The Hidden Girl
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Synopsis
The lights of her parents’ cabin just visible through the woods, the girl carefully curls up amongst the reeds, her knees pulled tight to her chest. Terrified, the only sound she makes is the pounding of her heart, but she hears the stranger searching… if she keeps silent, will she be safe?
When Agent Tori Hunter is urgently called to the murder scene of Dan and Heidi Newman, she finds their throats slit, and Dan tied up: forced to watch his wife lose her life. Tori’s first thought is for their seventeen-year-old daughter Cara who is nowhere to be found. Will this popular young girl be the next victim?
A broken bracelet is the one clue left at the scene, but the team are running in circles until Tori finally tracks down Cara hiding in the woods. Sobbing, the devastated girl says all she remembers is a flash of a man’s face as she was chased through the forest…
Desperate to find the monster behind this crime, Tori pieces together the broken chain: and it leads her to an elderly lady living alone nearby. When the woman won’t speak to police, Tori senses that although it means breaking all the rules, introducing Cara will show this lonely soul what’s at stake. And once inside her house, Cara gasps when she sees a framed photo on display. It’s the man who chased her…
But then another local couple is murdered in their isolated home, another husband forced to watch his worst nightmare unfold. As more couples lose their lives, can Tori keep Cara, her one witness, safe from this vicious killer? And can she track him down before more innocent families are torn apart?
An absolutely addictive and mind-blowing crime thriller that will have you glued to the pages through each and every twist, until the final shocking conclusion. Fans of Kendra Elliot, Robert Dugoni and Lisa Jackson won’t be able to put this down.
Read what everyone’s saying about Roger Stelljes:
“Hang on to your seat… adrenaline-fuelled thrill ride… will keep you riveted and reading till the early hours… Fabulous… LOVED IT… highly recommend… definite 5 star read for me…
Release date: October 7, 2021
Publisher: Bookouture
Print pages: 350
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The Hidden Girl
Roger Stelljes
“That was a fun game to watch,” Heidi said to her husband as they drove along Highway 6. “I haven’t seen you guys get into the game that much in a long, long time.”
Dan Newman laughed. “Well, those young flat-belly boys thought they were all that and then some.” He was referring to their softball opponents for the night, a collection of twenty-year-old students from Central Minnesota State University in Manchester Bay. “They thought coming over here was like playing intramurals. Us middle-aged guys have a trick or two left up our sleeves on a Friday night.”
“What was funny was watching them get frustrated as you guys hit single after single while all they did was try to hit it over the fence.”
“They succeeded a few times.”
“Sure, that one guy hit two of them into the pine trees in left field, but there was nobody on base. Then you guys would get those little soft hits, the rollers between their players, and the little fly balls that dropped in—”
“They call those bloops, dear.”
“Oh, right, bloops, those little bloop hits over their infielders’ heads. They died the death of a thousand cuts, and they got so… pissed. Ha!”
“Yeah, they figured they’d handle us old guys. What they didn’t realize is we’ve played thousands of games. We know a few things,” Dan replied, stifling a burp. “Oof, that sausage and pepperoni pizza tonight.” He patted his stomach. “I think I shook a hair too much cracked red pepper on it. It’s kind of getting to me.”
Heidi had already reached into her purse and handed over two antacid tablets.
“Thanks, honey.”
He turned right onto the dirt road and headed into the woods. “It’ll be a great night for sleeping. Nice and cool.”
“What time is Cara coming home?”
“I told her one a.m.”
“That’s a late curfew.”
“Her mom has been giving her that one, so I feel like I should too, so we’re consistent.”
The woods cleared on the right and the bright white rail fence that defined the front of their property appeared. Dan slowed, turned right and pulled up the driveway into the garage.
“Tomorrow we need to weed the flower beds in the front yard before you go off and play golf,” Heidi said as they reached the back door.
“Again?”
“Yes. It shouldn’t take long.”
“I should hope not,” he replied as he unlocked the door and pushed it open. “We did it just a few weeks ago.”
“Hey, we have to keep up to keep it all looking sharp,” she replied as she stepped into the kitchen. Dan quickly locked the door and followed.
He sensed sudden movement from his left.
Thump!
The blow hit him high in his back and sent him crashing face first into a kitchen cabinet, then down to the floor.
Heidi spun around to see a huge man swinging a crowbar.
“Dan! Dan!”
Thump! Thump! Thump!
“Da—” She was slammed to the floor from behind. “No! No! Get off me!”
Someone pulled her arms behind her back. The large man dropped the crowbar and approached. He wore a ski mask and took something black out of a pocket.
“You got her?” he asked.
“Give me a hand.”
“Stop! Stop!” she pleaded as the two men put something around her wrists and pulled it tight. She heard a ripping sound. “Stop! St—” The man on top of her stuck a piece of duct tape over her mouth.
Heidi kicked with her legs and tried to wriggle free as the man on top of her eased up, but it was only so he could turn around and hold her legs together. She felt the same type of restraint dig into the skin around her ankles.
She looked at her husband sprawled out on the floor, unconscious. Blood dripped from his mouth and forehead. She tried to scream his name, but her voice was muffled behind the tape.
The patting on his cheek was rhythmic at first, then harder, and then… Slap!
“Wake up, Dan! Dan, wake up sleepyhead…”
His eyes bolted open. In front of him was a behemoth of a man dressed in all black, wearing black leather gloves.
He tried to speak, but there was tape on his mouth.
The large man crouched to him. He didn’t say anything, just turned his head to the left. Dan’s eyes followed.
“Heidi! Heidi!” he tried to scream against the tape.
Heidi was face down on the couch, squirming, thrashing, fighting. A skinny man was on top of her, dressed in all black, including a ski mask. He too wore gloves. In his right hand was a long hunting knife, and he was slicing through the back of Heidi’s tank top. Her panicked eyes locked on her husband’s.
Dan thrashed, trying to break free. His arms were secured behind him and around the fireplace post. He tried kicking with his legs, but he saw that his ankles were bound with what looked to be nylon zip ties. A tall, athletic man, he nevertheless had no leverage, no ability to mass his strength.
“You can fight the restraints all you want, but you’re never getting free. Your pretty little wife can scream and squirm and flail all she wants, but she isn’t getting free.”
Dan looked over to his wife as the other man started pulling down her pants.
No! No! No!
He closed his eyes, banging his head back against the pillar, again yanking at his restraints. He had to try. He had to try, even knowing it was futile.
“I bet you have no idea why we’re out here, do you? Why we came after you? You’re totally clueless, aren’t you? You’re thinking, what did I do to these guys?”
Dan shook his head feverishly.
“The question will be whether those responsible for putting you in this position do.”
This time Dan looked back at him quizzically.
“You know what your truly fatal mistake was, Dan?” The hulk of a man in front of him pulled out a long bowie hunting knife. “It was living out here in the middle of nowhere.” He took off his mask. “Out here, nobody can hear you. Nobody can save you. And tonight, we can do whatever we want. And we will.”
Dan renewed his struggle against the restraints on his wrists and ankles.
“Fight all you want,” the man said, knowing that eventually Dan would exhaust himself. Then resignation would set in, and finally the knowledge of how it all would have to end. “You ain’t getting free of this. But you do have a front-row seat for the show.”
A half-hour later, Slim rolled away from the woman. “It’s been a while since I felt all that,” he said to D as he zipped up his pants. He had already put the used condom in a plastic bag and stuffed it into a backpack they’d brought along.
D, who had been sitting in a chair watching Slim have his way with the woman, stood up and pulled out a black nylon rope from his back pocket, then went and stood in front of a sweaty, teary-eyed Dan Newman. He made a point of slowly wrapping the rope tightly around each hand and then pulling it taut.
Dan knew what was coming next. “No! No! Noooooo!” he screamed behind his gag as D turned around and approached Heidi. He quickly had the rope around her neck, dragging her up from the couch and turning her toward her husband.
“Heidi! Heidi!” Dan pleaded, pulling frantically against his restraints. His eyes never left those of his wife as D slowly and methodically tightened the rope around her throat, the black strands digging into her skin as she fought with what strength she had left. He held her off the floor, his forearms vibrating with the effort. He didn’t kill her quickly, keeping his own eyes focused on those of her husband. Tears streaked down Dan’s cheeks.
After a few minutes, Heidi’s body fell limp, the fight gone. D undid the rope and let her drop to the floor. Then he nonchalantly walked over and stuffed the rope in the backpack.
“Let’s get her to the bathroom.”
Slim nodded and knelt. With one arm, D lifted Heidi’s body over the other man’s shoulder so he could carry her to the back of the house. He watched for a moment until Slim disappeared. Then he slowly turned around and looked a broken Dan Newman in the eye as he reached down into the backpack, pushed his pistol aside and made a show of pulling out a long, jagged knife from its sheath.
Slim was using the portable shower head to wash Heidi. He’d been standing barefoot, running the water over her for fifteen minutes now, wiping down her whole body.
D walked into the bathroom.
“What time is it?” Slim asked.
“One twenty. We need to get moving.”
“Is he done?”
D nodded.
“You… went off out there. I mean… with the knife and all. Holy moly.”
“You got what you needed, I got what I needed,” D said. “You about ready to prop her up?”
Slim sat Heidi’s body up against the tiled wall and adjusted the shower head so that the stream of water flowed down and between her legs. As they stepped out of the bathroom, they heard a thud and felt a vibration.
“What the…”
I’m so in trouble, Cara Newman thought as she tore down the long, narrow road that cut through the dense woods. She was late, extremely late, potentially getting-grounded late. Her curfew was generously 1:00 a.m., and it was now almost 1:30.
Why does Dad have to live out in the middle of nowhere like this?
It wasn’t as if she’d lost track of time completely. She knew she was pushing it, but then Ashley had needed a ride home and, well, that threw everything off kilter. Of course, it didn’t help that her dad and stepmom lived so far from Manchester Bay. She always underestimated how long it took to get over to Crosby.
She had no doubt they would be upset with her. She was surprised she hadn’t heard from one of them, but she was certain there would be stern words. Stay calm and just apologize. There was an out-of-town soccer tournament next weekend, and she didn’t want to miss that. Contrition was the strategy. Just say you’re sorry, she told herself. Don’t argue, don’t fight, just admit you blew it, give them nowhere to go.
As she emerged from the tunnel-like road, the house was on the right, set back quite a way. The good news was it looked dark, with few lights on and no exterior lights.
Could it be she was catching a break? Maybe they weren’t home yet. Maybe they’d stayed out late with friends. That was the hope, although just to be extra sure, once she turned onto the driveway up to the house, she turned off her headlights.
She pulled up in front of the garage and parked. As she got out of the car, she looked to the house. She’d figured there would be a light on in the back, but there wasn’t. There was a light on somewhere deep inside the house, but certainly not in the kitchen. She’d expected that when she reached the back door, either her father or her stepmom would be pacing the room, ready to pounce when she entered.
If they were home, maybe they were already asleep. Maybe I can sneak in, she thought hopefully.
When she reached the back door, she found it locked.
They said they were going to leave the door open. Again, maybe a sign that they weren’t home. She fumbled with her key ring and found the house key, then opened the door and stepped into the dark house. The only light was to the right. She flipped up the switch and set her purse, keys and phone on the center island. As she glanced around, she realized that the family room looked odd. Couch cushions were scattered on the floor. She took another step and to the left saw her father leaning oddly against the fireplace pillar, his head tilted to the side, and then the blood.
“Dad!”
She heard a noise to her right. A man, stepping out of her parents’ bedroom. He was dressed all in black, wearing a ski mask.
“Oh my God! Oh my God! Who—”
He took a step toward her.
Cara turned and bolted out the back door, turning left and making for the driveway. As she came around the corner, a second man in a ski mask appeared from the front of the house. His angle cut off her path down the driveway to the road.
“No! No! No!” she screamed, frantically looking around for an escape. “You stay away from me!” she yelled, searching for anything to defend herself with. Turning, she saw the other man, who was much bigger, coming out the back door, lumbering toward her.
The two men were slowly closing in on her.
You’re dead if they get you, she thought. She looked to her right.
The woods. It was her only chance.
The smaller man charged at her.
She took off, sprinting, vaulting over a downed tree and into the woods. Run and hide, was all she could think. Run and hide. Run and hide.
She leaped over another tree trunk, but then caught her foot on a branch and tripped, falling face first. As she pushed herself up, she looked back to see the men closing on her.
Go, go, go, she told herself, heading to her right, what she knew was northeast. It was so dark, she couldn’t really see the obstacles in her path, and she stumbled again, landing hard.
Dazed for just a moment, she glanced back once more. The men were still coming, the smaller one out in front, closing rapidly.
He had her trapped.
She felt a long branch under her right hand. She quickly stood up and swung it at him. The man raised his right arm to deflect the blow.
“Aargh,” he groaned, falling back.
She swung and hit him again, this time knocking him to the ground, then looked up. The other man, the big one, was closing in.
She threw the branch at him, spun away and ran again, deeper into the woods, hurdling obstacles as she saw them, ducking under branches, feeling thorns and sharp twigs slice through the skin of her legs, hands and face.
She snuck a look back. The men were both still coming, but she had managed to create a sizable gap now. As she ran, it seemed like she’d stumbled onto a narrow path. Pumping her arms, she sprinted on.
“Do you see her? Do you see her?” D growled urgently, constantly tripping over the uneven ground and downed branches. “Dammit!”
“Where’s your gun?” Slim asked.
“Back at the house in the backpack,” D replied angrily. “Do you see her?”
“I had her just a second ago,” Slim said, ten feet ahead. “I think… I see her! I see her!”
“Just go.”
Slim ran on as D trailed behind, panting.
As Cara followed the little zigzagging path, she saw the glint of moonlight off water ahead. The small lake at the edge of her dad’s property, thick with reeds and cattails.
What now? Swim for it? Dive in and hold her breath? Could she hide in the reeds and cattails?
Down to her right, she saw a grouping of big rocks.
She didn’t like the lake. If they got her into the water, the men would drown her. She picked up a rock and heaved it out into the reeds.
Kerplunk!
Kerplunk!
“Did you hear that?” Slim whispered to his left. “That sounded like water.”
Kerplunk!
Kerplunk!
“Is she going into the lake?” D exclaimed. They carried on running; another couple of hundred feet and they reached the shoreline.
On all fours, Cara crept back inland, slithering as best she could along the ground. As she peeked up over the brush, she could see the silhouettes of the two men, fanning out left and right. She lost sight of the smaller man, but the big one was shuffling along the shoreline, moving in her direction but looking into the reeds, hunting her.
Ten feet in front of her were what looked like three downed trees, lying askew. She crawled towards them, careful and slow with each movement. Of the three, one was extremely old, rotten and partially hollowed out. She slid inside; though she couldn’t go far, it at least provided a few feet of cover. She made like a ball, her back against the left side, her knees pulled tight to her chest, her mouth closed, breathing through her nose.
She could hear voices whispering in the distance, and then heavy footsteps coming in her direction.
Slow. Deliberate. Getting closer.
She froze. Ten feet away, she could see two feet. Then she heard more footsteps. Another set of feet were now just outside the tree.
They were right there.
She closed her eyes. Go away. Please go away.
“I’ve been searching, but the reeds are so thick,” Slim whispered. “I don’t think she went in. There’s nobody in the water. She’s still in the woods here somewhere. Has to be.”
D took a moment to scan with his eyes, but there was no movement. She was hiding, or… “She could be doubling back. She could have looped around on us.”
“The house. If she gets back there…”
“Or she’s playing us,” D said. His eyes had adjusted to the dark, and he peered around, hunting for movement, listening for any sound.
“Can we risk that?” Slim said anxiously. “We’re sitting ducks out here.”
“Go.”
Slim led the way back down the path. “Who is she?”
“I’m guessing their daughter.”
“She wasn’t supposed to be here. She was supposed to be at her mom’s.”
They exited the woods and made their way back to the house. The girl’s car was still there. Her purse, phone and keys were still in the kitchen. D knew it was at least a mile in any direction to get to another house.
“What do we do! What do we do!” Slim yelped, panicked, hyperventilating.
“Stay calm,” D replied. “Keep your head. That’s what screwed our boy in the first place, not thinking things through. What we do is grab that backpack and leave, right now, just as we planned.”
“But the girl…”
“Saw two men dressed all in black and in ski masks. That’s all she saw.”
Tori stirred awake as a cool breeze flapped the curtains at the bedroom window. She took in a comfortable breath, feeling the long, muscular arm wrapped tenderly around her waist, her naked body warmly enveloped by Braddock’s angular six-foot-four body. She could feel the light heaves of his chest against the soft skin of her bare back as he slept. It had been a relaxing night. They’d taken a long boat cruise on the lake, then had grilled chicken on the deck before watching documentaries about the Fyre Festival and the college admissions scandal on Netflix with a bottle of wine, capping it all off with an energetic first hour in bed. All in all, a wonderful night in a summer full of them. She let her eyes once again drift closed, nuzzling her body further back into his.
Ring! Ring! Ring!
She waited for him to move.
Ring! Ring! Ring!
“Braddock?”
“Yeah, I hear it,” he said with a sigh as he reluctantly pulled his arm away and rolled over to his nightstand.
Tori checked her own phone: 4:50 a.m. A call at this time of the morning was never good. She listened as Braddock said, “Yeah? Whoa, hold on. Where? Okay then. On the way.”
“You’re off?” Tori said sleepily when he hung up.
“I think I need you to come along on this one,” he replied. “We have a double murder over east of Crosslake. Gory scene, yet somehow the couple’s seventeen-year-old daughter survived it. She’s a witness.”
“Survived it? How?”
“That’s what we need to go and find out.”
Fifteen minutes later, Braddock was driving rapidly northeast toward the small town of Crosby.
“Who is on scene right now?” Tori asked as they sped along Highway 210, east of Manchester Bay.
“Dewey with the Crosby PD, plus our guys.”
“Dewey.” Tori smiled. “That guy. I see that guy and just… laugh.”
“He’s humorous, that’s for sure. As for our murder scene, it’s a house out in the woods. Two bodies inside. Dan and Heidi Newman.”
“Anything else?”
“I guess it’s…”
“It’s what?”
“Staged.”
“Staged? How?”
“I don’t know. We’ll find out when we get there.”
“Did you call Cal?”
“I wanted to see what we have before we got him out of bed.”
“Why should Cal get special dispensation?”
“Because he’s the boss and he employs me and now you on a more frequent basis.”
“I’m going to need a raise.”
“You FBI types, always making demands.”
Twelve months ago, that was what she was: an FBI special agent, based in New York City. And not just your standard special agent. The elite of the elite, she was the bureau’s go-to on missing children cases. At a moment’s notice, she and her select team could be on a chopper or an airplane, a new disappearance to investigate. Tori thrived professionally, continually driven to find children and reunite them with their families.
Problem was, her motivation came from her own heartbreak. It had started with the disappearance of her identical twin sister, Jessie, twenty-one years ago, just before her senior year at Manchester Bay High School, and was followed a year and a half later by the death of her father, the legendary Shepard County sheriff Big Jim Hunter, while she was away at college in Boston. While the official cause of death was a heart attack, the real cause was the disappearance of his daughter on his watch and the broken heart it had left him with.
With no remaining family to bind her there, Tori had left Manchester Bay. Whether intentionally or otherwise, she’d cut off all contact with the place and after some years, never intended to return. But while the tragedy had been effective in motivating her professionally, the grief from it metastasized unchecked for nearly twenty years.
Then a year ago, she was lured back to Manchester Bay by the resurfacing of her sister’s killer, who’d abducted another woman on the twentieth anniversary of Jessie’s disappearance. Although coming close to death herself, Tori had finally solved her sister’s murder, and the murders of many other women. While investigating the case, she’d met and fallen for Braddock. A New York transplant, and a man with his own history of loss, Braddock reached her, understood her, and started to care for her like no other before.
Solving her sister’s case and her evolving feelings for Braddock had forced Tori to finally confront her past. She’d spent two months intensely working through it, and even now went for therapy sessions every so often to strengthen her gains.
These days, life was slower. While she consulted with the FBI on occasion from afar, the only airplane she had been on in the last year was for a week’s vacation to Barbados in late March with Braddock, her most relaxing week in twenty years. She taught a couple of criminal justice classes at the university in town, and on a not infrequent basis helped Braddock and the Shepard County Sheriff’s Department on cases of interest that ran the gamut from homicide and missing persons to robbery. In the last six months, she’d worked enough that Cal had accounted for her presence in his latest department budget. Given Tori’s abilities, reputation and familial history in Manchester Bay, the budget item was lauded and swiftly approved by the county commissioners.
“We’re coming up on Crosby,” she noted now.
“And our turn.”
Braddock turned left and motored north out of Crosby on Highway 6 until he veered right onto a gravel road that wound its way through dense woods until a small clearing emerged on the right. They could see the patrol unit parked near the house, and a department-issue Tahoe along the road. Jake Williams, simply known as Steak—Tori’s childhood friend and Braddock’s top detective—was awaiting their arrival, while his partner, Sheryl Eggleston, was stringing out yellow crime-scene tape.
“This is obviously the place,” Tori said. “Hey, see the sign.” The wooden sign, perhaps a foot tall and three feet wide, was mounted on the large white elm just to the left of the driveway. It was dark brown, with The Newmans carved into it. Two green pine trees were painted on the left and a grouping of flowers on the right. It was the kind of sign that many Minnesotans with cabins and lake houses displayed to mark their homes. “It looks like the one you have.”
“It kind of does.”
Braddock’s personalized sign featured carved shamrocks on each side. He’d had it specially made a few years ago to fit in with the rest of his neighbors. These days he didn’t tend to notice the kitschy signs as he drove by the local lake homes, but seeing this one struck him for some reason.
“Have you been inside?” he asked Steak once disembarking from the Tahoe.
“Not yet. We’ve been here like a minute.”
As a group, they walked up the driveway. The house was a one-story ranch-style building set in the middle of a wide clearing surrounded by thick forest. To the left was a three-car garage. On the far side of the garage, parked on a cement slab, was a trailered and covered pontoon boat, and in front, a white VW Jetta and an ambulance. Inside the ambulance, two paramedics were treating a teenage girl sitting on a gurney.
“That must be the daughter,” Braddock murmured.
Tori observed the blank, almost catatonic stare on the girl’s face. She was paying no attention to the paramedics as they patched her scrapes and wounds.
At the house, Crosby patrol officer Dwayne Jones awaited their arrival.
“If it isn’t the immortal Will Braddock, and his sidekicks Tori and Steak,” he said in a low voice as she shook Braddock’s hand.
“Sidekicks?” Tori asked with raised eyebrows and a sly smile. “I am not a sidekick, Dewey.”
“You could definitely pass as Wonder Woman,” Steak quipped.
“Wonder Woman isn’t a sidekick. She has her own movie. Besides, I like the Avengers.”
“Wicked Witch, then.”
“Tori is Black Widow, if anything,” Braddock said, earning himself an approving smile from his girlfriend.
“Figures you’d like all the leather—”
“Okay, enough,” Braddock said, stopping Steak. To Jones he said, “What do we have?”
“The victims are Dan and Heidi Newman,” Jones explained, gesturing with his thumb to the house.
“And the girl in the ambulance is their daughter?” Tori asked.
“Yes. Cara Newman.”
“Has she said anything?”
“She was obviously traumatized when I got here. From what I could make out, she got home and went into the house, saw her father’s… body in the living room, spotted a man inside the house, another when she ran outside, and managed to get away by running into the woods. She hid out there for at least two hours, she thought, so by the time she called us, the killers were long gone. She was all cut up, scratched, bitten and bleeding, so I called for the ambo.”
Braddock looked to Tori. “Why don’t you talk to her?”
“In a minute,” Tori said. “Let’s have a quick look inside first. See what she saw.”
Jones led Braddock and Tori around to the back door of the house. Tori took a long look around. “It’s really isolated out here,” she remarked. “And quiet.”
“Too quiet,” Braddock murmured. “I like having neighbors.”
“What did you see inside?” she asked Dewey.
He grimaced. “I think ya’ll just better just go in and see for yourselves.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Is a BCA crime scene unit on the way?” Braddock asked.
“They’ve been called,” Steak replied.
The three of them pulled on white rubber gloves. Steak handed Tori and Braddock slip covers for their shoes, then they stepped inside the house.
The kitchen had been recently remodeled given the stainless-steel appliances, white marble counter tops, light gray painted cabinets and dark wooden floor. The wooden floor extended into the wide hall and entryway that divided the house in half front to back. Ahead they could see a living room. To the right was a hallway leading to the bedrooms and bathrooms.
“I’ll take the right,” Steak said, turning on his flashlight.
Tori led Braddock into the living room.
“Oh my,” Tori murmured. Dewey hadn’t been exaggerating.
Dan Newman was lying against a white pillar supporting the mantelpiece, his throat gruesomely cut from ear to ear, his head drooping and tilted to the left. Blood had streamed down the front of his chest and gray softball jersey and there was a pool of it dried around him on the tiled fireplace threshold.
Deliberate in her approach, Tori crouched to the right side of him. Newman was tall, with long legs, and had short dark brown hair with isolated grayish strands at the temples. His arms were wrapped around the back of the pillar and his wrists were secured with zip tie handcuffs. His ankles were secured the same way, and a single strip of wide gray duct tape had been placed over his mouth.. . .
Dan Newman laughed. “Well, those young flat-belly boys thought they were all that and then some.” He was referring to their softball opponents for the night, a collection of twenty-year-old students from Central Minnesota State University in Manchester Bay. “They thought coming over here was like playing intramurals. Us middle-aged guys have a trick or two left up our sleeves on a Friday night.”
“What was funny was watching them get frustrated as you guys hit single after single while all they did was try to hit it over the fence.”
“They succeeded a few times.”
“Sure, that one guy hit two of them into the pine trees in left field, but there was nobody on base. Then you guys would get those little soft hits, the rollers between their players, and the little fly balls that dropped in—”
“They call those bloops, dear.”
“Oh, right, bloops, those little bloop hits over their infielders’ heads. They died the death of a thousand cuts, and they got so… pissed. Ha!”
“Yeah, they figured they’d handle us old guys. What they didn’t realize is we’ve played thousands of games. We know a few things,” Dan replied, stifling a burp. “Oof, that sausage and pepperoni pizza tonight.” He patted his stomach. “I think I shook a hair too much cracked red pepper on it. It’s kind of getting to me.”
Heidi had already reached into her purse and handed over two antacid tablets.
“Thanks, honey.”
He turned right onto the dirt road and headed into the woods. “It’ll be a great night for sleeping. Nice and cool.”
“What time is Cara coming home?”
“I told her one a.m.”
“That’s a late curfew.”
“Her mom has been giving her that one, so I feel like I should too, so we’re consistent.”
The woods cleared on the right and the bright white rail fence that defined the front of their property appeared. Dan slowed, turned right and pulled up the driveway into the garage.
“Tomorrow we need to weed the flower beds in the front yard before you go off and play golf,” Heidi said as they reached the back door.
“Again?”
“Yes. It shouldn’t take long.”
“I should hope not,” he replied as he unlocked the door and pushed it open. “We did it just a few weeks ago.”
“Hey, we have to keep up to keep it all looking sharp,” she replied as she stepped into the kitchen. Dan quickly locked the door and followed.
He sensed sudden movement from his left.
Thump!
The blow hit him high in his back and sent him crashing face first into a kitchen cabinet, then down to the floor.
Heidi spun around to see a huge man swinging a crowbar.
“Dan! Dan!”
Thump! Thump! Thump!
“Da—” She was slammed to the floor from behind. “No! No! Get off me!”
Someone pulled her arms behind her back. The large man dropped the crowbar and approached. He wore a ski mask and took something black out of a pocket.
“You got her?” he asked.
“Give me a hand.”
“Stop! Stop!” she pleaded as the two men put something around her wrists and pulled it tight. She heard a ripping sound. “Stop! St—” The man on top of her stuck a piece of duct tape over her mouth.
Heidi kicked with her legs and tried to wriggle free as the man on top of her eased up, but it was only so he could turn around and hold her legs together. She felt the same type of restraint dig into the skin around her ankles.
She looked at her husband sprawled out on the floor, unconscious. Blood dripped from his mouth and forehead. She tried to scream his name, but her voice was muffled behind the tape.
The patting on his cheek was rhythmic at first, then harder, and then… Slap!
“Wake up, Dan! Dan, wake up sleepyhead…”
His eyes bolted open. In front of him was a behemoth of a man dressed in all black, wearing black leather gloves.
He tried to speak, but there was tape on his mouth.
The large man crouched to him. He didn’t say anything, just turned his head to the left. Dan’s eyes followed.
“Heidi! Heidi!” he tried to scream against the tape.
Heidi was face down on the couch, squirming, thrashing, fighting. A skinny man was on top of her, dressed in all black, including a ski mask. He too wore gloves. In his right hand was a long hunting knife, and he was slicing through the back of Heidi’s tank top. Her panicked eyes locked on her husband’s.
Dan thrashed, trying to break free. His arms were secured behind him and around the fireplace post. He tried kicking with his legs, but he saw that his ankles were bound with what looked to be nylon zip ties. A tall, athletic man, he nevertheless had no leverage, no ability to mass his strength.
“You can fight the restraints all you want, but you’re never getting free. Your pretty little wife can scream and squirm and flail all she wants, but she isn’t getting free.”
Dan looked over to his wife as the other man started pulling down her pants.
No! No! No!
He closed his eyes, banging his head back against the pillar, again yanking at his restraints. He had to try. He had to try, even knowing it was futile.
“I bet you have no idea why we’re out here, do you? Why we came after you? You’re totally clueless, aren’t you? You’re thinking, what did I do to these guys?”
Dan shook his head feverishly.
“The question will be whether those responsible for putting you in this position do.”
This time Dan looked back at him quizzically.
“You know what your truly fatal mistake was, Dan?” The hulk of a man in front of him pulled out a long bowie hunting knife. “It was living out here in the middle of nowhere.” He took off his mask. “Out here, nobody can hear you. Nobody can save you. And tonight, we can do whatever we want. And we will.”
Dan renewed his struggle against the restraints on his wrists and ankles.
“Fight all you want,” the man said, knowing that eventually Dan would exhaust himself. Then resignation would set in, and finally the knowledge of how it all would have to end. “You ain’t getting free of this. But you do have a front-row seat for the show.”
A half-hour later, Slim rolled away from the woman. “It’s been a while since I felt all that,” he said to D as he zipped up his pants. He had already put the used condom in a plastic bag and stuffed it into a backpack they’d brought along.
D, who had been sitting in a chair watching Slim have his way with the woman, stood up and pulled out a black nylon rope from his back pocket, then went and stood in front of a sweaty, teary-eyed Dan Newman. He made a point of slowly wrapping the rope tightly around each hand and then pulling it taut.
Dan knew what was coming next. “No! No! Noooooo!” he screamed behind his gag as D turned around and approached Heidi. He quickly had the rope around her neck, dragging her up from the couch and turning her toward her husband.
“Heidi! Heidi!” Dan pleaded, pulling frantically against his restraints. His eyes never left those of his wife as D slowly and methodically tightened the rope around her throat, the black strands digging into her skin as she fought with what strength she had left. He held her off the floor, his forearms vibrating with the effort. He didn’t kill her quickly, keeping his own eyes focused on those of her husband. Tears streaked down Dan’s cheeks.
After a few minutes, Heidi’s body fell limp, the fight gone. D undid the rope and let her drop to the floor. Then he nonchalantly walked over and stuffed the rope in the backpack.
“Let’s get her to the bathroom.”
Slim nodded and knelt. With one arm, D lifted Heidi’s body over the other man’s shoulder so he could carry her to the back of the house. He watched for a moment until Slim disappeared. Then he slowly turned around and looked a broken Dan Newman in the eye as he reached down into the backpack, pushed his pistol aside and made a show of pulling out a long, jagged knife from its sheath.
Slim was using the portable shower head to wash Heidi. He’d been standing barefoot, running the water over her for fifteen minutes now, wiping down her whole body.
D walked into the bathroom.
“What time is it?” Slim asked.
“One twenty. We need to get moving.”
“Is he done?”
D nodded.
“You… went off out there. I mean… with the knife and all. Holy moly.”
“You got what you needed, I got what I needed,” D said. “You about ready to prop her up?”
Slim sat Heidi’s body up against the tiled wall and adjusted the shower head so that the stream of water flowed down and between her legs. As they stepped out of the bathroom, they heard a thud and felt a vibration.
“What the…”
I’m so in trouble, Cara Newman thought as she tore down the long, narrow road that cut through the dense woods. She was late, extremely late, potentially getting-grounded late. Her curfew was generously 1:00 a.m., and it was now almost 1:30.
Why does Dad have to live out in the middle of nowhere like this?
It wasn’t as if she’d lost track of time completely. She knew she was pushing it, but then Ashley had needed a ride home and, well, that threw everything off kilter. Of course, it didn’t help that her dad and stepmom lived so far from Manchester Bay. She always underestimated how long it took to get over to Crosby.
She had no doubt they would be upset with her. She was surprised she hadn’t heard from one of them, but she was certain there would be stern words. Stay calm and just apologize. There was an out-of-town soccer tournament next weekend, and she didn’t want to miss that. Contrition was the strategy. Just say you’re sorry, she told herself. Don’t argue, don’t fight, just admit you blew it, give them nowhere to go.
As she emerged from the tunnel-like road, the house was on the right, set back quite a way. The good news was it looked dark, with few lights on and no exterior lights.
Could it be she was catching a break? Maybe they weren’t home yet. Maybe they’d stayed out late with friends. That was the hope, although just to be extra sure, once she turned onto the driveway up to the house, she turned off her headlights.
She pulled up in front of the garage and parked. As she got out of the car, she looked to the house. She’d figured there would be a light on in the back, but there wasn’t. There was a light on somewhere deep inside the house, but certainly not in the kitchen. She’d expected that when she reached the back door, either her father or her stepmom would be pacing the room, ready to pounce when she entered.
If they were home, maybe they were already asleep. Maybe I can sneak in, she thought hopefully.
When she reached the back door, she found it locked.
They said they were going to leave the door open. Again, maybe a sign that they weren’t home. She fumbled with her key ring and found the house key, then opened the door and stepped into the dark house. The only light was to the right. She flipped up the switch and set her purse, keys and phone on the center island. As she glanced around, she realized that the family room looked odd. Couch cushions were scattered on the floor. She took another step and to the left saw her father leaning oddly against the fireplace pillar, his head tilted to the side, and then the blood.
“Dad!”
She heard a noise to her right. A man, stepping out of her parents’ bedroom. He was dressed all in black, wearing a ski mask.
“Oh my God! Oh my God! Who—”
He took a step toward her.
Cara turned and bolted out the back door, turning left and making for the driveway. As she came around the corner, a second man in a ski mask appeared from the front of the house. His angle cut off her path down the driveway to the road.
“No! No! No!” she screamed, frantically looking around for an escape. “You stay away from me!” she yelled, searching for anything to defend herself with. Turning, she saw the other man, who was much bigger, coming out the back door, lumbering toward her.
The two men were slowly closing in on her.
You’re dead if they get you, she thought. She looked to her right.
The woods. It was her only chance.
The smaller man charged at her.
She took off, sprinting, vaulting over a downed tree and into the woods. Run and hide, was all she could think. Run and hide. Run and hide.
She leaped over another tree trunk, but then caught her foot on a branch and tripped, falling face first. As she pushed herself up, she looked back to see the men closing on her.
Go, go, go, she told herself, heading to her right, what she knew was northeast. It was so dark, she couldn’t really see the obstacles in her path, and she stumbled again, landing hard.
Dazed for just a moment, she glanced back once more. The men were still coming, the smaller one out in front, closing rapidly.
He had her trapped.
She felt a long branch under her right hand. She quickly stood up and swung it at him. The man raised his right arm to deflect the blow.
“Aargh,” he groaned, falling back.
She swung and hit him again, this time knocking him to the ground, then looked up. The other man, the big one, was closing in.
She threw the branch at him, spun away and ran again, deeper into the woods, hurdling obstacles as she saw them, ducking under branches, feeling thorns and sharp twigs slice through the skin of her legs, hands and face.
She snuck a look back. The men were both still coming, but she had managed to create a sizable gap now. As she ran, it seemed like she’d stumbled onto a narrow path. Pumping her arms, she sprinted on.
“Do you see her? Do you see her?” D growled urgently, constantly tripping over the uneven ground and downed branches. “Dammit!”
“Where’s your gun?” Slim asked.
“Back at the house in the backpack,” D replied angrily. “Do you see her?”
“I had her just a second ago,” Slim said, ten feet ahead. “I think… I see her! I see her!”
“Just go.”
Slim ran on as D trailed behind, panting.
As Cara followed the little zigzagging path, she saw the glint of moonlight off water ahead. The small lake at the edge of her dad’s property, thick with reeds and cattails.
What now? Swim for it? Dive in and hold her breath? Could she hide in the reeds and cattails?
Down to her right, she saw a grouping of big rocks.
She didn’t like the lake. If they got her into the water, the men would drown her. She picked up a rock and heaved it out into the reeds.
Kerplunk!
Kerplunk!
“Did you hear that?” Slim whispered to his left. “That sounded like water.”
Kerplunk!
Kerplunk!
“Is she going into the lake?” D exclaimed. They carried on running; another couple of hundred feet and they reached the shoreline.
On all fours, Cara crept back inland, slithering as best she could along the ground. As she peeked up over the brush, she could see the silhouettes of the two men, fanning out left and right. She lost sight of the smaller man, but the big one was shuffling along the shoreline, moving in her direction but looking into the reeds, hunting her.
Ten feet in front of her were what looked like three downed trees, lying askew. She crawled towards them, careful and slow with each movement. Of the three, one was extremely old, rotten and partially hollowed out. She slid inside; though she couldn’t go far, it at least provided a few feet of cover. She made like a ball, her back against the left side, her knees pulled tight to her chest, her mouth closed, breathing through her nose.
She could hear voices whispering in the distance, and then heavy footsteps coming in her direction.
Slow. Deliberate. Getting closer.
She froze. Ten feet away, she could see two feet. Then she heard more footsteps. Another set of feet were now just outside the tree.
They were right there.
She closed her eyes. Go away. Please go away.
“I’ve been searching, but the reeds are so thick,” Slim whispered. “I don’t think she went in. There’s nobody in the water. She’s still in the woods here somewhere. Has to be.”
D took a moment to scan with his eyes, but there was no movement. She was hiding, or… “She could be doubling back. She could have looped around on us.”
“The house. If she gets back there…”
“Or she’s playing us,” D said. His eyes had adjusted to the dark, and he peered around, hunting for movement, listening for any sound.
“Can we risk that?” Slim said anxiously. “We’re sitting ducks out here.”
“Go.”
Slim led the way back down the path. “Who is she?”
“I’m guessing their daughter.”
“She wasn’t supposed to be here. She was supposed to be at her mom’s.”
They exited the woods and made their way back to the house. The girl’s car was still there. Her purse, phone and keys were still in the kitchen. D knew it was at least a mile in any direction to get to another house.
“What do we do! What do we do!” Slim yelped, panicked, hyperventilating.
“Stay calm,” D replied. “Keep your head. That’s what screwed our boy in the first place, not thinking things through. What we do is grab that backpack and leave, right now, just as we planned.”
“But the girl…”
“Saw two men dressed all in black and in ski masks. That’s all she saw.”
Tori stirred awake as a cool breeze flapped the curtains at the bedroom window. She took in a comfortable breath, feeling the long, muscular arm wrapped tenderly around her waist, her naked body warmly enveloped by Braddock’s angular six-foot-four body. She could feel the light heaves of his chest against the soft skin of her bare back as he slept. It had been a relaxing night. They’d taken a long boat cruise on the lake, then had grilled chicken on the deck before watching documentaries about the Fyre Festival and the college admissions scandal on Netflix with a bottle of wine, capping it all off with an energetic first hour in bed. All in all, a wonderful night in a summer full of them. She let her eyes once again drift closed, nuzzling her body further back into his.
Ring! Ring! Ring!
She waited for him to move.
Ring! Ring! Ring!
“Braddock?”
“Yeah, I hear it,” he said with a sigh as he reluctantly pulled his arm away and rolled over to his nightstand.
Tori checked her own phone: 4:50 a.m. A call at this time of the morning was never good. She listened as Braddock said, “Yeah? Whoa, hold on. Where? Okay then. On the way.”
“You’re off?” Tori said sleepily when he hung up.
“I think I need you to come along on this one,” he replied. “We have a double murder over east of Crosslake. Gory scene, yet somehow the couple’s seventeen-year-old daughter survived it. She’s a witness.”
“Survived it? How?”
“That’s what we need to go and find out.”
Fifteen minutes later, Braddock was driving rapidly northeast toward the small town of Crosby.
“Who is on scene right now?” Tori asked as they sped along Highway 210, east of Manchester Bay.
“Dewey with the Crosby PD, plus our guys.”
“Dewey.” Tori smiled. “That guy. I see that guy and just… laugh.”
“He’s humorous, that’s for sure. As for our murder scene, it’s a house out in the woods. Two bodies inside. Dan and Heidi Newman.”
“Anything else?”
“I guess it’s…”
“It’s what?”
“Staged.”
“Staged? How?”
“I don’t know. We’ll find out when we get there.”
“Did you call Cal?”
“I wanted to see what we have before we got him out of bed.”
“Why should Cal get special dispensation?”
“Because he’s the boss and he employs me and now you on a more frequent basis.”
“I’m going to need a raise.”
“You FBI types, always making demands.”
Twelve months ago, that was what she was: an FBI special agent, based in New York City. And not just your standard special agent. The elite of the elite, she was the bureau’s go-to on missing children cases. At a moment’s notice, she and her select team could be on a chopper or an airplane, a new disappearance to investigate. Tori thrived professionally, continually driven to find children and reunite them with their families.
Problem was, her motivation came from her own heartbreak. It had started with the disappearance of her identical twin sister, Jessie, twenty-one years ago, just before her senior year at Manchester Bay High School, and was followed a year and a half later by the death of her father, the legendary Shepard County sheriff Big Jim Hunter, while she was away at college in Boston. While the official cause of death was a heart attack, the real cause was the disappearance of his daughter on his watch and the broken heart it had left him with.
With no remaining family to bind her there, Tori had left Manchester Bay. Whether intentionally or otherwise, she’d cut off all contact with the place and after some years, never intended to return. But while the tragedy had been effective in motivating her professionally, the grief from it metastasized unchecked for nearly twenty years.
Then a year ago, she was lured back to Manchester Bay by the resurfacing of her sister’s killer, who’d abducted another woman on the twentieth anniversary of Jessie’s disappearance. Although coming close to death herself, Tori had finally solved her sister’s murder, and the murders of many other women. While investigating the case, she’d met and fallen for Braddock. A New York transplant, and a man with his own history of loss, Braddock reached her, understood her, and started to care for her like no other before.
Solving her sister’s case and her evolving feelings for Braddock had forced Tori to finally confront her past. She’d spent two months intensely working through it, and even now went for therapy sessions every so often to strengthen her gains.
These days, life was slower. While she consulted with the FBI on occasion from afar, the only airplane she had been on in the last year was for a week’s vacation to Barbados in late March with Braddock, her most relaxing week in twenty years. She taught a couple of criminal justice classes at the university in town, and on a not infrequent basis helped Braddock and the Shepard County Sheriff’s Department on cases of interest that ran the gamut from homicide and missing persons to robbery. In the last six months, she’d worked enough that Cal had accounted for her presence in his latest department budget. Given Tori’s abilities, reputation and familial history in Manchester Bay, the budget item was lauded and swiftly approved by the county commissioners.
“We’re coming up on Crosby,” she noted now.
“And our turn.”
Braddock turned left and motored north out of Crosby on Highway 6 until he veered right onto a gravel road that wound its way through dense woods until a small clearing emerged on the right. They could see the patrol unit parked near the house, and a department-issue Tahoe along the road. Jake Williams, simply known as Steak—Tori’s childhood friend and Braddock’s top detective—was awaiting their arrival, while his partner, Sheryl Eggleston, was stringing out yellow crime-scene tape.
“This is obviously the place,” Tori said. “Hey, see the sign.” The wooden sign, perhaps a foot tall and three feet wide, was mounted on the large white elm just to the left of the driveway. It was dark brown, with The Newmans carved into it. Two green pine trees were painted on the left and a grouping of flowers on the right. It was the kind of sign that many Minnesotans with cabins and lake houses displayed to mark their homes. “It looks like the one you have.”
“It kind of does.”
Braddock’s personalized sign featured carved shamrocks on each side. He’d had it specially made a few years ago to fit in with the rest of his neighbors. These days he didn’t tend to notice the kitschy signs as he drove by the local lake homes, but seeing this one struck him for some reason.
“Have you been inside?” he asked Steak once disembarking from the Tahoe.
“Not yet. We’ve been here like a minute.”
As a group, they walked up the driveway. The house was a one-story ranch-style building set in the middle of a wide clearing surrounded by thick forest. To the left was a three-car garage. On the far side of the garage, parked on a cement slab, was a trailered and covered pontoon boat, and in front, a white VW Jetta and an ambulance. Inside the ambulance, two paramedics were treating a teenage girl sitting on a gurney.
“That must be the daughter,” Braddock murmured.
Tori observed the blank, almost catatonic stare on the girl’s face. She was paying no attention to the paramedics as they patched her scrapes and wounds.
At the house, Crosby patrol officer Dwayne Jones awaited their arrival.
“If it isn’t the immortal Will Braddock, and his sidekicks Tori and Steak,” he said in a low voice as she shook Braddock’s hand.
“Sidekicks?” Tori asked with raised eyebrows and a sly smile. “I am not a sidekick, Dewey.”
“You could definitely pass as Wonder Woman,” Steak quipped.
“Wonder Woman isn’t a sidekick. She has her own movie. Besides, I like the Avengers.”
“Wicked Witch, then.”
“Tori is Black Widow, if anything,” Braddock said, earning himself an approving smile from his girlfriend.
“Figures you’d like all the leather—”
“Okay, enough,” Braddock said, stopping Steak. To Jones he said, “What do we have?”
“The victims are Dan and Heidi Newman,” Jones explained, gesturing with his thumb to the house.
“And the girl in the ambulance is their daughter?” Tori asked.
“Yes. Cara Newman.”
“Has she said anything?”
“She was obviously traumatized when I got here. From what I could make out, she got home and went into the house, saw her father’s… body in the living room, spotted a man inside the house, another when she ran outside, and managed to get away by running into the woods. She hid out there for at least two hours, she thought, so by the time she called us, the killers were long gone. She was all cut up, scratched, bitten and bleeding, so I called for the ambo.”
Braddock looked to Tori. “Why don’t you talk to her?”
“In a minute,” Tori said. “Let’s have a quick look inside first. See what she saw.”
Jones led Braddock and Tori around to the back door of the house. Tori took a long look around. “It’s really isolated out here,” she remarked. “And quiet.”
“Too quiet,” Braddock murmured. “I like having neighbors.”
“What did you see inside?” she asked Dewey.
He grimaced. “I think ya’ll just better just go in and see for yourselves.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Is a BCA crime scene unit on the way?” Braddock asked.
“They’ve been called,” Steak replied.
The three of them pulled on white rubber gloves. Steak handed Tori and Braddock slip covers for their shoes, then they stepped inside the house.
The kitchen had been recently remodeled given the stainless-steel appliances, white marble counter tops, light gray painted cabinets and dark wooden floor. The wooden floor extended into the wide hall and entryway that divided the house in half front to back. Ahead they could see a living room. To the right was a hallway leading to the bedrooms and bathrooms.
“I’ll take the right,” Steak said, turning on his flashlight.
Tori led Braddock into the living room.
“Oh my,” Tori murmured. Dewey hadn’t been exaggerating.
Dan Newman was lying against a white pillar supporting the mantelpiece, his throat gruesomely cut from ear to ear, his head drooping and tilted to the left. Blood had streamed down the front of his chest and gray softball jersey and there was a pool of it dried around him on the tiled fireplace threshold.
Deliberate in her approach, Tori crouched to the right side of him. Newman was tall, with long legs, and had short dark brown hair with isolated grayish strands at the temples. His arms were wrapped around the back of the pillar and his wrists were secured with zip tie handcuffs. His ankles were secured the same way, and a single strip of wide gray duct tape had been placed over his mouth.. . .
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