Amber loses all track of time. The cold is endless. He keeps the room dark except for when he comes back to play his sick game of Russian roulette. What she hasn’t lost track of is how many times he’s held the gun to her head and pulled the trigger.
Three.
Three times he made her believe that she was about to die. Three times the gun dry-fired, leaving her limbs weak and her bladder loose. Three times he screamed at her, railing at her to just tell him what he wanted to know and end this. Whatever ‘this’ was—his psycho game. His quest for information she vowed to take to her grave. So far so good. Except Amber is beginning to think that it will never end. Hours stretch out before her. All she knows now is cold, dark, hunger, thirst, and the rancid smell of her soiled, dirty clothes. She almost wishes he would end it once and for all.
But then he won’t get what he wants.
The door scrapes open. Light blinds her. She stays where she is, curled up in a ball next to the pipes in the corner. A couple of times a day they get hot. It is the only warmth she has. She throws a forearm up over her eyes. She hears his heavy footsteps as he walks slowly across the room.
She jumps when something touches her skin, flailing and screaming until she realizes it is a blanket. Wrapping herself in it, her body trembles with pleasure.
“I need to apologize,” he says.
She looks up but he is just a black silhouette against the light flooding in through the doorway. The calm in his voice sends a shiver straight through her, in spite of the blanket.
“I’m sorry for the way I’ve treated you,” he tells her.
Her voice shakes. “You tried to kill me. Three times! You don’t get to just apologize for that and act like everything’s okay. You’re keeping me prisoner.”
He kneels in front of her, staring intently. “I am sorry. I want you to know I have no choice.”
“What are you talking about?” she says. “Of course you have a choice. You could choose to let me go. We can forget all of this. I won’t turn you in. You know I won’t. I don’t want anyone asking questions about why you took me.”
A sigh issues from his throat. “I can’t let you go. Not because of that. I know you know how to keep secrets. I can’t let you go because I need information you have. I can’t let you go until you tell me, but I want you to know that I don’t like doing this.”
She pulls the blanket more tightly around her shoulders. “But I can’t tell you,” she says, voice squeaking.
He doesn’t speak for a long time. Amber shivers beneath his intense gaze. Finally, he says, “You’d rather die than let go of your secret?”
“I know you can’t understand, but yes.”
Thirty-One
Josie couldn’t feel her fingers or her face or even her jean-clad legs. She stood on the bank of the river several yards away from the power station’s security fence. Just as it had the other night, the wind whipped off the river, punishing anyone stupid enough to stay in its path. Ambulance and police lights strobed from the station parking lot. She hadn’t been tasked with being part of the team that extricated Lydia Norris’s body from the fish lift, and for that she was grateful. Above, the sky dawned a dirty gray. Denton PD’s marine unit had been called to transport the ERT members from the bank to the island that abutted the fish lift. It was hardly an island, Josie thought. More like an extremely large and jagged rock slab jutting out from the water. Still, it was big enough to hold several members of the ERT in their Tyvek suits as they studied every nook and cranny of it for evidence.
Noah walked up beside her. “They’re taking Lydia Norris over to the morgue now. Dr. Feist will start right away. We haven’t found her car yet but now that it’s daylight, the Chief sent a few patrol units out to at least cover this area in the event that she met someone nearby since she was seen leaving Amber’s house on her own.”
Josie nodded and tucked her hands into the large pockets of Noah’s coat. She really needed to get a new pair of gloves.
“What do you think?” asked Noah.
“I think that whoever did this is trying to make a statement. It’s December. It’s freezing. If it hadn’t been such a warm fall this loch would probably be frozen. It took a lot of forethought and effort to get Lydia Norris’s body out there and dump it into the fish lift. It also took a lot of balls. He probably parked right here on this bank. You can drive right down here from the access road before you even get near the entrance to the power station. It’s far enough away from the plant that he wouldn’t be seen. No one would be out here during the night. He probably kayaked over, dumped the body, and kayaked back. It would have been dark enough right here for him to do it. It’s only Wilson here at night. The shift doesn’t change till seven. The biggest challenge, besides towing a body, would be getting back to the car with a kayak—or two kayaks—before Wilson comes out to the fish ladder after the perimeter alarm is tripped. He had to know he’d be caught on camera.”
“True,” said Noah. “But the camera picks up a shadow, basically. You can’t get anything identifying from that footage. He would have to have knowledge of the lift, though, wouldn’t he?”
“Yeah, but like you said, all the plant employees checked out. Plus, there are tours of it every spring—not the inside of the plant but the fish lift itself. The tours are open to anyone who wants to take them. They bring high-schoolers out here every spring for a demonstration. I don’t think we’re going to find this killer that way,” said Josie.
“Then how are we going to find him?”
“By figuring out the significance of Russell Haven Dam. Obviously, it means something to the killer. There are plenty of places to dump a body in the middle of December that would be easier than a fish lift. Also, we need to figure out why the Watts family is being targeted because clearly they are on this killer’s list.”
Noah said, “So far none of the Wattses has been exactly forthcoming, and now we’re running out of family members to question. Your contact at the Sheriff’s office went to Gabriel’s house multiple times yesterday, and he wasn’t home.”
Josie thought about Amber and again wondered where she was and if she was still alive. “I know. I’ll ask her to stop by a few times today until we can get out there ourselves. I’d also like to get a couple of units out here on both sides of the river to keep an eye out in case the killer comes back.”
Noah took out his phone and started sending texts. Josie did the same. Gravel crunched behind them, and Josie turned to see Gretchen trudging toward them. The hood of her coat was pulled over her head and tied tight, exposing only a small circle of her face. “Patrol found Lydia Norris’s car.”
“Where?” asked Josie.