James Patterson - Thriller - Stories to Keep You Up All Night

Maura could now see into the dining room through an open archway. The huge table was draped almost to the floor in an off-white tablecloth, and featured a magnificent centerpiece of freshly cut flowers.

"Audra, get down here!" Alec shouted.

He crossed to the base of the stairs.

Now! Go! Maura commanded herself.

Soundlessly, she crawled to the table and slid between two massive chairs and under the cloth. By pressing her cheek against the plush Oriental rug, she could peer out through a three-inch gap. She saw Alec's bare feet enter the room, followed closely by his wife's.

"You look like a little whore in that outfit," Alec snapped. "I like a slut. I like that a lot."

There was a sharp slap, and Audra cried out.

"Please, Alec, not tonight. I can't."

"You love it, bitch. You know it, and I know it."

There was another slap, this one harder than the last. Audra dropped from the force of the blow, landing just a few feet from where Maura was watching. Their eyes actually could have met, but didn't. The woman was clearly shaken.

"Get up!" Alec demanded. "I'm already hard." "Alec, please."

Every neuron cried out to save Audra from this monster, but Maura remained in a fetal position underneath the elegant table.

"Get on the table," he commanded. "I love the way you look right now. You're beautiful…so beautiful. Tomorrow, after your surgery, you're going to look even better."

Maura covered her mouth and gasped inwardly. Her calf muscle knotted from the tension and strain of staying in one position. The searing pain felt as though it was being stabbed with a dull knife. She bit her knuckles to keep still and quiet, and to blot from her mind the horror of what was transpiring above her.

For an excruciatingly long time there was no letup in the fury of Alec's attack. Audra's simpering cries had no effect. Finally, there were only the sounds of two people struggling for breath. Alec Meadows's rape of his wife was complete.

If Maura could have killed the man without jeopardizing her son, she well might have. When he was ready, Alec pushed away from the table, fixed his clothing and ambled upstairs. Audra remained where she was for a time, whimpering and totally spent. Maura felt deeply connected to her. Both of them were suffering greatly by Alec Meadows's design.

It was nearly four-thirty when Audra finally headed upstairs. Maura remained concealed. After a few minutes, she cautiously crawled out from under the table and stretched her throbbing calf. Then she conducted a fruitless search of the downstairs and located the door to the basement, which was by the kitchen. The vast, poorly lit space was unfinished concrete, dank and creepy. There were scattered boxes and old furniture, but no sign of David, and nothing that tied Alec to his kidnapping.

Disheartened, Maura considered then rejected the notion of waiting until the house was empty to search the upstairs. She was heading out when she noticed a door at the far end of the basement. It opened into an unfinished bathroom with a small vanity, sink, mirror and toilet. Inside the vanity she found a blue cosmetics kit containing several plastic vials of pills. Valium, Zoloft, Prozac, Xanax, Effexor-all prescriptions, and all in the name of Audra Meadows. Most of them were empty, but there was a good supply of both Effexor and Xanax. Maura knew those medications well. During and after her divorce, she suffered from depression. Effexor made her feel logy, and highly addictive Xanax was just plain scary. Instead, she opted for late-night TV, counseling and rigorous exercise. Still, it was easy to see why Audra might need medication.

The pills gave Maura something to work with. Assuming Audra was in therapy, her shrink might know about Alec. The problem would be getting the doctor to break professional confidence. Perhaps, she thought, smiling savagely, Dr. Simon Rubenstein had a son.

She glanced at her watch. There were nine hours left. Pocketing one of the empty pill bottles with Rubenstein's office address, she slipped outside through the basement door, and disappeared into the cool mist of the early-morning woods.

Hack left a small shoe box, per Maura's instructions, at the Holiday Inn reception desk. He knew David well and had no trouble honoring her request. Once inside her car, Maura transferred the loaded.38 special to her jacket pocket. Hack, always slightly paranoid and as eccentric as he was brilliant, had a small arsenal hidden around his apartment. In addition to the gun, he had information in the form of printouts regarding Alec Meadows.

Meadows had no actual studio or warehouse in his own name or the name of his company, and his office in downtown L.A. didn't sound like a place David would be kept. Also included was a list of twenty properties in southern California owned by people named A. Meadows. One of them, Hack had circled-per-haps a cabin of some sort, he noted, in the Los Padres National Forest north of Ventura. It was owned by an A. R. Meadows-

Alec's initials. She checked a map and estimated the drive there and back would be five hours. There were eight left before the surgery.

Dr. Simon Rubenstein had an unlisted home number, but Hack was working on finding it and his home address. Meanwhile, Maura went to the shrink's office in Hollywood, only a few blocks from George's surgicenter. The building was locked. She could hang around and wait for Rubenstein, or go with the only lead she had-the place in the mountains.

She called George at home, at the office and on his cell, but got only machines. Dr. George Hill, plastic surgeon to the stars, was never out of touch. He was avoiding her, and that meant he was still ambivalent as to what he would do when the moment of truth came. She left testy messages on each of his phones, letting him know in no uncertain terms what his life would be like if anything happened to their son because of him. Then she filled up the tank of her Camry and headed toward the freeway.

It took a stop at a Los Padres Forest ranger station, and some blind luck, but finally, nearly two and a half hours after she left L.A., she pulled onto Eagle's Nest Road, two miles west of Fra-zier Park. She had just four and a half hours to find David.

Number 14 was painted on a piece of wood nailed to a tree. The house, a cabin, just as Hack had suspected, was a tiny, ramshackle place with junk in the dirt yard-hardly the sort of property the Meadows were likely to own. Maura parked down the drive and approached through the woods. At the edge of the clearing, she took the.38 from her pocket. At almost the same moment, she felt a gun barrel pressed firmly against the back of her neck.

"Drop it!" a bass voice growled. "Now, turn around. Slowly!"

The gun was a hunting rifle with a telescopic site. The man was huge-six-six at least, with a dense red beard. Maura looked up at him defiantly.

"Where's my son?" she demanded.

"Lady, the only son you'll find around here is mine. Luanne?"

A frumpy woman came into the yard, hand in hand with an unkempt two-year-old. Maura felt ill.

"Is your name Meadows?" she asked, her voice hoarse and shaky.

"Ambrose Meadows if it's any business of yours. Now, what'n the heck are you doin' here?"

One hour.

Devastated that she had rolled the dice with her drive to Los Padres and lost, Maura drove back to L.A. in heavy traffic. Her pistol was back in her jacket pocket. Calls to her ex-husband's various lines brought no response except the answering service.

"Perhaps you forgot," the operator said firmly, "but Dr. Hill doesn't allow any calls to the surgicenter while he is operating."

Maura groaned. It was the great doctor's crowd-pleasing policy that every patient was his only patient. She made no attempt to threaten the woman, but instead cut into the breakdown lane and sped back to Simon Rubenstein's office building and ran up three floors to his office. A man she assumed was Rubenstein, squat and egg bald with a kind, wise face, was just locking the door behind him.