The second I did, a vile smell assaulted my nose. “Shit!” I hissed as I covered my nose and mouth with my forearm. Standing as still as a stone, I listened for any sounds. There were none. Moving as quietly as possible, I checked the first-floor rooms. They smelled musty; the furniture had been covered with sheets for years.

They still looked exactly the same.

My heart sank as I reached the bottom of the stairs. “Ellis . . .” I said under my breath. I raced up the stairs two at a time. The closer I got to the room where she had been holed up for years, the stronger the putrid smell became. “Ellis!” I called out. I felt an increasing sense of dread as I approached the door. It was open. No noise came from within.

I raised my gun and stopped beside the wall. I took a deep breath. Relying on the intensive Ranger training I’d been through in recent months, I crept slowly into the bedroom—Ellis’s bedroom—heart in mouth. My breathing seemed to stop as I paused before turning the corner to look at her spot, the place she always sat. I closed my eyes for a second, then counted to five and turned to face the rest of the room. I froze. Ellis’s chair was missing. Her dark clothes, the clothes she always wore, were in a heap on the wooden floor . . . and then I felt the blood drain from my face. A pair of feet poked out of the shadows, near the bathroom. I forced my feet to move, one reluctant step after the other, until I felt something beneath my shoe. I looked down and saw a pool of congealed blood, now nearly black in color. “Ellis,” I whispered, feeling the muscles in my chest tear in two, only to freeze when an older body came into view.

I tiptoed closer and closer still until I saw the blank, death-masked face of Mrs. Jenkins. It seemed as if she was staring toward the window Ellis used to sit and stare out of. I crouched down, making to check for a pulse, when I spotted the deep gash across her throat. The wound was a faded red, the skin split wide open, revealing the flesh beneath. But the blood was dried and cold, caking her skin and the floor around her.

Heart pounding, I kicked into action. I tore through the house. “Ellis!” I roared, gun held out before me, searching for anyone who remained alive. Where was my oldest, best friend? “Ellis!” I zipped through back hallways, hallways I hadn’t even known existed. I ran up stairs and through rooms, dread seeping into the very marrow of my bones, until I came to a stop.

A total dead stop.

There was a hole in the wooden floor before me. It was uneven, the edges hard, clearly carved with a saw.

What the hell . . . ?

Carefully, I shuffled forward and looked down. A rope lay pooled on the floor below, surrounded by fragments of wood, the remains of a chair. I looked closer and recognized it instantly. “Ellis,” I said softly, my eyes widening as I realized what must have happened.

Someone had taken her.

“Ellis!” I instinctively called again and reached into my pocket for my cell. I pressed the number for the third person on my speed dial. “Uncle,” I wheezed, out of breath, as I ran back to Ellis’s room and the rotting body of Mrs. Jenkins. “You’ve got to get to the Earnshaw estate now. We have a kidnapping on our hands.”

“Where’s Earnshaw?” my uncle asked as the forensic team took samples from the room and the folks from the mortuary began removing Mrs. Jenkins’s body.

I ran my hand through my hair, gripping my Ranger hat in my free hand. “Left years ago. He ran his business from here, with his associates, for decades. I used to come here to play with Ellis when we were kids. They all left years ago when there was some kind of problem with the business.” I shrugged. “No idea where they went. It was . . . weird.”

My uncle’s brow furrowed in concentration. “And Ellis?”

My chest tightened. “She had a breakdown years ago, when she was in her mid-teens.” I looked at the spot where she would always sit. I had visited her every week since I found out she was sick. I talked to her. But she never said a thing. Just stared out of the window, silent, eyes completely devoid of life. I thought back to when we were kids. “She was never allowed off her property when we were young. I once asked my mama why. She told me that Ellis had some issues.” I shrugged. “Anxiety and such about leaving her home. It’s why she was homeschooled. Her papa told my mama that it only got worse when her mama died.” I shook my head in sadness. “Don’t think she ever left this place . . . then she had her breakdown. Guess she always had a fragile mind.”

Tags: Tillie Cole Erotic
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