“A while ago. She had a daughter who’s a tween now, I think. She hasn’t been totally upfront. She’s scared.”
Kat didn’t tell her friend where she was. It was police business, and she didn’t want to involve Ruth and earn herself another reprimand. And in that arena, Shiloh and Beau weren’t helping her cause. They’d taken it upon themselves to interview Bryce Higgins, the missing Erin Higgins’s brother, who’d been so vocal and energized when his sister had first gone missing, then had stopped speaking out, like someone had turned his spigot off, almost as if he knew his sister was never coming back. He’d been affronted as well, and Shiloh had been frustrated in her attempts to get any information from him.
“Kind of an asshole,” had been her report to Kat, who’d once again told her nicely to stand down.
Haney was a wildcatter who, by all accounts, spent more time at The Dog and Big Bart’s bending an elbow than he ever did making a living. Kat drove up to his place and could feel adrenalin rush through her veins. It would have been a lot better meeting with him at the station, but though he’d been invited several times, he’d showed no inclination to do the deed. So now she was here.
She stepped out of the car and looked around. There was a garden of sorts to her left. She didn’t believe Cal had anything to do with growing vegetables; it just wasn’t in the man’s DNA. She concluded the ragged rows must be his new wife’s doing.
And then she saw the ten-by-four mound of dirt near the garden. It looked as if the ground had been bulldozed and then tamped down. It looked, in fact, like a grave.
Her heart started pounding in her ears. Addie Donovan? No. Surely, if he’d killed her, he wouldn’t bury her body in his own backyard!
The front screen door screeched open and slammed shut, and Cal Haney, all six foot two of him, stood on the concrete porch and glared down at her.
“What’re you lookin’ at?” he demanded.
“Is this your wife’s garden?” she asked.
“Well, it sure ain’t mine.”
She swallowed. “Then you didn’t dig up that part of the yard and fill it in with dirt?” She pointed.
His gaze landed on the suspicious mound, and he blinked several times. A dark flush crept up his neck and cheeks, and he said in an ugly tone, “I don’t know what you think you know, but you get that right outta your head. I was building me a patio, but the dickhead landlord told me no. So that dirt’s just sitting there. You wanta dig into it, be my guest. There’s nothing there but more dirt.”
She believed him. He was too sure of himself, and she didn’t think he was bold enough and stupid enough to risk burying a body in his own backyard. But it didn’t mean he was innocent.
“I know why you’re here. That scaredy cat, Ruthie, told on me for spraying her kid with the hose. She was with my niece. I was just playin’ with ’em.”
“We’re asking people to help us find Addison Donovan, who’s been missing for—”
“You think I did it. That’s why you’re here.”
“Mr. Haney, we’re just trying to find her, make sure she’s all right.”
“Don’t lie to me! You think I took her? Go ahead and arrest me. Take me to your Fearless Leader.” He held out his wrists and glared at her. “Do it, or get the hell off my property!”
Chapter 25
It was terrifically hot inside her four walls, but Addie had almost grown used to the oppressive, airless cell. She’d worked and worked and worked to break the chain of her handcuffs, but it was no use. He hadn’t noticed the scrape marks she’d left on the bucket, but she hadn’t made any more progress, either. She’d have more luck sliding a wrist out of the pink-acetate-covered cuffs themselves, but since her initial thrill that she could almost get her hand free, she’d failed in that over and over again, bruising and further chafing her wrists, making them swell. The cuffs were still a smidge too tight.
And he was coming back tonight. She just knew it. He said he would try to stay away, but he just couldn’t. She understood that now. He didn’t have to say it. He would take her and relieve himself, and then do it again, three times most often, and she would escape the moment by going to that heavenly place in her head where she and Dean were together, lying on a blanket together and looking at the stars, telling each other how much they loved each other.
However, the last time he’d actually slapped her and yelled at her to wake up. “C’mon, honey. Don’t lie there like a sack of manure. Put your lips around me, here.” And he’d shoved his sex in her face, and she’d tried not to gag, but it had been no use.
He’d left more tense and angry than when he’d shown up.
He’ll kill you if you don’t get out.
Addie gazed helplessly down at her swollen wrists. If she could just twist one loose. Get it past the widest part of her hand . . .
She heard the faint sound of his truck’s engine, and her heart clutched with fear. It was a ways down the dirt track through dense trees to this cabin. She remembered that much when he’d first driven her here. Would she be able to lead someone back here if she managed to escape? She didn’t know. She sensed how isolated the cabin was, the mountains rising behind it. Sometimes she caught sight of a sliver of the moon or twinkling stars through the high window near the rafters. If she did manage to free herself, she didn’t trust that she would really be able to get away.
She braced herself, as she heard the truck approaching. If only there was something to bash him with, but apart from the barbed wire stretched ominously through a ring on the wall, just out of her reach, the place was carefully empty. Her captor had put everything away.
“Call me Lover,” he’d told her, when he stroked her hair after the first time.
She couldn’t. She just couldn’t, so she’d remained silent.
“Say it,” he’d insisted, and his hand had squeezed her breast a little too hard, a warning.
“Lover,” she managed to whisper in a tremulous voice.
“That’s my name. Say it again.”
“Lover.”
“Louder.”
“LOVER.”
And for that he’d kissed her hard and bitten her lip, mounting her again, coaxing her to fucking move.
Now, she glanced down at her wrists again, stubbornly held in their unforgiving, fuzzy, pink vises.
If she couldn’t free herself, she hoped to hell she had the courage to end it all.
*
Late Saturday morning, Kat pulled into the parking lot of the Wheeler Hotel, a wattle and daub relic from a previous century that had been recently painted and sported a café at street level with ivory lace curtains and antique tables and chairs clustered throughout a main room.