Exposure

Lorraine eyed the eleventh box, envisioning this one on top. You can do this.

A final wave of power flushed through her. Grimacing, Lorraine lifted her burden one more time and raised it inch by inch until its bottom cleared the eleventh box. With two hands she pushed it into place.

Puffing, she stood back and blinked in amazement at the loaded van. The doors would just close.

Lorraine glanced toward Huff and Starling streets, then reached down to pick up the gloves. Putting them on, she hurried inside the unit to fetch her flashlight and the bolt cutter. She threw them into the van on top of a box. Lorraine pulled down the unit door, wincing at the sound it made. She tore off the gloves and tossed them into the van. Nerves humming, she closed up the rear.

Almost there.

Lorraine ran to the driver’s door and yanked it open. She flung herself into the seat, slammed the door, and started the engine. Only then did she notice the passenger door hanging ajar. Tammy had wriggled toward the console, her head flopped in Lorraine’s direction, Belinda on the seat to her right. Lorraine thrust a hand on the console and heaved over her daughter toward the door. Tammy shifted beneath her weight and mumbled. Lorraine leaned farther, left hand reaching for the door handle.

“Nnnn.” Tammy tried to push her off.

Lorraine stretched her arm out but couldn’t touch the door. Tammy fought. Lorraine ignored her. She jerked her right hand from the console to the far side of Tammy’s seat and lunged for the door.

Belinda rolled off the seat to the ground.

“No!” Tammy cried.

Lorraine’s fingers closed on the handle. She yanked the door closed.

“Belinda!” Tammy reached for the door handle.

“Stop!” Lorraine caught her arms. “I’ll get her.”

Movement past the two storage buildings caught Lorraine’s eye. Her gaze cut toward it.

Light. Washing the concrete. Someone had turned in off Huff Street.

FORTY-FIVE

They left through Kaycee’s dining room door that opened onto the wrap-around section of the porch. It was already unlocked. Rodney smirked at her. “Locks never stopped me. But you know that.”

He closed the door and pushed her off the porch onto grass. “Over there. Toward the barn.”

Terror bubbled in Kaycee’s lungs. That barn was dark. With a dead man in it. “I know Hannah’s not in there. That barn was searched.”

“Keep your voice down. We’re going around the fence to the back.”

He gripped her arm hard and pulled her forward. As they neared the fence he veered right. Kaycee stumbled along, trying not to fall. God, just let me get to Hannah.

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