For once, his size worked against him. His breaths were gusting from his mouth. He spat out a wad of chewing gum. He couldn’t throw Mitch off, though he tried.
Mitch said conversationally, “Or I may save myself the trouble and just use the shotgun.” He tapped the double barrel against the ogre’s head. He stopped struggling.
“Mitch!” John came running from the back of the house.
“Is she okay?”
“She’s not here.”
Mitch swiveled his head toward John. “What?”
“Molly isn’t in the house, not in their car.”
“What about Barker?”
“Unconscious and disarmed.”
John, looking diabolical, kicked the ogre in the vicinity of his kidney. Then he went down on one knee, bent over him, drew the knife from his boot, and placed the tip of it in the man’s ear. “Is my daughter dead? Did you kill her?”
“No,” Frank sputtered into the dirt. “I swear. No!”
“You’ve got two seconds, two, to tell me where she is, or I sink this knife into your brain.”
“Fuck you, Bowie. You’re so smart, you find her.”
Mitch increased the pressure on his neck. “It’s as meaty as a ham, John, but I can make his neck bones snap like twigs. Just give me the word.”
“Thanks, but I’ve got this.” Calmly, quietly, John whispered to Frank, “You want to live? Tell me where she is. Two seconds.”
The ogre remained silent.
“Okay.” As he tickled the ogre’s ear canal with the sharp tip of the knife, he began his countdown. “Two.”
“I—”
“One.”
The ogre, the terror, the bully screamed, “Wait! I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you.”
Mitch and John looked at each other; John bobbed his chin. Mitch let up on the man’s neck but worked his boot beneath the ogre’s shoulder and pushed him onto his back. He was drooling. His eyes were wild with fear. They darted between the barrels of the shotgun, the wicked knife, and John and Mitch, both of whom were glaring down at him with evangelical intent.
He blubbered. He sobbed. “After school let out, she gave me the slip. Barker went apeshit. Ranting and raving. He called me in to account. You,” he said, meeting John’s fierce gaze, “you called, accusing Barker of taking her. He… he—with me sitting right there—pretended that we had her. It was a hoax. A… a… a ruse. To… to… you know, to draw you out.”
As though John had officially assigned Mutt to guard her, he trailed Beth from window to window, chair to chair, bedroom to bedroom to kitchen as she roamed the cabin, too keyed up to light anywhere.
Her anguish over the severance from the TV show paled in significance to the unthinkable torment John was experiencing now. She also was sick at the thought of Molly being at the hands of the ogre and Tom Barker. She didn’t hazard to speculate what it would do to John if his daughter was harmed, or what he would do to the men who’d harmed her.
She hadn’t been fooled by his and Mitch’s need for privacy to check their guns. They’d been devising a plan. While she was slightly resentful that she hadn’t been included, she was also relieved that she didn’t know the details. Knowing what they intended to do might have made this waiting worse. As it was, worry was eating her alive.
Restless and needing something to distract her, she wandered over to the table and sat down in front of her computer. The professor had agreed to look over their list of social media handles, but she hadn’t heard back from him yet. She doubted she would until tomorrow.
Suddenly she was struck cold with the realization that it was already tomorrow. Yes, there on her computer screen: 12:02 March 13.
She and John had been fed so much information in the last two days. It was such a small amount of time to digest it all. What had they missed? What had they missed? What? What?
Had the professor referenced in passing something that they hadn’t picked up on, hadn’t yet explored? She recalled him saying of the trends “waxing and waning.” Alliteratively, “witchcraft and werewolves.”
Wolves howled at the moon.
She woke up her laptop and opened it to that virtual meeting with the professor, which, fortunately, she’d recorded. As he explained the nature of his lectures, her attention lapsed and her gaze wandered from him to the overstocked shelves behind him.
In addition to the interesting and unusual artifacts on display, he had an extensive library. Had he read and absorbed everything in those books? Is that how he could give knowledgeable lectures on such a variety of subjects and yet stay within the realm of the supernatural?
She paused the video in order to examine the book titles and noticed that, although the shelves appeared messy and haphazardly arranged, the books were actually grouped by subject matter.
She saw only three books on werewolves, but one entire shelf was given over to books on witchcraft and its dozens of subdivisions. Two shelves were lined with books about the moon and related astrological subjects, both scientific and mythological. Fact side by side with myth.
There was a section on numerology, which she found curious. He’d told John he wasn’t an expert, but she supposed that having a collection of books on the subject didn’t make him one.
Still… the professor didn’t come across to her as being that modest. Indeed, he enjoyed expounding on a topic.
She got up suddenly and stumbled over Mutt in her haste to get to her bedroom. She took her suitcase out of the closet where she’d stowed it and placed it on the bed. The zipper stuck several times in her rush to open it.
She tossed aside her hair dryer, a bag of toiletries, and a pair of sneakers, then plowed both hands through folded articles of clothing until she reached the bottom, where she’d placed Professor Victor Wallace’s book.
His article had piqued her interest, so she’d ordered his book. It had been delivered mere hours before she’d left for her flight from LaGuardia to New Orleans. She’d read the first two chapters on the plane but had found it tedious reading and hadn’t opened it since.