Evil Never Dies

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Claire sat up and tried to figure out where she was. The room was dark. Her head was spi

Where am I?

She felt around, using her hands to search in the dark. She was on a thin mattress covered with a sheet and a scratchy wool blanket. Her heart raced, pounded against her chest.

She crawled over the mattress until she could feel the ground. Smooth cement. Pushing herself to her feet, she kept her arms straight out in front of her, careful not to trip as she explored the room. The tips of her fingers brushed against a rough stone wall. She moved slowly, inch by inch, feeling around, hoping to find a window or a door. Finally. A door.

She tried the knob, but it was no use. The door was locked. Down on her knees, she tried to peek under the door. She couldn’t see a thing. Back on her feet again, she crossed to the other side of the room and found a wall of empty wooden slots. She was in a wine cellar.

A clear image of the man’s face came to her: he was wearing a hat and sunglasses. He had a crooked nose, an ugly, wiry beard, and a wide smile. The man who picked her up on the side of the road had brought her here.

How stupid could she be? Getting into the car with a stranger was bad enough, but then asking him for drugs and taking his magic pills? Hell, she didn’t even know what kind of car he’d been driving. Four-door? Two-door? Blue? Green? She had no idea.

She sank down onto the mattress and tried to get a grip, tried to think.

Her mouth was dry. She couldn’t remember ever being so thirsty. Once again she began to crawl around the room on all fours, hoping he’d at least left her some food or water. But there was nothing here. No windows. No table. No chairs. No food and no water.

“Are you awake?”

Her head snapped up at the sound of his voice. She scrambled to the door. “Please let me out. My family is probably worried sick about me. You have to let me call my mom.”

“Oh, Claire. That would be foolish of me. You’re a smart girl. I can’t let you do that.”

She banged on the door, didn’t stop until her hands hurt from the effort. “Let me out of here, you sicko!”

She heard the squeak of metal. A sliver of light spilled through the top of the door. It looked like a mail slot. She stood on her tiptoes and found herself peering into gray-blue eyes.

She stepped back, put a hand to her chest, tried to catch her breath.

“Please,” she said when she realized he might leave her there and never come back. “I’m begging you. I’ll be good, but I don’t like the dark. And I’m thirsty. My throat is dry. I swear, I can’t breathe.”

“My little drama queen,” he said. “I’ll get you a glass of water and something to eat. I’ll be back.”

The metal door shut with a clank.

She stood still. She needed to think. He said he would be back. As soon as he opened the door, she would attack him, claw at his eyes and then run.

Where was she, though?

If she escaped the wine cellar, would she find another locked door? And it didn’t help that she was small and he was tall. Inside the car, the top of his head had looked as if it was only an inch from the roof. The weird hat he’d been wearing probably made him look even taller. The hat. The strange hat and sunglasses made sense. His beard hadn’t looked right, either. It had to be a disguise. She never should have gotten into his car. What an idiot she was. And to think she had believed every word the man uttered. Right down to the ridiculous magic pills he happened to keep in his car. Shit!

She chewed on her thumbnail. She already knew she couldn’t fight the man. Her little brother could practically pin her to the floor when they wrestled. When it came to fighting her way out of there, she didn’t stand a chance.

Not without a weapon.

That thought set her in motion. She moved around in the dark until she could feel the wooden wine rack beneath her fingers again. She brushed her hands over every wooden slot, looking for a loose board. The squeak of metal—the slot in the door—stopped her dead. Damn. She’d have to wait. She dropped down on the mattress.

He had a flashlight this time, and the little beam of light hit her directly in the face.

“There you are.” For a long moment, he merely stared at her, the beam of light roaming over her, his beady eyes unblinking. He was a creeper, all right.

“Stay right where you are, Claire. You need to understand how this works. You need to stay perfectly still. If you do anything that I don’t tell you to do, bad things will happen. One wrong move and it’s over. Now, Claire, I want you to nod your head if you understand. Can you do that?”

She nodded her head and prayed she would find a way out of there alive.

It wasn’t long before she heard the door being unlocked.

The door opened. Using his foot, he pushed a doorstop in place to hold it open while he brought in a tray. There was a bowl of soup and a tall plastic cup filled with water. There was also a napkin and a spoon. The bowl and the cup were made of plastic. No help there.

He put the tray on the floor, then watched her closely as she reached for the water and gulped it down in thirsty swallows. She kept her eye on the spoon. It was metal.

“You are a thirsty girl,” he said.

His voice grated on her nerves. The man disgusted her. She looked at him, tried to get a view of the room and the stairs behind him. Stone floors and narrow steps made of stone curved around the wall until they disappeared. It was like some sort of medieval castle down here.

“There’s no way out,” he said. “You can pound on these walls and scream at the top of your lungs all day long and nobody will hear you.”

She started in on the soup. It was lukewarm and tasted like shit, but she was hungry. She needed to keep her strength up if she had any hope of escaping.

“What happened to all of that bravado I saw yesterday in the car?”

“That was before some creepy, disgusting old man brought me to his weird castle to keep me prisoner in his dungeon.”

“There we go,” he said. “Much better.”

She kept her eye on the spoon as she lifted each spoonful of soup to her mouth. Be patient, she reminded herself, but the idea of sitting in this room for another hour, let alone another day, made it difficult to sit there and do nothing. She lifted her chin, looked him square in the eyes. “Why are you staring at me?”

“You’re mesmerizing, Claire. I don’t think you have an inkling as to what an absolute masterpiece you are.”

“Let me go. I can’t live here with you.”

“Who said anything about living?” He picked up the tray and waited for her to put everything on it.

Dutifully, she placed her bowl on the tray. The spoon was clutched tightly within her fist. She wanted to jab it into his eye, thrust the hard metal into his throat, but she felt unusually weak. The bastard had put something in her soup. Her head began to spin. Her eyelids felt heavy.

“I bet you wish you were back home with that hateful family of yours—isn’t that right, Claire?”

She wanted to spit in his eye, lunge at him, and rip that stupid beard from his face. But she was light-headed and tired. The spoon dropped from her hand. Her body sagged against the flimsy mattress. Instead of charging at him, she felt herself nodding in agreement right before she drifted off to sleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Lizzy pulled to the curb, screeching to a stop. She threw the car in park in front of the building where Stacey Whitmore worked. Stacey had made the mistake of leaving her keycard behind in Lizzy’s car after their “interview” with Be