Page 34 of Traces of Kara

Her chest heaved as she took a deep breath of the fresh air, kicking her legs free of the building. She burst into tears. The cold, hard rain pelted her back. Her chest and hands pushed deep into the mud. Kara let out a shriek of disbelief. The smell of the wet earth, and the sound of the canal rushing beyond the trees, formed a familiar safety net in her mind. She cried aloud. She’d made it out alive!

Shuffling within the building sent her flying to her feet, stumbling forward. Kara gasped, tears mixing with the streaming rain. She ran for the hole in the fence, her arms outstretched, her fingers reaching for the cold metal.

“Bastard!” Her mother’s terrified voice rang out behind her—from within the room where she’d just escaped.

Mom? Kara whipped her head around. Oh, God! Her fingers clenched the freezing fence, her body trembled and shook. Her mother. He had her mother. She had to get help. She stared at the dark and menacing opening to the building. She couldn’t go back in. She couldn’t! She’d get help—it was her only option. She pushed her body through the fence. A broken chain link gouged her shoulder; searing pain radiated down her arm.

Her mother’s shriek pierced the air.

Mom! Kara stood frozen, her fingers clenching the fence, blood dripping down her arm. She stared back at the building, her heart thumping against her chest like a runaway train she had no control to stop.

Another scream—a loud slap.

“Mom!” she yelled.

Silence.

Had she made a mistake? Was it not her mother? She turned and bolted toward the parking lot. “I’ll kill her!” Roland’s deep, angry voice boomed through the night.

Kara stopped dead in her tracks.

“Run, Kara!” Mimi wailed.

Kara’s legs tensed. She turned around slowly, her head shaking, her teeth clenched. The upper half of Roland’s body stuck out the broken window. Mimi’s head was squeezed between his bicep and chest, her eyes bulging. Blood was splattered on her cheeks.

Roland disappeared back into the building. Mimi’s shrill screams trailed off.

Kara didn’t stop to think—she sprinted back to the building, falling to her knees in front of the hole.

Roland grabbed her by the hair and pulled her forward. She kicked and screamed, punching uselessly against his massive strength.

“Kara!” Mimi beat on Roland’s back.

He swatted her away with one swift movement, throwing her to the ground like a rag doll as he yanked Kara’s body over his shoulder and into the room.

“Mom!” Kara screamed at the sight of her mother’s bloodied face. Their eyes locked seconds before Roland threw Kara to the ground, sending her sprawling, face first, onto the cold concrete floor.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Spurred into action by a hunch and the images from Greer’s apartment, Mark slipped into his car, typed Williamsport into his GPS, and headed toward Route 81. The sun had begun its slow dip toward the horizon. Mark chewed on the inside of his cheek, the engine of his patrol car rumbling along. He switched off the police radio. He was off the clock, and he didn’t want to think about procedures or protocol, and he knew he risked being reprimanded for not waiting for confirmation. Mark didn’t care. He knew he was right about Roland Greer, and even if he had to do it without the support of the department, he was going to find the sick bastard.

The way Mark looked at it, facts were what you made of them, and too many cops, even good cops, overlooked facts that stared them in the face. Mark knew Roland Greer had a twin sister he was separated from. He’d found her a few times when they were younger, and eventually her name had been changed—probably out of necessity due to Greer’s obsessive behavior. Some time thereafter, she’d moved to a new city.

Mark looked out the window and gave a deep, long sigh before drawing his eyes back to the highway. He remembered the Civil War Museum clip that had been shown on the news. The museum was in Williamsport. Greer’s sister must have been in that clip. Greer had acted too strangely when he’d seen it. Mark wasn’t an idiot. He saw the facts. The only questions that remained were, what was Marissa Greer’s new name, and how would he find her?

Mark drove down the ramp of the Williamsport exit at six p.m. and into small town U.S.A. He drove past the empty McDonald’s parking lot, his stomach growling. He ignored the reminder to eat and drove on. A soft spritzing of rain speckled his windshield. He drove past Byron Memorial Park, slowing, recognizing the gazebo from the newspaper clipping on Roland’s wall. He was in the right place.

He drove along a narrow street, feeling as if he’d stepped back in time. The houses were all from the nineteen-thirties, with not a new one in sight. No markets adorned the streets. The town reeked of blue jeans and wife-beater t-shirts. Rain pelted his windshield, as if it had heard his thoughts and the small town’s sky was revolting. He flicked on the windshield wipers.

Downspouts propped up with poles at the edge of the street ran from each ancient roofline. Chipped and ratty lattice ran beneath every house. Three stories high, the houses stood like aged sentinels over the empty streets. Mark passed a Sheetz gas station and crossed over Artizan Street. He couldn’t pronounce the next street. The name was too long to catch as he drove by. Conoca-something-or-other.

He stopped at another stoplight. Mark disliked small towns for that very reason—stoplights every hundred feet. The light changed, and he followed the road down the steep incline to the canal.

Mark turned into the gravel parking lot of the canal, and parked his car next to a Dodge Neon with an empty bike rack attached to the trunk. Wet ride, Mark thought. He turned the car off and looked in the direction of the footpath. To the right, an umbrella of trees created an inviting trail. To his left, the footpath widened, with trees on one side and an open field on the other.

Mark leaned forward, watching the Route 11 bridge through the driving rain. Mark sat back, feeling as if he were chasing his tail. Something told him this was where he’d find Roland’s sister, but he had no proof. He was in the right town, now he had to pinpoint Roland’s whereabouts. This isn’t Maynor, he told himself. He couldn’t be wrong again.

Chapter Twenty-Nine