Page 144 of The Morning After (Savannah 2)

“You got it,” Siebert said and Reed sprinted across the kitchen, then flattened to the wall beside the open door.

“Police!” he yelled again and the muffled cry increased. It sounded like a woman’s voice. He could barely breathe. “Nikki?” he yelled and the response was another muted cry.

“Don’t go in there!” Morrisette warned. “I’ve got a man outside and he’s reported that he can’t see through the window. The shades are pulled down.”

Tough.

Weapon drawn, Reed whipped around the corner, kicked open the door so hard it banged against the wall and snapped on the light. He stared in horror at the scene before him and yelled over his shoulder, “Get an ambulance! We need EMTs. NOW!”

Inside, bound and gagged, was a frail woman Reed recognized as Charlene Gillette. Her eyes were wide and terror-riddled and she was shaking, whimpering behind the gag. All around the woman was a dark, coagulating pool of blood.

He bent over her and tore off the gag as footsteps pounded behind him. “I’m Detective Reed with the police department, Mrs. Gillette. Hang in there.”

“I’ll take over.” A young EMT with a military haircut, whip-thin body, and commanding attitude had snapped on gloves and knelt beside the shivering woman. “No visible wounds,” he muttered as he unbound her.

“But all this blood?”

“Holy shit!” Morrisette appeared in the doorway. “Okay, we need to preserve this scene. Touch as little as possible!” Her eyes moved from the woman to one wall where Gillette family memorabilia hung. “Jesus Christ,” she whispered and Reed turned to the wall where awards, certificates and pictures were hung neatly.

His stomach clenched. “That son of a bitch.” Portraits of the family, snapshots of crucial moments blown up and mounted, even some pictures with pets were framed and placed side by side. It was the pictures that held his attention. There was a message hurriedly scrawled on the wall beneath a blown up snapshot of Nikki Gillette and her father at her college graduation. It was a clear summer day, Nikki’s wild hair was tousled in a breeze, her father’s arm draped over the shoulders of her graduation gown, her mortarboard at an angle as she smiled and squinted into the camera. Judge Ron towered over her, grinning proudly.

The single word message that ran and streaked down the knotty pine wall read: LE BLANC.

French for “The White.”

And the name of a cemetery on the north side of town.

Nikki opened a bleary eye and felt pain jarring through every bone in her body. But it was too dark to see and she was disoriented, her mind thick, her mouth tasting foul. She had the sensation of movement, but that was ridiculous, right? She was lying in her bed…no…where was she? Thoughts drifted in and out of her mind in restless waves, as if they were carried upon a sluggish, murky sea.

She remembered that Simone was dead…Oh, no…maybe that was a dream and…She lifted her head.

Bang!

Ouch!

Her forehead rammed into something hard.

Tears sprang to her eyes. Dear God, what was happening? She tried to raise her hand to rub the knot on her forehead but she could barely move…it was as if she were wedged into a box…a tight box and…and…Oh, dear Lord, something was wrong, something she should remember. Think, Nikki, think! Where the hell are you? You should know. She willed her brain to concentrate, but she kept wanting to fall back to sleep.

You can’t! Something is terribly, terribly wrong….

She tried to reach around her, but could barely move and the panic she felt was fuzzy and far away. She felt the mattress beneath her. Lumpy. Soft and cold and uneven pressing into her back and on her shoulders. When she moved her head, the back of it connected with something hard…and…and…Oh, no!

Her eyes fluttered open. Her mind was so foggy, she had to strain to think. Where was she? She’d been looking for someone…and…and…. Oh, God, was she, like Simone, packed into a coffin? With a dead body beneath her!

She should try to fight, to scream. She was going to be buried alive. That part she remembered. She had to do something fast. But still her mind was like molasse

s, the drug she’d been given pulling her under again. She tried to scream, but couldn’t. It was as if she were slogging through quicksand and her mind wouldn’t clear. She remembered the needle and blacking out.

Maybe this was all just a dream, a really bad dream. She tried to grasp onto conscious thought, but the drug in her system kept working on her, dragging her back into the blissful blackness…and with terror lurking in the dark corners of her consciousness, she quit fighting and let go, slipping once again into the void.

The bitch had hurt him. His crotch still throbbed where she’d nailed him in the nuts and the side of his face ached, compliments of her sharp-heeled boots.

But she hadn’t gotten away. No. She was getting everything she deserved. Finally. Like the rest.

Nikki Gillette was already in a casket. Soon to draw her last breath, soon to know the fear and pain, the sheer terror of being helpless, at the mercy of someone stronger. She, like the others, had crumpled before him, always underestimating his strength and cunning.

As he drove outside of the city, The Survivor swiped a bloody hand over his forehead, catching a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror. Blood covered a face streaked with mud, compliments of Le Blanc Cemetery. His hair was wet and plastered to his head, his muscles sore from the hard work and the wounds she’d inflicted.

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