Page 51 of The Missing Couple

Rather than respond, she grabbed the knob and gave it a twist. Didn’t budge. She tried twice and had no luck. “It’s locked.” She banged on the door. “Hello! Anyone in there?”

Silence inside and around them seemed to close in. Disappointment wrapped around her skull and compressed. She wanted to find his sister and her husband. She didn’t want the worst to be the way this ended. There had to be something somewhere! Someone who had seen or heard something! Damn it!

“I checked the other end.” He nodded to the side opposite of where she had come around the house. “There’s a window but like all the rest, it’s covered from the inside.”

She made up her mind then and there. “We have to get this door open.”

He held her gaze a moment. “We’re already trespassing. Do you want to add breaking and entering as well?”

“I do.” She slammed her shoulder into the door to prove her point. It didn’t budge. She grimaced, rubbed her arm. Definitely not as easy as it looked in the movies.

“Give me a sec,” he said. He withdrew something from his pocket and crouched next to the door.

She surveyed the woods, looking for any movement, before setting her attention back on him. It was a typical generic locking knob. Shouldn’t be that difficult—as if she knew one thing about picking a lock. She knew nothing about getting a lock undone other than with a key.

The door suddenly swung inward.

Charly grinned. “Oh that was good, Mr. Jagger.”

“If you have no qualms about breaking and entering,” he reminded her.

“Never done it until now. It’s kind of cool.”

“But illegal.”

“Wait.” She frowned. “Didn’t we hear a noise? Like a cry for help. Doesn’t that suggest exigent circumstances?”

He laughed; a short, dry sound. “You have watched too many movies.”

“Yeah, guess I have.”

They held each other’s gaze and then peered into the cabin. Beyond where they stood, the interior was completely dark with just a slice of gray from the part of the door opening their bodies didn’t block. The little jovial exchange had been more about not wanting to go inside. If they did and found nothing…or found something really bad…

As if he’d read her mind, their gazes locked again. “In this situation we’ll ignore the usual decorum and I’ll go first.”

Charly gestured to the open door. “Be my guest.”

As he entered, she held her breath. Though he had turned on the flashlight from his phone and was aiming it inside, she couldn’t slow the pounding in her chest. Please don’t let there be bodies.

“Clear.”

The word vibrated through her as she stepped inside. Hot. Stuffy. She pulled out her phone and lit up her flashlight as well. There was a rusty metal cot with an old dusty mattress atop it. A ragged quilt and pillow were tossed to one end.

The floor was cleaner than she’d expected. A little dusty but not much else. No other furniture. No nothing… Her gaze stalled. Water bottles. Empty water bottles. She forced herself to breathe.

While Billie inspected every square inch of the place, she assessed the wood walls, looking for anything written there. No words scrawled in blood or written with anything else. Nothing hanging anywhere. The windows were covered with plywood. Whoever did it must have painted the side facing the windows black since it had been unidentifiable from that angle. What the hell were they using this cabin for?

The clink of metal had her turning back to the cot. Billie was crouched next to the cot, inspecting something there. She moved closer before she recognized what he’d found. Handcuffs…no…shackles. Attached to the cot. Her gasp drew his gaze toward her.

“The cot is secured to the floor so there was no moving it in an attempt to get away.”

Then she saw the other thing he held…shiny…so thin…a necklace.

“Is that…?” She directed her light fully on his hand.

He stood up. “This is my sister’s. Our grandmother gave it to her when she was thirteen. She wears it every day—even wore it on her wedding day.”

A single white pearl hung on the delicate silver chain.