Scream For Me

“Three, actually. Bailey, you can’t falter. And if I give you an order, you obey me without question. Do you understand?”

He was coming closer now, opening a door, then firing a single shot. She heard screams from where she’d only heard the weeping before. Horrified, Bailey met Beardsley’s eyes as more doors were opened and more shots fired. The screaming faded as the voices were silenced one by one. “He’s killing them.”

A muscle twitched in Beardsley’s jaw. “I know. Change in plan. You hide behind the door, I’ll stand on the other side. Move, Bailey.”

She obeyed and he took up position next to the door, his big dagger in one hand. A second later the door flew open and she covered her face to keep from being hit. Bailey heard a strangled cry and a gurgle and then a thump.

“Let’s go,” Beardsley said. She stepped over the body of one of the guards she’d seen one of the times he’d taken her back to the office. Beardsley wiped the dagger against his pants, cleaning off the blood, then he was ru

But her knees were weak and her legs so bruised she kept stumbling. “Just go,” she said. “You run. Leave me here.”

But he didn’t let go, dragging her past one cell, then another. Some were empty. Most were not. Bailey gagged at the sight of the girls, chained and bleeding. Dead.

“Don’t look,” he barked. “Just run.”

“I can’t.”

He picked her up and tucked her under his arm like she was a football. “You’re not dying on my watch, Bailey,” he gritted, ru

Then Beardsley stopped and she looked up. He stood in the middle of the hall and he had a gun. Beardsley tossed her and she landed on her knees. “Run,” he barked.

Then Beardsley plowed into him and knocked him against the wall. Bailey made herself get up and run while the two men grappled behind her. She heard the sickening sound of bone hitting the concrete wall, but she kept going.

Until she saw the girl. She was battered and blood oozed from a hole in her side and a second, glancing wound to her head. She’d clawed her way across her cell and had stretched out one arm into the hall. But she was still alive.

Weakly the girl lifted her hand. “Help me,” she whispered. “Please.”

Without thinking Bailey grabbed the girl’s hand and dragged her to her feet. “Move.”

Dutton, Friday, February 2, 2:35 p.m.

Daniel stood on the front porch of his family’s house, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu. It was here he’d stood, nearly three weeks ago, with Frank Loomis. Frank had told him his parents “might be missing.” Of course they were already long dead. But Daniel’s search for them had led him to Philadelphia and Simon and the pictures. His search for the pictures had led him right back here.

“Déjà vu all over again?” Luke asked softly and Daniel nodded.

“Yeah.” He unlocked the door and pushed it open and found his feet wouldn’t move.

Alex slipped her arm around his waist. “Come on.” She tugged him over the threshold and he stopped in the foyer, his eyes doing a sweep of the place. He’d hated this house. Hated every brick of it. He turned to find Susa

“Where?” he asked.

Susa

Upstairs, Daniel frowned. Doors he’d closed the last time he was here were opened and a painting on the hall wall was askew. He pushed open the door to his parents’ bedroom. The room had been ransacked, the mattress slashed.

“They’ve been here,” he said flatly. “Looking for Simon’s key.”

“This way,” Susa

There was, he thought, an evilness hanging in the air. Or perhaps it was just his imagination. But Alex’s face had taken on an uncomfortable cast.

“It has kind of a presence, doesn’t it?” she whispered, and he squeezed her hand.

Susa

Something in her voice had the hairs rising on the back of his neck. “Yes. I thought I knew them all.”

She knelt, feeling around the baseboards. “I found the hidey-hole off my closet one night when I was hiding from Simon. I’d huddled up against the wall and I must have pushed the right way because the panel opened and I rolled behind the wall.” She steadily worked as she talked. “I wondered if all the closets had these hidey-holes. One day when I thought Simon was gone, I tried to see if I could open his.”

The flat finality with which she’d said it twisted his stomach. “He caught you.”

“At first I didn’t think he had. I heard him thumping up the stairs and I ran to my room. But he had,” she said, quietly now. “When I woke up with a whiskey bottle in my hand, it was inside my hidey-hole. He’d stuffed me in there.”

Alex smoothed her hand down his arm and he realized he’d been holding her hand too tightly. He let go, but she held on, comforting him.

Daniel cleared his throat. “He knew about your hiding place.”

Susa

Now that he had them, Daniel was almost afraid to look. His heart beating hard, he lifted the lid. And wanted to throw up.

“Dear God,” Alex whispered beside him.

Friday, February 2, 2:50 p.m.

“Come on.” Bailey tugged the girl’s hand, dragging her through the dark hallways. Beardsley had pointed this way. He couldn’t be wrong. Beardsley. Her heart clenched hard. He’d given up his freedom… for me. Now he’d die. For me.

Concentrate, Bailey. You have to get out of here. Don’t let that man have given up his life in vain. Focus. Find the door. After another few minutes, she saw light.

Light at the end of the tu