The Buried Hours: A Novel, page 14
Leo had shocked her by insisting on sex in the cabana, and she’d surprised herself by enjoying the risk of being observed.
She hadn’t even been marginally famous then, so sex in a public place hadn’t been nearly as risky as it would be now. Not that she was famous now, but she was known in circles. She had a fan base. She received her share of rape and death threats. The life of an outspoken woman in the era of social media.
These thoughts flooded her with the taste of lime, salt, and tequila.
She took a second sip, hoping more would quash the memories and replace them with today.
Did she want to forget her honeymoon?
If Leo was fucking another woman right this moment . . . well, yeah.
The lone man picked up his drink and walked the length of the bar until he was by her side. He raised a brow and asked, “Seat taken?”
She debated but then raised her left hand, flashing her plain wedding band—she didn’t wear diamonds when meeting with informants—and said, “If you’re looking for a hookup, it’s not going to happen.”
His smile deepened as he lowered his huge frame onto the barstool next to her. “Just looking for conversation.”
She snorted. He’d been checking her out rather blatantly. “Right.”
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t say no if you changed your mind, but I can be content with conversation.”
“Fine. We can talk until someone open to your attention shows up.”
He smiled and signaled for the bartender to bring him another drink.
Signe’s head hurt. It might even be the worst headache of her life. Was this a migraine? She’d never suffered one before but could easily believe this was the kind of pain she’d heard about.
The room—when she managed to open her eyes the tiniest bit—was dark, but light seeped around the drawn shades.
Was she in her hotel room?
How did she get here?
Her brain throbbed in agony as she searched her memory. Was this the Wawona? If so, how—and when—did she get here?
She’d been planning a getaway with Leo. Before the meet with the informant. Disco . . . something. They were a trafficking victim. Sex . . . or maybe labor? Or they weren’t a victim at all but someone who worked at the lowest level of the crime pyramid.
She shook her head, trying to force the memory. She groaned as the slight movement sent daggers of pain along her occipital nerve.
How much did she have to drink last night?
She tried to move her hand so she could cradle her head and met resistance. Her brain couldn’t process. Why couldn’t she move?
And then she realized her wrists were tied to something. Separate corners of the bed?
Legs too.
All at once, the truth flooded her. She was tied spread-eagle to a bed.
She twisted to test the bonds. Pain that had been masked by the nightmare going on in her head reared up, making it known that her entire body hurt.
Fire seared along her inner thighs.
She was bruised. Beaten. Sore.
She tilted her pelvis as much as her bindings would allow and felt the soreness in her hips and butt. Burning pain in and around her vagina.
No. No. No. NO. NO. NO NO NONO . . .
Vague memories assaulted her. Men—plural—between her legs. And elsewhere. Forcing their penises inside her. Everywhere.
She groaned and the sound came out hoarse. Her throat ached. From screaming.
A sob escaped. She was still tied up. They’d be back. They’d repeat what they’d done.
How did she get here?
Again, she searched her memory.
The bar. Leo canceled on her. Probably cheating.
Two margaritas and a handsome man named . . . Stone? Rocky? Something like that.
Had he roofied her? Was he one of the men who raped her?
Probably yes to both.
Her breathing came in shallow as she struggled against the bonds and tried to remember.
How long had she been here?
Worse, what came next? Were they going to kill her? Drug her again? Rape her again?
Sticky fluid between her legs could be semen or blood. Probably both.
Nausea surged. She twisted to the side in case she puked. Tied as she was, she could aspirate her own vomit if she wasn’t careful.
She forced herself to take slow, deep breaths. She needed to get her panic under control if she was going to find a way out of this.
What did she know about her situation? She was in a hotel room. It was dark, but there was light around the edges of the blinds. It was daytime.
She’d entered the bar midafternoon on a weekday. Hours had to have passed for the drugs to have worn off, so it must be at least the next day, but more days might have passed.
The room smelled of sweat, sex, and blood.
Her stomach roiled again and this time she couldn’t stop herself. She heaved. Bile surged and splattered the pillow, the putrid fluid dribbled down her cheek.
At least it masked the scent of semen.
She heaved again and more bile ejected from her esophagus. She had nothing substantial in her stomach to heave. When was the last time she’d eaten or drunk?
Had it been days?
She let out a small sob.
A circle of green light flashed at the foot of the bed. She heard a long tone followed by a distorted voice. “Hello, Signe.”
She studied the light and tried to decipher what was happening. And then she recognized it for what it was. One of those assistive devices that played music and turned on lights. It was on the dresser. Someone was using it as an intercom.
Should she answer?
“We know you’re awake. You just vomited.”
Oh god. There were cameras in the room. Probably everything that had happened to her on this bed had been recorded.
Again, she retched. There was no bile left to spew, so it was a dry heave.
The voice said the wake word for the device through which it was speaking and turned on a small projector she hadn’t realized was mounted to a tripod to the right of the bed. The projector went through its power-up routine, then landed on the home screen with a list of apps for viewing streaming content. With more commands from the distorted voice, an app that played MP4 files opened. The voice named a file to play.
The image was projected on the bare wall above the small TV that sat on the dresser opposite the bed.
Signe guessed cheap motel art had been removed to make room for the projected image. The camera was off-center, projecting at an angle. The distorted image was shorter on the left than the right. The lines of the bland, beige-striped wallpaper gave an eerie texture to the scene.
But she didn’t need perfect perspective and a clean backdrop to understand what she was seeing.
There she was, sitting at a table in another room, her eyes a bit glazed—but it was hard to tell with the distorted view—talking to someone who was just off camera.
There was no sound, but her mouth moved. There was a cadence to it, her responding to the person who was visible only when they lifted a cocktail glass to take a drink.
The hand was large and masculine.
All of a sudden, the sound came on, and Signe heard her own voice clearly say, “That’s Jasper Evans. He’s an undercover agent for the FBI.”
The pain in her head exploded.
No. No. No. She hadn’t burned Jasper.
Hadn’t revealed his real name to a crime lord.
NO.
But clearly, she had. There she was, on-screen, doing exactly that.
She’d been drugged, but it was hard to know if it would be clear to other viewers. Her voice wasn’t slurred or hesitant, just a little flat. She didn’t look like she was in any sort of trance, but the distortion could hide that.
Regardless, there were those who would never believe her. Not when stacks of hundred-dollar bills were slid across the table and she reached out and stroked the nearest pile, thumbing the edge to fan it like it was a familiar act.
She had, in fact, done that when she filmed a segment on counterfeiting and the man she interviewed invited her to touch the merchandise and tell him if she could tell the difference between the real and fake stacks before her.
In her drugged state, had she mentally returned to that touch test and repeated it?
Regardless of what had been going on in her mind at the time, this video made it look like she’d been paid several thousand dollars for the name of an undercover FBI agent.
CHAPTER 19
Yosemite National Park, California
Present
Signe reached the top of the last switchback. She’d been so lost in her miserable thoughts, she’d finished the relentless climb in something of a daze. Rendering the sense of accomplishment of reaching the summit totally wasted on her.
Yesterday, she’d stood at Glacier Point and spoken to the camera about not being human if she didn’t pause to take in the magnificent view. Now, she trudged toward the overlook that would give her a glimpse of the valley from the other side, where she could wave to tourists at Glacier Point, and the sense of wonder she should feel had been crushed by the weight of fear and sorrow.
Jasper Evans had been a good man. Risking his life every day in an effort to remove drugs and guns from the streets and put the men she interviewed out of business.
As a general rule, people who worked for the FBI weren’t friendly with her. They wanted the intel she had, but as a journalist, she was ethically bound to protect her sources.
She’d made her name in the business because she’d refused to give up a source when a judge ordered her jailed to intimidate her into backing off investigating the sexual harassment allegations against him. Nine years later and she was still that reporter who’d go to jail before compromising a source.
Except that wasn’t true. Two years ago, she’d watched a video in which she was drugged out of her mind and revealed the name of a deeply embedded undercover FBI agent and appeared to accept money for it.
Now she sat on a rock that overlooked the magnificent display of glacially carved granite and didn’t see the beauty of it. In her mind, she was back in that hotel room as a distorted voice told her she’d revealed more than the FBI agent’s identity. Other sources had been compromised too.
The message was clear: I own you now. You will do what I say.
And the first order of business was to tell her that she couldn’t reveal anything that had happened over the past forty-eight hours to anyone. Not even to her husband.
One word and the named informants would die.
Her husband would die.
She would be exposed for selling information to a crime lord. She would lose her career and reputation.
She’d go to prison.
And lest she not believe they were serious, she needed to see another video.
Strapped to the bed in that hotel room, she witnessed a new horror: Jasper Evans tied to a chair, a heavy chain wielded like a whip lashing repeatedly at his head and torso. He screamed until he lost consciousness.
Stripes of red opened on his face, neck, and arms.
She’d dry heaved again and again, her body producing nothing to foul the sheets she was strapped to.
Next, they showed her video of Leo entering the Wawona Hotel.
He’d shown up for their romantic getaway after all. But she hadn’t been there.
Tears poured down her cheeks as the distorted voice said, “We know where he is at all times. You tell him anything and he’s a dead man, just like the FBI agent.”
Then the voice gave her instructions on how to untie herself. She had one hour to vacate the hotel room or one of the other informants she’d named would be beaten with chains.
She’d managed to free herself and then went straight into the shower—there was no way she could walk through the lobby beaten, bloody, and covered with bile. When she emerged from the shower, the assistive device, the projector, and the storage drive with the videos were all gone. Her car keys rested on the dresser where the assistive device had been.
She left the hotel with fifteen minutes to spare and found her car under the entranceway awning. Her purse, suitcase, and laptop bag were in the trunk. Nothing had been taken from her wallet, but her phone and laptop had been erased.
She drove away, her fogged brain vaguely registering she was in Modesto, about two hours from Oakhurst. She drove forty minutes north to Stockton, where she bought enough meals to last two days from a fast-food drive-through, then found a motel room.
In her drab room, she ate what was likely her first meal since she’d been drugged in the bar. Her head throbbed and she was bleeding from cuts she hadn’t been able to bandage in the Modesto hotel room, but food was her first priority.
Second priority was reconfiguring her blank phone so she could check messages. Anything received after the wipe should still be delivered.
She logged into her cellular account and reset all her passwords. Once it was linked to service again, the phone pinged with messages. The first message from Leo had been sent the previous morning, asking why she wasn’t at the Wawona. His messages grew more urgent as she failed to respond.
She tapped out a reply explaining that she’d been so upset when he canceled on her that she’d gone to the coast to think. She’d dropped her phone in saltwater and was only now getting it to work again.
The phone rang immediately, and Leo launched into a tirade about how she’d worried him and should have called.
Now, sitting on a rock in Yosemite, she remembered the jab of pleasure and pain she’d felt at hearing his voice. He was safe. Alive.
It didn’t matter that he was angry with her, not when, unlike Jasper Evans, he was still breathing.
She’d told him she hadn’t meant to worry him. She’d just needed time to figure things out and didn’t think he’d notice she wasn’t at the Wawona as planned. Then she added she’d woken up feeling crappy that morning and had taken a COVID test. It was positive. Her throat was raw from coughing, which was why her voice was so hoarse.
She figured her voice was raspy from screaming, but Leo would never know about that.
Instead of going home, she’d explained, she planned to get a vacation rental for two weeks. She’d recuperate and quarantine with a full kitchen and have food delivered.
Leo offered to drive north—he’d returned to the Redondo Beach house when she didn’t show up at the Wawona—and take care of her. She insisted she could take care of herself. No need to get him sick too.
And then she did exactly as she’d said and moved to a vacation rental in San Jose. She saw no one for two weeks. When she returned to Redondo Beach, Leo was back up at Mount Shasta, and she realized she no longer cared if he was sleeping with the archaeologist.
Someday, she might care again, but in the weeks after her abduction, her emotions were erratic.
She’d made the decision to go to the LA field office of the FBI days before Leo was set to return from filming. He was safe up at Mount Shasta. She’d figured after she gave the FBI a starting point to find Jasper’s murderers, she’d kill herself before they had a chance to go after Leo.
But then she’d received the message that changed everything. It was a video. With shaking fingers, she’d tapped the “Play” button and there was Muriel, sitting in a coffee shop. The time stamp showed she’d been recorded a few days before. They’d been tracking the young widow, an informant whose name Signe hadn’t even known she’d revealed.
A distorted voice narrated the video. “Say goodbye to Muriel.”
The voice went on to threaten Leo and everyone else she loved, then, a few days later, she’d received a package that contained a necklace she recognized as Muriel’s and four links of a heavy chain. Both were streaked with blood.
After she’d opened the package, her phone had buzzed. Another video. She clicked the link to see Leo with the dig crew on the site near Mount Shasta. Handsome and in control as usual.
The voiceover made the message clear: “He’s next if you say a word. This is your last warning.”
She’d believed the voice then. She believed it now.
They would always follow through.
Signe swiped away the tears that poured down her cheeks as she relived the horror of those days.
Who else had she given up during those buried hours?
“I know it’s a spectacular view, but I have a feeling that’s not what brought you to tears.”
She wiped her eyes on her sleeve before facing Cole. “I thought I told you to go home.”
He dropped his pack on the ground next to hers, then settled onto the boulder by her side and faced the intersection of Tenaya Canyon and Yosemite Valley. “And miss this view? No way.”
“Great. You’ve seen it. Now go away.”
“Why were you crying?”
She glared at him. “What makes you think I was crying?”
“Talk to me, Sig.”
“No.”
“What have you gotten yourself into?”
“I told you. I’m following a story. A lead from an informant.”
“Have you ever . . . considered going to the feds? Tell them what you know?”
She reared back. “What the hell does that mean?” Was Cole probing to find out if she’d break and reveal what had happened to her? Was he working for the man who’d orchestrated her abduction?
He ran a hand over his face. “It doesn’t mean anything other than what it sounds like. You’re hiding something. My guess is you’re in over your head. Maybe you should tell someone.”
“Tell you, you mean.”
“That would be a solid start.”
“Pass, thanks.”
He draped an arm around her. She couldn’t stop herself from leaning into him. Dammit.
“I’m not going to let you push me away. I’m with you until we meet with your informant.”
She rested her temple against his shoulder. “Why?”
“Because I like you.”
“Why?” she repeated.
“Well, it’s not your honesty and candor, that’s for sure.”
