Fatal Burn (West Coast 2)

Nothing!

Not one darn shred of information.

She’d have to lie to her dad and come up with another way to come down here, but only after she’d checked on Jessica’s computer to see if an e-mail with an attachment had come through. She couldn’t risk downloading it at her friend’s house, so only when she knew the attachment had made it through would she come back and spend another five dollars.

Angry and deflated, she was peeling off her sweatshirt when she noticed the white van parked in the alley. She probably wouldn’t have thought much about it, but it seemed like it was the same dirty one she’d seen across from the school.

Nah…this one had Idaho plates, but it looked a lot like the van she’d seen the tabby cat hiding beneath. It had the same dirty exterior. Same make and model. As she was passing, she noticed one door wasn’t quite shut. Then she heard something…like a puppy whimpering. Geez, did someone have a dog in that tin can in this heat? What kind of moron would do that? She paused for a heartbeat when she saw a flash in the corner of her eye, something lunging at her.

She started to run, but it was too late.

A man leaped from behind the van and grabbed her in a viselike grip with one arm. He smashed a rag soaked with something awful over her mouth.

No! Oh, God, no!

She bucked away from him, but he was too strong.

If only she could round on him, she could kick and strike, landing blows that would incapacitate him. She writhed and tried to break free, to no avail.

Fear and adrenaline raced through her bloodstream.

She tried to scream but only took in more of the sickening smell. It filled her nostrils and throat. Frantically she kicked but hit nothing in her attempts. Whatever the hell the noxious stuff on the rag was, it weakened her, made her woozy, and within seconds she couldn’t move, was barely awake.

In a daze she realized she was being dragged into the van.

No! Dani, don’t let this happen. Fight! Run! Scream!

She flailed wildly, but her arms and legs were like rubber and any blow she landed was weak. Darkness welled at the corners of her brain, dragging her under.

In one last attempt, she swung her arm at his face, but only managed to slap him feebly, her fingers scraping down the side of his jaw without an ounce of strength. Her arm felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.

As he hauled her into the van, she noticed that there was no dog, no scared, overheated puppy in the darkness, just a cassette player hidden in the back.

She’d been fooled.

This guy had been waiting for her.

And she didn’t doubt for a moment that he was going to kill her. As her eyes closed, she caught a glimpse of something else in the van.

A black plastic garbage sack, tied with a yellow ribbon. And from the bottom of the bag, through a tiny hole, leaked a thin, dark stream of something that looked like blood.

Sickened, she rolled her eyes up at her captor, fearing she was about to die, certain that his face was the last she would ever see, and then, blackness.

Chapter 4

“It’s been days,” Travis Settler muttered through tight lips, fear for his missing daughter congealing in his blood as he sat idly, impotently at his kitchen table. “A damned lifetime.”

He closed his eyes. Leaned back in the old dinette chair. Tried to quiet the rage and anxiety roiling deep in his gut by counting to ten. When that didn’t do any good, he kept on reeling off numbers in his head. Eleven, twelve, thirteen…At seventy-nine he quit, opened his eyes to find Shane Carter, the sheriff of Lewis County, sizing him up.

Carter was a tall, rangy man who could have, in another century, been a cowboy. A bushy moustache that matched his near-black hair covered his upper lip and he had those hard brown eyes that could cut to the center of a man. Right now they were staring straight at Travis. “We’re working on it,” he said.

And the third man in the room, Lieutenant Larry Sparks, of the Oregon State Police, nodded his agreement.

Sparks was leaning a shoulder against the wall of the kitchen alcove, sipping coffee and frowning. Not a speck of humor showed in Sparks’s dark gaze and the lines etched into his face said it all: everyone was worried. Beyond worried.

They all felt it, the disquiet of knowing that with each passing day they were losing ground. Over the stove, the old clock ticked off the seconds, emphatically reminding Sparks that time was rapidly fleeing.

“We’ll find Dani,” Carter said, conviction underscoring his words. “Just like we’re going to nail the bastard who killed Blanche Johnson.”