But it was the structure in the center of the camp, directly across from us, that held my attention, a three-story plantation house. Unlike the other plain, faceless structures, it was a beautiful building, with an elegant, airy design. The white paint gleamed like a pearl in the midday sun, while the glass windows glimmered like diamonds next to the black shutters. A porch wrapped around the front of the house, which was surrounded by a wide, grassy yard and a white picket fence. A variety of pink, red, and white roses twined through the fence slats, their delicate petals and thick green vines providing vivid splashes of summer color.
If it hadn’t been for the plain, grim, depressing look of the rest of the camp, I would have thought the house was a beautiful mountain hideaway. But the more I stared at the structure, the more something about it bothered me, like I’d seen it somewhere before.
Three stories, plantation style, white paint, front porch. My stomach turned over at the wrongness of it . . .
“Is it just me, or does that house in the middle look like Jo-Jo’s place?” Owen whispered.
“It’s not just you,” I replied in a low voice. “I wonder when Grimes built that.”
According to Fletcher’s maps, there had been a house in that spot the last time he’d been up here, but he’d sketched it as a much smaller structure, and he hadn’t made any mention of it resembling Jo-Jo’s. That wasn’t the sort of thing that he would have overlooked.
“It certainly wasn’t here the last time Fletcher and I were,” Warren chimed in. “But that was some fifty years ago. It’s definitely new—in fact, it doesn’t look to me like it’s more than a few months old. See how fresh the paint still looks? And how thin the yard is in places?”
“Do you think . . . do you think that he built it for Sophia?” Owen asked.
That was exactly what I thought, that Grimes’s sick obsession with her had led him to do that very thing. I wondered how long he’d been planning to kidnap Sophia again and when he’d started construction on the house.
If Warren was right, and the structure had only been finished for a few months, then Grimes must have started building it as soon as he heard that Fletcher had died back in the fall.
I kept scanning the clearing, fixing the locations of all the buildings in my mind and watching the men go about their chores. No one glanced up at the ridge, and no one realized that we were watching them. No doubt, they felt perfectly safe and secure in their mountain camp. Well, that was going to change—and soon.
I was about to tell the others to draw back down away from the edge of the ridge, when the front door of the plantation house opened. I put the maps away, then rustled around in my backpack, grabbed my pair of binoculars, and held them up to my eyes so I could get a better look at things.
Harley Grimes stepped out onto the front porch, then ambled down the steps and out into the yard. He’d traded in his gray suit for a fresh one in an off-white. A white fedora with a black feather stuck in the brim topped his head, and I could see the shine of his black wing tips from all the way up here. Once again, he was dressed like some gangster straight out of the Prohibition era. According to Fletcher’s file, that’s when Grimes had grown up. Apparently, he enjoyed clinging to his youth. That, or he just liked his look to match his occupation.
The door opened again, and a woman stepped outside.
She hesitated, then followed Grimes down the porch and out into the yard. I recognized her, but this person was the exact opposite of what I knew her to be.
She wore a short-sleeved white sundress patterned with tiny pink roses—instead of her usual black jeans and T-shirt.
A black ribbon was cinched around her waist, and black patent-leather heels gave her a few more inches of height—instead of her old, battered black boots.
Her black hair was pulled back into a high ponytail tied with a long white ribbon—instead of the colored streaks and glitter that usually highlighted her hair.
Pale pink lipstick covered her lips—instead of the darker, bolder colors that she normally wore.
Grimes held out his arm. The woman hesitated again, then stepped forward and took it.
Sophia.
Chapter Fifteen
I blinked and then blinked again, wondering if I was really seeing what I thought I was. But the picture didn’t change, no matter how I much adjusted the focus on the binoculars or how hard I squinted through the lenses.
Sophia standing with Grimes, wearing a dress, dolled up like a gangster’s moll from some old-fashioned mob movie. It was bizarre seeing her like this, looking so different and not at all like her usual dark, fierce, Goth self.
It was wrong. Just . . . wrong.
After a few seconds, I lowered the binoculars and passed them over to Owen.
“Is that . . . Sophia?” he asked, peering through the lenses. “What’s she doing? Why is she wearing a dress?
And why isn’t she trying to get away from him?”
“Look past them,” Warren said, using the binoculars he’d pulled out of his own satchel. “There on the porch.”
I’d been so shocked by Sophia’s appearance that I hadn’t noticed that three men had also stepped out of the house behind her—and that they all had guns in their
hands.
“No doubt, Grimes will have them shoot her, but not
kill her, if she steps out of line,” I said. “She’s still injured, though. See how she’s limping?”
Sophia favored her right leg with every step that she
took, dragging her left one along behind her in an awkward shuffle. Her left arm also hung limply by her side, and one of her cheeks was red from where Grimes had slapped and burned her in the salon. I didn’t see any blood on her, though, so Grimes must have at least bandaged her wounds. Well, that was something, although he was still going to suffer for everything that he’d done to her and Jo-Jo.
Owen handed me back the binoculars, and I focused in on Sophia again. Grimes squired her around the yard, dragging her over to the picket fence and pointing out the roses to her. Sophia hobbled along beside him as best she could. But through the binoculars, I could see exactly how cold, hard, and flat her expression was and the way her black eyes kept darting around, desperately looking for an escape.
But there was nowhere for her to go.
Even if she could have gotten away from Grimes, there was nothing but clear space all around her, which would make it all too easy for one of the men on the porch to step forward, take aim, and put a bullet in her back.
Still, she tried.
Sophia waited until Grimes turned his head, and then she brought up her good arm and punched him in the face, making his spiffy white hat fly off his head. She kept hold of him, spun him around, and hooked her arm around his throat, using Grimes as a shield between her and the guys with guns on the porch. She also plucked Grimes’s revolver out of the holster on his belt, thumbed back the trigger, and held the weapon up to his head.
Sophia didn’t say a word, but she didn’t have to. Her meaning was crystal-clear. If any of the men followed her, she’d shoot Grimes in the head with his own gun. I thought she should go ahead and do that anyway.
Apparently, Sophia had the same idea, because she pulled the trigger.