gloom. A kennel, with at least twenty dog runs.
No wonder Blue had been pacing outside her fence line when she first saw him. He was looking for Candace, and after being drugged, escaping from Kurtis’s property and traveling more than ten miles, he was understandably confused.
Sidney knew she should wait for Marc, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she didn’t have a moment to lose. Samantha’s life depended on her immediate arrival. An unbearable sense of urgency propelled her forward.
“You want to get him, boy?” she asked in a low voice, meeting the dog’s fierce gray eyes.
Blue looked ready to rip out throats.
Sidney figured it was as good a plan as any. She’d go down there, surprise Kurtis during whatever torture he was inflicting upon Samantha and sic Blue on him. Then she’d pepper spray his sorry ass, for good measure. Picturing the scene, she felt a strange, cold sense of calm, almost as if she could bare her own teeth and sink them into the killer’s flesh.
“By whatever means necessary,” she whispered, heading down the dark hillside.
She couldn’t sneak up behind the house, not with a dozen or more dogs who would surely alert him to her presence, so she made her way along the side, moving quick and staying low until she came to an open garage.
Inside, there was a small black truck, its cooling system still ticking. Next to the truck sat a beige Ford Taurus with a gaping hole where the passenger window should have been. Sidney could see that the vinyl interior was chewed and torn.
Blue had really done a number on it.
Pulse pounding with adrenaline, she studied the door leading from the garage to the interior of the house. Reaching down, she unclipped Blue’s leash, needing one free hand to turn the knob, the other to spray with.
Sidney didn’t allow herself time to hesitate, or to speculate on Samantha’s condition. Her sister was still alive. She had to be alive. He liked them scared, and alive.
Motioning for Blue to follow, she crept around the vehicles, stepping forward cautiously. When she reached out to test the doorknob, it turned easily, and just like that, she was crossing the threshold from the garage into the house.
A dark blur was her only warning before a blunt, heavy object smashed into the left side of her head.
The next thing Sidney knew, she was on her hands and knees, gasping for air, black spots obscuring her vision. The pepper spray stick was no longer clenched in her fist. Somewhere in the background, Blue’s ferocious growling was cut off with a yelp, then nothing.
Warm wetness flowed into her ear and coursed down her neck. Fat red drops splashed onto the floor between her braced hands. The pain was so immense she couldn’t believe she was alive, let alone conscious. Struggling to stay that way, she swallowed her fear, fighting against an almost overwhelming urge to lie down on the floor and die.
“Didn’t see that coming, did you, psychic bitch?”
“The police will be here any minute,” she said between gasping breaths.
“I guess I better hurry then.” Grabbing her by the arms, he dragged her across the linoleum. Not only was she helpless to stop him, but she couldn’t summon the energy to kick her legs or fight in any way.
On the other side of the door, Blue’s prone body lay in a crumpled heap.
Sidney moaned weakly.
“Is that all you’ve got?” he grunted, stretching her out on the floor next to Samantha. Her sister was alive, bound and gagged, her blue eyes glassy with panic.
Kurtis stood over Sidney, legs splayed wide apart, arms crossed over his chest. He was much the same as she remembered him: tall and wiry, no better than average-looking, his coarse black hair falling over his forehead into dark, soulless eyes.
A malicious smile spread across his pale face. “Now this is a dream come true. The Morrow sisters at my disposal. A slutty little blonde and a dark-haired tomboy. I don’t know who I want to do first.”
Beside her, Samantha whimpered.
Kurtis raised his dark brows. “You volunteering, Miz Parker?”
Black flashes danced behind Sidney’s eyes, beckoning her to oblivion. “You don’t have time,” she promised hoarsely, her head spinning.
He must have believed her, because he left them lying there alone for a moment. When he returned, he brought the tarp.
Marc arrived at Kurtis Stalb’s house less than twenty minutes after ending the phone call with Sidney. He was lucky the country roads were deserted, because his driving gave the term “reckless endangerment” new meaning.
When he saw Sidney’s truck parked by the side of the road, he slammed his open palm against the steering wheel, furious with her for putting her life in danger.
He turned into the driveway, cut the engine a few hundred feet from the house and was out running, Glock in hand, before his car came to a complete stop. The only vehicle in the garage was an older model black Ford Ranger. Between it and the door leading from the garage into the house, there was a small yellow object, hauntingly familiar. Sidney’s pepper spray. It didn’t appear to have been used.
Fear gripped him, squeezing his heart with a sweaty fist.
Abandoning stealth in the interest of saving time, he kicked in the door, holding his Glock out in front of him with both hands. A hundred pounds of fur and muscle sailed through the air, right at his chest. As he fell back against the wall, he discharged a bullet into the ceiling. Plaster rained down on his head.
The first time he’d fired his weapon in the line of duty, and it was an accident.
Growling and whining, Blue sank his teeth into the front of his T-shirt and pulled, ripping cotton away from flesh. Face-to-face with the deranged mongrel, staring into his silver-gray eyes, Marc came to the understanding that the dog wasn’t trying to kill him.
“Easy, Blue,” he said, surveying his surroundings.
Underneath him, a slick trail of blood ran from the door to the kitchen, where a small pool had collected on the middle of the linoleum floor. At the sight of it, a black rage fell over him, darkening the edges of his vision. When Marc found Kurtis Stalb, he was going to tear him apart with his bare hands.
Drag marks and smeared footprints traversed the length of the hallway, as if Stalb had pulled something along behind him. A tarp-wrapped body, for instance.
With a mouthful of his T-shirt clamped between his impressive jaws, Blue continued to jerk him backward, toward the garage, his claws seeking purchase on the slippery linoleum.
“Halt!” he ordered in German, hoping Blue wouldn’t take offense to the language, as Greta had. Not only was the dog ruining his crime scene, Marc needed to check the other rooms.
Making a pitiful sound, Blue sank to the floor, panting, more worn-out than he should have been after the brief tussle. Marc noted the blood on his muzzle and wondered if the dog had already gone a round with Stalb, and lost.
The rest of the house was empty. In the back, behind the only other locked door he encountered, there was a small, dark room. Digitally printed photos were spread out over a bare mattress. Annemarie Wilsey. Anika Groene. Candace Hegel.
And Sidney. With him, in the truck. On the beach. At the mission.
Some of the photos were landscapes. Guajome Lake Park. Agua Hedionda Lagoon. The most puzzling of these appeared to be a stone fountain, several feet deep. He stared at the image for a moment before he recognized the scene.
The photo had been taken in front of the San Luis Rey Mission.
He left at a dead run, calling for Blue to follow.
In the trunk of Kurtis Stalb’s Taurus, Sidney woke up. The uneven gravel road had made the first few moments of the ride bone-jarringly painful. After one of the roughest jolts, she’d slumped into unconsciousness.
Now the road was smooth, and she had no idea where they were.
She could smell her own blood, feel it clotted in her left ear, matted in her hair, working like an adhesive to plaster the tarp to the side of her face. Her head throbbed, but her mind was clear and she felt more alert than
