Obsession Falls by Christina Dodd
Yet that didn’t solve the immediate problem. Kennedy needed a photo of James Brachler as he had looked in college.
He pushed himself back from his desk, pulled out his phone, and called his sister.
Tabitha answered with that cobweb-mouth sound that meant she’d been asleep, and a note of alarm. “You okay?”
“Fine. I need you to do something for me.”
A pause. A slight groan as she sat up. “Sure. What?”
“I want you to go down to storage and find the file box marked MIT.”
“Okay.” She was moving, but slowly.
“I want you to get into the last file for my senior year.”
“Okay.”
“And get out my yearbook.”
That stopped her. “You want your yearbook? Now?”
“Tabitha, it’s important.”
She sighed. “I’m sure it is. I’m going. Let me get my robe.” He heard shuffling around, then she came back. “So you found something up there?”
“I found everything.”
“You found Taylor Summers?” Tabitha’s voice rose.
“Yes, and I found James Brachler. He’s who I want you to look up.”
“James Brachler.” Her voice got dreamy. “I remember him. You brought him when you visited me. I had an instant crush.”
“I thought he would encourage you to work harder at your schooling.”
Tabitha burst into laughter. “Sure. Gorgeous guy. Blondish with chocolate-colored eyes. I was fourteen. First thing I thought was, Gee, I need to do my schoolwork.”
“I was an idiot.”
“Pretty much. But you were all I had.”
“And I was busy. I’m sorry.” Regret clawed at him. “That foster home. I should have taken you out of there.”
“Child Protective Services wouldn’t have allowed it.”
“I knew how to live on the run. I could have removed you and they wouldn’t have known where we were. I could have found a job, got an apartment, put you in school…” At the time, he had thought he was doing the right thing.
“But then you couldn’t have graduated and started your business. You had goals. You had plans. I just couldn’t stay there any longer.” Before he could apologize again, offer his regrets that she had had to live as a runaway, her tone changed back to brisk. “No big deal. I survived. I got my street creds. And I’ve got Miles. He’s worth it. But … James. He was nice to me. Afterward, I dreamed he would rescue me, carry me away and marry me. He was, like, my first serious crush. Except Justin Timberlake, of course.”
“Why?” Kennedy had never understood why women flocked to James.
Tabitha sounded bubbly, almost as if she were still fourteen. “He was such a bad boy. That voice. Those eyes. He looked like he knew his way around a woman’s body.”
“What made you think that?” Kennedy had to know, because he had a niggling fear in the back of his mind. About Summer. And about James.
“Oh. Well.” As Tabitha descended the basement steps, her voice echoed across open spaces and concrete walls. “He really looked at me. Listened to me. It was like he could see into my soul, like he appreciated what made me unique.”
Kennedy paced across the living room. “Did he do anything?”
“Make a move on me?” She laughed. “Not a chance. I offered, but he idolized you. He told me he wished he had a sister like me.” Kennedy could hear her moving boxes around, shuffling through papers. “Here it is,” she said. “Your yearbook. What do you want me to do with it?”
“Find his photo, scan it, send it to me.” Kennedy’s hand tightened on the phone. “And one other thing. You say he idolized me, and he said he wished he had a sister like you. Well … he took Miles. He took Summer. And I’m afraid—”
Tabitha made the logical leap. “That he’ll take me. Because then he does have your sister.”
“Yes. Someone in my organization works for James.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know yet. Do you still have that pistol?”
“It’s upstairs, loaded. And I’ve got a few knives stashed around the house.”
Her years as a runaway had taught her well. “Keep them close. Keep Miles home. Until I give you the all-clear.”
“Right.” She shuffled around in the boxes again. “I’ve got a knife now, and I’ll get you this photo right away.”
He relaxed a few degrees. “While I wait, I will make contact with someone who was at the prison when James served his time. The warden, perhaps.”
“That won’t work. Whatever happened concerning Jimmy, we can assume it would reflect badly on the warden. Try a guard. Or one of the repeat offenders.”
“Good point,” he said. “And Tabitha—thank you.”
* * *
Tabitha locked the basement door—she had a horror of Miles falling down the stairs and breaking his neck on the concrete floor—and turned into the kitchen. And screamed.
The head of Kennedy’s development team stood there. Brandon Wetzel was tall and handsome, with melting blue eyes, a body he worked hard to maintain, a big ego, and a wife Tabitha felt sorry for.
She suspected she was about to feel a lot sorrier for Brandon’s poor, cheated-on wife.
Brandon put his finger to his lips. “Shh. Kennedy sent me. There’s trouble brewing, and he wants me to take you and Miles to a secure location.”
She noted that he kept his other hand at the small of his back.
He was carrying a pistol, and at the slightest defiance, he would bring it out, point it at her, and frankly … the man was a computer geek. She no more trusted him to know his firearms than she trusted him to keep his promises.
So she widened her eyes in make-believe horror and moved swiftly toward him. “I’ll wake Miles right now. Do I have time to pack clothes? I hate to leave in my nightgown.” She stood in front of him and loosened the belt to her robe.
His gaze dropped to her cleavage. He lost focus. He reached for her.
She stabbed him in the thigh, and she never even dropped the yearbook.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Summer woke to a single icy snowdrop melting on her cheek.
Where was she?
Stiff with dread, she opened her eyes. Without moving, she cast her gaze around and saw … a rock. A gray, granite boulder set into bare dirt, about ten inches from her face. She blinked. A single thought blazed through her mind.
Get up. Escape!
She fought to stand, but she was wrapped, trapped, unable to move. Like a dark tide, panic overwhelmed her. She flipped over. She stared through a snowy curtain down a mountain, into the lonely wilderness.
How did she get here?
The ten months in Virtue Falls had been a dream. She was still in the Sawtooths, isolated, starving, and mad. Stark, staring mad.
No. No! That was wrong. Wherever she was, it was not the Sawtooths. Everything about this was wrong. The air was different. The snow was different. She was above the tree line, where she never went.
She twisted around, looked down at herself. She was wrapped in a sleeping bag, a mummy bag, zipped up so high only her face was showing. The granite boulder … she had been placed under its overhang. Someone had placed her here. Someone …
A face drifted out of the fogs of her memory.
Michael Gracie … Jimmy.
She groped for the inner zipper, slid it down as fast as she could, and flung the bag aside. In a frenzy, she stood up and looked around.
Yes. She was somewhere high in the mountains. Patches of old snow alternated with bare ground, and all of it was being covered by new snow that shifted out of the air and whirled in the wind.
She stared, mesmerized, at the dancing, twirling flakes.
Gold walls and bright mirrors. Glittering, masked dancers circling and spinning. And the waiter with his terrifying face and dark brown eyes. Then his face had melted away, and Michael Gracie had been revealed. Jimmy …
Now she remembered. She’d been d
That didn’t make sense. Why not just kill her?
Because of the game. He had spoken of the game.
Her cold hands held out in trembling appeal to Kennedy.
Kennedy turns away.
Jimmy’s smug, razor-blade-sharp smile …
She turned, leaned over the edge of the boulder, and vomited until she had nothing left in her stomach. The drugs, and the memories, made her sick.
She didn’t want to be sick. She needed to get out of here, wherever here was. She needed to concentrate on the task at hand—finding her way back to civilization. She could do it. She knew the mountains. She knew how to survive, and if she could get down the slope in time, she would survive.
She assessed her situation.
First—she was warm. She wore clothes she had never seen before, outdoor winter clothes designed to keep snow out and body heat in. Boots and dry socks sat wrapped in plastic, waiting for her. She slid under the overhang and pulled them on, and an unwelcome thought caught at her mind.
Last night she had been in costume, in purple silk. Sometime, during the lost hours of the night, she had changed her clothes. How? Who? She rubbed her forehead and tried to think.
She could see the helicopter blades through the glass bubble; they slapped at the clouds, slicing them, then slicing them again. A futile operation; the clouds always re-formed, yet sometimes she glimpsed bright stars in the midnight heavens. “Beautiful,” she murmured.
A man knelt beside her on the floor, and she laughed as he found the hidden zip in her costume and pulled it down. “Are we going to have sex?” she asked.
“If you want to,” he said.
Summer stood up too fast and slammed her head against the overhang. The impact dropped her to her knees, and she cradled the bump in both hands and moaned, “No. Oh, no.” Whatever had happened last night, whatever Jimmy had done … she could not remember. She didn’t want to remember.
And it didn’t matter. The sky was light gray and flat. She didn’t know what time it was, only that she needed to get down the mountain before nightfall, when the temperatures dropped and she would be lost in the trackless wilderness.
A small backpack leaned against the boulder.
She pulled it toward her and rummaged through the contents. A canteen of fresh water. Breakfast in the form of fresh strawberries, granola, and milk. Dehydrated-food packages for lunch and dinner.
Jimmy had given her a day’s worth of supplies.
A whole day’s worth. Wow, thanks, no pressure.
A down coat and gloves.
“Compass … Where’s the compass?” She sorted through the supplies with increasing desperation.
That bastard. She didn’t know where she was—the Olympic Mountains, most likely, but as drugged as she was last night, she could be in the Swiss Alps. She didn’t know which direction to go. Assuming these were the Olympics, west and to the coast would probably be best. Yet without a compass or a chance to see the sun—and the storm showed every sign of increasing in intensity—she had no way of knowing which way was west.
She scrunched under the overhang. She ate her granola and milk. The strawberries were out of season, yet as ripe and sweet as springtime. The advanced planning for this operation unsettled her, made her realize she was outmaneuvered and outflanked.
Jimmy said it was a game. Okay. Then she was a pawn. A pawn with a mind and a heart of her own. If he thought she could be moved around this chessboard and she wouldn’t strike back, he would soon be surprised.
As she finished the strawberries, at the bottom of the small recyclable paper container she found parchment-thin paper sealed in a small plastic bag. She unfolded the paper and read:
Darling Summer,
Before dark, you have to make it down the mountain and to the right spot to be rescued. Those are the rules. Cruel, I know, but I didn’t make them up. Kennedy McManus did.
Believe me, my dearest, I have faith in you. You know what you should not know. You live when you should be dead. You recognize the real me when no one else does. My darling, I have faith in you. This day requires strength, determination, knowledge and luck, and you have all four. You can do this. Confirm my faith, and I will see you soon.
I am your faithful servant, Venom (or Jimmy, or Michael, as you prefer. I am the man you wish me to be.)
Was she supposed to be thrilled? Flattered? Encouraged? She was none of those things. She was angry.
She knew the prevailing winds came from the west. The wind was blowing in her face. So she stood and moved toward the tree line, into the teeth of the storm.
Summer trekked downhill. She stepped again, and again, and again, through the snow falling at inches an hour, across paths empty of hikers, through a foot of fresh powder, eighteen inches, two feet, more. The hours rolled along. She paused long enough to choke down the second meal. She had stumbled down this mountain for what felt like forever and she had yet to see anything to indicate she was going the right way. Whatever way that was.
A spot between her shoulder blades itched. She felt as if a sniper held her in his sights. If she didn’t get down this mountain by dark, somehow, Michael Gracie was going to kill her. She kept herself motivated by imagining the ways he could do it: the bullet from a rifle, a trip wire, or maybe the dinner she would eat next was laced with enough poison to take her out of this world.
Maybe if she was lost long enough, she would gladly eat it.
Then she stepped in a hole and fell face-first. She put her arms down, yanked her face up and wiped at it, and she wiped away some tears, too.
She stood up. She had to keep going.
The light was so flat and gray, she couldn’t even guess at the time. When had she started? How long had she been walking?
But … She blinked through the snowstorm. She stood on a flat spot, a long flat spot that wound around the curve of the mountain. And the hole she stood in wasn’t a hole, but a rut, matched by another rut about six feet out …
She stood on a road! She had stumbled across a road! And someone had driven this road recently! He, or she, had to have come from somewhere, had to be going somewhere. Which way was civilization? Which way should she turn?
She saw no reason to change course. She turned into the wind and walked. Whatever vehicle had come through here was big; the tire tracks were wide, and even with snow filling them up, walking was easier in the ruts.
She had to survive this. She didn’t want to die an irony, the woman who had lived through solitary months in the Sawtooths and died on a one-day excursion in the Washington mountains, the dupe of two adult men playing a deadly game. When she got her hands on Kennedy McManus, she was going to wring his neck, among other things. Because she did not appreciate …
Wait.
What was that? In the road ahead of her. What was that?
A tent. A tiny, one-man, fluorescent orange tent set up right on the road.
She rushed toward it … Okay, she plowed through the snow as rapidly as she could.
There were footprints around it, a man’s footprints by the size of them. She batted the snow off the sloped sides, brushed the snow off her snowsuit, unzipped the door and crawled in. Inside there was a thermos, a small insulated bag, a devise of some kind … and a note.
A note. Like the one Jimmy had left her. For the first time, she realized this could be a trap. She snatched up the note; the font was Helvetica, plain and unadorned. She glanced at the signature, and clutched the paper to her chest.
It was Kennedy’s signature.
Signatures could be forged.
Then she read:
Summer, if you’re reading this, you found the tent with the GPS. Activate it immediately and we will come to get you.
It was Kennedy, all right. Compared to Jimmy’s flowery style, there could be no doubt.
She snatched up the GPS, followed the instr
If Kennedy got back here soon enough, she might live through this day.
Then she only had to worry about tomorrow.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
In the distance, Summer heard the dull sound of a motor.
No, it was the wind in the trees.
She heard it again, louder this time.
An avalanche? Oh, that would be humorous in a good-bye-cruel-world way.
At last, she was sure. That sound was a motor. She fastened her hood and crawled out of the tent.
A silver Hummer rounded the corner toward her.
She waved her arms and jumped up and down. She hoped it was Kennedy inside. She prayed it wasn’t Jimmy. But honestly, she didn’t care who it was. That Hummer had a heater in it.
The vehicle slowed down.
A man jumped out even before it stopped.
Black hair. Vibrant blue eyes surrounded by freakishly long black lashes. Long stride. Square jaw. Yep. That was Kennedy.
The driver got out, too. She recognized the short, wide man in an orange gimme cap as John Rudda. Nice guy. He lived outside of town, had lost his wife in that serial killer thing a couple of years ago, and more to the point, he was a long-haul trucker. She guessed that was why he was driving—snow and a Californian like Kennedy did not mix.
John headed toward the tent.
Kennedy headed toward her.
Both men stopped short when she started peeling off her clothes and discarding them. “It’s a long story,” she said. “Did you bring anything for me to change into?”
Kennedy’s eyes narrowed. She could almost see his clever brain chugging away, putting the facts together. Then he turned back to the vehicle and opened the back door for her. “Dry clothes inside.”
John muttered something about city folks, and continued toward the tent.
As she brushed past Kennedy, he grabbed her. In one quick, tight motion, he hugged her.
She suffered the embrace—she was glad to be rescued, and pissed that she had to be rescued—then she climbed in the Hummer. The lovely, clean, luxurious, warm Hummer.
Oh, God, it was so warm. Essential, since she was going to get naked. “In or out,” she said. “Just shut the door.”