She turned and pushed through the door, leaving the words hanging in the air behind her.
Chapter 38ANNIE
The church was empty and silent, except for the two fans on the ceiling that creaked in slow circles, swirling warm, stale air around the room.
Annie scanned the sanctuary, with its polished wooden pews and its imposing pulpit. The eight windows that punctuated the long walls were darkened by the thick patch of forest into which the building was nestled. Leafy bough tips bent against the panes and overgrown rosebushes crept up from beneath the sills. The only piece of stained-glass in the room was a small, round window above the baptismal tank that showed a pair of hands, folded in prayer.
“Daniel?” she called out.
Annie walked down the center aisle, her footsteps echoing on the wooden floor. There was a door to the right of the baptismal, and she pulled it open with a screech that reverberated around the sanctuary. It led to a narrow hall with a kitchen the size of a closet, an office, and another closed door at the far end, which Annie reached for in the hope of a way down into the basement.
Behind the door, musty air met her at the top of sagging wooden stairs, badly in need of repair. The steps disappeared into adarkness below that smelled damp and fetid, and Annie’s pulse started to hammer as that childish pull to turn and run from unseen monsters gripped her.
“Daniel?” she called into the darkness.
There was the muffled sound of someone moving around below, and then a voice called back.
“Annie?”
She took the decrepit stairs as quickly as she dared, sticking to the edges and avoiding the sagging middles. Halfway down, the banister ended abruptly, the lower half lost to termites or some other malady. Only when she reached the bottom did she risk lifting her eyes to look around.
At first, she saw nothing. It was so dark in the recessed room; only one small window high in the far corner that let in choked light. And then she found the cells lined against the wall.
Annie’s hand flew to her mouth. Three rusted metal pens about eight feet tall and deep sat side by side, and Daniel lay curled on the floor in one of them, his form vague in the darkness.
Annie ran to him, nearly tripping on the uneven dirt floor under her feet.
There was no cot in the cell, no chair, and nothing but the earthen floor on which to rest. It was a cage.
With a sob rising in her throat, Annie knelt and stretched her arm through the bars to touch his shoulder.
“Are you okay?”
Slowly he sat up, one cheek dusted with dirt from where he’d rested his head. “I’m fine. Just sleeping.” He turned to look at the hand on his shoulder and Annie let it drop.
“We need to talk.”
Daniel lifted his eyes to hers and smiled tiredly. “You can’t break up with me. We sort of already did that, remember?”
Annie’s heart cracked at the sadness in his voice, and she raised her hand again to brush away the dirt on his face.
“We’re running out of time,” she said. “I need you to tell me the truth about that night. All of it. Anything you left out. I need to know what really happened up there.”
“I told you. I found Jamie in the lake and asked her to leave, then I went back to bed.”
“There has to be something else. Something you’re forgetting. Think.”
His gaze faltered and fell.
“Tell me.”
Daniel did not look at her as he answered. “When Jamie climbed out of the water, I… my drawing pad was right there, and I… I showed her the drawing I’d done of her swimming in the lake. She loved art. Wanted to study it, actually. I thought she’d appreciate seeing the sketch, and I asked if she was okay with me selling it. She said it was fine. I told her she could have it, since I’d already done the outline on the bigger canvas, and she touched it, just reached out and brushed her thumb over it for a second. I think that’s where the charcoal came from.”
“But she didn’t take it?”
“No. She wanted me to keep it.” Daniel hesitated. “She said she wanted me to think about her every time I looked at it. I didn’t want to hurt you by telling you before, but I think we’re past that now.”
Annie nodded. They were way past hurting each other. All that mattered now was finding the truth.
