How could I have let this happen? I was a cop. I was always aware of my surroundings, even in the grocery store. I curled onto my opposite side and managed to sit up. My hands were zip-tied behind my back, and there were cable ties securing my ankles. The guy was sloppy. I knew about eight ways to get out of zip ties. First I would see if the easy way—a sharp tool—was available. I couldn’t see in the pitch-black room. I listened and could hear male voices in the next room arguing. Beneath that, if I concentrated, there was a smaller sound. I had been listening for water rushing to see if we were near the river or the falls, but instead I heard a soft whimper off to my right. I edged closer.
“Hey,” I whispered when I bumped up against a bed frame, “I’m a police officer. My name is Laura. Are you okay?”
“Y-yes,” a fearful voice said.
“What’s your name?” I asked her.
“B-becky,” she stuttered again.
“Becky Simms,” I said, a rush of relief flowing through me momentarily. “I’ve been looking for you. It’s okay. Just keep quiet and hold on. I’m going to get us out of here.”
I backed up to the low cot and felt around with my fingers, bending all the way forward to reach up and feel the legs and rails and springs. I found a sharp edge and started working my zip ties against it. I worked silently, pressing steadily against the sharp edge and rubbing the zip tie back and forth over it until it broke. I rubbed my freed wrists and then removed the ones at my ankles. I untied Becky and leaned in.
“What about the other girl? Where is she?”
“She got loose and went to run for help a while ago. The one guy was supposed to watch us but he fell asleep. That’s why they’re fighting,” she whispered.
“Is there anywhere in here to hide?” I asked.
“There’s a little closet over there in the corner.”
“Go get in it, quietly as you can, and stay still until I say it’s safe to come out, okay?”
She started to cry a little.
“Hey, Becky, you can do this. You’re so smart. You left that earring for me to find. That’s how we knew you were alive. Now you just have to hang on a little bit longer. It’s almost over. Go,” I said softly.
She moved quietly off the bed and I heard the soft click of a door. Confident she was concealed in the closet, I felt around for anything to use as a weapon. All I could find was a chest of drawers—it would be too noisy to search it—so I went back to the bed frame and broke off a spring. It was better than nothing as long as I wasn’t bringing a shank to a gunfight, I thought ruefully.
The shouting grew louder, and there was the scrape of furniture like someone knocking over a chair. Then the sharp crack of two gunshots and an unmistakable thud of a body hitting the floor. I was trying to decide whether to hide so I could surprise him when the door crashed open.
“Everything’s fucked up now. I can’t leave any of you alive.”
26
Brody
It was possible I would lose my mind before I got to her. I’d found a woman I deeply cared about, for the second time in my life. I’d be a fool to let her get away. But she’d been kidnapped, hopefully stashed somewhere and not already dead. It made me sick to my stomach to think of it. The wind whipped cold from the east with a coming storm, turning a late September night chilly. The dark and the cold wind made it worse somehow, that she was out there in the clutches of a man who didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as her.
The girl from Overton had gotten away and luckily she had reached help. She told them where Becky was being held, so it was just a matter of time before we had them free. Carl and I, plus some of the Overton cops drove out that way as fast as we could. A quarter of a mile out, we stopped and went on foot to keep from alerting anyone we were coming. In a hostage situation, those blue and red lights tended to cause the bad guys to panic and do something stupid. We were creeping up the ridge, not a hundred yards off from the cabin when we heard two gunshots. I broke into a dead run. As I reached the door, another loud shot split the quiet.
Without a firm plan, I burst in and saw Laura with a gun, standing over a body. She looked up and met my eyes. There was another body on the floor a few feet away.