Page 125 of Blood Moon

“We,” she said. “Wehave a starting place. I’m going with you this time. No argument. Leave Molly a note, telling herwe’re out looking for her. Tell her to call you and then to stay put till we can get back.”

He must’ve thought that was a reasonable course of action. He sat down again and began to scrawl on a legal tablet. “Let Mutt out, please. And fill his bowls. We don’t know how long we’ll be gone.”

She did that, then went into the bedroom and got her jacket. When she returned to the main room, John was in the kitchen pouring coffee from the carafe into a thermos.

She let Mutt back in, and he sensed their urgency. He kept in stride with her as she went over to the table to turn off her laptop. She noticed that there were less than two minutes left to run. She reached out to stop its play when her hand froze in midair.

She nudged Mutt aside and sat down on the edge of the chair seat. She backed up ten seconds of the video and replayed it, then quickly paused it and reversed it again. Her heart in her throat, she croaked, “John?”

He was moving quickly around the room, turning off lights. “Yeah?” He came over.

“Listen. Listen closely.”

She restarted the video where she’d stopped it. The professor was talking. Distantly, a phone rang. A chair was heard scraping back across the floor, then John’s whisper, coming through the professor’s monitor, was barely there but loud enough to be heard. “Molly.”

The professor’s eyebrows lifted.

Beth paused the video there. “Molly called you, remember? You got up to answer and told me who it was so I would know why you were leaving the virtual meeting.” Shepointed to the monitor. “Look at his reaction when you said her name.”

“And a few hours later, he talked to me about names with double letters.”

The two of them looked at each other with dawning horror.

Molly woke up with the worst headache ever. For a time that’s all she could concentrate on; then gradually she became aware that the surface beneath her was hard and cold and that she was uncomfortable all over.

Fearing that any movement at all would sharpen the splinters of pain piercing her brain, she lay perfectly still, wondering why she felt so bad. The flu was going around at school. Had she caught it?

But then memory came drifting through the dense fog of her mind, and she remembered.

She had left the restaurant, furious at her mother, nauseated by the whole “new happy family” scene. She hadn’t had a plan other than to get away from that stupid cake with the sparklers flaring from it, and the people at other tables clapping and calling out well wishes. She’d had to escape the whole farce.

As she’d exited, she batted away the valet who’d approached her about retrieving her car. She’d seen that the nearest corner was half a block away. Fuming and upset, she’d walked toward it, wanting to get out of sight of the restaurant quickly, thinking that possibly either her mother or the loser would chase after her, demanding that she return to the celebration.

She’d rounded the corner and hadn’t gone far when acar pulled up to the curb and idled. The driver’s window slid down. “Excuse me, miss. I think you forgot this when you left the restaurant.” He opened the car door and stepped out, extending a purse toward her.

“Nope. I have mine,” she said, patting the small bag hanging from her shoulder.

“Oh, well, someone else’s then. My mistake.” And then he’d swung the purse at the side of her head. Her last thought had been,What just happened?

Something terrible had happened, she realized now. A woman’s worst nightmare had happened. Like Crissy Mellin and others who’d disappeared without a trace.

That couldn’t happen to her, though. No! Not to her!

But, oh God, if it had, it would positively kill her dad.

Spurred by that thought, she opened her eyes. She was dizzy, making it difficult to bring the wavering shape bending over her into focus and keep it still. But finally she did. She recognized the man who had smiled at her through the open car window. He was smiling now.

“Ah, good. You’re awake. I was afraid you wouldn’t come to before I have to leave, and I had hoped for a chance to get to know you, Molly.”

He knew her name? As muzzy as she was, she knew she’d never met him. She tried to sit up and only then realized that her hands and feet were bound.

“Don’t strain,” he said, placing his hand on her shoulder. “You can’t get loose, and you could hurt yourself trying.”

She wanted to yell at him that she was already hurt. The purse he’d struck her with must’ve been packed with iron, and she wondered if the blow had in fact cracked her skull.

He was leaning down close to her, blocking most of her field of vision, but what she could see beyond his head and shoulders was a high ceiling supporting metal walls. It was an ugly enclosure. A garage? A boathouse?

She shuddered beneath his caressing touch on her shoulder. She detested his smarmy smile. He was looking at her like they were friends. Or lovers. That thought made her want to throw up. Shrinking from him, she asked, “Who are you?”