Bobcat thought,
Well, there’s gonna be a
rob
bery, alright
, and chuckled at his wit.
He waited until they reached the rear of the building, then keyed the ignition and followed, switching off the headlights, gravel crunching under the all-terrain tires. He rolled up on them seconds later, hanging on to each other back here, strolling in the moonlight without a care in the world. They didn’t even turn around.
Bobcat stopped six feet away from them and flipped a special dash switch, bathing them in the seething light of twin Gobi Stealth LED roof racks. By the time they turned to squint at him, shading their eyes in the glare, Bobcat was striding toward them across the gravel, saying, “That’s my little toad you got there.”
Rob said, “What the...Patty, you know this guy?”
Bobcat said, “Bitch looks more like a Trixie,” and drove the heel of his hand into the guy’s nose. The big bastard stumbled but didn’t fall, and Bobcat kicked him in the balls with a steel-toed boot, following through with an upcurving elbow that dropped him like a sack of seeds. Finishing with a brutal kick to the ribs, Bobcat leaned over to examine his handiwork and the flag girl swung at him, a ring on her finger grazing his ear, drawing blood. Screeching like a barn owl, she wound up for another shot and Bobcat caught her by the throat, instantly subduing her.
He looked again at Rob, the man unconscious now, and said to Patty, “It appears you’ll be needing a new escort,” and struck her with the sap, bearing her up as she sagged into his arms. He carried her to the camper and secured her inside, then got behind the wheel and drove out to the highway, humming tunelessly, confident no one had seen him.
* * *
It was after 6:00 P.M. and still no word from the OR. In spite of Trish’s mild objections Dean had stuck around, bringing her coffee and donuts and sitting with her in the lounge, mostly in silence. He’d left a few minutes ago to check in with the OR again, and Trish thought this might be a good time to call her mother...if there was ever going to
be
a good time.
She dialed the number on her cell.
It rang once—
“Do you have any idea the color of shit I had to wade through to
get
you this job in the first place?”
Busted by caller ID.
“I know, Mom, and I’m—”
“No, I don’t think you
do
know. I had to do just about everything but sleep with my boss, the sleazy bastard. And you just take off to Toronto?”
“I’m sorry, Mom, you’re right. It was impulsive and dumb.”
“Oh, it was that and then some. Now you listen to me, young lady. You get your fanny back here by four P.M. tomorrow—and not a minute later—and maybe, just maybe you’ll still have a job.” Her tone softened then. “You can’t expect to go to veterinary college if you can’t afford the tuition.”
Smiling, Trish said, “The letter?” and heard paper being shuffled, her mother saying, “And I quote: ‘The Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph, is pleased to accept your application, and looks forward to your continued academic excellence...’” Which was followed by a wet, unladylike sniff. “You did it, baby. You really did it.”
Trish squealed and gave the air a punch, drawing a stare from an old dude tottering past on a walker. She said, “
Yes.
Thanks, Mom. I left in such a hurry I forgot to check. And I’ll be home by four, I promise.” She saw Dean getting off the elevator, coming toward her now. “I wanna go tell Dean, okay?”
Putting on a catty tone, her mother said, “Stacey told me you two got back together,” and Trish could almost hear her grinning; she’d always liked Dean, although Trish had never told her the real reason they’d broken up. “That was awfully sudden. Your dear old ma’s gonna wanna hear all
about
this little romantic turnaround.”
“Mom.”
“Okay, sweetie, go tell him the good news. I’m so proud of you.”
“I’m proud of me, too. Bye, Mom.”
She signed off and joined Dean at their seats, bright yellow wing chairs by the windows. As she sat Dean said, “They’re still working on him up there, but I caught one of the scrub nurses at break and she said he’s stable now. Whoever stabbed him got his lung, bowel, spleen and liver, but she said she thinks they’ll be done soon.”
“That’s great news.”
Dean said, “So how’d your mom take it?”
Trish felt herself blushing. “I lied to her about why I’m here. I hated doing it, but she was already furious at me for taking off.” She smiled then. “I got accepted at Guelph.”
“Hey, Trish, that’s
great
. I knew you’d make it. I knew it.”
Trish could see the sentiment in his eyes, his genuine happiness for her, and an alarm sounded in her heart. She could feel herself being pulled back in and didn’t like it.
Dean said, “You know, you haven’t changed.”
“It’s only been six months.”
“Seems a lot longer. It’s been a weird six months for me. I—”
“Dean, look, I’m sorry, but I’ve got a lot on my mind right now. God willing, I’m about to see my father for the first time in my life. And like I already told you, I don’t want to rake over all that old shit with you again. You made a choice: a crack pipe and Shelley Dixon. Now it’s up to you to live with it.” She stood. “Maybe you should go. I really appreciate what you’ve done, but it doesn’t change anything between us.”
Dean stood now, too, saying, “I understand. I only wanted to say that after you found us, Shelley and me, it really turned me around. I saw a counselor at the university a few days later.” He hung his head. “I ended up in a rehab program for twenty-eight days. Had to dump a semester to do it.”
He raised his eyes, looking squarely at her now.
“I’m an addict, Trish. I didn’t realize it until treatment. I knew something was wrong, but I sure never thought it was that. So I figured, with your dad and all, the way he’s been living...maybe I could help.”
Trish didn’t know what to say.
Dean said, “My life’s a lot different now. I have regrets, but I’m learning to live with them. I’m portering here for the summer, then heading back to U. of T. for med school in the fall, and...shit, Trish, I’m sorry. So sorry. And if I can help with your dad, I will. You know where to find me.”
He gave her a half smile and started away.
Trish said, “Dean?” and he turned around. She said, “What you did hurt. It really hurt. But what you’re doing now, that takes guts. Thanks again for calling me. And if you’d like, once things settle a bit, maybe we can talk. We were friends for a long time; maybe we can at least salvage that.”
“That’d be great, Trish, thanks. Want me to wait with you?”
“No, that’s okay. I need some time alone.”
Dean nodded and walked away.
* * *
Patty Holzer regained consciousness in total darkness. She was cold, lying spread eagle on her back in a moving vehicle—she could feel the vibratory hum of the wheels through the coarse material beneath her—and she believed she was naked, though she couldn’t be sure because her wrists and ankles were secured to the floor and she could barely move. She considered screaming for help, but decided against it as her recovering memory filled in the blanks.
Someone had attacked them in the parking lot at Zak’s, coming out of the light and beating Rob terribly, then knocking her out and carting her off. And though her head throbbed from the blow she’d taken, her mind was whirring like a computer now, filing back through time to a newscast she’d heard about a month ago:
Another missing girl
, the announcer said.
Gail Grafton, a twenty-three year old college student last seen by her mother as she left their Sturgeon Falls home for a weekend trip to Toronto, where she was scheduled to attend a Shania Twain concert. But Gail never made it to Toronto. Her vehicle was found that evening by police, abandoned in the breakdown lane along a remote stretch of Highway 11, a hundred and twenty kilometers north of Toronto. And though there was no evidence of foul play, investigators are working under the assumption that Gail was abducted; her and four other young women under similar circumstances in the preceding three months...
Patty began to scream. She screamed until her throat was raw and her struggles against her restraints left her limbs cramped and numb. She screamed until she realized the space she was in was soundproof and that no one was ever going to hear her.
And the tomb that enclosed her rolled on.
After some indeterminate period, Patty felt the vehicle turn and the texture of the surface they were driving on change. Her body was jouncing now, and she heard gravel rattling off the undercarriage like distant machinegun fire.
She closed her eyes and prayed.
And after what seemed like forever, the vehicle stopped. The world went silent for a long beat—then a door swung open and a powerful flashbeam found her eyes, blinding her, and that same cocky voice from the parking lot at Zak’s said, “Now I’m gonna loosen this shit off you. You try to kick or take a swat at me, it’s gonna go bad for you, understand?” She felt the enclosure shift as he stepped aboard, the light still scorching her eyes. “But I think you’re gonna behave for ol’ Bobcat, am I right, little toad?”
Sure, you asshole,
Patty thought, fear and fury turning her muscles into high-tension cables. She wasn’t a small girl, and had been wrestling champion two years running as a senior in high school.
You go ahead and think whatever you want.
She braced herself as he got closer, ready to kick or bite or gouge his eyes with her fingernails, whatever it took. Then a stinging slap came out of the light and made her eyes water. “Just a taste,” he said, sounding amused. “In case you think I’m shitting you. It can go whichever way you want, easy or hard, makes no difference to me.”
Keeping the light in her eyes, he sat astride her now and snugged a heavy cloth bag over her head. Then he went to work on the restraints, freeing her right arm first, using a key to release some kind of fixed metal shackle. The significance of that—permanent restraints in a rolling prison—struck Patty with a hundred times the force of the slap he’d given her, and she realized this really
was
the guy who got all those other girls...and not one of them had turned up yet, dead or alive.
A paralyzing horror welled up in her and she bit down hard on her lip to stifle it.
No
, she thought, trembling now, the night air pulling her skin into gooseflesh.
You’ve got to stay sharp.
Once he’d freed her feet, he shifted his weight to work on her other hand, bracing a knee across her throat now, making it difficult to breathe.
“Now remember what I said. You treat Bobby right, why, maybe I’ll let you go back home to your momma when we’re done. You believe me?”
“Yes.”
“It speaks.” He slapped her again, harder this time. “You’ll be good, then?”
“Yes.”
“Show me some of the tricks you were gonna do for young
Rob
?”
“I’ll do whatever you want. Just, please, don’t hurt me.”
He rose and jerked her to her feet. “That’s so sweet.”
He led her to the doorway now—Patty could feel the night air rushing in—and hopped outside, the enclosure shifting as his weight dropped away. When his hand closed around her wrist to pull her through, Patty threw a fierce kick—but all she struck was air and now her bracing foot lost its purchase, toppling her onto her ass in the doorway. There and then gone, he’d sidestepped her attack with a quickness that startled her and set that numbing terror loose in her again.
He said, “I
knew
you’d be the feisty one,” and punched her in the face.
Patty slumped through the doorway into the wet grass.
* * *
Gail Grafton heard the camper pull into the yard and huddled against the wall of the earthen pit under the barn. The base of the pit was flooded with ground water from a recent rain and Gail was freezing, her nude frame showing ribs and knobs of bone from starvation and prolonged exposure. She’d been in the hole almost a month, though any clear sense of time had long since abandoned her, along with the bulk of her sanity. She was pure animal now, any semblance of humanity obscured by pain, constant fear and the absence of any real nutrition. Things crawled into the eight-foot diameter hole from time to time, and Gail had learned to subsist on them. The first thing she’d eaten was a milk snake that had fallen into the pit from the barn up above. That had been on day six, when Gail was still aware enough to keep track of the days by the shifting patterns of light and dark she perceived through the air holes in the thick metal plate that covered the pit. The snake had startled her, slithering across her ankles in the dark, and she’d picked it up by the tail and whipped it against the root-stubbed wall, stunning it. The skin had been scaly and tough, but the meat was quite good, chewy and moist. Nothing that satisfying had come along since.
She listened with an alertness she’d never known in her previous life as a student living with her mother at the age of twenty-three, a life that had already faded from memory and sunk into this pit of despair. There had been another girl down here when Gail was shoved in naked and bleeding, a girl who had stared at her with terrified eyes, so far gone that all she could do was shake her head and moan like a beaten dog. And on the third night, Gail heard the camper pull into the barn—and then the dark shaft was flooded with light, glaring, retina scorching light, and when it was extinguished Gail was alone in the hole in the ground. A few minutes later she heard the screams, faint with distance, but shrill enough to curdle her blood.
And then the chainsaw, silencing the screams.
So she listened. And waited.
* * *
Trish had begun to drowse when a tiny, bright-eyed woman in faded scrubs sat next to her in the visitors’ lounge. “Trish?” the woman said. “I’m Doctor Peale. They tell me you’re our John Doe’s daughter.”
“Yes. I think so. It’s complicated. His name is Jim Gamble.”
“Well, it looks like he’s going to make it. He’s very lucky. But the road ahead will be a rough one. God only knows what he’s been poisoning himself with. On the bright side, guys like him are usually tough as nails.”