Page 36 of Still Burning

“She’s not out there. She must have come in the front and gone upstairs,” I said, not stopping as I went to the door that led to the hallway.

“I guess that was three hours ago. I didn’t realize I’d been in here working on dinner so long,” I heard her say, but didn’t respond.

Salem had tried to hide the fact that my going to the appointment was hard on her, but I’d seen the pain in her eyes. It had twisted me up so much that I’d been in an even more foul mood than usual around Nixie. Salem had probably wanted to be alone. I was going to fix that. Put a smile back on my girl’s face.

Taking the steps two at a time, I got to my room and swung open the door, only to find it empty. My gaze scanned all the way to the bathroom door. It was open, and the light was off. Nina wasn’t here, and maybe she’d gone with her. But wouldn’t Goldie have known that? Anson would have seen her leave.

Where the fuck was she?

I walked over to the bedside table and searched around for a note of some kind. When I didn’t find anything, I started down the hallway to the room Pepper had used when she stayed here. I didn’t know why she’d be in there, but I was running out of places to look.

When I looked inside, the room was dark, and there was no Salem. I hadn’t heard anyone in the game room, but that was all I could think of. She could have gone to distract herself with a game of pool. Alarm was starting to set in, but there was no way she had left. Someone would know. There were cameras, and Anson was working the gate, where he also had a screen with the live feed of all the cameras. Salem had to be somewhere on the property. Getting myself worked up was stupid.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and hit the front gate number.

“Yeah,” Anson said in greeting.

“Did Salem leave with anyone this afternoon?” I asked him.

“Nope. I’ve not seen her.”

“What about Nina? She wasn’t with her?”

“Nope. Nina was alone. I did see Salem walking around by the shed about, eh, two hours ago, I’d guess. Before that, she was at the pond. Lick came and talked to her. But, yeah, I saw her walk near the shed, but I didn’t see her again after that.”

I was already back outside and headed toward the shed before he finished talking.

“Did she go behind the shed?” I asked him.

“I, uh…I don’t know. UPS came to the gate, and I had to get the packages. I didn’t see where she went. Since I haven’t seen her again, she’s probably in your room.”

I scowled. Did he not think I’d have checked there first?

“She’s not in there,” I clipped. “That’s why I’m searching for her.”

“Oh. Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Go rewind back to when you saw her last and see where she goes after,” I told him.

“Okay. Hey, I see you,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. I was on the east side of the shed. There wasn’t a camera behind it, just woods. As I walked back there, my heart started to race as I thought of things that might have happened to her.

What if a snake had bitten her or she had fallen and hit her head? Fuck, why didn’t we have a camera back here?

“Here it is,” he said.

I stood back there alone. No sign of Salem anywhere. The shed, a few old bikes that we had for parts, a barrel of smashed beer cans, and the fucking trees. Past that was a ten-foot-tall steel fence with an electric current running through it and spikes at the top. It wasn’t like someone could have gotten over it and taken her with them.

“Ah, she goes behind the shed and…” He paused as he checked the video. “Damn,” he muttered. “She’s back there somewhere,man. She never came back.”

I stalk toward the trees, my fear growing as images of her hurt flashed through my mind.

Why would she have gone into the trees? She was scared of snakes and shit. This didn’t make sense.

The sight I found wasn’t Salem injured, and I’d trade that any day for what I was seeing. Disbelief and horror flooded me as I stared at the ladder. There was a covering—which had to be rubber, a mat that blocked electrical currents—at the top of the fence.

She’d been taken.

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