Tony hit Pause on the video and rushed after the chief. Outside, the cabbie’s complexion revealed how worried he was.
“I picked up another fare and he told me about the message. I called 911 and came straight here.”
Tony slid into the back seat and stared at the words written in the same red ink as the note on the bathroom stall.
Help me! Call the police!
“Yes, sir, that’s her.” The cabbie was pointing to the chief’s cell phone and nodding.
Tony climbed out of the car. “Was anyone else with her?”
“No, sir,” he insisted. “She was alone.”
“Who hired you to pick her up?” the chief asked before Tony could.
“Dispatch received the call. When a third party hires a pickup they pay with a credit card. I called and verified that on the way here.”
“What was the caller’s name?” Tony asked.
“Orson Blume.”
“You’re sure the caller was a man?” Phelps asked.
They both knew Blume was dead.
The driver shrugged. “Dispatcher said his voice sounded kind of weird but it was definitely a man.”
“Weird how?” Nick asked.
“You know,” the man said, “like it was a computer speaking instead of a real person.”
Probably because it was.
“Where did you drop her?” Phelps demanded.
“At one of those creepy old buildings out at the old asylum.” He rattled off an address. “She said it was her birthday, that she was turning eighteen again.”
Fear ignited inside Tony. He reached for the door. “Take me there. Now.”
53
Jo had begged Sylvia to listen to reason but she refused. Pamela Blume had evidently convinced Sylvia that Jo was responsible for her sister’s—her mother’s—problems. That if Ellen had not been covering for Jo all this time she wouldn’t have slowly lost her mind.
The first thing Sylvia had done when the driver dropped Jo off was to take her cell phone. She’d tossed it into the woods, wagged her weapon and told Jo to move. Now as they walked through the dense woods toward wherever the hell they were going flashes of memory zoomed through Jo’s mind. She and Ellen had managed to get Carrie out of the white box prison in which they’d been held. They’d carried her between them through dark corridor after corridor until they’d grown so exhausted they’d literally sat down on the floor and fallen asleep. Later Jo realized they had likely been drugged. Something in the air, she was certain. When they’d awakened they had been in the woods, lying on the ground with Carrie’s cold, pale body between them.
At first fear and panic had them at each other’s throat. Then they’d realized they had no idea where they were or where they’d been. A dead woman they had murdered—Ellen had murdered—was with them. They had no proof of what really happened. No one to point to as responsible for what happened to them—nothing. How would they ever explain what happened? No one was going to believe such a bizarre story.
So they’d buried Carrie’s body and they’d never told a soul what really happened.
Jo blinked away the memories. Sylvia ushered her from the tree line, across the road and through an opening in one of the tall fences that surrounded a decaying building she and Nick Shade had thoroughly searched. How could they have been so close and missed it?
Jo felt confident she could overtake Sylvia and wrestle the gun from her. But she wouldn’t risk the girl getting hurt. The weapon could go off and one of them could end up dead. Jo needed to know where the others were so she cooperated. She would worry about clearing things up with Sylvia later.
If she was still alive.
To Jo’s surprise Sylvia didn’t go to the building; she went into the old guard shack that stood near the gated entrance to the compound. She raised a section of the cracked tile floor like a trap door and an old staircase lay before them, plunging into the darkness below.
“Go.” Sylvia gestured to the stairs with the gun.
Jo took the first step down and automatic lights came on as if activated by her presence. As they moved downward, the trap door closed behind them. At the bottom of the long staircase Sylvia urged her forward, along a dimly lit corridor.
Fear slammed into Jo’s gut.
She knew this place.
This had to be where she, Ellen and Carrie had been kept eighteen years ago.
Her heart pounded harder with each step.
Sylvia ushered her from the main corridor into a maze of narrower corridors, going through door after door. Jo couldn’t get enough air into her lungs. The urge to turn around and run back to those stairs was nearly overwhelming.
Finally, Sylvia stopped and opened one last door. Inside, a row of monitors lined one wall. Televisions showing the news on three different channels hung on the wall above the monitors. A conference table stood in the center of the room. Four chairs surrounded it.
She recognized the dark corridors but she had never seen this place.
A door on the other side of the room opened and Pamela Blume walked in. She held yet another gun pointed at Jo.
“Very good, Sylvia. You may lay your weapon down now.”
“I’m not stupid,” the younger woman said. She shifted her aim from Jo to Pamela. “I want the whole truth. I want to hear it from her before I take your word for what happened.”
“Dear, dear girl—” Pamela smiled “—did you really believe I would give you a loaded gun?”
Sylvia pulled the trigger on the .38. Nothing happened. She threw it aside and charged Pamela.
Jo screamed for her to stop a split second before the first of three shots rang out.
Sylvia crumpled to the floor.
Jo started toward her.
Pamela aimed her weapon back at Jo. “Do not move.”
Fury roared through Jo. She wanted to kill Pamela Blume. She wanted to tear her apart with her bare hands. But she didn’t move. If she got herself killed right now there would be no hope for Tiffany and the others. She owed it to Tony LeDoux to try and save his niece.
Blume said, “You should never have come back, Joanna. But—” she sighed “—you’re here. Do you want to end this where you stand or do you want to join the others and die with them? Either way, my plane is waiting.”
Jo stiffened her spine. “I’ll die with the others.”
“Very well. This way.” Pamela gestured for Jo to precede her through the door on the other side of the room.
The door led into a room similar in size to the one they’d exited except there was a big square hole in the center. About a foot down from the top of the hole metal bars covered it. Inside the hole the light was so bright it hurt to look at it.
Something hardened inside Jo. The place where she had spent those fourteen days was directly below her. Her body trembled. The urge to vomit was so fierce her throat burned.
The smell, the tension, the undeniable sense of doom.
She was back.
The choking sensation had her breathing in unreasonably deep gasps.
Pamela used a key to unlock an almost-invisible control panel in the wall. She pushed a button and the bars rose upward. A white shelflike thing lowered from the ceiling.
Jo’s gut clenched. This was the thing they’d used to lower food and water to the hostages—to her and Ellen and Carrie. To all the others imprisoned here after them.
“Hello?” one of the girls below called.
Suddenly, Jo knew exactly what she had to do. “Tiffany?”
“Yes? I’m Tiffany?”
The girl’s hopeful voice was suddenly nearer the opening in the center of the room.
“My name is Joanna. I’m a friend of your uncle Tony’s.”
Pamela gestured to the lift with her weapon. “Move. You can continue your little get to know each other face-to-face.”
Jo said, “Just one more thing.” With her gaze fixed on Pamela, she shouted to those below, “No matter what you hear, stay away from the opening!”
Then Jo ran for the door.
One shot, then another exploded from Pamela’s weapon, biting into the wall as Jo dodged and darted until she was out the door they’d only just entered. She slammed it shut. Two more shots pinged, the noise muffled behind the steel door.
She stabbed the lock button on the keypad.