Northwest: Deep Freeze Part 52

"Of course I am. You would, too. If it was Scott."

Since the cells were working again, she found her phone in her pocket and hit a speed-dial b.u.t.ton.

Her first call was to Ca.s.sie's cell. No answer. Four rings and a quick transfer to voice mail, where Jenna left a quick message instructing Ca.s.sie to call home. Her second phone call was to Allie's cell. As she listened, she heard Allie's phone ringing and found it stuffed in the cus.h.i.+ons of the couch in the den.

"d.a.m.n."

She met Rinda's eyes and then dialed Josh Sykes's cell phone. Once again, nothing. "Oh, pick up," she ordered, as if the kid could hear her. She was shaking inside, scared to death. When Josh's disembodied voice asked her to leave a message, she did. "Hi, this is Jenna, Ca.s.sie's mom. I'm worried about her. She's not here at the house and I thought, make that I hoped, she was with you. Please call me back as soon as you can." She rattled off her phone number before hanging up and dialing a final number.

A woman's rough voice answered. She sounded as if she'd just woken up. "h.e.l.lo?"

"Mrs. Sykes? This is Jenna Hughes. I'm looking for my daughter. I was hoping to talk to Josh."

"He ain't here right now. Don't know when he'll be back, neither." She paused, and Jenna heard the click of a lighter, then the deep intake of breath. "I figured he was with your daughter," Wanda Sykes said, and the tone of her voice hinted that Ca.s.sie was the bad influence of the pair.

"I don't know where either one of them is."

"Don't that just figure." Another long drag of her cigarette. "You know, I been tryin' to rein him in, but he don't listen to me, 'specially when it comes to your daughter. I told him to keep his distance, that she ain't his kind, but would he listen? h.e.l.l, no. Never did have a lick of sense. Too much like his old man. Only interested in drinkin', smokin', and gettin' himself some."

Jenna was stunned. She'd never met this woman, and yet Wanda was more than willing to spill her guts. "Listen, when Josh comes in, or calls, would you have him phone me?"

A cackling, sarcastic laugh that ended with a coughing fit. "Oh, I'll tell him, if it'll do any good and if I'm awake. Sure, I'll tell him."

"Please, leave him a note if you're going to go to bed." How could Wanda not be worried sick?

"Didn't you say you left him a message on his cell phone? He'll get back to you." She hung up as if Ca.s.sie's whereabouts was of no concern.

"Idiot woman. Doesn't she know there's a madman running around abducting women?" Jenna muttered. Without waiting for Rinda's response, Jenna raced up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time, the feeble light of her flashlight bobbing in front of her. She found the shotgun beneath her bed, the sh.e.l.ls in her nightstand. She loaded the gun, clicked on the safety, and headed back to ground level where Rinda was adding wood to the dying fire. Red embers glowed and a few flames began to lick at the new chunks of fir.

"I'll come with you."

"No." Jenna glared at her friend. "Absolutely not. Stay here. I've got my cell. If I need you, I'll call."

"If it works."

"Yeah."

"Tell me you're not going to do anything foolish," Rinda said, spying the shotgun. She was sitting on the edge of the hearth, the embers in the fireplace behind her finally catching fire to crackle, hiss, and cast s.h.i.+fting golden shadows through the room. "Tell me you're going to take Shane's advice."

"I'm going to find my kids," Jenna said. "That's what I'm going to do."

Rinda's gaze slid to the shotgun. "With a gun?"

"For protection. Or if some creep's got the girls."

Rinda snorted. "Do you even know how to use that thing?"

"Well enough," Jenna said, and headed outside to the night where the wind blasted, the snow and sleet slanted from the sky, and somewhere, oh, G.o.d, somewhere, her children were.

"Sheriff Carter?" a male voice said over the crackle of static on the cell phone connection. Carter turned his back to the wind and the accident, a jackknifed semi and a small car smashed like a tin can. EMTs were working on the survivors, the M.E. had been called for the fatality. "This is Officer Craig, OSP. We were on our way out to the Hughes place, but we got caught up with an accident here on the highway. Two injured, one critical. A woman trying to have a baby. The EMTs are on their way, but we won't be able to get out of here for at least half an hour."

d.a.m.n! Carter checked his watch. The unit should have been at Jenna's by now.

"I've called for backup, but the department's stretched to the breaking point."

"I'll handle it," Carter said.

"We'll get there as soon as we can."

"I know."

Carter hung up and walked to the scene where Lieutenant Sparks was taking notes. "Do you need me for anything?" he asked, and Larry looked up, dark eyes a.s.sessing.

"What's up?"

Carter explained and Sparks nodded. "I can handle this. Go ahead and take off."

He didn't need any further impetus. He was in his Blazer and driving as fast as he dared, winds.h.i.+eld wipers slapping off snow, police band crackling, his heart in his throat. Hang in there, Jenna, he thought, and planned to ream out and fire that useless piece of trash who called himself a bodyguard. What the h.e.l.l was Turnquist thinking?

His cell phone rang and he answered, dreading a call that would pull him away from Jenna's place. "Carter."

"Hi, it's BJ. I've been called to an accident on 84, but I thought you should know that I got a match."

"A match?" he repeated, and his gloved hands tightened over the steering wheel.

"It's not much, but you were right. There was an employee who worked for Hazzard Brothers who left right after working on White Out. He was a makeup man who also did technical stuff and he was injured in the explosion, nearly lost a leg. Collected a hefty sum of cash, nearly a million dollars, and disappeared. They checked their forwarding addresses-one in, get this, Medford-but that was a while back."

"Mavis Gette was last seen in Medford," Carter said. "Okay, so what's his name?" He braced himself. Knew it could be anyone in town and probably not Wes Allen.

"Steven White," she said.

"Steven White? Never heard of him."

"Neither have I, and he's not in our local phone book. Of course, there are about twenty S. Whites in the Portland-Metro area and I'm looking into them. I'm also asking for all public records under that name.

"The Hazzard Brothers have a ton of employee information they're faxing me, including White's employee picture. If this guy's using an alias, we'll find him."

"And check any property bought since the accident. This guy has to live around here somewhere, and I bet he doesn't want a landlord snooping around, so get a list of people who've bought places in the time since the accident."

"There's one other thing," BJ said in a rush. "I don't know how this factors in, if at all. But Steven White was the name of a character in Resurrection. He was Anne Parks's, Jenna Hughes's character's, love interest."

"Oh, this factors in," he said, sure of it. "I just don't know how. I'll call Lieutenant Sparks and have him get in touch with the FBI, run Steven White's name through their database; and see if anyone with that name on the West Coast was ever incarcerated."

"You got it," BJ said, "as soon as I get back to the office."

"Keep me posted." Carter clicked off, dialed Sparks and made his request, then turned off the main road. Jenna's house was less than twenty minutes away.

Gripping the shotgun in one hand, Jenna directed the beam of her flashlight with the other. Icy snow pelted her as she tried to read the footprints that had collected around the house, garage, and sheds. Overhead, the windmill creaked and spun in the frigid wind, and though the night was alight with the blanket of snow, it seemed eerie, filled with an evil she couldn't touch or see, could only feel, as if it were breathing hard and cold against the back of her neck.

The tracks were half covered with fresh snow, but she noticed several sets leading to the stable, or the fence line, or the barn. Big footprints. Made by Turnquist as he perused the property.

A fine lotta good that did, she thought angrily, when she noticed the smaller prints, nearly buried, heading straight to the barn. Her heart galumphed. Allie...the footprints had to belong to Allie, and beside the girl's tracks, those belonging to some animal. The dog? There was also a larger set. Hopefully belonging to Turnquist.

Help me, she thought, and started following the footprints, the beam of her flashlight illuminating her path. Her heart was jackhammering with dread, adrenaline rus.h.i.+ng through her bloodstream. What if the b.a.s.t.a.r.d had her daughters? She thought fleetingly of Sonja Hatch.e.l.l, Lynnetta Swaggert, and Roxie Olmstead, all strong adults and probably up against the same sick son of a b.i.t.c.h that had taken her girls. Dread settled like lead in her heart. Her fingers clenched harder over the shotgun.

Would she be able to shoot the creep?

If he had her kids-no problem.

What if he used Allie as a s.h.i.+eld?

She'd have to find a way to get her daughter free.

What if Allie and Ca.s.sie are already dead?

She wouldn't even go there. Setting her jaw, she trudged through the knee-deep snow to the window and peered carefully into the darkened barn. She used it only for storage now. She'd never owned cattle or sheep; her horses were housed in the stable.

She saw nothing but blackness through the icy panes, heard no sign of life. But the footsteps had ended at the barn door.

Drawing a deep breath, she clicked off her flashlight. There was no reason to draw any more attention to herself or make herself an easier target than she already was. If someone was waiting for her inside, she wanted to level the playing field a little.

And then she glanced at the snow near the door again and her hopes plummeted. A splatter of dark spots, partially covered by half an inch of white, oozing stains that had melted the snow and were now being covered by new flakes.

Bird droppings, she told herself but knew better. One quick burst of illumination from her flashlight confirmed it. Blood. Deep red splotches of blood.

Her insides curdled with fear. Images of her daughters came to mind, and she forced herself to push onward. Maybe they were only wounded...she could help them. Fear driving her forward, she pried open a side door and it creaked softly, the sound muted by the wind.

She slipped into the barn and wished she'd picked up Turnquist's night vision goggles, the ones she'd spied upon his coffee table. Too late now. The scent of dry hay and dust tickled her nostrils and over the sound of wind whistling through a crack in a window, she heard something...something quiet and steady and out of place.

Safety still locked, she hoisted her shotgun to her shoulder.

Inching her way around the old, empty mangers, she squinted into the darkness, spying shadows of tools and grain sacks and images that seemed ghostly in the gloom. Only pale light from the whiteness outside the small windows gave any visibility. The shotgun was heavy and the sound she couldn't identify, the noise that was out of place in this old barn seemed closer, still soft and m.u.f.fled, but definitely human.

Her throat went dry.

She wasn't alone.

A low, frightening growl reverberated through the cavernous barn. Jenna almost dropped her gun as she spun to face the noise.

A dog barked loudly. Jenna's heart was in her throat as scrambling, frantic claws sc.r.a.ped against the floorboards.

"Critter, no!" Allie's panic-stricken voice shouted from the corner near the stairs to the hayloft.

"Allie?" Jenna nearly collapsed in relief. She headed toward the sound of her daughter's voice. "Allie? It's Mom. I'm here." She flicked on the beam of her flashlight, s.h.i.+ning it on her own face before sweeping the weak illumination toward the wall.

"Mom?" Fear strangled her daughter's voice. "Oh, Mom!"

To h.e.l.l with being a target-Jenna ran toward the sound, Critter nearly tripping her in his eagerness. Her flashlight swept one of the stalls and there was Allie, curled into a fetal position, rocking back and forth, tears running down her face. She jettisoned herself toward Jenna. The shotgun clattered to the floor as Jenna threw her arms around her child.

Gasping, sobbing, quivering head to toe, Allie clung to her.

"Shhh...baby..." Jenna said. "It's all right, I'm here."

"No...no..." Allie's voice was garbled, her face white, her eyes round in the darkness.

"Are you all right?" It was a ridiculous question. Allie, though showing no signs of physical wounds, was nearly hysterical.

"Where's Ca.s.sie?" Jenna whispered, holding her daughter close and remembering the blood.

"With...with...him." Hiccupping and sobbing, Allie seemed barely able to breathe.

"Shh, honey, calm down. We're okay. Now, who's Ca.s.sie with? Turnquist? Or Josh?"

Allie was shaking so violently, Jenna had to brace herself against a pillar supporting the haymow to stay upright. Critter, too, was anxious, whining and growling, pacing. The barn was cold as a meat locker and there was a smell that was out of place.

"No," Allie insisted hysterically. "Not with Josh, with him. With him!"

"Who?" Jenna asked, but her heart sank and icy blades of fear sliced deep into her soul. No...oh, G.o.d, no...not the pervert who had been stalking her. She glanced out one of the small windows and prayed for headlights, some indication that the police were on their way. "Come on," she whispered. "Let's go back to the house."

"No!" Allie sniffed and clung harder. "He's there," she whispered frantically. "He's waiting."

"He's where?" Jenna asked, her skin p.r.i.c.kling.

"In the house."

Jenna's stomach twisted. Rinda. "But I was just there, I searched it top to bottom. Listen, you have to be brave. Let go of me for a second."

"No!"

"I need to call the house and get the shotgun. Come on, Allie...I'm right here." Gently she peeled her daughter off her and bent down to retrieve the shotgun. "You hold the flashlight, okay?"

"Y-yeah."

Fumbling, Jenna extracted the phone from her pocket and flipped it open. The battery was low, but she hit the speed-dial number for her house.

One ring.

What was dripping? That sound. Now that Allie had quieted, there was another noise. A plop, plop...

Two rings.

And the smell...what the devil was that smell? Copper? Iron? Some kind of metallic tinge in the air?

Three rings. Why wasn't she answering? Panic a.s.saulted her. Was Allie right? Was the monster in her house, waiting?

Oh, no, please, not Rinda. "Answer, d.a.m.n it."

Four rings and her own voice answered. "Rinda, pick up!" she whispered over the recording. "Pick up the d.a.m.ned phone!" Critter was whining, dancing beside her and she gave up. Hung up and dialed Shane Carter's cell.