Imprints Read online

  Gabe stared at me for a moment, perhaps surprised at my initiative. “Good idea,” he said finally, his voice low. For my ears only. “I think neither of us can pretend that Dar will ever let us out of here alive.” His gaze went from his wife to the unseeing Marcie, his expression dark with poorly concealed fury, as though he could already imagine Harmony in Marcie’s place.

  In silence we walked to the wall and began searching for a likely place. At one point Gabe picked up a piece of broken two-by-four from the ground. “Better than fingers for digging.” I was glad he wasn’t afraid of hard work.

  “Look, more blankets,” I said. “Probably more than one person was down here at a time.” Had Victoria been here at one point? Or had Dar only showed her what might happen to her if he was denied his will?

  We hadn’t found a place for waste yet, though there had to be one because of the ever-increasing smell in this direction. Maybe covering it with a blanket would help.

  What I found next was worse than any latrine. The light fell on a scuffed and worn slip-on shoe, and I followed it up a thin, short leg to the torso and at last to the narrow face I recognized only too well. The loose right eye was still rolled up in terror, perhaps in realization that his beloved brother had killed his wife and was about to murder him.

  We’d found Inclar.

  Chapter 23

  Inclar’s body looked decidedly the worse for wear. I jiggled his leg with my foot and found it stiff with rigor mortis, but that’s as far as I was willing to go to check out his condition. Luckily, the latrine was just beyond him, because three seconds later I lost the potato I’d eaten and all the vegetables from the field. Heaving over the pit, I tried not to pass out from the pain the action caused in my ribs.

  “Inclar was out there,” Marcie said once my heaving had ceased. She sounded lucid again, and her high, thin voice carried easily in the small space. “He called to me through the door. Said he wanted to let me out, but he’d given someone else the key, and he’d have to come back. I was afraid to answer at first, but then I did. After that Dar came, and they were arguing.”

  “About what?” Gabe asked.

  “About me, about what really happened to his wife. Inclar was going to turn himself in, lead the police here, ask some psychic to read the chain that strangled Sarah. He ran away, and Dar went after him. They brought him back a few hours later. At first I thought he was unconscious, but he wasn’t breathing.”

  She’d had to spend the night and day alone in a tomb-like pit with a dead man. Marcie was quiet again, clutching her blanket baby and pushing her face into Harmony’s shoulder like a frightened child. Harmony rocked her gently.

  “I think he died from a blow to the back of the head.” Gabe stood after his perusal of the dead man, his face tight. “Look here.” He pointed to a place where the chicken wire had run out along the wall and the builders had instead tied wires to span the gap between the beams. “Some of these will be easy to undo, and we can stretch out the others with this two-by-four. We’ll have to move the body first to get to it.”

  The body. It was sad to see a man so reduced to such a description. Tears ran down my cheeks. What a waste! Inclar should be with his beloved Sarah, both alive and in good health, and Marcie should be in the comforting arms of her brother. Inclar was beyond any help, but I’d darn well make sure Marcie had a chance.

  A noise from the other room shattered the sudden silence. We froze for a precious half-second before we scrambled to the other room. Marcie moaned as we left, but we had to see what was happening.

  Maybe Dar had come back to finish us off. “We may have to jump him,” I murmured.

  Someone was already coming down the stairs, and my heart lightened when I saw by the thin light filtering in from several flashlights above that it was a woman. Spring, in fact.

  We were saved!

  She crouched suddenly, and the door behind her slammed shut, leaving us again in total darkness. “Autumn?” Spring called with a sob.

  “I’m here,” I said. “Just come to the bottom. Carefully.” Harmony shone her light over the stairs and us so Spring could see where we were.

  “I was trying to find you, and I couldn’t, and then I went to talk to Dar and he said you’d left. I couldn’t believe it. You wouldn’t have left without telling me.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I told him I was going to leave, too, to see a doctor about my allergies and talk to my mom. He said I couldn’t and that if I tried, he’d take Little Jim and hand him over to his father, and I’d never see him again.” She was crying in earnest now, and I had to go up a few steps to help her down, ducking my head so I wouldn’t hit the metal doors.

  Spring latched onto me tightly, and I gasped with pain, but she was too upset to notice. “How could he take my baby?”

  “Where’s Little Jim now?” We’d dropped the pretense of calling him Silverstar. Those days were over.

  “He gave him to Misty, the girl from the kitchen.”

  “Then he’ll be fine,” Harmony said. “Misty loves children. She’ll take good care of him. Now, let Autumn go before you break another of her ribs. We’ve got a plan. We’re going to dig our way out.”

  “Maybe we should try the radio again,” I said. “My friend might have just been gone for a while.” Harmony eagerly handed over the batteries, but there was no answer.

  “I don’t think the signal’s getting through,” Gabe said.

  “We dig then.” Biting back bitter disappointment, I followed the others back to Marcie’s prison. Spring gasped to see her and began to worry again about Little Jim. Ignoring everyone, Gabe grabbed hold of Inclar’s feet and moved him to the other side of the latrine. I was glad he didn’t ask for help. I didn’t think I could bring myself to touch the rigid corpse again.

  From Marcie’s supply basket, I removed one of the glass jars that had held water, hoping to use it to dig. The imprints came suddenly and unexpectedly—bright, terrible flashes of aching thirst and helplessness that seared me. Terror, need, want, loneliness. Oh, the soul-killing loneliness! With a cry, I let the bottle fall to the ground, where it clinked against another bottle, knocking it over and breaking it.

  “What is it?” Harmony’s flashlight blinded me for an instant.

  I shook my head, blinked back tears. “Maybe one of you can use the bottle. I can’t.”

  Thankfully, Harmony didn’t question me but picked up an intact bottle and a large, knifelike piece of the broken one and strode toward the wall.

  “We have to do this tonight while they’re sleeping at the farm,” Gabe said. “In the morning it might be too late.”

  I wondered where Jake was and hoped he had the good sense to stay away from Dar. What if he hadn’t? What if Dar had killed Jake, as he’d killed his own brother?

  I had to warn him. But before I could do that, we had to get free. I went to find a piece of wood.

  Hours later, I sat down to rest a moment. My body was drenched in sweat, and my ribs were so numb with pain that I no longer felt them. I imagined a rib piercing a lung and killing me, the idea almost a welcome alternative. My hands were raw and bleeding from the tedious digging, my injured wrist throbbing and swollen, and I had numerous cuts up my arms. But staying busy kept the fear away. Fear of the cramped space, of the dark. Of Dar.

  Gabe, Harmony, and Spring were equally bad off. Spring was taking a turn carving out the dirt, having managed to break a pointed piece of wood off one of the potato crates, and she worked with all the fierceness of a mother separated from her child.

  Harmony had begun worrying aloud about her daughter as well, but each time Gabe comforted her. “It’s night. She’s in bed asleep. Probably with her friends. She’s fine.”

  “What if we never get back?”

  Harmony had voiced all our fears. If Dar continued as leader of Harmony Farm, he would use the people and discard them when he was finished. The children would be raised in strict obedience and worship of that evil man,
brainwashed to do whatever he required of them. Memories of suicide pacts other cults had made haunted me, and I couldn’t stop thinking of poor Victoria/Misty, her longing for home, and the baby that swelled within her. The face of a victim.

  “We’ll get out of here,” I said. “Sooner or later. My sister knows where I am, and her husband. And Jake.”

  My words felt empty. No one had to say that we might not live long enough to see the farm freed of its tyrant.

  Gabe picked up his piece of two-by-four, and Harmony went to check on Marcie. We were using Marcie’s dim lantern now to save our flashlight, which meant we worked almost completely in the dark.

  “She’s got a fever,” Harmony told me. “She needs a doctor.”

  “Her brother’s nearby somewhere. As soon as we’re out of here, he’ll take care of her.”

  Harmony sighed. “I didn’t get to know her very well. I regret that now.” Her voice lowered to a soft whisper. “It was because she was so taken with Gabe, you know. I’ve been used to some of the men falling for me, and I knew that sometimes bugged Gabe. That and the silly things I sometimes do to tease him. But this was the first time I’d ever felt jealous of another woman. I was actually glad when Dar told me she’d left.”

  “You don’t have to be jealous because of Gabe,” I said. “He adores you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, for one thing, I’m not blind. But when I first met him and he shook my hand, I felt an imprint from his ring. If you could see yourself as he does, you’d have no doubts.”

  She looked down, veiling her thoughts with her lashes. “Sometimes I worry that he’ll wake up and realize I’m not what he bargained for.”

  “Oh, he’s probably already realized that, but he doesn’t care. He loves you just the way you are.”

  “Thanks for telling me.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Harmony stroked Marcie’s blonde hair. “I do seem to remember Marcie telling me that she and her family weren’t on good terms. That she joined us to get away.”

  “Her husband and child died. Her brother thought she was okay, but apparently she wasn’t. He’s been searching for her for the past year.”

  “That’s sweet.”

  “I thought so, too.”

  Harmony’s short laugh sounded out of place in our dank cell. “I think you like him.”

  “I do. A lot.”

  “What about Jake?”

  I sighed. “Jake’s another story. I like him too much for my own good, but he treats me like a little sister.” Well, except for those two fabulous kisses.

  “Not from what I’ve seen. You’d better look again.”

  “Hey,” Gabe called. “We’ve reached some sand. It’s just pouring down. Come and help us clear it away.”

  Spring was kneeling inside the hole we’d begun, her small body barely fitting, and she was shoving sand through the small space between her legs. We cleared with our hands as fast as she could get it out. When the vein of sand ended, we were back to digging, but Spring was able to crouch in the hole now.

  Harmony shook her head when I offered to take another turn digging. “I’ll do it now. We’re close. No use in damaging your ribs or your wrist further.”

  “Try to go straight up,” Gabe directed. “As soon as you clear out a little more, I’ll be able to fit in there.” He’d actually done most of the digging, his farm muscles more developed for the task, but lying half in and half out of the small hole hadn’t been easy.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Harmony spoke. “The stick is through. We did it!”

  “Shhh,” I cautioned. “Dar might have left a guard.”

  “Let me try now.” Gabe traded places with Harmony. It was a tight squeeze for him, so he jumped back out and worked vigorously on the sides for a while before climbing back in. We all watched eagerly, except for the sleeping Marcie, as he scraped the ceiling, trying to widen the hole. “I need something to stand on,” he said. “Can’t get any leverage this way.”

  Spring and I brought a crate. Standing on it, he dug for a while longer and then said, “I can see stars.” Finally, he threw down the two-by-four and jumped up. All we could see of him were his legs as he dangled in the crevasse we had excavated.

  He was back in less than a minute. “I can’t see anyone out there. This part is in the clearing, though, so we’ll have to hurry. No way anyone will miss the hole as they head for the barn in the morning.”

  Sore and bleeding, we emerged from the pit. Spring went first, and then Gabe lifted me up while Spring helped me through. My throat constricted in fear at the tight squeeze, but that discomfort was overridden by the pain flaring in my ribs. Blackness ate at the edges of my consciousness, but I managed to get through without passing out. Then Spring and I grabbed Marcie as she came hesitantly through the hole, supported entirely by Gabe from the other side. Harmony followed her, bringing the smelly blankets to protect Marcie from the night chill. Gabe climbed through last.

  “Quick! Into the trees,” I urged.

  Gabe carried Marcie, while the rest of us darted glances at the shadows.

  “What do we do now?” Spring asked. “I want to get Little Jim.”

  “We will,” I said. “But first let’s try the radio. My friend may have already contacted the police.”

  I put in Harmony’s batteries again and turned on the radio. “Ethan, are you there?” I let the button go.

  At her brother’s name, Marcie moaned, but she was burning with fever, and I wasn’t sure if she understood that she was almost saved.

  Almost being the key word.

  “Ethan, come in, please,” I said.

  Nothing. My mind rapidly turned over the possibilities. Dar was armed, and we were far from civilization. Too far to walk anywhere. So unless we could steal a vehicle, we would be forced to deal with Dar ourselves.

  “Ethan, so help me, I’m going to kill you!” I growled into the radio. Where could he be? Worry made me angry.

  A crackle from the radio and then, “Autumn?”

  “Yes!” He sounded odd to me. “Where have you been? Have you called the police?”

  “Ethan’s not here. There’s no sign of him. This is Jake.”

  Relief poured over me, turning my muscles weak. A tear of relief skidded down my left cheek. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine, but I’ve been looking for you all over. I followed when you left the square. Someone jumped me from behind, hit me with a club or something. I was out for a good while. What happened to you? Where’d you go?”

  “Dar locked us in a cellar. Gabe and Harmony are with me. Spring, too.”

  “Is everyone okay?”

  “Yes. Well, mostly. We found Marcie. She needs a hospital. Any idea where Ethan might be?”

  “Everything looks like it’s here in his van, but he’s gone, and so are all the keys. I’m trying to hot-wire my bike, but it’s harder than it looks. Plus, the muffler looks damaged. I guess he tried riding it. I just hope it still works.”

  Even if we got Jake’s motorcycle working, we’d have to hide Marcie in a safe place until the police arrived. She was in no condition to ride on the bike. “Where’s Dar now?”

  “Last I knew he was in the office with some of his men. I don’t know if they brought anyone else inside because I couldn’t watch both sides of the house. So I came looking for Ethan.”

  “Something’s happened to him. He wouldn’t have up and left everything.”

  “For once we’re in agreement. Look, I think I just about have this solved. Where are you?”

  I let static fill the air as I looked at the others.

  “Tell him we’ll meet him in the barn,” Harmony said. “It’s the closest shelter, and she needs to be made comfortable.” She stroked Marcie’s head.

  I conveyed the message to Jake, and then we waited among the trees while Gabe went to make sure no one was in the barn.

  “You realize it’s dangerous to stay there,” I said.


  Harmony shrugged. “What else can we do?”

  “I’m going to get my son.” Spring stood up, looking determined, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to change her mind.

  “Wait,” I said. “Let Jake and me go with you. Besides, we need to figure out where Dar is. Maybe we can steal his phone or a car.”

  “Maybe he’s already taken off.” Spring squatted back down near me.

  “No way,” Harmony said. “He means to kill us all.” She was rubbing the scar on her jaw again.

  “Your father did that?” I asked.

  She took her hand away. “I was a teenager at the time. He was drunk. Gabe found me bleeding in the street, and we’ve been together ever since.”

  “What happened to your father?”

  “I never saw him again.”

  “And Gabe?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did he ever see your father again?”

  She stiffened. “Gabe didn’t do anything wrong. Now or then, if that’s what you’re implying. We didn’t intend for any of this to happen.” Though I couldn’t see her expression, there was anger in her voice.

  “I believe that. But both you and Gabe have to share some responsibility.” I tried to keep my tone neutral, but it came out harsher than it might have had I not been beaten and thrown into a hole in the ground and left to die. I was exhausted both physically and mentally, my wrist ached, and my ribs burned fire so that every breath was a challenge. “Dar would never have been able to do any of this if your people had more say in running this place. If family visits were encouraged, if everyone received proper medical care and vacation time. If they didn’t have to work from sunup to sundown or fast just because someone new joins. That may help with crowd control, but I’m not sure it’s at all what you intended when you built this place.”

  “We give them a home! We love them and take care of them! We give them everything they need.”