She jumped in her car and headed toward Cedar Crest Way.
A loud banging echoed from the basement of the Prewitt cabin.
Allen Meeker kept pushing out with his foot, trying to break the leg off the worktable—or at the very least, tear the duct tape securing his ankle to that table leg. Like a crazy man, he repeatedly threw his weight to slam the table against the cellar wall.
With every crashing blow, saws, wrenches, and other work tools that had been hanging from hooks on the wall dropped to the floor—some two or three at a time. The pile of fallen tools lay on the cement floor, just out of his reach. Allen had thought he’d lost all feeling in his hands, arms, and shoulders, but now, every time he banged the worktable against the wall, he felt a painful reverberation in his limbs.
But Allen was relentless. He figured if he could break the table, he’d be as good as free. He wasn’t sure which one of them would give out first—him or the table.
After every violent blow, Allen caught his breath. Then he’d push and pull at the table leg until the joints in his own leg ached.
He was doing that now—putting as much pressure as he could against the wooden strut. His face turned crimson, and the veins protruded in his neck and forehead. “C’mon, you son of a bitch,” he growled.
Then he heard the crack.
It was a lovely sound.
Leo wondered what that noise was. It sounded like he’d hit a tin can along the snaky road to Rosie’s Roadside Sundries. He’d been driving for nearly five minutes and hadn’t seen another car yet. He hadn’t seen any lights either. If there were any other homes or cabins along this route, they were tucked away behind the trees— like Jordan’s place.
The car didn’t seem to be handling right. He’d only gotten behind the wheel of the Honda Civic on the rare occasions when Jordan needed a designated driver. But he could tell something was wrong. He felt as if he were driving over a path of potholes, and yet the road ahead looked smooth. The steering wheel resisted as he tried to maneuver the many curves. “This isn’t good,” he said to himself. “Please, God, don’t let it be a flat….”
Hunched close to the wheel, he eased off the accelerator and felt the car tilt and buckle. “Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered—with a pang of dread in his stomach.
Leo switched on the emergency flashers and veered toward the shoulder of the road. The car limped to a stop on the gravel. He left the motor running, climbed out of the Civic, and checked the back tire. It was flat.
He took a few deep breaths. “Okay, okay, don’t panic,” he whispered to himself. “Don’t wuss out….” He’d changed only one flat tire in his day—and even then, Jordan had done most of the work. It had taken them about ten minutes.
Leo figured he was about halfway between the cabin and the store—about three miles in either direction. On foot, it would take him at least twenty minutes. He’d need the car to drive back to the cabin after calling the state police. He couldn’t leave Jordan alone—fast asleep and defenseless—with that guy in the house.
Ducking back inside the car, he switched off the ignition and took out the keys. With the key ring, Leo tried to pop the hood, but nothing happened. Frowning, he tried to unlock it manually. That was when he found a metal piece—it looked like part of another key—jammed in the trunk lock.
“What the hell?” he murmured.
The lock had worked fine yesterday when he’d unloaded their suitcases.
Frustrated, Leo tried to wiggle the piece of metal out of there, but the damn thing was stuck. It looked like someone had jammed the lock on purpose.
Then he realized the flat tire might be on purpose, too.
Leo anxiously looked around and felt swallowed up by the darkness. Jordan’s crippled car—with its emergency blinkers going—seemed to provide the only pool of light for miles.
He couldn’t just stand here. He’d have to run to Rosie’s and call the police.
Leo shut the car door, but left the flashers on. He was just about to start running. But then, in the distance, he saw something on the dark, winding road.
Through the trees, the light seemed to wink at him.
It was coming his way.
Susan couldn’t see anything beyond the twin beams of her car’s headlights—just a small patch of road; the rest of the landscape was black. She’d left Rosie’s just a few minutes ago, and yet she felt as if she were the only person around for miles, the only person in all this darkness. She couldn’t believe it was only 7:20. It seemed more like three in the morning.
She was still trying to make some sense out of Deputy Shaffer’s reporting procedure. Why would he radio the police operator to set up the APB for Allen, but then radio someone else about the girl, Moira? If anything, that helpless teenager’s situation was far more urgent and life-threatening than Allen’s disappearance. Why didn’t the police operator know about it?
Susan took another curve along the dark highway when suddenly a figure darted out from the roadside. The thin man looked ghostly in the harsh glare of her headlights. He ran right in front of her car, waving his arms.
Panic-stricken, Susan slammed on her brakes and jerked the wheel to one side to avoid hitting him. Tires screeched as the car swerved off the road and careened toward a tree.
All the while, Susan had this powerless, doomed sensation. She pumped the brake, but the car kept moving. Automatically, she reached for the backseat with one hand. Her fingers grazed Mattie’s empty child seat, and she realized he wasn’t there. He was all right.
But she wasn’t—and neither was the car.
It slammed into the tree. Susan reeled forward, but the seat belt kept her from hurtling through the windshield.
She hadn’t even had a moment to recover from the shock when the man rushed up to her car window. For a second, Susan thought he was going to attack her. But then she recognized Jordan Prewitt’s friend—and he looked utterly terrified.
“Are you okay?” he called through the closed window.
Rattled, Susan caught her breath. She gazed at him and nodded.
He ran around to the front of the car. “Can you back it up?”
The motor was still running, and it looked as if both headlights were still on. Susan felt her heart racing. Her hands shook as she shifted to reverse and backed up the car a few feet.
“The bumper’s a little dented, but it doesn’t look too bad,” he announced. “I’m really sorry! I didn’t mean to make you drive off the road….”
Susan’s first instinct was to step on the gas and get the hell out of there. But something made her hesitate. As he approached her window, she checked to make sure her door was locked. She rolled down her window an inch.
“Listen, I—I know where your fiance is,” he admitted, hovering by her window. “I need to call the state police. If you’ll give me a ride to the store, I’ll explain everything to you on the way.”
“Where is he?” Susan asked. “Is he all right?”
“He’s okay,” the teenager told her. “I’ll tell you all about it—if you’ll just give me a lift.”
Susan didn’t trust him. She shook her head. “Tell me now. Where’s Allen?”
Jordan’s friend winced and then gave the ground a kick. “Please! My car got a flat, and I’m stuck out here. I really need to call the police—”
“Why?” Susan asked, shouting at him. “Tell me what the hell is going on!”
The young man let out an exasperated sigh. “My friend, Jordan, he’s pretty sure your fiance is the guy who killed his mother.”
Susan stared at him. She wondered if she’d heard him right. Hadn’t Jordan’s mother been one of Mama’s Boy’s victims?
“I know it sounds crazy, but I think Jordan might be right. Jordan has him tied up in the basement at the cabin. We’ve been talking to him, asking him questions, trying to get a confession out of him….”
Stunned, Susan kept shaking her head.
“Jordan has a gun, and I was worried he’d—he’d
