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 hell 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 hell 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 hell 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. Cassie 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. Cassie…where in God’s name was Cassie? 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 Cassie to kill her.
Please, God, 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.
The engine suddenly stopped and she braced herself. He must have arrived at his destination. This was her chance. Her moment for escape. Think, Jenna, think. She had so few options, but she had to get free. When he opened the tailgate, she’d throw all her force at him, kick her bound legs at his face as he leaned in to pull her out.
And then what? You’ll still be tied up. No…you have to wait until he tries to move you. You can’t do anything until you’re untied from this truck.
But he’ll use the stun gun on me again.
Not if you fake him out. Pretend that the drugs haven’t worn off. Act as if you’re completely feeble and out of it. You’re an actress, for God’s sake! Get ready for the performance of your life.
She mustered all her courage, prayed silently, and stared through the darkness to the point where she knew the back of the truck was. Come on, you sick pervert, she thought. I’m ready. But instead of the back of the truck opening, she heard a clanging of chains, close, from the area near the front of the truck, and then the whine of an engine. The entire truck shuddered, then jolted, and slowly the truck began to move, upward, inching at an impossible angle, creeping up the horrendously steep terrain.
What! No! She had to escape…now! Gravity pulled at her and Jenna would have slid to the back of the truck if she hadn’t been secured, a cord around her body strapped to the sides of the truck. What was happening? Her thoughts raced and collided before she realized that the truck was being winched up the hillside. That had to be it.
Wherever he was taking her was remote. Hidden in the mountains. Away from the roads.
Any hope of being rescued disintegrated.
The police had no idea where she was.
In this blizzard, she would never be found.
He had her!
He had his Jenna.
He hummed to himself, the theme song from Resurrection. The haunting, nearly eerie melody reverberated through his mind like an anthem. His blood ran hot, the wanting a fever. Seeing her so close. Touching her…ahhhhh…Everything was almost in place, he thought, relishing the cold as the wind and snow raged through the trees. He watched as his truck was winched off the road, through a clearing to a plateau on the mountainside. He kept the winch for just this purpose, to hide his vehicle, and now, as the snow fell ever downward, kissing his skin and hiding his tracks, he knew all he’d hoped for, all he’d planned, was about to come to fruition.
He’d waited so long for this moment. He’d scouted out this property the moment he’d learned Jenna Hughes was buying in this part of Oregon, an area he’d been familiar with, a section of the country where his own pathetic excuse for a mother resided.