain howling through her body.
The dog's barking grew frantic, competing with the screech of the tires. The Jeep wobbled and lurched as she yanked the wheel, spotting a narrow opening between the truck's front bumper and the guardrail leading into the convenience store's parking lot. The trucker finally spotted her, hitting his brakes and twisting the wheel until he almost jackknifed.
The Jeep's center of gravity was too high. It finally surrendered, toppling over the guardrail.
Lucy wrenched the wheel. The seat belt and air bags did their job-her body hurled in first one direction, then slapped back against her seat. No, no, no, her voice screamed inside her head. This couldn't be happening. She didn't have time …
The Jeep skidded to a stop, resting on its passenger side. Lucy hung from the seat belt, her body trying to fall into the other seat and against the door that was now the floor of the vehicle.
Other than a slap from the air bag deploying and more muscles wrenched in unnatural directions, Lucy wasn't hurt. She clawed the remnants of the air bag away. The dog whimpered.
She twisted in her seat and tried to push her door open. It didn't move. The sound of the dog's claws skittering against glass echoed through the suddenly quiet vehicle. Had the kennel broken open? She strained to turn to see into the rear.
Was the damn dog clawing its way over the seat even now, ready to finish the job it had started earlier, eager to tear her apart? This time it wouldn't stop at her foot and ankle. It would go for the jugular.
She rammed her weight against the door. Still nothing. Even if she did get it open, it was going to be almost impossible to climb out on her own.
She didn't care. She didn't have time for impossible. Not if she was going to save her family.
Then
11:11 a.m.
She was in a shitload of trouble, Lucy decided, as she paced the interior of her concrete prison. Literally.
She hugged her arms around herself, cursing the fact that she'd dressed in a thin silk blouse for the meeting in Harrisburg rather than her usual layers of fleece. Maybe she'd freeze to death.
Not a bad way to go. She forced the renegade thought aside. No one was dying. Not today. Not with her family in this guy's sights.
Besides, the concrete and dirt she was buried in made for decent insulation. Despite the snow and frigid temperatures outside, she was cold but not freezing.
How much air did she have? She stopped, doing some quick calculations in the impenetrable black … No, air wouldn't be a problem, not as long as the outlet pipes were open.
Easy to seal them off, the pessimistic voice continued, cataloguing the number of ways Lucy's kidnapper could kill her. Or hook them up to a vehicle's exhaust pipe, pump carbon monoxide down here. Or fill the place with water-then it'd be a toss-up between drowning and hypothermia.
Or just leave me here to starve.
No, she'd die of thirst first. Didn't matter.
"Not. Going. To. Happen." Lucy's voice ricocheted from wall to wall, surrounding her with the affirmation, driving her doubts away. For now.
He was probably listening. Maybe even watching if he had concealed a thermal-imaging camera in one of the pipes or on the ceiling.
Lucy didn't care. She wasn't playing by his rules. Not with her family's lives at stake.
She continued her exploration of her dungeon. She walked the perimeter again, fingertips touching the outer concrete wall, feet sweeping the ground invisible to her in the dark, searching for anything hidden there. Halfway down the length of the tank, her toe brushed something hard and sharp.
Lucy stopped. She abandoned the anchor of the wall and stooped to feel what her foot had struck. A cinder block. In the center of the floor.
It was just an ordinary cinder block. No hidden compartments with a stash of weapons, a cell phone, or radio. Nothing that could help her. It was really too heavy to use as a weapon, but if she had to she would.
She sat on it, face turned up, pondering the blackness above her. There was only one reason why her captor would have left it here.
He'd needed a way to climb out.
Lucy jumped up and balanced on the side of the block. Hard to do in the dark, with nothing to orient her. She wobbled and caught herself with one palm pressed against the wall, the other raised overhead.
Nothing. Just more empty blackness.
She stepped down, sat on the block again. At five foot five, she should have felt it if the ceiling were seven feet high … Yeah, sixty-five inches plus another sixteen or so of arm reach, plus the eight inches of the cinder block … She had to do the math twice to be sure, but seven feet was eighty-four inches, and she should have more than cleared that.