Page 65 of Vanishing Point
Vi closed her eyes. She knew what came next.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Eric demanded in a cold, distant voice.
Dianne stopped on a dime, freezing with eyes wide. “I was just going to…to eat my…”
“Eat? You were going to leave this mess andeat?” He didn’t storm over to her. He moved with a quiet kind of stealth that no doubt made him good at his job. All menacing force in the quietest of moves.
Even Vi found herself holding her breath as he advanced on Dianne, towered over her as she hunched down and looked away.
“I’m so—”
Before she could finish the word, Eric’s hands were around her throat. She made terrible noises as he squeezed. She fought him. Kicked and scratched out, her eyes getting wider and wider until Vi had to look away. Squeeze her eyes shut.
“You eat when I tell you to,” he said, his voice low and cold. “You clean up when you make a mess or you areuselessto me. Do you hear me?”
But Dianne obviously said nothing, because he had his hands around her throat still. Vi didn’t want to look, but it wasn’tstopping. So she did.
“Eric, you’re going to kill her,” Vi said, knowing it was pointless. Knowing there was nothing to be done. He either didn’t hear her or just didn’t care. He just kept squeezing as Dianne’s fight got jerkier and less… Justless.
He didn’t look away. And when he finally dropped Dianne, she didn’t move. She just crumpled onto the floor in a heap.
Vi was shaking, trying to breathe without making noise. But he was coming for her now, and no matter how hard she tried to hold on to her strength, her hope, her determination, fear won.
He rolled back his sleeves, looked down at her with that pleasant smile that was only ever a lie. “Now it’s your turn.”
Chapter Nineteen
In the end, they split the three addresses between them.
Cash took Rosalie and a dog to the one closest to Sunrise and one of Jack’s deputies was going to meet them for a police presence. The online listing Rosalie had found showed that the sale was really more for the property rather than any of the buildings, though there was a barn still in good shape.
Carlyle went with Jack and a dog to the one farthest down 124th. This property had no pictures on its listing and was definitely just about the land. The description listed some “rustic” buildings that could easily be razed by someone with a “creative plan” for the acreage.
Thomas and another Hudson brother, Palmer, went to the address sort of in the middle of the other two. The thought being if the dogs on either end found something, Thomas could get to either of the other properties quickly and involve Bent County if necessary.
The property he was driving to had included a house and pictures in the listing. A little small, a lot old. Definitely not something someone would buy if they were looking to move into it in the near future.
All three listings gave Thomas hope they were on the right track. Why was the postal inspector looking at land for sale with no houses, no signs of life, if she wasn’t looking for a place to hide? And if she’d found one, now Thomas would find her.
And Vi.Please God, let me find Vi.
Thomas drove his patrol car down the street with Palmer in the passenger seat. They’d brought a dog with them too, sitting happily in the back, but it wasn’t trained for scent-specific tracking. Cash had explained the difference, but Thomas hadn’t been paying much attention at that point. He’d been looking at the property listings.
In the end, he got the gist. The two with Cash and Carlyle could track Vi’s specific scent. This one could only alert him to human presence, not Vi specifically.
The scent-specific dogs would search for Vi thanks to a scrunchie Rosalie had in her purse that Vi had last used, and Thomas’s bag because it had been in the same house Vi had last been at.
The dog in his back seat was more search and rescue, on the scent foranybody. Cash had warned that hits with any of the dogs were a pretty big reach considering the sheer area they had to case, but he’d also seen no reason not to try.
And with the addresses narrowing things down, Thomas hoped there was more of a chance.
“Right there,” Palmer said, pointing at an entrance off the highway Thomas probably would have missed. It was covered in over brush, but they could see a green sign with the property number amid the brush. And it wasn’ttotallyovergrown. Someone had driven through here recently.
Probably in an attempt to sell the place, take the pictures on the listing, etc. The photographer had certainly avoided certain parts of the property. Like the overgrown entrance, the barely-there gravel on the gravel road that would lead to the house.
He followed the road at a slower pace, watching the world around them. Mountains in the distance, and overgrown, poorly kept ranch land around them. Thomas kept an eye open foranything that pointed topeople.
But it was all so damn abandoned. He thought something in the distance was maybe the house, but in the end, it had just been a pile of trash. A rusted-out car, old appliances, rusty ranch equipment that had no doubt been left to the elements at least a decade ago, if all the overgrowth obscuring half the trash was anything to go by.
