No Going Back - 07 Read online

  Prompted by his buddy, Rob, Scott had told me about the run-in he’d had with the family who owned a homestead out in the desert, and how one of the Logan men had shown an unhealthy fascination with Helena, and had gone as far as pawing his wife’s hair before Scott had intervened. They’d been drinking in a bar that was frequented primarily by a local Native American contingent, but Scott and Helena were regulars and had been accepted into the community. The Logans were a different story: when they entered the dimly lit bar room, the promise of unrestrained violence in the air became palpable. The Logans made no secret of their dislike for their Navajo and Hopi neighbours, and made it plain with their unchecked insults and racial slurs. Some of the local men might have stood up to them, but they knew it was a pointless exercise, and one that would bring them further trouble. They took the Logans’ belligerence, kept their heads down and hoped they’d pick on someone else.

  That was when, uninvited, they had joined Scott and Helena at their table.

  ‘Guys,’ Scott had tried, ‘you mind? Me and my wife are trying to have a little privacy here.’

  ‘We don’t mind,’ their elected spokesman said. All three Logans sat down, the spokesman, Carson, slapping a bottle of bourbon on the table top. ‘You go ahead with what you were doing and pretend we aren’t here.’

  Scott and Helena shared a grimace. ‘C’mon, guys. Give us a break will ya?’

  ‘We ain’t sitting with any of those savages.’ Carson tipped his head at the other customers with a sneer. ‘Besides, these are the best seats in the house.’

  ‘They sure are.’ Brent Logan leered at Helena, admiring the swell of her breasts beneath her white blouse in open disregard of Scott.

  Scott glanced at Helena and could see the flicker of uncertainty in her eyes. He couldn’t allow Brent to be so brazen without appearing a coward, but he’d heard rumours about these bad asses and didn’t want the kind of trouble they could bring. ‘C’mon, guys? We’re only having a quiet drink, winding down. There’s plenty other places to sit.’

  ‘Relax.’ Carson splashed bourbon into glasses, shoved one across the table to Scott, and took up one of his own. ‘Have a drink with us, man.’

  Helena bumped Scott’s thigh under the table. Scott got the message: she wanted to leave before things got out of hand. Scott was in agreement but couldn’t see how he could do that without drawing the ire of the Logan boys.

  Helena offered a plausible get-out. ‘You’re driving, Scott. You’ve had enough to drink already. We can’t afford for you to lose your licence.’

  Scott pushed the glass of bourbon back towards Carson. ‘She’s right. The cops have been after me long enough . . . don’t want to give them a reason to run me in.’

  Carson shoved the glass back again. ‘One more won’t hurt.’

  Brent’s eyes had fixed on Helena’s face since straying up from her chest. His pupils dilated as he watched the play of light on her dark hair. He reached up with trembling fingers and pinched a bunch of his coarse blond mane. Scott’s gaze flicked from him to Carson, then across at the third Logan. The stocky, dark-complexioned man merely returned the look, a faint smile playing about his thick lips.

  ‘OK,’ Scott relented, as he picked up the glass of bourbon. ‘But just this one, OK?’

  He downed the bourbon in one long gulp then stood up and reached a hand for Helena’s. ‘C’mon, babe, we’d best git going.’

  ‘Sit down.’

  Scott looked at Carson, but it wasn’t he who had spoken. It was the dark one.

  ‘I gotta go, buddy,’ Scott said.

  Carson slammed his empty glass on the table top. ‘Samuel told you to sit down.’

  Scott shook his head. ‘Look, guys, I don’t want no trouble, but me and Helena are leaving.’ He pulled his wife up beside him, but Brent mirrored the action and stood directly in front of her. He was still teasing the strands of his thick hair. Brent mouthed her name, mimicking Scott: ‘He-lena.’

  ‘We just bought you a drink,’ Carson said. ‘It’s only fair you do the same for us.’

  ‘Fine.’ Scott dug in his jeans pocket and pulled out a wad of dollars. He dropped them in front of the man. ‘Get yourselves a drink on me.’

  Samuel Logan reached for the small stack of bills, and scrunched them in his fist. He tossed them at Scott and they bounced off his chest and on to the floor. Scott stiffened. Helena’s hand in his had also tightened up. ‘C’mon, Helena, we’re leaving.’

  Brent stepped in front of Helena, while Samuel also came to his feet, blocking the other route around the table. Up close Samuel’s face was a criss-cross of old scars like white threads in his sun-parched skin. His hands were lumpy, as though his fingers and knuckles had been broken many times and had failed to set properly.

  ‘Oh, c’mon,’ Scott said. In the bar room the buzz of conversation had dropped to a hush. All around them was a static charge, like ozone building in the atmosphere before a lightning storm. Some customers left hurriedly.

  ‘You think you’re too good to drink with us?’ Carson asked as he refilled glasses.

  ‘No, I don’t. But like Helena said, I’ve already had too much and have to drive back to Indian Wells.’ He looked at Brent, just as the young man let go of his hair and reached for Helena’s. He pushed his fingers deep under her bobbed cut and cupped the back of her head. He pulled her towards him. Helena let out a gasp, at the same time as Scott grabbed Brent’s wrist. ‘Hey! Git your hands off my wife!’

  Without warning Samuel lunged forward and slammed his curled fist into Scott’s solar plexus.

  The air whooshed out of Scott and he folded, his grip falling from Brent’s wrist to the pain in his gut. Carson reached up and snagged a handful of his hair and pulled him across the table. With his other hand he splashed the glass of bourbon in Scott’s eyes. Scott yowled wordlessly and tried to wipe the stinging liquor from his face. Distantly he could hear Helena shouting, and he knew that Brent was still holding her hair in his fist.

  Carson forced Scott’s right cheek against the table, using the leverage on his hair to hold him there. Scott struggled, but he’d no purchase with his feet to force himself backwards, and he felt Samuel’s hammer-like fist jab him in his right kidney. Something silver flashed in his vision, and when he blinked some of the liquor from his eyes he saw that Carson had laid a revolver on the table alongside his face. There was a hubbub in the bar now as people fled for the exits. ‘You really want to mess with us, boy?’ Carson asked.

  Before he could answer, Samuel pressed a cheek to the table so he could meet Scott’s gaze. ‘Do it. Say yes. I will make you hurt everywhere.’

  ‘Jesus, God!’ Scott’s cry was because of the knuckle Samuel rotated into a nerve cluster on the side of his jaw. Scott had never experienced localised pain like it before. Words failed him, the noise coming from his mouth became an animal-like howl of agony.

  Suddenly Samuel stopped pressing, and the grip on his hair was loosened: Scott reared back, his face flushed with anger and shame, and not a little fear. Carson slid the gun into his shirt front. When Scott searched for Helena he saw her a few feet away, and Brent taking a step back. Samuel had sat down again.

  Two state troopers had entered the bar.

  They stood silhouetted in the doorway. One of them had his hand on the butt of his sidearm.

  ‘There a problem in here?’ the trooper called.

  Scott glanced at Helena again, giving a subtle shake of his head. Her face was pinched with fear, and a clump of hair stood out from the side of her skull from where Brent had held her. She smoothed it back quickly.

  ‘No problem, Officer,’ said the bar manager coming out from wherever he’d been hiding since the Logans entered. ‘None at all.’

  The state troopers strode further inside. They were no fools, and they surveyed the small group arranged around the table, eyes slipping from one to the next. But they also knew that they were on to a loser if they expected anyone here to come clean about what had
just happened. These kinds of bars, these kinds of people, they knew to keep their mouths shut and their problems to themselves.

  ‘See that things stay that way,’ said the trooper with his hand on his gun.

  The other, reading the probable cause of the situation, pointed at Scott and Helena. ‘You two . . . I think it’s best that you get yourselves home.’

  Scott saw the opportunity and snatched it. He took Helena by her elbow, whispering a warning to stay quiet, and led her towards the exit. Brent stood aside for them, allowing them to move past him, but he held Scott’s gaze. ‘You’re a pussy, Scott,’ he whispered. ‘And you don’t deserve such a fine-looking woman as Helena. She’d be far better off with me.’

  Those were the words that told me the Logans were likely suspects in Helena’s subsequent disappearing act, little more than a fortnight after the incident in the bar. Scott had related the details to the police who were tasked with investigating her disappearance. However, the cops hadn’t placed much credence in Scott’s abduction theory. In fairness, they’d visited the Logans and made a cursory inspection of their property but had found nothing untoward. The family had all offered alibis that they backed up for one another. On their own, those alibis didn’t hold water, but they’d also got corroboration from a third party. Their friend, Doug Stodghill, a mechanic from Holbrook, swore that the Logans had all been at his auto shop working on their pick-up truck at the time Helena had walked into Indian Wells. The police suspected that Stodghill was lying, either on the Logans’ behalf or under threat, but with little else to go on, and no proof of a crime, their line of inquiry fell flat.

  I wondered if, since the robbery and shooting at Peachy’s gas station, the Logans had entered the frame of inquiry and if I was perhaps stepping on the toes of the local law enforcement community by driving out to their homestead. If that was the case, then tough; because I wasn’t going to give up on Jay, Nicole and now Ellie Mansfield so easily, the way that the cops had on Helena Blackstock.

  11

  The heat had grown stifling, so much so that Jay’s clothing was soaked through and chafing her skin. She was very thirsty, her mouth sticky with foamy saliva that worked to seal her lips shut. The ropes that bound her wrists were shrinking, or her hands were swelling, and causing intense pain. Jay imagined that the circulation had been cut off completely and soon her flesh would necrotise and drop off her bones. She had not realised it earlier but her ankles were also bound together, though only loosely so that she could walk if needs be, but would be unable to run. Not that there was much chance of either in this box.

  She kicked up with her feet. At the far end of her tomb-like prison the tin sheets buckled slightly, but that was all. A chain had been fastened over the roof and held it in place. Testing the tin sheets with a shoulder, she’d found that they were chained down in two further places: no way could she force her way out without leverage. The sturdy wooden sides had resisted her attempts to kick the planks loose, and now that she thought about it, she believed they had been buried below the surface of the desert to strengthen them. The roof was level with the ground outside, but at least it hadn’t been covered by sand. Light spilled inside through the old nail holes, like thin lasers that she feared might burn her exposed flesh.

  She had no conception of time. She did not know how long it had been since she was placed in this coffin and left to stew in her own juices; she did not know if her captors were ever going to release her. Only the fact that they hadn’t fully concealed her prison gave her some hope.

  But if they were coming back for her, that gave her a new sense of urgency. If she was ever going to escape and bring help for Nicole and the girl, then she needed to do something quick.

  Earlier she’d screamed and pleaded, then demanded that she be released; now she held her peace, because she did not want to face the men again. Fancifully she’d thought of them as characters from The Wizard of Oz, but twisted into evil caricatures. The brainless idiot with the yellow hair could only be the Straw Man. The cold and heartless cowboy, he was the Tin Man. The third one, squat and ugly, was the Wizard himself. He was a sham, a fake, but worse than that: something evil and demented lurked beyond the curtain he hid behind. What did that leave her: the Cowardly Lion? She joked about living dangerously, but up until now she hadn’t shown that she was prepared to do so. She needed to get a grip, she realised, grow some balls as her dad would say, and get them all out of here.

  Lying on her back, bound as she was, she could achieve nothing. But that was only an excuse.

  She looked at one of the pinpricks of light, and then twisted on to her side so that she could probe the hole in the tin with a fingertip. Her fingers were almost numb, but she could feel a burr of sharp metal. It was corroded and brittle but would it be enough?

  Jay rocked sideways, then allowed herself to roll over on to her belly. The position severely limited any hope of offering resistance if her captors returned for her, but there was nothing else for it. With the pressure off her ropes she was able to manipulate her arms and she drew in some of the slack until it was bunched next to her right fist. She began rubbing the rope against the metal burr, taking it easy, though desperate to move faster, so that she didn’t break it off. Perspiration flooded from her hair, streamed down her face and invaded her eyes. She squeezed her lids tight, because there was no need of vision at that moment.

  While she laboured, struggling for each breath, she recalled what happened after she was brought to this place in the desert, though the memories boiled through her mind in an incoherent jumble. She had to concentrate before she could bring them into order.

  The teenaged girl was carried from Jay’s dad’s SUV by the young man with blond hair, Brent. She remembered his name with a stab of revulsion. She was led by the gargoyle, both her wrists enclosed in one big hand. While she was pushed towards a decrepit wooden shack, she squirmed round, looking for Nicole. Her friend was unconscious and lying over the lanky cowboy’s shoulder as he strode from the pick-up towards an equally decrepit house half-concealed beyond a zephyr of dusty air. ‘Nicole!’

  Her captor’s spare hand clamped hard over her mouth, muffling her next yell as he rasped in her ear. ‘Make another sound and I assure you it will be a scream of pain.’

  Jay peered about frantically, wondering why his warning had been so explicit. Was it because they were in earshot of a neighbouring property? She doubted that very much. All she could see beyond the ill-kept homestead were wind-scoured mountains and strangely shaped rock formations. To think the beauty of the desert was what had brought her and Nicole out here in the first place. Now all it denoted was a barren hellscape. As though the man had read her mind, he said, ‘There’s no one within twenty miles of here. I just don’t like people shouting round me. Screams I’m fine with.’

  He forced her to the shack and through the door. Inside was even shabbier than the disintegrating boards outside. It was dark, although strips of light punched through chinks in the walls allowing a strobe-like perusal of the interior. It smelled dry and musty, underlain by the bitter tang of corroding metal. Old tools and implements hung from the wall at the far end and a large wooden bench dominated the centre of the space. Rusting chains hung from worm-holed beams, from which dangled dusty cobwebs. Another chain lay in a loose coil on the floor, attached to one of the sturdy bench legs, large steel bolts fixing it to the wood. At one end was a half-moon of thick leather, hinged where it met the chain link. Jay’s vision fixed on it and she began to shake her head furiously.

  Her captor spun her, slapping her hard across the face with a hand that was as hard as steel, and she almost blacked out. While she slumped at the knees, the man danced round her and hauled the chain off the floor. Jay felt the two horns of leather clasp round her throat, forming a tight collar. Before she could pull free, the man snapped some kind of hasp shut and secured it with a padlock.

  When he stood back from her Jay wilted, going all the way down to the floor as her hands
came to the collar. Within the leather she could feel iron: no way on earth could she pull it free.

  ‘I need to go and help with your friends, Nicole and Ellie. Be good, do as you’re told, and maybe I’ll bring you food and water. The choice is yours.’

  With that ominous warning, the man had walked out without a look back. Jay knew why: he had no immediate interest in her. But was he as engrossed with Nicole and Ellie as his two crazy friends? She thought not. His gaze fell on them with a different hunger.

  The night had been long in coming.

  Jay tested her bonds but they were solid. She thought about demolishing the bench, but it resisted her efforts. The chain was old but strong. She couldn’t reach any of the tools on the wall. Finally she’d fallen asleep on the warped floorboards as insects and rodents scuttled among the filth.

  A scream woke her.

  ‘Nicole!’ she’d yelled in response, because her friend’s howl had been tinged with terror. ‘Nicole? Nicole?’

  There was no reply and all went quiet again.

  Panting she’d crouched on the floor, pulling futilely on the chain where it was bolted to the bench. She rubbed the skin raw on her palms. But she kept on tugging.

  What in God’s name was happening in the house? She didn’t want to imagine the scene but she couldn’t help it: Nicole writhing in agony beneath the beasts as they tore off her clothing and invaded her most private places.

  When she heard Ellie scream she vomited on the floor.

  ‘No . . . no . . . no . . .’