Blood Red

Angie woke up just in time to feel the water closing in around her head. She tried to catch her breath but failed, and instead sucked in water. She thrashed, drowning and terrified, but it did no good. They held her under the water with their thin hands and incredible strength. She tried to escape again and again, but soon the burning in her lungs was too much and the blackness came back to swallow her again.

And finally she awoke, soaked and naked and shivering in a different sort of darkness. There was no light of any kind, but she could hear just fine, hear the sounds of the things that moved around her, and feel their hands as they touched her in the lightless, echoing void.

“Who’s there?” Her voice, weakened though it was, echoed around her.

A voice giggled off to the right. “Mommy? Is that you, Mommy?”

“Shhhh. Be nice. She is with child.”

“Mmmmm. Babies.”

“Leave me alone!” her voice boomed in the darkness and ricocheted off distant walls.

“No, Mommy. I’m hungry now. Feed me.”

The teeth clamped down on her breast again and then there were more mouths, all of them biting at her skin, all of them penetrating flesh and meat and sometimes even bone.

Angie Freemont screamed for what seemed an eternity, pushing and fighting and trying desperately to escape from the agonies they delivered onto her. She tried to stand and they knocked her back down. She tried to claw at their flesh and they ignored her best attacks. Finally she stopped struggling, feeling every last bite.

She took a long time to die.

Chapter 9

I

He wanted to be truthful with the detectives, but he couldn’t, not even if it meant Angie’s life.

He knew that, and hated himself for it.

Brian Freemont came home to an empty house and at first thought Angie had finally decided to leave him. It didn’t take him long to realize that her clothes were still there, along with her suitcases and everything else she owned. Her purse was still exactly where she’d left it, on the edge of the couch. After that, it took about ten minutes of looking around to see the shreds of her clothes on the darkened porch.

He dialed 911 and sat down on the edge of the stairs leading up to his house. He wasn’t about to touch anything else until the detectives got there. His heart was beating too fast and he was sweating despite the late October chill.

When the phone rang on his hip, he jumped. His fingers scrabbled madly to answer the damned device, and he hoped beyond all of his wildly growing doubts that Angie was calling him.

“Angie?” His voice was trembling as much as his hands.

“No, Officer Freemont,” he knew the voice as soon as the man spoke, and he felt rage blossom in his chest. “It’s not your wife. I’m just calling to let you know that your accounts are back where they should be.”

“What did you do with Angie, you sick fuck!”

“Your wife?” The voice sounded surprised enough that Brian guessed the man either knew nothing about her disappearance or he was an actor with supreme skills. “I don’t know anything about your wife, Freemont. Maybe she found out about your extra job benefits.”

The man hung up before he could respond, and much as he wanted to hunt the bastard down, he was forced to put his cell phone away when the detectives showed up.

Boyd and Holdstedter got out of their car and moved toward his house, their faces lacking any of the usual expressions he saw on the department’s local clowns. The odds were good neither of the men had slept more than a couple of hours before he called for assistance. There were a total of four detectives in Black Stone Bay’s police department. The other two dealt with murders. These two dealt with everything else.

Holdstedter looked like the sort of guy who got women without even trying. Boyd, at five feet, eight inches tall, was thin and balding and usually looked constipated, even when he was having a good time. Currently both of them looked like sleep was the only thing on their minds.

Boyd nodded to him and asked, “Have you heard anything at all since you called it in, Brian?” Despite his gruff exterior, Boyd’s voice and demeanor were considerate to the point of being unsettling.

He shook his head. “I wish I had, Rich.” His stomach felt like it wanted to tear free of its moorings and make a run for it.

“You know I have to ask these questions, Brian.”

“You ask whatever you need to.”

“Have you been seeing anyone on the side?”

“No. No one.” The lie came out easier than he’d expected.

“Has Angie been seeing anyone?”

“No. Come on, Rich, she’s six months pregnant.”

Boyd shook his head and shrugged. “You’d be surprised how many people find that a turn-on, sport.” He looked around the porch and then looked at Holdstedter. “Danny? Why don’t you give the place a look-over?”

The Nordic cop nodded and moved up the stairs, his eyes suddenly cold and calculating.

“Okay, Brian. Can you think of anyone who would have a reason to harm Angie?”