Home Repair Is Homicide - Crawlspace Part 15

And especially not with that anchor still chained to his leg. Which meant that as she'd suspected right from the start of this whole nightmare, she was on her own.

Still taped tightly in the blankets Randy had wrapped her in again, she wiggled to a sitting position and began straining against the tape strips. But it was no use. He'd wrapped them around and around her so no matter how much she twisted and flexed, nothing gave.

"Inch over here if you can," said Sam. "Closer to me." His voice sounded awful, like two pieces of sandpaper being rubbed together. But she had no good plan of her own, so she obeyed.

"Ouch," she said as her hip bones b.u.mped the deck. After a long, painful slog across the damp, hard boards, finally she got to within an arm's length of him. "Now what?"

"Get ... your back close to my hands."

She squinted doubtfully at him, then saw something gleam in his trembling fingers. It was a tiny penknife.

A thrill of hope went through her at the sight of it; maybe she wouldn't die after all. A shaky grin creased Sam's face.

"He was in too big a hurry," said the young man who held her salvation in his not-very-steady grip. She recalled Randy's rough, almost panicky rush as he'd seized her ... .

You b.a.s.t.a.r.d, you made a mistake, she thought exultantly, and in the back of her mind she could hear the girls in their graves cheering about it, too.

Eagerly she bounced herself closer to Sam, angled her stiff, tape-wrapped torso near enough for him to reach it. Freedom ...

He dropped the knife. It clattered to the deck. In the pale moonlight she could see it was bloodstained.

Sam's blood. "Ouch," he whispered softly, and let his head fall back. Or maybe it fell back without him realizing it.

"Sam?" Please, no, not now when she was so close ... "Sam?"

His eyelids fluttered open. "Sorry. Maybe you can ..." His head moved slightly.

Get that. Oh, yes. She definitely could get that.

She let herself fall onto her side, then inched like a worm toward the fallen blade, heedless of the pain the movement cost her.

Eyes on the prize, d.a.m.n it. Because this was it, she had a strong feeling that this was her very last chance. She could get out of this tape somehow, get out of it and live, or stay in it and ...

No. She shoved the thought from her head. The knife lay just inches away. Craning her neck, she touched her lips to it, tasted the blood on it, clamped her teeth around it, and pulled back.

It stayed between her teeth, though the blood taste made her gorge rise. Aching and feeling half dead with fatigue and terror, she began wiggling her way back.

"Hurry," Sam whispered weakly.

Yeah, tell me about it. A little more ... there. She thrust her chin up, poked the knife toward his searching fingers ...

"Okay." This near, she could hear the harsh hitching of his breath, smell the blood soaking his shirt. "Sit up, I can't-"

Biting back pain-sounds, she struggled to comply and at last got herself turned around and sitting so he could reach her. The first shaky cut went through the blanket into her arm.

Startled, she cried out. "Shh!" he warned, and pulled the knife back. But the next cut was no less vigorous. "I'm sorry," he gasped. "But there's no time for-"

"Just get the d.a.m.ned tape off me," she grated out. "I don't care if you cut my arms off. It surprised me, is all."

At last the blankets fell away. Next he slit the tape from her arms, which produced an unpleasant surprise in a night that had already been full of them: She couldn't move.

And the man-Randy, his name was, Randy Dodd-could appear again at any moment.

Suddenly she began sobbing, hating it, hating herself, but unable to stop, because she'd gotten so far, she'd gotten free, and now none of it was going to make any difference.

"I can't move," she wept. "They're all ..."

"Hey," said Sam. "They're asleep, that's all. Your arms and legs are just ..."

A cough cut his words off as he slid down, tried to sit up again, and gave up the effort, collapsing with a hand pressed to his middle. Creased with pain, his face went even whiter. In the moonlight, his lips looked nearly black.

The sight shut her tears off abruptly. Was it just a few hours ago that she'd written him off because he wouldn't be able to help her? Yet now, suddenly, keeping him alive felt almost as important as surviving herself.

Because they were together against Randy, and an ally in that fight seemed desperately required; she didn't see why that should be, but it was. It just was. That Randy shouldn't win. "Sam?"

The feeling was coming back to her arms and legs, ferocious p.r.i.c.kling and tingling that was much worse than not being able to feel them at all. But they moved.

Tentatively she lifted one arm and then the other, flexed her fingers as much as she could, tried getting her feet under her. Up, big fella, Chip Hahn used to say whenever he hauled himself out of a chair after a long session at the computer. Chip ... She hadn't thought about him in hours, not since she looked for him outside the bar.

A fine a.s.sistant you turned out to be, she thought at him, with a flash of the old irritation she used to feel when he screwed up. Which, she had to admit now, he almost never did.

But that thought seemed so irrelevant, she dismissed it almost at once. Because wherever he was, he wasn't beat up and captive, held by some guy who would kill you as soon as look at you.

Another burst of resentment made her lips tighten, then all thought of Chip was gone, along with everything else back in her old life, the one she'd been s.n.a.t.c.hed out of.

Because now everything was different. "Sam?" she said again, then got to her feet and managed to totter a few steps.

The boat moved gently in the water, the wind had gone down, and the sky, fully cleared now, spread overhead thick with stars.

Still no sign of Randy. What he might be doing, she had no idea; digging graves, maybe. The thought sent her to Sam's side again, where she crouched urgently.

"Sam? Listen to me. Do you know how to run the boat? How to start it?"

No reply. She shook his shoulder gently, drew back with a little gasp when even that slight motion produced fresh blood on the front of his shirt. He roused with difficulty.

"Can't go ... now. Tide's too low. Can you ... water?"

She got up. Everything hurt, her wrist most of all, but now she thought maybe it wasn't broken, because she could move it and the swelling at least wasn't getting any worse.

And water was a good, a wonderful, idea; her tongue felt like a dry bone. "Cabin ..." Sam muttered.

Turning, she confronted the dark hatchway. The notion of going down there at all repelled her; if he returned and shut her in there ...

But of course that's where the water would be. Food, too, although the idea of eating was disgusting. The thought returned that if Randy came back while she was down there, he could trap her there.

The fear of what he might do with her then made her stomach roll lazily and her throat close with fright. On the other hand, there might be more than food and water down there.

Randy might've stashed a weapon, maybe even a gun. Carolyn didn't know how to shoot a gun, had in fact never even held one. She was afraid of them.

But he didn't know that. Swallowing past the cottony-thick terror that was so all-consuming it felt like it might smother her all by itself, she put both hands on the frame pieces around the hatchway opening and started down quickly, before she could lose her nerve.

The cabin was a tiny, low-ceilinged enclosure with a small filmy plastic window, a low cupboard, and the table on sawhorses. Moonlight through the square of window plastic showed a crumpled bag of Cheetos and a half-eaten pack of Ring Dings on the table.

Despite her belief that she wasn't hungry, she crammed one of the Ring Dings into her mouth. Chemical-tasting fake sweetness clogged her throat, but she forced it down.

It gagged her, but she made it stay there. The stink in the cabin was hideous, even with the hatchway door open. Squinting around, she saw why: A plastic bucket on the floor was coated with ancient fish scales. Unidentifiable stuff stained the rough table. Cleaning and gutting tools, some with toothed blades and others with edges so sharp they glinted even in the thick gloom, hung from nails.

A plastic gallon jug stood in one corner; she grabbed it and cautiously sniffed its spout. Water ... She drank greedily, then spied a quart bottle of Wild Turkey by one of the sawhorse legs.

Thank you, G.o.d. ... She tipped the bottle up and took a long, warming swallow, felt the alcohol hit her and spread out through her nerve endings, and took another.

Then she caught sight of the sc.r.a.pbook. Sticking out of a large canvas duffel, its corner looked at first like a sheet of cardboard; she almost missed it.

Even as she approached the bag, she thought only that it might contain a gun, or perhaps a cell phone. Her own phone was missing along with the rest of her bag's contents, and the bag itself.

Still in the car trunk, maybe, or in a trash can somewhere. She didn't care. Hastily she rummaged in the duffel.

A tattered sweater came out, some socks and underwear, a can of mosquito repellent. A few T-shirts, threadbare jeans, sneakers, and ... a black official-looking folder.

She opened it, found papers in an envelope. A Canadian pa.s.sport, the name on it unfamiliar, the photograph recognizably Randy Dodd.

There was a driver's license, also Canadian. And a bankbook in French, which Carolyn neither read nor spoke.

She tucked them away again, not wanting Randy Dodd to know she'd been down here, and reached out for the sc.r.a.pbook to put it back where she'd found it, as well.

As she did so, it fell open. A clipping slid out. Stapled to it was a photograph.

Not a newspaper photograph. Carolyn glanced at it and felt her gorge rise; reflexively, she grabbed the Wild Turkey bottle again. The alcohol made her eyes water, blurring the face of the girl in the picture.

Unfortunately, it didn't obscure the rest of her body. Or what was left of it ...

Hideously, Carolyn felt her working instincts kick in with a cold surge of excitement. The clipping was a year-old story from a small-town newspaper in Georgia, detailing the disappearance of a local girl.

FAMILY IN LIMBO AS VANISH ANNIVERSARY LOOMS, yelled the headline. Carolyn didn't bother reading the rest. She didn't have time, and anyway, she knew what it would say, so much so that she could have written it herself.

It said what they all said. It said everyone still hoped the girl had just run away, that after all this time she was alive.

Even though they knew she wasn't. Carolyn flipped through the rest of the sc.r.a.pbook, knowing what she would find: girls in graves, girls who were about to be in graves, girls who had been in graves but who'd been removed from them.

Six in all. Two in Georgia, three in South Carolina, one in Alabama, all vanished over a period of eighteen months. The last one had disappeared in a Wal-Mart parking lot, in broad daylight.

All had long black hair like Carolyn's, except for one whose hair color could not any longer be determined by anyone who hadn't already known her.

Not from the photograph, or in any other way. Carolyn closed the sc.r.a.pbook with hands she would positively not allow to tremble, put it back in the duffel, picked up the water jug and the Wild Turkey bottle.

She stumbled back up on deck and crouched by Sam, tipped the jug to his lips. In her mind's eye, all those dead girls watched her carefully, waiting to see what she would do.

For them. For herself. Sam drank thirstily, then gasped and signaled enough. She broke off a piece of the chocolate snack and showed it to him.

"Can you eat? Maybe you should ..." But to this he shook his head firmly; she hesitated, then ate the other Ring Ding herself.

"Do you want some of this?" She held up the Wild Turkey.

He hesitated, licking his lips, but refused this, too. "Maybe I shouldn't," he said with a strange little laugh. "I might have something kind of ... important to do."

She didn't like the sound of that. She took another sizable swig herself, capped the bottle, and put it aside. "Sam, we've got to get out of here."

He frowned, said nothing. "While he's gone, Sam," she said urgently. "We've got to move the boat out of here, or get off it before he comes back."

It had been maybe an hour now that Randy had been gone, though she had no way of measuring time. Her watch had smashed when she landed on her wrist, and Sam wasn't wearing one.

She inspected him again. He was breathing, and his color-at least as far as she could tell-seemed better, his lips not so bluish-black and his cheeks less papery-looking.

Though that could be the growing moonlight, as the fog thinned and the sky cleared. She picked his wrist up and tried to find his pulse, but she didn't know how to take it, and what would she do about it anyway, whatever it was?

"Sam." His eyelids flickered, but there was still no reply, and she had to hurry.

"Sam, I've got to leave here, I've got to try to find someone to help us, I can't-"

The water would be frigid, and all she could see of sh.o.r.e was dark, the big old trees and whatever lived in them. A person could die out there, especially in this cold, and she was not so stupid as to think she could survive just by wishing it so.

But staying here ... It just wasn't possible. Not if she wanted to live. "Sam, I'm going. I'll try to come back for you, I'll find someone and tell them ..."

The boat rocked gently in the dark waves. She shook Sam's shoulder gently. Muttering, he woke. "No. You can't ..."

Leave me, she thought he meant. "I'm sorry, I don't want to, but-"

It was only thirty feet or so to sh.o.r.e. Wincing, he opened his eyes. "Tide's running out," he whispered. "Too fast. It'll take you ... ."

A terrible suspicion struck her. Rising, she hurried to the rail and peered over. In the moonlight the water's surface was a bright, ruffled expanse, like aluminum foil smoothing and then crinkling again.

Not too bad-looking, really, and there were plenty of rocks sticking up out of it. So even if it turned out to be deep, she could stagger from one to the next ... .

"Don't do it." His voice was an anxious whisper, followed by a cough.

You just don't want me to leave, she thought rebelliously. You just can't stand it, that somebody else might get to ...

But then she looked straight down, saw the water against the boat's side rushing along ... racing along. On the surface, it was flat. But ...

No, she thought. Oh, please no.

Because Sam was right, she'd never make it. Not that it was so far, and the rocks were there, all right. But the water ... the water was running like a river. A fast river.

"Rocks ... too slippery," he whispered. "Don't ..."

Wildly she looked around for something to help her, to hold on to, the tree that the boat was hidden under, maybe. Grimly she managed to climb onto the rail, straining up hard with both arms, trying to reach one of the thicker branches overhead.

But when she grabbed it, it snapped crisply off in her hand, knocking her off balance. Arms windmilling, she fought to stay upright, then sidestepped crazily and fell off the rail, tumbling to the hard deck.