"Negative. Teddy Rutherford, son of the LightPulse CEO. See you in fifteen. I"ll explain later."
By the time DJ got to Teddy Rutherford"s home near Portland Heights, Barker was already waiting on him, leaning on the side of his car, admiring the house from a distance. DJ parked behind him.
Barker whistled as he walked up. "What do you think? Million five? How do people afford this s.h.i.t?"
"Spending his daddy"s dollars certainly doesn"t hurt." DJ looked up to the house, taking in the spectacle. His s...o...b..x-sized home could easily fit inside three times. Modern design with lots of straight lines and boxy edges. Gray exterior with white trim. A cobblestone walkway led up to a sky blue door. Lush, vibrant landscaping made it look like the house was hiding within a jungle rather than being a place where a person might lay his head down at night. A huge, three-paneled picture window took up a good portion of the left side of the facing wall, and on the opposite side of the front door, a smattering of rectangular windows formed a wavelike pattern.
Barker said, "I get dizzy looking at it. Makes me think of those flashing cartoons that give kids seizures. Would you live in something like this?"
"If I had your salary, I might."
"My salary couldn"t rent a room in that thing, cowboy." He angled sideways to face DJ. "What"s the deal here? Uniforms left about five minutes ago. n.o.body home."
"d.a.m.n. It"s never easy, is it?"
"You"ll learn one of these days."
"And I"m sure you"ll take credit for it when I do."
DJ recounted the details of his LightPulse visit. The s.h.i.tty meeting with Jim Rutherford. The connection to Teddy and the note. The golf tournament. The lack of golf tournaments. The unaccounted for a.s.sistant and her coincidental departure. The teasing that Teddy Rutherford may or may not have taken offense to. "The lead is there," he said, "but I don"t feel like it"s enough for motive."
Barker said, "What we feel and what we can reason-"
""Do not sleep in the same bed together." I know, Barker. I know."
"I wish you"d stop interrupting me."
"I don"t need to. Your ramblings are ground into my brain."
"One of these days I might surprise you with something you"ve never heard before."
"When you do, I"ll be all ears."
Barker tapped a cigarette out of his soft pack. Lit it with a one-handed click and strike of his Zippo, then took a long drag, slowly exhaling, letting the billowing smoke get lost in the breeze. "What now, cowboy? We"ve got a missing woman, her missing children, a missing husband, a missing suspect, a missing a.s.sistant."
"Don"t forget the missing babysitter. The Bluesong woman."
"Seems to me like we"re doing the exact opposite of our jobs. Losing people instead of finding them. I"m not sure I"ve ever gone this far in the wrong direction."
DJ decided against reminding his partner of all the time they"d wasted that morning chasing puffs of smoke that dissipated faster than the filth coming out of his lungs. "We"re here. We might as well take a look around."
Barker stood quietly, smoking his cigarette, staring at the house.
"Well?" DJ said.
"Hold your horses. I"m pondering."
"Pondering what, Barker? We have to do-" DJ stopped mid-sentence as the front door swung open.
The young woman that stumbled out of the doorway and lurched toward them was naked from the waist down, with one strap of white cloth around her left wrist and one on her right ankle. Ripped purple t-shirt. What looked to be a ball gag dangled like a s.a.d.i.s.tic necklace. Her legs were covered in cuts and bruises that were so prominent, DJ could see them and her black eye from fifteen yards away.
Barker choked on his cigarette smoke, coughed hard.
DJ said, "Holy s.h.i.t." He sprinted toward her, shouting back, "Call 9-1-1, Barker. Now!"
"Help me," she said, and then collapsed on the walkway.
CHAPTER 12.
SARA.
Sara opened the small box again as the driver headed east in the direction of Gresham and Powell Valley. She had to be sure that what she saw wasn"t a trick of her imagination. Could it be the exhaustion? Was she hallucinating? It was possible. She was empty. Physically to the point of collapsing. Mentally to the point of seeing things that just couldn"t be.
The object inside was a relic of history come to life. It was a memory that had manifested itself into a tangible form. It was the dead rising.
Sara peered inside and immediately regretted looking. It sat motionless, right where it was thirty seconds earlier, daring her to pick it up and feel what was really there.
Brian"s wedding ring. It"s not possible.
She reached into the box and pinched the ring, pulled it out and examined it in the light. The thick band of hammered tungsten felt cool on her fingertips. The tinted windows made it harder to see, but it looked like Brian"s. She held it by the outside, tilting it this way and that until she was able to get a better glimpse of the interior. She didn"t want it to be true, but it was.
The inscription read: Forever Yours a SLW A storm surge of emotions-anger and frustration and hope-rushed over her body, plowing their way through like a ten-foot-high wall of water over sh.o.r.eline streets. It tore what remained of her stability to splinters, ripping it from the foundation, grinding it into shards of unrecognizable flotsam before it retreated and dragged her sanity with it.
She inhaled as deep as her constricted lungs would allow and let loose a banshee scream toward the front of the car. The driver ducked and swerved. She pounded the metal grating between them with her fists, rattling the cage. She wrapped her fingers through the holes and shook and shook and shook, pulling and pulling, trying to rip it free so she could claw at the driver"s eyes, wrap her fingers around his neck until he couldn"t breathe, or reach inside his chest and rip out his beating heart.
When he didn"t turn around, when he didn"t acknowledge her, when he did nothing more than click on his blinker to make a left turn, it unleashed a level of fury so deep that Sara began to feel cramps forming in the arches of her feet. She screamed. She raged. She pounded the metal grating until her knuckles bled. She shouted, "Who are you? Why are you doing this? Where did you get my husband"s ring?"
On and on she went, screaming every question she could think of, every question that had plagued her since early that morning. She knew her temper tantrum that had escalated into a full-bore Hiroshima explosion was against whatever rules Teddy had dreamed up, but she was past containing herself. All the emotions she"d swallowed and hidden away for the past two years, all the anxiety and stress and fear that she"d kept buried so the kids wouldn"t see, everything, all of it, detonated there in that car, leveling the walls she"d built around her psyche.
Sara screamed until her throat was raw and her vocal chords burned. Every muscle in her body ached from the vehement expulsion of her wrath and she went limp, flopping back onto the seat when no more words would come.
She looked down at Brian"s ring in her open palm. The aftershocks of pain sent tremors vibrating through her hand and she could feel her pulse throbbing through the fluid in her swollen knuckles.
What did you do to him?
She tried one last time with the driver, this stoic courier delivering his pathetic, distraught package. "Where did Teddy find this?"
Nothing.
So many questions. No answers. Did the ring mean that Brian was still alive? Or worse, did it mean the opposite? What possible link could there be between Teddy and Brian?
Her chauffeur, the stone statue in the front seat, pulled over to the side. Sara sat up straight, tried to figure out where they were, but didn"t recognize the area. Somewhere east of Portland proper, but not quite to Gresham yet. The driver reached up and worked a green strip of cloth through one of the openings in the grate.
"What"s that for?"
His one word response was, "Blindfold."
Indignant, she said, "I"m not wearing that."
"Blindfold."
"No."
"Blindfold."
She clenched her jaws. "I said no."
The driver reached down, grabbed something from the seat beside him. He held up what was left of Jacob"s Tyrannosaurus Rex t-shirt, the one he"d worn to school that morning. The one he"d worn so much the color had begun to fade. "Blindfold."
"If you hurt him-"
"Blindfold."
She ripped the green strip of fabric from its metal grasp. "If you"ve done something to him or my girls...if I get out of this G.o.dd.a.m.n game alive, and if I ever, ever find out who you are, you better pray to G.o.d there"s another wall between us, because I"ll be coming for you. Do you understand me?"
"Blindfold."
Sara wrapped the cloth around her head, covering her eyes, turning out the lights on a world that was already dark. She shifted the material around until she found a thinning spot on the old t-shirt, allowing her just enough sight to make out shapes in the sunlight.
What good will it do me? "Done," she said.
She heard him shuffling around, heard the familiar clicking of fingers on a keypad. Silence. More clicking.
"What"re you doing? Did you hear me? I said I"m done."
The car began to move again. The driver turned on the radio. Cla.s.sical music blared from the speakers, drowning out every other sound.
I can"t hear where we"re going, a.s.shole. The blindfold is enough.
But with limited sight, her other senses took over, amplified themselves. She felt the rough material of the car"s seat on the back of her legs. The throbbing in her swollen hands. The weight of the key in one, and the ring in the other. She felt the vibration of the tires rolling across decaying roads. Every pothole felt like they were falling. Every incline, a roller coaster climbing toward its apex. Tasted the remnants of vomit. She remembered the apple and bottle of water.
Save it. Might be all you"ll get.
I hope they"re feeding the kids. They didn"t eat much this morning. Oh G.o.d, why didn"t I make them finish their breakfast?
Breathe...breathe...breathe...
Everything will be fine.
Sara repeated the mantra in her mind, even said it aloud a number of times, but it didn"t help. No matter how much she tried to convince herself that the ending of the game would be a happy one, no matter how many alternate ending scenarios that she came up with, the feeling that something bad would happen wouldn"t go away.
Sliding into depression was an understatement. She careened downward, headlong, toward the awaiting and inevitable bottom. Thought about how rare truly happy endings were out in the real world. You got handed the results and you had to acknowledge them and move on, regardless of the outcome or circ.u.mstances.
She had no idea how long they"d been driving. Twenty minutes? Half an hour? Surely they were out of the city, but for all she knew, they could"ve doubled back. It was too hard to make out where they"d gone with the fleeting glimpses through the material, but it wasn"t worth risking a peek. If the driver saw her do it, one call to Teddy might result in more pain for her children.
As the car rattled and bounced along, Sara got the feeling that they were no longer on a paved road. The vibrations were different. More rugged and unforgiving. Wherever he was taking her, and however long it had been, it was far from where she wanted to be.
Which was on her porch, in her rocking chair, watching the kids play a game of freeze tag in their postage stamp of a backyard. Or in their living room, putting together a puzzle after dinner. Lying between the twins, reading them a bedtime story as her little boy dozed across the hall, mouth open, s...o...b..ring on his favorite pillow.
We just did that yesterday. Seems like a year ago. I miss them so much.
She slipped Brian"s ring over her left thumb.
I miss you too, sweetheart. What happened that day? Where did you go? How did Teddy get your ring?
The radio went silent. The driver made a lurching left turn that slung Sara sideways and then he slammed on the brakes, pitching her forward into the grating. Without the benefit of vision, it was impossible to tell when she needed to brace herself.
"Ouch," she said, rubbing the impact spot on her forehead. "How about a little warning, a.s.shole?"
"Sorry," he said, shutting off the car.
"Did you just apologize to me?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Five seconds pa.s.sed. Ten. He shifted in the front seat. Fingers tapped on the steering wheel. Not being able to see his reaction unnerved her.
He said, "Guilt."
"Guilt? Guilt for the knot on my head or guilt for what you"re doing?"
"Both."
"So you are human."
Another long silence, then a dejected, "Sometimes."
With her heightened sense of hearing, Sara picked up on the regret in his tone. She wondered if nudging it along would help. She needed an ally. "Why"re you doing this?"
"Because."
"Because? Because? What kind of answer is that? What if it were your children? Do you have kids?"
Tap, tap, tapping on the steering wheel. "One."
"Honestly? And you"re doing this to me?"