Page 30 of Glimmer in the Darkness

“Think anybody recognized you?”

“I don’t think so. But I think Eugene was looking for me. He’d drive a few seconds, then stop and look around. Then drive again. So I stayed out of sight. He’d been stopped a while when I gave up trying to hide, got back to the road, and ran.”

“All those people at the campsites, you could’ve just yelled for help.”

“And gotten all those eyes on me, maybe had the police called?”

Made sense.

He didn’t know what to think. She didn’t think Eugene could be the kidnapper, and he was pretty sure Wilson couldn’t be, either. The man was kind and gentle. But maybe beneath that mask, he was a killer.

Or maybe Cassidy was the one wearing the mask.

All he knew was that the best way to find Ella would be to join Cassidy in her search. He’d study her words, her actions, to figure out if she was telling the truth. It was possible, wasn’t it? And maybe she could lead him to where she and Hallie had been held back then. Maybe Ella was being held there now.

If Cassidy was playing him, trying to pretend to be the hero, then she could definitely lead him to where Ella was being held.

Either way, the police could sort it out after Ella was safe again.

Between now and then, James would keep Cassidy close, and he wouldn’t fall for anything. He had to let this play out. Whatever it took to save Ella.

Chapter Eleven

Ella startled and sat up straight. The world was empty and black. Even the crickets were silent. Usually when the man left, he turned on a lantern he kept deeper in the cave. “To chase away the shadows,” he said, but they really just made different shadows on the moist walls. She never liked those shadows, but they were better than the dark.

She lifted her hand in front of her face but only saw its outline against the faint light coming from outside. It was dark out there, but not as dark as inside. Like… like the crayons in her box at home. When she pressed hard, she could make the reds redder and the yellows yellower. Someone was pressing down really hard on the cave, ’cause it was blackest of all. There probably wasn’t a crayon in the whole word this dark.

Where was the man? Usually, the crickets stopped singing to warn her he was coming. But maybe something else had scared them.

The wind whistled through the trees, but that wasn’t what woke her. The wind didn’t sound like coyotes to her anymore. More like Nana’s singing when she used to tuck Ella in for a nap when Ella was a baby. She could almost hear Nana’s soft voice in the wind asking God to watch over her while she slept.

Was Nana praying for her now? Was Daddy?

A low sound reached her, like her daddy’s snoring, which sometimes carried through the walls of their house. Except it came faster. Whomph whomph whomph.

What was that?

A dog? A dog could find her and go for help. He could bark at a policeman until the policeman realized something was wrong and then follow the dog to the cave and save her from the bad man and take her home to Daddy.

The sound was getting louder, though, too loud for a normal dog. It must have been a huge dog, like Clifford in the books Daddy read to her.

God, please send Clifford to save me. Let him find me.

Except Clifford wasn’t real.

The whomphing was getting louder. Closer.

Something moved in front of the cave entrance. Something…humongous. It whomphed at the opening, then lumbered inside.

A scream bubbled up in Ella’s tummy, crawled up her throat and got stuck where her tonsils used to be. What was that? An animal. It was on four legs but too big to be a dog. Tall and wide and fat with big feet…

It turned, and she gasped.

A bear!

She scrambled as far away as the chain would let her and pressed against the wall and hid behind her hands and held her breath. Maybe it wouldn’t see her. Maybe it would go away.

Maybe it was like Clara and would leave her alone if she ignored it. Even though that didn’t work with the man, who always came back. But what if he didn’t this time? What if the bear ate him?