blindfold on or not. I can’t even tell the difference between opening and closing my eyes.
But with the gag out, I have access to my teeth. And they can grip the nylon ropes a hell of a lot better than my fingers.
I’m shaking with cold by the time I get my hands free, but I’m so giddy with relief I barely notice.
I slowly turn around, blinking hard as I take in my surroundings. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I think I’m starting to see faint shapes in the dark. Maybe there is a little bit of light down here after all.
I go slow at first as I start to explore. I don’t want to bump my bare toes into anything, or knock over something that could make a noise.
But the more I explore, the more frantic my movements become.
Especially once I hit the first wall of the small basement I’m in.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Rube
“I need to get gas,” Cass says.
I point. “Go down there.”
“Oh my God, Rube, seriously. Do you want to push this thing? Because I—”
“Go down the fucking road.”
An edgy silence fills the SUV’s cabin. We’re all staring out the windows, trying to spot a white van, a head of dark curls, the slightest thing out of place.
We’ve been driving around for almost an hour.
I don’t want to call it—refuse to—but we all know she’s gone.
Cass goes down the road I pointed out, but as soon as he reaches the next intersection he doubles back and heads for the gas station we passed about a mile back. He does it without a word, but making sure he doesn’t catch my eye in the rear-view mirror either.
Guess I wouldn’t be surprised if this got physical.
If the tension eating away at my insides is anything compared with my brothers, then there’ll be nothing left of us come dusk.
We have to find her before then.
If the sun goes down before then, she’ll be lost forever. That’s all I can think. We have to find her before dark. Have to find her before dark.
I should be figuring out how to find her, not what will happen if we don’t.
The moment Cass stops the car at a pump, I’m out of the door. I go inside the convenience store, buy a packet of cigarettes, a soda. Zach comes in behind me. He grabs some chips, a six-pack of ginger beer, and another packet of cigarettes. We don’t look at each, don’t speak. The clerk ringing us up keeps sending us a wary look through her lashes as if she’s considering triggering the alarm behind the counter.
Cass is still pumping gas when we get back. Zach tosses his bag into the back seat and climbs up without missing a beat.
I head for a picnic table a few yards away, lighting a cigarette en route.
Grit crunches under shoes behind me, but I don’t turn around. “It’s Gabriel, isn’t it?” Apollo says.
I grunt non-committally, and then turn to face him as I pass him my cigarette.
He shrugs before taking it. “I’m thinking he paid someone to put up that article online. Paid that lawyer chick to handle everything as if he was dead.”
“No,” I murmur, taking back the smoke. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“He wanted her back. Couldn’t find her. Knew this would get her attention. Seems pretty straightforward to me.”
“Then he’d have taken her somewhere we couldn’t find them in the first place.”
Back then, when Zach was lying in that hospital bed with tubes sticking out of him, I was sure I’d lose it. So instead of fixating on how likely he was to die, I tried to put together the pieces of this fucked up jigsaw puzzle.
But too much of it didn’t make sense.
Gabriel had evaded us for close to a decade. Then all of a sudden he pops up on our radar. All right, not him, per se, but a bread crumb. The first of many. An article anyone but us would have missed.
A missing child turned up five years after he’d been kidnapped walking home from school one day. Told reporters he’d been abducted by a priest. Turns out the guy was a bank manager, and little Stuart only thought he was a priest because he wore a crucifix and spoke about God a lot.
The kid’s abductor made a run for it, and was never found, but that article sure as hell got our attention.
We visited the abandoned house where the kid had been kept. Then we broke in one night and took a