Possession

Every creak of the car was magnified until her ears burned like she was at a concert. Each foot down was like a mile at walking speed. Moments stretched into hours, days. Hands cramping up, fingers cranked into claws, her body was in full fight-or-flight—

The phone, she needed to get her goddamn phone. With a jolt of action, Cait fumbled in her purse, things falling out; she didn’t care what—

Ding.

Bump. Halt.

Cait’s head jerked up to the doors as the “3” lit up, and the descent stopped. “No … no…!”

Lunging forward at the panel, she hit the bright red stop button. As a ringing alarm exploded into the enclosed space, she had no idea whether she’d shut down the opening mechanism.

Phone—where was her phone! Shoving her hand back into her purse—with enough force to break one of the straps—she rummaged around until her fingers ran into the thing. But she couldn’t keep hold. As she brought the cell out, it slipped away from her, bouncing across the floor, sending her on a goose chase as she fell to her knees to catch the—

Are you sure you would like to make an emergency call? the screen asked her as she got it and began working the screen.

“Hell, yes!” She nailed the green button and put the phone up to her ear, staying frozen in that crouch, her eyes locked on the double doors as she prayed they’d stay shut—

“Yes!” she shouted over the din as she plugged her free ear. “I’m in an elevator in the Palace Theatre’s parking garage.” What was the address? What the hell was the— “Yes! On Trade! Help me—there’s someone trying to—”

Above her head, the inset lights in the ceiling started to flicker again.

“I’m alone, yes—I’m in the elevator!” She kept shouting, because the alarm was still going off loud as a jet plane—and because being scared shitless really wasn’t conducive to library whispers. “I’ve stopped it at the third floor—what? That’s the alarm, ringing—no! It wasn’t a malfunction—I stopped the elevator! There was someone chasing me and I ran into—excuse me?” She actually took the phone away from her cheek and glared at it. “Are you kidding me—lady, no offense, but he would have just followed me down the stair—no! My car was on another level.”

Was this woman on the other end actually critiquing her choice of escape?

“Thank you—yes, I would like the police!” Much preferred over an embalmer at the end of all this. “Thank you!”

As they went around in circles for what felt like an eternity, Cait told herself to try to reel in the frustration. Not a good idea to fight with the source of the cops. But for godsakes…

“No, there’s no telephone—wait, there is a call button, yes.” Why hadn’t she noticed it on the panel? “Yes, I’m hitting it now.”

A buzzer cut in through the alarm. And then … a whole lot of nothing but that screaming, ringing sound. Maybe the security guard was on break?

“No, no, answer—oh, God, please just send someone—”

Pounding on the double doors made her scream. 

Chapter Fifteen

As Sissy stood in the center of her parents’ living room, she held on to the only thing that seemed solid in the world.

The man who had returned her home.

And it was strange. Even through her hysteria, she had some vague thought that he was hard all over: His back was as unforgiving as stone, his arms like bridge cables, his chest a table to rest her head on. He was strong, so very strong; she could sense it in the way he held her to him. If she fainted again? He was going to do what he’d done before with ease.

Pick her up. Carry her somewhere safe.

But was there any true safety to be had anymore?

Probably not. And that was another reason she’d locked herself away all day long.

She hadn’t been sleeping; that was for sure. Nope. She’d been reliving the past—and not as in distant history, not the happy or sad or poignant stuff she could recall from her real life. No, she’d passed those solitary hours mourning the prosaic trip out of the house that she’d made however many evenings ago: She’d replayed in her head everything she could remember about the night she had been abducted … in the kitchen, going to the fridge, looking for ice cream. None. Calling out to her mother, who was in the family room, watching TV and cross-stitching.

I want to go to the store—can I have the keys?

Her mother’s reply: They’re in my purse. Take some money, too. And can you pick up some …

She couldn’t remember what her mom had asked her for. Broccoli? Bath soap …? Something that began with B.

The next thing she remembered was going out the front door and getting in the car … and thinking that as usual, it smelled like Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum and coffee—which might have been nasty, but was actually wonderful. Talk about straight out of childhood. Her mom had always taken a travel mug with her whenever she was in the car in the mornings, and in the afternoons, she was all about the gum. When Sissy had been in middle school and the seasonal rotation of field hockey/swimming/dance, etc., had required a nearly constant juggling of rides, the sweet, earthy smell in that Subaru had been all about home.

God, that hurt to think of right now…

And strange that on the night everything had changed she had noticed it one last time—and had smiled to herself as she’d backed out and gone at the speed limit down the road they lived on. She had been saving up for her own car, and looking forward to the summer break when she could pull big hours at Martha’s, an ice-cream place across from the Great Escape theme park near Lake George. If she bunked in with a couple of friends and worked pretty much around the clock, by the time September rolled around, she would have been able to buy her own beater and go back and forth more easily from school.

The drive had been less than four miles and taken maybe eight minutes, tops.

After pulling into the parking lot at Hannaford, she’d left the car about five spaces up from the handicap reserves, and walked quickly to the entrance with its shopping carts centipeding in rows. Inside … she had lingered over picking out the ice cream. In the end, it had been all about the Rocky Road—because she liked the crunch of the nuts and the chocolate chips and the smooth, super-sweet veins of marshmallow.

Rocky Road. How fitting.

At the self-checkout, she’d scanned the two things in her basket, the ice cream and the B whatever it had been that her mother had wanted. She’d paused to check out the new issue of Cosmopolitan, but she hadn’t gotten permission for it, and it felt wrong to buy the trashy magazine without having asked first. At that point, she’d gone for her cell to call and see if it was okay, but no-go. Having been in a rush, she’d only taken her wallet and the twenty-dollar bill her mom had let her have.

No way to phone home—or for help either, although she hadn’t been thinking about that at the time.

She could remember putting the ice cream in one of the plastic bags that was held open by struts on a Ferris-wheel scale.

Out toward the automatic doors. Into the parking lot.

Everything after that was hazy. Someone had stopped her? Someone who’d needed a…

She’d tried throughout the day to get her brain to cough up the goods, give her what she wanted, show her the steps that had led … to Hell.

All it had gotten her was a migraine.

Turning her head to the other side, she saw the curtains that hung by the bay window. Her mom had picked