Dead Spots

“Okay. I got something I can try, but I can’t involve you.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“It’s better if you don’t know, and I don’t have permission to out the party in question, anyway. Give me your number.”

Jesse recited it, still pissed.

“Okay. Do whatever you can on the cop side of things. I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”

There was a click, and Jesse found himself staring at a silent phone. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he told it. Was Eli going to do something illegal, and he didn’t want Jesse to know about it? But he’d just confessed to illegally tracing Scarlett’s cell phone, so what would that even be? He ground his teeth.

With nothing better to do, he went back to the original copy of the Hess file, flipping through it. Other than the battered arrest photo he’d shown Scarlett, there were no other pictures of Jared Hess, whose identity had been protected as a minor. Jesse dug through the police report until he found the name of Jared’s high school—Elm Grove Senior High. Then he logged on to the school’s website, searching for online yearbook pages. There were some, but only for the last five years. After some thought, he went to Classmates.com and laboriously went through the school’s registered users until he found a few that were still in LA. Jesse looked at the clock: 11:00. Screw it, he thought. He picked up the phone.

Thirty minutes and three irritated classmates later, Jesse stood by the floor’s ancient fax machine, nervously tapping a beat out on his legs. He’d found a former cheerleader who had been fond enough of her glory days to keep the yearbook handy. The old machine wheezed and sputtered, finally spitting out a scanned page of photos from Elm Grove’s yearbook. He ran his finger along the row next to the name Hess, Jared, stopping at a grainy shot of a young man with glasses and protruding ears. Jesse stared. Then he leaned his back on the wall and stared a little more, until he was absolutely positive he recognized the face. And he knew Thomas Freedner had nothing to do with the murders.

Now Jesse felt very, very stupid.

Chapter 29

I woke up to a dripping sound.

Plurp...plurp...plurp went the water, and I squeezed my eyes open and shut a few times, trying to clear them. My eyes and nose still hurt, but in a fading way, like when your cold medicine is just beginning to kick in. My head felt like it was full of thick soup, though, and for a few minutes—or maybe a few hours—I couldn’t seem to organize myself. Where were my hands again? Was I lying down or sitting up? I shook my head back and forth until my orientation started to return, and then I moved my hands up to rub my eyes, only they stopped halfway to my face. I squeezed my eyes shut again, then opened them and looked around.

Water was dripping from a pipe into a puddle a couple of feet away from me. I was sitting on the floor, my back against the wall and my wrists chained in front of me in handcuffs that connected to an enormous metal ring stuck deep into the concrete floor. The ring was as thick as my ankle, and every link in the chain was thicker than my thumb, but I gave the whole contraption an experimental tug anyway. I could barely get the chain to move, much less the metal ring. I would not be escaping this via strength.

I looked around, squinting into semidarkness. With the concrete floor and windowless walls, I assumed this was a basement, though they’re rare in Southern California. The metal ring I was chained to was in the back of the basement, opposite a set of shoddy-looking wooden stairs that presumably lead up to the next floor. The basement’s only light spilled down the stairs from the room above, though I wasn’t at an angle to see up into it. I squinted toward the darkness, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Fifteen feet away from me, on the left side of the steps, there was a tool bench that looked fully loaded with...something. I squinted even more. I caught a few metal reflections shining here and there, standing out against the gloomy mess. Silver. On the other side of the stairs and a little closer to me stood a gleaming metal cage, like a kennel for the world’s biggest dog. Or, I realized, a werewolf.

He’d built a cage for werewolves.

I shivered against the dank cold. My canvas jacket had been removed, and I didn’t see it anywhere near me, so maybe it was up the stairs. Or by Kirsten’s front door, or anywhere in between, I thought, fear igniting in my stomach. I had no idea where I was, and worse, no one else had any idea, either.

I don’t know how long I just sat there, trying to push away my fear, but after what seemed like hours, I heard a telltale creak and saw a work boot hit the first wooden stair, immediately followed by another boot, a pair of jeans, and a T-shirt. The man flicked a switch at the bottom of the stairs, and light burst into my eyes. When they adjusted, I realized I was looking into the face of Aaron Sanderson, the guy who owned the bait shop.

“You,” I said brilliantly.

He smirked. “Me.” Aaron Sanderson/Jared Hess made his way across the basement floor, stopping a few feet away from me and folding his arms across his chest. Up close, with only the T-shirt, I realized just how muscled his arms and chest were. How had I not put this together?

“Where’s Kirsten?”

He grinned broadly. “On her way to a wedding in Santa Barbara. But damned if she didn’t forget her cell.” He held up a little blue phone, waving it in front of me like a kid teasing his little sister. “And her keys.” He held them up in the other hand.

“What’d you do, steal her purse?”