“Were you driving the car?”
A nod. Sad. “I’m s-sorry.” Hoarse. “Please…don’t make me sh-shoot you. Y-you have to…come inside.”
“Did he take you?”
The gun jerked in the woman’s hand. The bullet blasted out, burning a path over Cadence’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry!” The woman gasped out. “I—I didn’t mean to do th-that!”
“It’s okay,” Cadence whispered. No, it’s not. She freaking just shot me. Cadence climbed from the trunk, trying to move as carefully as she could. Her gaze tracked across the area. She couldn’t see any kind of landmarks. Just trees swaying too hard in the storm.
They’d driven up as they traveled. She’d felt the incline and she could see the trees slanted, drifting below her.
The gun shoved into her back. “Just…walk st-straight ahead. Please.”
It sounded like the woman was crying. Cadence started walking. “You didn’t answer me before.” She ignored the blood dripping down her arm, and the throbbing in her head that seemed to get worse with every step. “Did he take you, too?” The brunette was the right age for his victims, and Cadence tried to run through all of the images in her mind. Could she be Bridgette or Melanie? The hair color could have been dyed. The woman’s face was so thin and pale. Ravaged.
“Push through the bushes.”
Heavy bushes were in front of her. Cadence pushed through them, and saw only darkness.
Not another freaking cave.
It was.
Goose bumps rose on her arms. “This connects with the other caverns, doesn’t it?” Jason had said the caverns stretched for at least fifty miles.
“Go inside.” The woman’s voice was even weaker now.
Cadence stepped inside.
Her captor—victim—followed her. The bushes seemed to spring right back into place, sealing them in the thick darkness of the cave. A darkness that deepened with every step.
“How can you see?” Cadence whispered.
“I’ve been d-down here…” The words broke. “A very long time. I don’t n-need to see anymore.”
Those words made her heart hurt.
Cadence stopped walking. Screw going farther. This woman’s safety took priority. Cadence would get her out, then she and Kyle would come back to hunt for the others in this cave. “I can help you,” she said to the woman. “Let’s go now. Let’s get into the car and I can take you to the police station.”
“No!” Her shout echoed through the cave.
There was fear in that denial. So much fear.
“Y-you can’t h-help me,” the woman said. Softer once more. “B-but you can…take my place.”
Cadence stiffened. When she’d first started the case, she’d believed that the killer abducted a new victim when he killed his previous prey. But to discover that the victims were actually helping him…I didn’t expect that.
She should have seen it. Dammit. She should have seen it.
“Now, walk. Please.”
“I can’t see in front of me. I need a light.”
“The l-light’s gone. You learn that.”
She didn’t plan to learn anything.
But Cadence put one foot in front of the other. She walked in the darkness. The gun was still behind her. It pushed into her back every few moments. She could try to take the weapon away from the woman, but in the struggle, Cadence couldn’t be sure the gun wouldn’t go off.
The plan was to save the victims. Not kill them.
She walked. One foot. The other. Her eyes couldn’t adjust to the perfect darkness. There was no seeing. Just an endless night.
Her arm throbbed. Her head ached.
She walked.
The tires were spinning in the mud.
“Fuck, f**k, f**k!” Kyle snarled as his hands slammed into the steering wheel. He jerked the gearshift, pushing the vehicle into reverse.
The SUV heaved back.
The lights shone ahead of them. The road had been washed away. If he tried to advance, the vehicle would just get trapped again.
“There’s got to be another way to her,” he said, fury and fear knifing through him. They were losing too much time.
Time that Cadence didn’t have.
Dani was pulling up aerial maps on her tablet. “We need to go back, about two miles. Looks like there’s another turn we can take back there. As long as”—she exhaled slowly, the sound ragged—“as long as the road is still intact.”
Not a road. His gaze narrowed on her tablet screen. Another damn dirt trail. “If it’s not?”
She glanced up at him, the screen’s light shining on her worried face. “Then we go back to the highway. We circle around. It will take maybe forty-five minutes that way.”
Going by the time Cadence had made the call to the station, she already had at least a forty-five-minute head start on them.
He yanked out his phone. Called Heather. “Reverse the team,” he ordered. “We’re hitting the trail two miles back.”
They would get to Cadence, even if he had to get a f**king helicopter out there to take him in to her.
“How long have you been with him?” Cadence asked. She couldn’t stand the silence. The dark.
“Always,” was the soft answer behind her.
“That’s not true. How long?”
Stockholm syndrome. The words beat through Cadence’s head. This woman had been held by her captor for so long.
“I don’t remember anything…before him.” Stilted.
“You’re lying.” Her words weren’t angry, because this woman was a victim. Cadence kept her voice calm and steady. “You remember.”
A light was up ahead. A faint, flickering light.
Her breath heaved from her lungs. “Is that him?”
“Don’t scream,” was the whisper from behind her. Shaking. “He doesn’t like it when you scream.”
I didn’t scream. Lily’s words.
Cadence swallowed and kept walking toward that light. A candle? “Do you know Maria?”
Silence.
“She was taken fifteen years ago. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. She has a brother who’s been looking for her, all that time.”
Still nothing. Just the faint scrape of the woman’s shoes on the stone floor. The press of the gun into Cadence’s back.
The light flickered again. She could see a curving entrance near the light.
“There have been others who were taken,” Cadence said, determined to keep talking. Determined to make a connection with this woman. “Did you know Bridgette, Fiona, Judith—”