she’d had her fill-cereal, fruit, a sandwich, yogurt, and lots of coffee. He made her remove all the old bedding. Then he flipped the mattress over and let her put fresh sheets on.
She must have sensed that he wasn’t there to kill her, because the stress fell off her face.
She looked pretty, actually, especially considering what she’d been through.
“Can we go outside?” she asked.
Draven didn’t like the idea.
“Just for a few minutes?” she added. “I won’t try anything, I promise. There’s no air in here. I can hardly breathe.”
She was right, actually.
It was stuffy as hell.
“Fine,” he said. “But first I’m going to tie your hands behind your back.”
She nodded.
“No problem.”
“And if you try anything…”
“I won’t, you have my word.”
As he tied her hands he wondered if he should tie her feet too. No, that wasn’t necessary. She couldn’t go anywhere barefoot. The mountains would eat her feet alive within ten steps. They ended up sitting on the steps of the back porch, with the sun on their faces. Draven took his knife out and tossed it from one hand to the other. Then he spotted a fairly straight stick and whittled it into a spear.
“Thanks,” the woman said. “I really appreciate this.”
“No problem.”
His thoughts drifted to the things he needed to do-keep Mia secured until the client killed her, and then dispose of her body; snatch the rich-bitch Davica Holland; dispose of the tow truck; deal with the damage to the car; get Gretchen out to California where they could finally kick back and relax.
Suddenly he heard a vehicle.
It pulled to the front of the cabin and stopped.
Draven immediately put the knife to Mia’s throat.
“Don’t make a goddamn sound!”
She nodded.
Draven jerked her up by the arm to get her back into the cabin. Then something bad happened. The doorknob wouldn’t turn. The little shit was locked! He’d left the keys on the kitchen counter.
He pulled off his T-shirt, ripped off a section and gagged the woman.
She didn’t resist.
In fact she held perfectly still.
Someone knocked on the front door. “Anyone home?”
Draven poked the knife into Mia’s throat. “Lay down on your stomach and don’t move!”
She obeyed.
Draven walked around the side of the house, gave her one last threatening look before he disappeared around the corner, and found the owner’s son standing at the front door-the same kid who met Draven at the cabin initially, to show him around and get his money.
Draven stuffed the knife behind his back and smiled as nonchalantly as he could.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“There you are,” the kid said.
“Right. What’s going on?”
“My dad wanted me to swing by and give you a heads up that someone from the state’s going to be coming by to take a sample from the well,” the kid said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. My dad just wanted to be sure you knew it was coming, in case you came back and found a car here or something like that.”
Draven nodded.
“Tell your dad thanks, I really appreciate it.”
The kid headed towards his car.
“When are they coming?” Draven asked.
The kid stopped walking and tried to think. Finally he gave up. “I can’t remember. Sometime within the next week, I think.”
“Okay. Thanks again.”
As soon as the kid pulled away, Draven ran around the side of the cabin.
The woman was gone.
He looked at the mountains.
In every direction.
And saw her nowhere.
“Bitch!” he shouted as loud as he could. “Get your ass back here right now!”
75
DAY ELEVEN-SEPTEMBER 15
THURSDAY EVENING
It was dark outside and Teffinger was alone in homicide, feeling the weight of the day, when the phone company finally faxed over Chase’s cell phone records. On Monday she’d received about fifteen calls.
Monday was the day she disappeared.
Teffinger dialed the people who had called the woman and got their stories as to why they called, what they talked about, and whether Chase mentioned anything about meeting a man for sex.
He took notes but none of substance.
One of the calls came from a payphone north of Pueblo.
Teffinger dialed the number.
No one answered.
The oversized industrial clock on the wall, the one with the twitchy second hand, said 9:10 p.m. Overhead, a fluorescent bulb hummed. He stood up, dumped a cup of cold coffee into the snake plant, and turned the lights out as he left.
Then he headed south on I-25.
He was passing through the tech center, trying to stay out of the way of maniac drivers, when Sydney called for an update. He filled her in and was almost about to hang up when a stray thought entered his head.
“Hey,” he said, “before you go, help me out on something. One of the calls to Chase on Monday came from a public phone north of Pueblo. For some reason, that’s been nagging me. It means something but I don’t know what.”
“Pueblo?”
“Right.”
“We have a missing person down there,” she said.
Teffinger knew he should have remembered that as soon as she said it. Early in the case he’d asked Sydney to keep track of anyone who turned up missing in Colorado. She subsequently told him about a Pueblo woman. He’d dismissed it as not much more than a curiosity at the time because the location was too far away and all of the bodies found at the railroad spur had been white.
“I remember,” he said. “What’s her status? Did she ever show back up?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’d be interesting, if she hasn’t.”
Fifteen minutes later, when he arrived at Davica’s, a strange car was in the driveway-a white Jaguar. When
