Stone Cross (Arliss Cutter #2) - Marc Cameron Page 0,15

are exactly what they seem.” She winked. “Fortunately, you have yourself a Polynesian Jiminy Cricket.”

CHAPTER 4

“This is death,” Sarah Mead thought, fighting the urge to vomit. She panted, gulped for air, then panted some more, trying to focus on her surroundings to take her mind off the pulsing agony in her head. Summoning her last ounce of courage, she choked back the sobs and forced herself to take long, slow breaths. Her skull felt like it would explode any moment. Something was tied over her eyes, but the acid pain in the center of her brain brought with it a blue light, throbbing with each beat of her racing heart.

Her arms were pulled behind her, her hands tied. Whoever had done it obviously didn’t care if her hands eventually fell off and had cinched them so tight that they’d gone completely numb. She could hear voices, but they were muffled and unintelligible. She lay on her stomach, left hip pressed against something hard and cool—a log wall maybe. Was she still in the lodge? That wasn’t likely. Chaga had a slight mothball stench that she’d hated when she first arrived. She’d gotten used to it, somewhat, but it had never gone away completely. This place smelled like old socks and urine—and something else she couldn’t quite place. She heard more voices, still garbled. The left side of her face was warmer than the right, as if there was a fireplace or a stove on that side.

She replayed everything she could remember in her mind. Someone had hit her. Twice. She knew she was fortunate to be alive. Blows to the head could be deadly. Whoever had hit her used enough force to knock her out, or even kill her. That could only mean they didn’t care whether she lived or died. Then why was she bound and blindfolded? And where was David? She remembered now. There was a body. Without thinking, she tried to scream.

“David!” But it came out garbled, like she had a broken jaw or a mouth full of rocks.

More muffled sounds, closer now, as if someone was trying to get her attention.

She cried out again with the same gibbering result.

Unable to see, or hear, or scream, she could at least feel. She could smell. Someone was close to her, inches from her face. A man? He smelled awful, like sewage and wood smoke—an outhouse on fire. She froze. What was he going to do? Her breath came in ragged, terrified gasps. She was helpless to do anything but wait and wonder. Her heart beat faster, pushing the pain deep in her skull to an agonizing crescendo. Bright lights flashed behind her eyes like an oncoming car at night, and then faded as she slipped from pain into unconsciousness.

DAY TWO

CHAPTER 5

“You let them play with knives and fire, Uncle Arliss,” Constance Cutter said, turning up her nose at the mess her twin seven-year-old brothers were making in the kitchen. “That’s the only reason they get up so early to help you with breakfast.”

The heavy bass beat spilling out of the white buds in her ears made it clear that the prickly fifteen-year-old was making an observation, not conversation. Mousy brown hair was parted in the middle, hanging to her shoulders and forming curtains over her eyes, which allowed her to shut out the rest of the world. For most teenage girls, the straight hair, ripped jeans, and loose sweatshirts were all carefully executed to make it look as though they didn’t care about their appearance. Constance truly didn’t—which made her probably the most authentic sophomore in the Anchorage school system. She had her mother’s natural beauty and her father’s athleticism, which allowed her to pull off the look, where someone with less confidence might come off like a female Napoleon Dynamite. She threw her backpack—pink and covered with a pattern of tiny white skulls—on one of the heavy Amish chairs at the dining room table, and grabbed a cup of yogurt from the fridge. Arliss remembered a time when she was all bubbles and brightness—but the death of her father had knocked the happiness right out of her. She cultivated all the coziness of an aggravated porcupine, forcing everyone else in the house to get out of her way or suffer the consequences.

Arliss’s brother had been gone for over a year. Bedtime was still difficult—when the house grew quiet enough for little boys’ hearts to run wild with emotion. But the twins had rebounded, for the most part.