Once Gone (a Riley Paige Mystery--Book #1)

Chapter 34

Riley turned away from the pictures. She moved toward the closed door at the end of the hall. She swallowed hard.

There it is, she thought.

She was sure of it. That door was the barrier between the dead, artificial, unreal beauty of this country home and the hideously ugly reality that crept behind it. That room was where the false mask of blissful normalcy fell away once and for all.

Holding her gun in her right hand, she opened the door with her left hand. The room was dark, but even in the dim light from the hall, she could see that it was completely unlike the rest of the house. The floor was littered with debris.

She found a light switch to the side of the door and flicked in on. A single overhead bulb revealed a nightmare spread out before her. The first thing that registered on her mind was a metal pipe standing in the middle of the space, bolted to the floor and to the ceilings. Bloodstains on the floor marked what happened there. The unheeded screams of women echoed through her mind, nearly overwhelming her.

No one was inside the room. Riley steadied herself and stepped forward. The windows were boarded up, and no sunlight entered. The walls were pink, with storybook images painted on them. But they were defaced by ugly smears.

Pieces of a child's furniture—frilly chairs and stools really meant for a little girl—were overturned and broken. Scraps of dolls had been thrown everywhere—amputated limbs and heads and snatches of hair. Small doll wigs were nailed to the walls.

Heart pounding with fear, with rage, remembering her own captivity too well, Riley stepped deeper into the room, mesmerized by the scene, by the fury, by the agony that she sensed here.

There came a sudden rustle behind her, and suddenly, the lights went out.

Riley, panic-stricken, spun around to fire her gun but missed her chance. Something heavy and hard struck her arm an agonizing blow. Her weapon went skittering into the darkness.

Riley tried to dodge the next blow, but a rigid, weighty, object glanced across her head, cracking noisily against her skull. She fell and scrambled toward a dark corner of the room.

The blow kept echoing between her ears. Concussive sparkles flickered in the darkness of her mind. She'd been hurt and she knew it. She struggled to hold onto consciousness, but it felt like sand slipping between her fingers.

There it was again—that hissing white flame cutting through the darkness. Little by little, the shimmering light revealed who was carrying it.

This time it was Riley's mother. She was standing right in front of Riley, the fatal bullet wound bleeding in the middle of her chest, her face pale and dead-looking. But when her mother spoke, it was with Riley's father's voice.

"Girl, you're doing this all wrong."

Riley was seized by nauseating dizziness. Everything kept spinning. Her world made no sense at all. What was her mother doing, holding this awful instrument of torture? Why was she speaking with her father's voice?

Riley cried out, "Why aren't you Peterson?"

Suddenly, the flame was extinguished, leaving only lingering traces of phantom light.

Again, she heard her father's voice growling in pitch-blackness.

"That's your trouble. You want to take on all the evil in the world—all at the same time. You've got to make your choice. One monster at a time."

Her head still swimming, Riley tried to grasp that message.

"One monster at a time," she murmured.

Her consciousness ebbed and flowed, taunting her with bursts of lucidity. She saw that the door was slightly ajar and a man was silhouetted there against the dim hallway light. She couldn't make out his face.

He held something in his hand—a crowbar, she now realized. He seemed to be in his stocking feet. He must have been somewhere in the house all along, waiting for the right moment to come and take her by surprise.

Her arm and her head hurt horribly. She felt a sticky, liquid warmth on the side of her skull. She was bleeding, and bleeding badly. She struggled against unconsciousness.

She heard the man laugh, and the laughter wasn't a familiar voice. Her thoughts became hopelessly confused. It wasn't Peterson's voice, so cruel and mocking in that darkness. And where was his torch? Why was everything so different?

She groped about in her mind for the truth of her situation.

It's not Peterson, she told herself. It's Dirk Monroe.

She whispered aloud to herself, "One monster at time."

This monster was bent on killing her.

She clawed around on the floor. Where was her gun?

The man moved toward her, swinging the crowbar with one hand, slicing the air with it. Riley got halfway to her feet before he landed a blow across her shoulder and knocked her down again. She braced herself for another blow, but then heard the sound of the crowbar falling to the floor.

Something was looped around her left foot, pulling her. He'd gotten a rope around that foot and was dragging her slowly across the floor, through the litter and toward the pipe in the middle of the room. It was the place where four women had already suffered and died.

Riley tried to probe his thoughts. He hadn't scouted her or chosen her. He'd never seen her buying one of those dolls he so deeply loathed. Even so, he intended to make the most of her arrival. He was going to make her his next victim. He was determined to make her suffer. She was going to die in pain.

Even so, Riley caught a glimmer of impending justice. Bill and a team would get here soon. What would Dirk do when the FBI stormed the house? He'd kill her, of course, and instantly. He'd never allow her to be rescued. But he was doomed all the same.

But why did Riley have to be his last victim? She saw faces of people she loved—April, Bill—even her father. Now Riley knew she shared with him a stubborn bond of dark wisdom, a comprehension of limitless evil in the world. She thought of the work she lived each day to do, and slowly, a new determination rose up in her. She wouldn't let him claim her easily. She'd die on her own terms, not his.

She groped around the floor with her hand. She found something solid—not part of a doll, but something hard and sharp. She gripped the handle of the knife. It was surely the very knife he'd used on four women.

Time slowed down to a mind-numbing crawl. She realized that Dirk had just passed the rope around the central pipe. Now he was pulling her foot up against it.

He was turned away from her, too sure that she was defeated already. His mind was occupied with tying her to the post—and on what he would do to her then.

His unwariness gave Riley a moment, and one moment only, before he turned back her way. Still prone on the floor, she wrenched her body into a seated position. He noticed this and started to turn, but she moved quicker. She wrestled her free right foot beneath her, then rose up to face him.

She plunged the knife into hisstomach, then drew it out and stabbed him again and again. She heard him shriekand moan. She kept stabbing madly until she blacked out.