They hit an area of trees bordering the backyard of a house on South Walnut. Rodney yanked Kaycee left, all the way down until South Walnut dead-ended. A dark-colored SUV sat waiting. Rodney shoved her into the backseat.
“Lie down.”
She obeyed.
He ran around to the driver’s side, jumped in, and started the car.
Gripping the edge of the seat, Kaycee lifted her head a few inches. She focused her gaze high, angled through the window, intent on watching where they were headed. All she could see was trees and telephone poles going by. The car drove a block, maybe two, and turned left.
East Linden. Kaycee pictured the street in her mind.
A short distance, a stop. A second left turn.
South Lexington — Highway 29.
Kaycee sat up.
“Get down!”
“You see anybody on the streets?” She turned around and looked back toward the stoplight at the East Main intersection. “This is Wilmore.”
“Do you want Hannah to live?”
Kaycee lay down.
No more turns. They were headed out of Wilmore toward High Bridge. She felt the car climb a hill. They stopped. Kaycee twisted her head up and saw a stoplight. Lowry Lane. On the edge of town.
Rodney drove on, past all streetlights into darkness.
Kaycee pressed her face into the seat. This road was long and rural, passing wooded areas and curving toward the Kentucky River. So many hiding places. They’d never find her and Hannah.
The car slowed. Already? Kaycee stretched her neck up and peered around the front seat through the windshield. Rodney turned right, the headlights washing over a sign that read Shanty Hill Road.
Shanty Hill. A narrow hilly road, practically one lane. Kaycee had driven down it once. She’d seen an occasional house, and some distance down on the right, a sign for the Asbury College Equine Center. College students boarded their horses there and studied Equine Management. The program was run by the mayor of Wilmore.
In daylight Shanty Hill was a pretty road. Now after midnight, blackness claimed the countryside in thick, smothering velvet.
Kaycee’s breath snagged. She shrank down to the seat and held on.
They curved sharply to the left. Kaycee remembered that hairpin turn. It was past the Equine Center. She counted about thirty seconds. The car slowed and turned left. Gravel popped under the tires.
A driveway.
The popping ceased. The SUV hitched and bumped. Seconds drew out, a minute, and still they drove. Kaycee visualized an unused rutted road snaking into the woods. Far from people and help.
Without warning the screams and running footsteps from her dream rose in her brain. The shrinking, stifling sense of a dark, closed space.
Panic wrapped around Kaycee’s throat. Rodney had made her dream about whatever horror he had planned, hadn’t he? I still need something from you . . .
They rounded a curve. Long seconds later the car stopped. She couldn’t move.
Rodney slid from behind the wheel and opened the back door. He snatched up a handful of Kaycee’s hair and yanked hard. “Get out.”
FORTY-SIX
Headlights.
Lorraine had only seconds. She threw the van into gear and surged left toward Starling.
“No!” Tammy writhed in her seat. “Belinda!”
“We’ll get her, we’ll get her!”
Lorraine’s back was rammed straight, her fingers like claws around the steering wheel. She had no time to disappear down Starling. At the corner of building two she cut to the right and drove behind the units. Her headlights were off, illumination from the nearest tall lamp receding behind her. She strained to see in the growing dimness. No wash of light was visible from the vehicle at the other end of the lot. Lorraine could only hope that as she passed this side of the building, it passed the other.
Tammy smacked her window and wailed for Belinda. The sounds hissed in Lorraine’s ears. “Be quiet!”
The little girl only cried louder.
At the next corner Lorraine braked hard. Tammy slid forward in her seat, caught by her seatbelt.
“Mommy, stop it!”
Lorraine edged the van forward. Leaning as far toward the windshield as possible, she peered to the right down the long side of the building. No car. No lights. The Huff entrance, at the other end of the lot and to the left, was empty. Whoever turned in had passed building two. The driver would now be between the parallel storage buildings.
“I want Belinda!” Tammy threw herself across the console as far as the belt would let her, little hands pummeling Lorraine’s shoulder. Surely she was loud enough to be heard. Lorraine wanted to clamp both hands over her mouth.
“Be quiet, Tammy!”
She swerved around the corner and sped down the length of building two.
At the bottom she slid to another stop. Tammy pitched forward again. Her seatbelt caught with a snap. She let out a wail.
Lorraine rolled forward until she could see around the corner.
No one there.
It was him. Had to be. Martin’s killer, maybe some of the other robbers, skulking in the night to unit seven to clean out their millions.
Lorraine threw a wild look toward the Huff entrance. She could make it without being seen — as long as those men stayed up by unit seven. She wanted to roll down her window and listen in the darkness, but Tammy shrieked on. One crack of the window, and they’d hear her.
Lorraine’s chest tightened. By now they would be finding the broken hasp. They’d see Belinda.
“Mommyyy!”
Gritting her teeth, Lorraine whipped the wheel toward the entrance and hit the gas.
Every second seemed a lifetime. She wanted to screech out of there but couldn’t risk being heard. The van was old, but at least its engine ran quietly.
She checked in the rearview mirror, seeing only the long stretch of concrete leading up to the apartment. It would be the last glimpse of the life she’d had with Martin.
The Huff entrance jumped into view on her right. Barely slowing to check traffic, she darted into the road.
Lorraine accelerated to the next block, then swerved in a right turn. Her muscles hardened to granite. Any minute she expected a car to materialize behind her, shots to ring out.
At the next block she veered left.
Then right again. Then left.
She kept up the jagged pattern, her mind clamped down, all thoughts on hold.
Tammy cried herself out and lay back in her seat, panting. “You didn’t get Belinda.” Her voice trembled with exhaustion and bitterness. “You lied to me, you said you’d get her, but you didn’t.”
Lorraine’s throat ached. What had she done to her daughter this night? What would they do for the rest of their lives?
“I’m so sorry. I’ll buy you another bear.”
“I don’t want another bear.”
At the edge of town Lorraine spotted a sign for the freeway. She sped up the on ramp, not knowing, not caring which way they were headed.
Not until a few exits had passed did she see they were traveling south.
FORTY-SEVEN
Kaycee half fell from the SUV, her pulse a hard, steady grind. By the roots of her hair Rodney pulled her up. Needles dug through her scalp. She gasped and staggered, getting her bearings. Through the blackness she could barely make out trees all around her. Vague dual tracks ribboned behind the car’s wheels, soon disappearing into the night. Before her slumped an abandoned cabin with sagging porch and soulless windows.