Stan gave a whimper and Jay raced back to the cafe to give Dave the signal. He then caught a cab to Pemberton Historic Park while waiting for Dave to tie things off neatly with the gossipers before joining him there.
The thirty minutes that took were like slow torture. Someone was definitely playing some kind of game, or maybe it was merely an early warning system. He breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth, trying hard to stay calm. He focused on the hope that either option meant that Stella was likely alive. Stella had vanished here.
He let his mind run quickly through what someone might find out if they ran his name. If they were average, not much at all. They would get his birth and education in Natchitoches, his driver’s, and his arrest for murder. He felt a grim smile tug his lips. Perhaps that latter revelation would make them think twice about harming her. If the person was above average, then they might be able to realize that he had been a private investigator prior to his arrest, but they would have to be something extraordinary to get anything more than that.
Dave arrived with a huge smile on his face, but it faltered as he took in Jay’s expression.
“Was Stan not as helpful as his wife?”
Jay sighed. “I’ll fill you in later. I got nothing that requires us staying here. Did you get anything to change our previous plans?”
Dave grinned again. “Nope, but my darling crew of nattering, heartless women did give us a possible in to Miranda’s big old house without having to enter through the main gates.”
Jay perked up at once. If he was being watched, then entering through the main gates would have been problematic. Worse, it would give Ms. Williams and her assistant some time to prepare their story for his arrival. If anything, he wanted to give them no time at all. Something very odd was going on here, and surprise was his biggest weapon.
“Lead the way.”
Dave nodded and they began heading to the north edge of the park, but before they reached it, Dave abruptly pulled him into some thick bushes. “It’s through here. There’s one more thing I think you ought to know before we actually start trespassing.”
Jay felt a small tug on his lips at the ballsy way Dave had mentioned their intended illegal activity, but gestured for him to go on.
“One of the women is a part-time maid at the estate. She didn’t know much of anything, but she did say one thing that was interesting. Stella’s father is still there.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Stella felt her head spin. In the weeks she had been held in this lightless room, the food had always been sporadically given. At first, she had tried to save some, spread it out a bit, but that had backfired. Whenever food was given, the plate would be collected precisely twenty minutes later, whether it had anything on it or not.
She had no energy to stand and, with the waves of dizziness, was sure she would fall over if she tried. She shifted her weight, and the chains on her wrists and ankles clinked in the dark. Even though the cuffs were padded and her wrists had been neatly wrapped in gauze, she could already feel the damage every abrasive movement caused.
The room brightened slowly as the special lights along the ceiling lit up. In her time here, she had counted in her head and discovered that she got an average of six hours of light a day. Not that being able to see the doorless, windowless room was any help beyond marking days. Apart from her thin mattress, there was a toilet and sink. The entrance used by her captor was a sliding section of wall, with no way to access it from the inside. Twice, she had glimpsed a second door beyond the first and a trellis gate beyond that.
The room was also entirely sound-proofed, inside and out. She never had any warning of when her captor would appear. Though they were always heavily wrapped in a thick, black bodysuit with not an inch of skin showing from head to toe and never spoke, she felt fairly sure that the person was female.
She heard a click behind her and tried to rise obediently, fighting off the waves of nausea-inducing dizziness. Her chains, which fed into the wall beside her mattress, grew longer three times in what she believed was a day. The chains normally only allow her to sit or lie on the mattress. If she didn’t take the opportunity each time to use the toilet or drink some water from the sink, she would have to wait until the next time.
She drank the water sparingly despite the parched feeling in the back of her throat. She then stood and stretched for as long as she could until a second click sounded and she was inevitably dragged back toward the mattress.
She had just sat down when the door opened. They snatched Stella’s arm and expertly drew some blood. Stella didn’t fight. Other than her hard learned lesson that fighting would just cause more pain, this was not harmful to her. She watched as her siphoned blood was carefully added to various solutions and chemical test strips.
Her captor read the results and then pulled two filled syringes from their bag by the door and came over, injecting both into Stella. This, these syringes, were why Stella no longer fought. She recognized a couple of the tests used and knew that the person was checking her vitamin and sugar levels. The injections were to correct the deficiencies. She was fairly certain that this was what was keeping her alive. The
