CHAPTER ONE
1733 Words
CHAPTER ONE
Special Agent Carly See’s eyes followed the crisscrossing beams of searching flashlights that glared across the rain-drenched brushy landscape. She could hear the deafening barking and yelping of the enormous bloodhounds as they dragged on their leashes, trying to catch some scent of the missing young woman.
Carly didn’t know much about dogs, but she thought they sounded discouraged.
The circumstances were far from ideal for the hounds to do their job. This was the second night of rain, and 19-year-old Jean Bassman had been missing for more than 24 hours now. Any scent she might have left had probably been washed away.
Waving a flashlight of her own, Carly plunged on through the wet and heavy September fallen leaves into the rain and the deepening darkness. Carly’s tall, lanky African-American partner, Special Agent Lyle Ramsey, was sweeping the area right beside her. Like Carly, Lyle was clad in lightweight rain gear.
They were searching at the southern flank of a team of local police and FBI agents from the nearest field office. One of the local agents had put in a request to Quantico for help from the Behavioral Analysis Unit. Carly and Lyle had been obvious choices because of their reputation for locating lost people—especially dead people. And there was reason to fear that the girl they were searching for might be dead.
Two years ago at about this time of year, Jean’s older sister, Arlene, had been abducted and then found dead the next day in a creek bed. Her killer had never been caught. Now the distraught family was facing the possibility of another tragedy.
As she kept up a slogging pace alongside Lyle, Carly felt a familiar tingle of gratitude for having such a fine older partner. It had been sheer luck that she’d been assigned to him directly out of the academy.
Or was it luck?
She often wondered whether something more than luck had brought them together. Always sure-footed, self-confident, and ready for action, Lyle was both her mentor and her friend. He also seemed more like a father to her than her actual father had ever been—although she knew it would make Lyle uncomfortable if she told him that.
Confused though the hounds might be, they seemed to be leading the searchers toward the same location where Arlene’s body had been found two years ago. Carly knew that it was all too likely that the team would find Jean’s body in nearly the identical spot.
A gust of wet, early autumn wind blew past Carly’s face, and the night suddenly grew uncannily darker. Even her flashlight seemed barely able to penetrate the darkness. She could only see spark-like arrows of raindrops darting swiftly in front of her.
Suddenly a flash of lightning lit up the whole landscape. For a split second, Carly saw a ramshackle house standing directly in the path ahead.
Then the darkness crashed down again.
Again, her flashlight beam revealed nothing ahead except raindrops and darkness.
“We should check that house,” Carly said to Lyle.
“What house?” Lyle asked.
“The one I just saw up ahead of us,” Carly said.
“There’s no house up ahead of us,” Lyle said.
“Sure there is. I just glimpsed it in the lightning.”
“What lightning?” Lyle asked.
Carly was surprised by the question. Before she could reply, an even brighter flash engulfed the scene, again revealing the house a short distance in front of her. Then the darkness slammed down again, harder and darker than before.
“Didn’t you see it?” Carly asked.
“What are you talking about?” Lyle said. “This isn’t a thunderstorm. It’s just a fall rain.”
At that moment something occurred to Carly.
I don’t hear any thunder.
And Lyle didn’t see any lightning.
She knew perfectly well what that meant.
I’m the only one who’s seeing it.
Which meant she was getting a message. But what did this message mean? Why was she seeing an old house that wasn’t even there?
Then came another flash of weird, silent lightning, and the house appeared fleetingly before vanishing yet again.
Carly’s confusion swept over her in a wave of dizziness. She staggered to the nearest tree and leaned against its trunk. Although she couldn’t explain it to Lyle, she knew it was a bad sign that she was getting these impressions.
The night isn’t going to end well, she thought.
After all, she didn’t get messages like that from the living—only from the dead.
Lyle stopped in his tracks and stared at her.
“Hey, kid, what’s wrong?” he asked with genuine concern.
Carly didn’t know what to tell him. She gulped down a lungful of air to steady herself.
“Lyle, are there any houses near here?” she said. “Aside from the Bassmans’ I mean?”
“None that I know of,” Lyle said.
“Could we check a satellite image and make sure?”
Lyle gazed at her from under his cap, his dark eyes silently asking her, “Why?” But of course she knew Lyle wouldn’t ask. Instead, he took out his cellphone and hunched over it so it wouldn’t get drenched by rain.
Carly huddled next to him over the phone to look at the satellite image of their exact location. They certainly didn’t see anything that looked like a house nearby.
“Scroll around a little,” Carly said to Lyle.
Lyle scrolled across the map until something to the south of them caught Carly’s eye.
“There!” she said. “Look!”
In the dense woods just a short distance away from them was what appeared to be the roof of a house in a small overgrown clearing.
“We should check there,” Carly said.
Lyle hesitated for a moment, and Carly understood why. After all, their present course was taking them in a completely different direction. But then he nodded in agreement.
As they turned to walk away from the other searchers, a cop called out to them.
“Hey, where are you two going?”
“Just making sure we cover the whole area,” Lyle replied.
“But the dogs are heading that way,” the cop protested, pointing.
“Yeah, I know, but we just want to be thorough.”
The cop shrugged and kept moving in the same direction as the team.
Carly and Lyle only went a short distance before their flashlights came upon a dense patch of rainswept woods. They plunged into the stand of trees and pushed their way through brambles and bushes until they came to the object of their search.
In front of them was a small house, a shack really, in what must have been a cleared area before kudzu and ivy and scrub brush had taken over.
“We need to go inside,” Carly said.
“OK, but watch your step,” Lyle said. “This place looks like it might fall down around our ears.”
They climbed up onto a rickety stoop and passed through the front door, which hung open on broken hinges. Their flashlights revealed a desolate interior filled with cobwebs and emptied of furniture. Floor boards had collapsed here and there.
Lyle’s right, Carly thought. We’d better watch our step.
They moved about the tiny interior, examining every corner with their flashlights.
“I don’t see anything,” Lyle commented.
Before Carly could reply, they heard a thump and a moan.
Carly and Lyle both looked straight up to where the sounds were coming from.
“An attic,” Lyle said.
They shined their flashlights along the low ceiling until they found a trapdoor with a cord hanging from it. Lyle pulled on the cord, and the trapdoor dropped open. A ladder came rumbling down from above.
Carly followed Lyle up the ladder into a shallow attic under the sloping eaves. Sure enough, both of their flashlight beams fell upon a young blond woman bound with duct tape to a wooden post. Her mouth was gagged with a rag, and she stared at Lyle and Carly with pleading eyes.
Carly was swept by a wave of relief as she recognized the woman from photos.
Jean Bassman was alive.
And yet she wondered …
How did I get that vision if she’s not dead?
“Don’t be afraid,” Lyle said, showing his badge as he crouched down to approach the moaning woman. “We’re here to help you.”
But when Lyle loosened the gag, the young woman let out a yelp of warning.
“He’s here!”
A noise erupted behind Carly and Lyle. They whirled around just in time to glimpse a man dropping down through the open trapdoor. Then a loud thump and a clatter of footsteps made it clear that he was running.
Without hesitation, Carly dropped down through the trapdoor after him and Lyle was right behind her.
They tore out of the house, and their flashlight beams spotted the man pushing his way through the brush. He was about to disappear into the dark forest when he stumbled badly, and that was all the time the agents needed to catch up with him and take him down. Carly put him into cuffs while Lyle read him his rights. With his face in the mud, the man growled with humiliation and anger.
“I’ll call for help with this guy,” Lyle said, snapping out his cellphone. “You go back and take care of the girl.”
As Carly made her way back toward the house, there came another flash of that mysterious lightning. For just a second, she saw a dark-haired woman standing in the front doorway. She was smiling at Carly with gratitude.
Then the darkness crashed down again.
Carly’s flashlight illuminated an empty doorway. The woman was gone.
Suddenly Carly understood.
Her message hadn’t come from Jean Bassman at all, but from her older sister Arlene—the one whose body had been found near here two years ago. Arlene had sent Carly the message that helped find her little sister.
“Thank you,” Carly murmured aloud as she walked back into the house to free Jean Bassman.
The night itself seemed to reply, “You’re welcome.”
- Writer
