From the Shadows (Buckhorn, Montana #2) - B.J. Daniels Page 0,102

jug again.

She shook her head. “It smells funny.”

“Now you’re just being silly.” He grabbed her head with one large hand, cocked it back and poured the liquid over her face.

She tried not to breathe or swallow, but the water was going into her nose, choking her. She gasped and swallowed a huge gulp.

As if satisfied, Emery let go of her and turned to recap the jug and put it away. Casey began to frantically saw at the tape. She felt the blade bite into the flesh of her wrist and winced but didn’t stop until he turned back to her again.

“Now, isn’t that better?” he asked.

She looked away from his weathered, aged face. She could feel a trickle of blood running down her hand to drip on the ground behind her. She had to get away from him. All her instincts told her that, otherwise, she would die down here. She thought of the graves in the basement, and she knew in her heart that Finn had been right. Those girls who’d disappeared—they’d never left the hotel.

CHAPTER THIRTY

THE SUN SHONE through the pines, painting the forest with gold. Finn hadn’t gone far when he saw another piece from the Scrabble board lying in the dried pine needles. As he moved closer, his heart began to pound harder. He stooped down to pick it up, turning the tile to see the letter. F.

I have fallen for you.

His gaze lifted to the trees ahead—and the decrepit outbuilding in the distance. She was here. Someone had taken her from the hotel. All he had to do was find her. But he felt as if a clock were ticking toward a deadline, one that had the marshal and his men getting as far away from the hotel as possible.

Rising quickly, he headed toward the outbuilding, watching the ground as he moved, hoping for another tile, another clue, but sure he was on the right track.

The outbuilding, which was probably eight feet square, was set back against the side of the mountain, away from the others. While it looked as if it might fall down at any moment, he saw where someone had shored up the stone foundation.

There were no windows and only the one door. He saw that it had been padlocked. The police had broken the lock when they’d searched it. With the shape the building was in, it being locked was definitely a red flag. Padlocked like the door to the basement, padlocked like the wine-cellar door.

He pushed the door open, not sure what he would find. The officers had already checked the building. The door swung open, and he looked inside. Not that there was much to see. No Casey, that much he’d seen at once. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light inside and the dust settled, he saw shelves along all four walls and piles of junk.

If Casey had been here, she wasn’t now. He frowned. Something was wrong. He’d found one of the tiles from the Scrabble board only yards from here. Disappointment made his heart ache. He’d been so sure that whoever had taken her hadn’t gotten far. Otherwise the person would have been seen. No vehicles had left since the law had arrived, so she had to be here somewhere.

As he started to turn away, he saw something on the floor. The same tracks he’d seen in the dust in front of the wine cellar. Two narrow tire tracks that ended at the edge of a crack in the floor. His gaze flew to the junk at the other end of the shack where he spotted a cart, the kind used to drag out a deer carcass from the woods.

He moved to the dark crack between the boards and knew he hadn’t been wrong after all. A trapdoor.

* * *

THE SUN SHONE off the side of the string of motel rooms. “I don’t get it,” Benjamin said as he sat down on the curb outside Jason’s room where the others had gathered.

Jen sighed. “What don’t you get?” She’d whined enough that they all knew she wanted to go down to the bar. But the cops had been told to keep them all here until the marshal said otherwise.

“Why are we being kept here?” he said. “Legally, they have to arrest us, don’t they?”

“Why don’t you tell them that,” Jason suggested and mugged a face just in case Benjamin missed his sarcasm.

He studied Jason, wondering if being arrested was exactly why the man was acting so