"Carter." He answered on the first ring.

"It's Jenna. Get out here. Ca.s.sie and Turnquist are missing. There's blood around the barn and..."

Plop!

"What? I'm five minutes away."

"That might be too long!" she said, and noticed the floor, where the flashlight shined on the boards, paw prints and footprints in a crazy pattern of red...

"Oh, G.o.d," she whispered, cradling the phone between her shoulder and ear as she took the flashlight from her daughter and focused its weak beam on the trail of b.l.o.o.d.y paw prints...backward toward the rear wall where a wide, dark pool was slowly spreading, oozing over the ancient floorboards.

Terror gripped her. She swallowed hard as she slowly moved the flashlight, raising the beam upward, and saw a body swinging from a crossbeam.

Her scream reverberated through the barn, her face twisted in horror as she recognized the victim. Stripped naked and eviscerated, Jake Turnquist had been gutted like a deer on a hunting trip. His body was white, drained, a vicious, gory slash running the length of his body. Entrails, still steaming, were piled on the floor in a slippery, grotesque ma.s.s.

Jenna dropped the phone. Allie, clinging to her, was screaming again, losing it.

Jenna's stomach convulsed.

She retched violently at the horrid, grisly sight.

Who was the butcher who had done this? Did he have Ca.s.sie? Breathing hard, fighting the mind-numbing horror, she scrabbled on the floor, into the wet puddle, her hands sticky with the bodyguard's blood. "Shane!" she cried, but the cell phone connection was lost. She managed to grab the slippery phone, the gun, the flashlight, and Allie's arm, smearing blood everywhere. "Let's get out of here." Propelling her daughter toward a rear cattle entrance, she started running. If they could get to the garage and the Jeep...

She slid open the big door and stepped outside to the quiet night. Pulling Allie with her, Jenna turned off the flashlight, then started running, plunging through the knee-deep snow. She had the phone in one hand and punched out 91-1. The more police she could get here, the better. Critter bounded behind, gasping, keeping up as the snow continued to fall.

Rinda! She couldn't leave Rinda!

But the creep had Ca.s.sie.

She didn't think he was in the house. She'd come from the house and there were no fresh footprints leading in that direction, no freshly broken path through the frigid white blanket. Jenna's gaze swept the ground and saw only her own trail, already softening with the onslaught of fresh snowflakes.

Get a grip, Jenna. Pull yourself together. You have to find a way to keep Allie safe while finding Ca.s.sie.

How? Oh, G.o.d, how? She needed help.

Shane Carter, get here, now!

Why the h.e.l.l wasn't the phone connecting? Why was there no sound, no beep of life from the electronic contraption? Had the drop on the floor in the barn, the slide through a coagulating, warm pool of blood somehow short-circuited the d.a.m.ned thing? Or was it because thousands of calls were overloading the cell phone towers. Maybe it's just an overload of the circuits. Keep trying!

She was still dragging Allie, trudging through the snow, blinking against the icy crystals stinging her cheeks as the dog bounded ahead.

Come on, come on...where the h.e.l.l are the police?

Carter said he'd send a unit.

The garage was only a few feet away and the keys were in the Jeep, weren't they? If not, there was a spare set hidden in a drawer in the garage.

Suddenly, Critter stopped dead in his tracks. The hackles on his back went up and he snarled, baring his teeth.

Jenna slid to a stop. Held fiercely onto her child. Through the viscous curtain, she thought she saw movement. Her heart stood still. Every nerve ending sprang to life and she squinted and decided it was only the dark silhouette of a tree, branches moving in the wind.

"Come on, Allie," she said, urging her daughter forward.

She didn't hear a sound, just felt a change in the air, a whisper of cold air against the back of her nape. From the corner of her eye, she saw movement again, a dark, leonine ma.s.s springing from behind the garage.

Allie screamed.

Jenna swung the shotgun upward, flicked off the safety as he landed upon her, a strong, heavy male whose weight forced her to the ground.

"Run!" she screamed at Allie. She attempted to stand, searching frantically in the drifts for her gun, facing her attacker as the dog barked and snapped. Dressed in camouflage that was visible in the snow, his head covered with a ski mask, he lunged at her again. She rolled to one side through the freezing drifts. "Run!"

She felt the barrel of the gun and reached for it, gloved fingers surrounding the cold steel. But he was upon her again. This time something cold pressed hard against her neck and then a jolt ripped through her body, thousands of volts of electricity that burned through her nerves. She let out a pathetic whimper and collapsed back to the ground.

CHAPTER 45.

Carter was too late. He pulled through the open gates of Jenna's ranch and he knew it was over. He'd heard her terrified scream on her phone and then the still, d.a.m.ning silence that had followed. No matter how loud he'd yelled, she hadn't responded. When he'd tried to dial her again, he couldn't get through.

A lifetime had pa.s.sed since the moment they'd been cut off, but if he checked his watch, it had been less than ten minutes. Don't give up, he told himself, but now that he was here at her house, he knew without stepping outside of his truck that he'd lost her. He put in a quick call for backup, but didn't wait. Time was too precious.

His gut clenched as he opened the Blazer's door and a blast of winter slapped him hard in the face. He ran through the thick snow to the house and noticed a glow in the windows. Maybe he'd been too hasty; there was a chance she'd survived. Drawing his weapon, he moved toward the breezeway and hurried to the house. The back door was unlocked. Not a good sign. He pushed it open and stepped quietly inside.

No one greeted him, not even the d.a.m.ned dog. "Jenna?" he called. "It's Shane."

From somewhere in the back of the house he heard a sob.

"Shane?" Rinda's voice. "Thank G.o.d." Footsteps clattered against the wood of the floors. "I thought you'd never get here!" A flashlight bobbed, the weak beam pointed at his face, and suddenly she was upon him, crying and sobbing, talking in gibberish, Jenna's youngest child at her side.

"Slow down and tell me exactly what happened. Where the h.e.l.l's Turnquist?"

"Dead, I think, in the barn. I-I haven't been down there, but Allie was."

"You're sure he's dead?" Shane asked Allie, and she nodded mutely, her eyes round with terror.

A cold, certain fear twisted Carter's insides.

"It's worse," Rinda said. "Josh Sykes is dead, too. In his truck down on the other side of the fence, at the logging road. Allie followed Ca.s.sie after she snuck out to meet Josh there. She witnessed the killer attack Ca.s.sie. He'd already killed Josh. The poor kid's still in his truck. Dead."

"You checked?"

"No. But I took her word for it."

"He's dead. I saw," Allie whispered, her voice raw.

"And Ca.s.sie?"

Allie began to cry. "I shouldn't have left her. He had her. He had her!"

"He's got them, Shane," Rinda said, her face twisted in a deep, horrified fury. Her dark eyes flashed in the firelight. "That brutal monster, whoever he is, has Ca.s.sie and Jenna."

"You don't know who he is?"

"I never saw him, but Allie did."

Shane turned his attention on the young girl, who stared at him with wide, traumatized eyes. Her head was still moving up and down, not so much in confirmation, but because she couldn't stop it, an involuntary twitch that somehow soothed her. "Can you tell me what happened here?" he asked, and her lower lip began to quiver. "Allie, please." He touched her on her shoulder. "I won't be able to help your mother until you tell me what happened. Did you see the man who did this?"

She nodded. Tears filled her eyes.

"Did you recognize him?"

She hesitated. Shook her head.

"Think, Allie," he said, gently. "Do you know who he is?"

"No...but...but..." She bit her lip. "He knew my name. And his voice..." She swallowed hard. "I think I should know him."

"Can you describe him?"

Her chin wobbled and she glanced at Rinda. "Come on, honey, try."

"He was big."

"As tall as me?"

"But bigger...he wore a ski mask. Camouflage...It was dark and I was far away when he got Ca.s.sie and-" She was talking faster now, her voice pitching higher, nearly hyperventilating. "-and I ran back and I ran into the barn and that's when...that's when I saw Jake and I was so scared and I didn't know what to do, so I stayed in the barn, away...away from Jake, and Critter was with me and then my mom finally came." Sobbing hysterically, her face twisted in despair, she added, "And now she's gone!" Sniffing and swiping at her eyes with the back of her hand, she stared into his eyes. "You have to find them, Sheriff. You have to."

"I know. I will," he promised, his gaze flicking to Rinda's. What were the chances that Ca.s.sie was still alive? Or Jenna? Through the window, he saw flashing lights, strobing red and blue through the ever-falling snow. His backup had arrived.

But it was too d.a.m.ned late.

Ca.s.sie shivered, the cold permeating her skin. She ached all over and tried to move. Couldn't. Her eyes flew open and she panicked. Where the h.e.l.l was she? Suspended in the air, six or eight feet above a huge vat of some clear liquid. What the h.e.l.l?

Worse yet, she was naked. Completely nude...and what the h.e.l.l had happened to her hair? The b.a.s.t.a.r.d had removed her clothes and then...what? Shaved her head. Strapped her onto this tiny little platform and tied her wrists over her head? To what end? Oh, G.o.d, this was crazy! Everything about it was so G.o.dd.a.m.ned frightening. Through the thickness in her mind, she remembered seeing Josh in his truck, the lifeblood trickling out of him, and Allie running through the woods and that horrid jolt of electricity by the madman, a man she swore she knew, though she hadn't seen his face.

Quaking with a fear unlike any she'd ever known, she began to breathe in short, shallow breaths. She wanted to pa.s.s out, to close her eyes and fall into some deep sleep and wake up in her own bed, with Josh alive, her mother in the next room, her little sister bugging her...She let out a sob, then bit her tongue. She couldn't give in to the sheer panic overriding all of her rational thought.

No. She had to think. To find a way out of this unG.o.dly terror. Calm down, Ca.s.s. Figure this out. Don't panic. Do NOT panic. She took a deep breath and surveyed her surroundings. The psycho wasn't around right now; at least she couldn't see him.

She had to get out of this s.p.a.ced-out nightmare. So where was she?

Nearly immobile, she forced her gaze downward.

Dim lights glowed and she made out statues in various poses on a stage below, to one side, and a long recliner nearby with some kind of steel arm angled above it.

She squinted, tried to clear her head. The statues weren't random, nor were they just women, she realized, and a new weird fear skittered down her spine. All the statues looked like her mom. Or her mother dressed and made up for some of her most famous roles.

No, that couldn't be right, didn't make any sense.

What about this does make sense?

She had to be tripping or something...That was it. She tried hard to focus, and even though her brain was thick as mud, the lighting subdued, she recognized the characters...Paris Knowlton from Beneath the Shadows, Faye Tyler from Bystander, Zoey Trammel from A Silent Snow, Marnie Sylvane from Summer's End, all dressed as they had appeared in the movies, complete with jewelry and props, their hairstyles perfect replicas of each character's.

Weird.

And scary as h.e.l.l.

Forcing back the fear, she angled her head and craned her neck to look upward. Above the beam supporting her, tacked onto the high ceiling, were posters, dozens and dozens of blown-up pictures of her mother in her most famous roles. The same characters that were posed on the stage below, except there were pictures of Jenna as Katrina Petrova from Innocence Lost and shots of her as Anne Parks in Resurrection.

This was all so eerie...She looked down again. Two statues...no, mannequins, that's what they were, life-sized dolls. Two were faceless, though one had a wig, long black curls reminiscent of Katrina...oh, s.h.i.t, whoever this freak was, he hadn't finished his artwork...

Ca.s.sie's heart stood still. She remembered the women who had been abducted...Were they a part of this macabre scene?

Her heart turned to stone and she looked down to the stage where two mannequins stood with the others. Two that would surely become Katrina Petrova from Innocence Lost and Anne Parks from Resurrection.

When the artist got around to it.

But what the h.e.l.l does all this have to do with me? She looked around frantically as her mind cleared and she remembered the abduction, the way the sicko had stunned her and Josh...dead...eyes rolled up in his head, throat slashed, blood all over his truck.

What was this all about?

Don't think about that. Don't think about anything but getting out of here. You have to escape now.

Her eyes swept the large warehouse of a room. There were doorways...not marked, but she saw them, and some kind of high-tech room with monitors. If she could find a way to cut herself down...How the h.e.l.l was she suspended? Her wrists were bound...but she wasn't exactly hanging-her feet were resting on some kind of bar and a cold pipe ran up her back...Why?

As her head cleared, she became more frantic, realized how dire her situation was. The creep, a man whose face she hadn't seen but thought she should recognize, was missing. But he'd return.

Somehow she had to be ready for him.

Groggily, Jenna opened an eye. Her entire body ached, and her brain wasn't working. Where the h.e.l.l was she, and why were her thoughts painful and thick, as sluggish as if they were swimming through jelly in her brain?

Lying flat on her back, she was being jostled as she was transported in some rig-the bed of a pickup with a canopy, she guessed. Her hands and feet were bound and her entire body was strapped down, pressed against cold, corrugated metal. Tiny bits of memory cut through the sludge in her head. Ca.s.sie missing. Turnquist dangling and bleeding from a rafter. Allie scared out of her wits. What felt like a million volts of electricity zapping painfully into her body.

But that hadn't been the end of it, no...she'd been drugged, had witnessed a shiny needle being eased, almost gently, into her arm and a smooth male voice she should have recognized say, "Finally, you're coming home."

Coming home? What was that all about?

And now she was being unceremoniously hauled somewhere, tied into the back of a pickup, the cold seeping through the canopy, her body jostled by the rough ride. Her wrists were bound painfully in front of her, her ankles strapped as well.

She thought of her daughter. Ca.s.sie...where in G.o.d's name was Ca.s.sie? She hated to think that this madman had her. Jenna refused to think that her daughter might already be dead; that there had been plenty of time for this hideous beast who had captured Ca.s.sie to kill her.

Please, G.o.d, no, she silently prayed. Give me the strength to find my daughter and save her. She heard the pickup's big engine whine, felt the wheels sliding as the rig climbed, ever higher, bucking upward, sliding, spinning. As if they were driving up a sheer mountain.