Heather Graham - Dying Breath

Vickie—he knew.

“Vickie, dear, so good of you to come...it’s been so long. Noah... Noah is in his room. I’m trying to keep him from everything going on. Of course, I haven’t managed that at all. He’s nine now, still a kid, but... I’m going to have to explain. He just knows that his mom is missing. He had baseball today, Little League, you know? They called me because Chrissy wasn’t there to get him, and then I came home, and she wasn’t here, but she had a cup of tea out... Chrissy doesn’t leave things out like that. Her purse is here, her keys...it’s as if she’s vanished into the thin air. And that clue, Vickie, I mean, thank you. No one can know that ‘Preston’ means you, but...oh, God! I can’t believe this. My family, Chrissy, she’s amazing...you know Chrissy. Oh, God.”

Vickie Preston drew gently away from him. “Mr. Ballantine, we need to search the basement.”

“The basement? The cops have been down there—they’ve been everywhere,” he said.

“Yes, Mr. Ballantine, but we need to look, please,” Griffin told him.

The man still looked dazed. “Of course. Whatever. But shouldn’t you be out there looking for her?”

“We’re working on it, Mr. Ballantine. Please,” Jackson said quietly.

“What about the other woman—the other woman who was just saved? It’s all over the news—you just saved her. Can’t she tell you anything—tell you who did this? She could help, she could give us something!” George said.

“We keep checking in,” Griffin assured him. “I’m afraid she’s still unconscious. We need your help, sir.”

Ballantine nodded. “Sure.” He frowned as he stared at Griffin. “I know you,” he said.

“I used to be a Boston police officer,” Griffin said.

“Yeah, yeah, you were here...” George Ballantine seemed confused, and then angry. “Are you the reason this madman took my Chrissy?”

“I don’t believe so, sir. I haven’t worked here in years,” Griffin said.

“Then what the hell are you doing here?” Mr. Ballantine demanded. Then he looked at Vickie as if it all might somehow be her fault. “Both of you...maybe it’s because of you.”

Vickie was visibly shaken; Griffin fought his anger. The man was in no condition to be rational.

“I’m with the FBI now, Mr. Ballantine,” Griffin said. “Excuse us. We’re hoping that something in the basement will help.”

He turned; he didn’t know the Ballantine house, but Vickie did. She took his cue and walked away from Ballantine, heading to the kitchen.

Vickie opened the door that led to the basement. Griffin and Jackson followed her down. It was evident the police and techs had been down there already. Shelves that lined the brick walls had been gone through; the door to a half bath stood open.

One door led to the water heater and cooling system, another to other mechanics. The first room held a pool table and old comfortable chairs. There was a half bar that had been built to one side.

Structural components blocked off various areas.

They walked through the different rooms in the basement, between giant brick columns, leaving behind the finished section and moving into a raw work area. They all searched.

Vickie stood in the middle of the floor, baffled.

Dylan Ballantine appeared at her side.

“Vickie, please, please, think!”

She was thinking; that was painfully evident.

“I’m not sure what else...where else. The clue seems so evident. Where Paul rode...this house would have stood then. I’m not sure what else...there’s the Paul Revere house down the street, but too many people are in and out. And the churches...there are so many tourists around.”

“And we just found a woman in one of the cemeteries,” Jackson said quietly, encouraging her train of thought.

“She’s here. She’s here—I’m sure she’s here,” Vickie murmured.

Griffin looked around. A pile of wood was neatly stacked against a far wall. He closed his eyes and tried to see with his mind’s eye. Yes, there could be someone beneath it. But with just the wood piled on top?

Had the killer changed his ways, and strangled or stabbed her first?

He strode firmly over to the woodpile and began to toss the large and small logs to the side. He became more frantic, and then he was joined by Jackson and Vickie.

But as they neared the bottom of the pile, he felt his frustration grow. There was no woman there.

“Beneath, beneath!” Vickie cried. “There’s a door to a deeper pit...they used to store way more wood down here before, decades ago, long before modern heating systems came in.”

And there was a door. Griffin saw a little metal ring in the middle of it. He jerked so hard on it that he almost ripped the thin wood portal out of its sockets.

And there she lay. Chrissy Ballantine, covered in the minutiae of dust and chips and dirt that had fallen upon the place where she’d been entombed...

“Get her out,” Jackson said.

“Mom, Mom!” the ghost of Dylan sobbed.

Griffin dropped low on his knees and lifted Chrissy Ballantine from the little pit in her own home. He was prepared to resuscitate; Jackson was shouting to the cops upstairs to get a paramedic down to him.

Vickie stood by, silent, watching, as if she were frozen.

Chrissy Ballantine took a deep breath and coughed and sputtered on her own.

Resuscitation wasn’t necessary.

Chrissy Ballantine was alive and breathing on her own.

And her eyes opened. She looked up and smiled.

“Vickie... Dylan.” Her eyes closed. She was alive.

And the paramedics were hurrying down to tend to her.

Griffin closed his own eyes for a minute, silently thankful that they’d found a second woman alive—on the same day.

Then he realized that Dylan’s mother had said his name.

He looked up where Vickie was standing. She stood alone, staring at him with enormous green eyes. He tried to smile and rose and moved away from the paramedics and Chrissy Ballantine. They could hear George Ballantine above, fighting with the cops to get to his wife. They could hear a policeman urging him to let the paramedics work.

“She’ll be okay, Mr. Ballantine. She’ll be okay. You can come along. They’re going to get her to the hospital now,” one of the officers assured him.

“We’ve got to go to the hospital, too,” Jackson told him.

“Yeah,” he said. “But first, we have to get Miss Preston home.”

Vickie shook her head. “I should go back to my parents’ house, Agent Pryce. They need to know—I mean, I can call them, but they’re parents and need to see me, to know that I’m just fine and that Chrissy Ballantine has been found. Alive.”

“Of course,” Jackson told her. “But we’ll get an officer to escort you.”

“And,” Griffin added, “please assure them that we’ll have officers outside their building.”

“Do you think Chrissy Ballantine will know what happened?”

“Two victims were found alive today, Miss Preston,” Jackson said. “We can certainly hope that one of them is able to give us something. Mrs. Ballantine owes her life to you, and we got lucky with the other victim. We’re working to find real answers soon.”

The med techs were getting Chrissy onto a stretcher. Boston med techs were among the finest in the country, Griffin was certain. Chrissy Ballantine already had an IV in her arm and an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth. Her color was already better; she was going to make it just fine, he believed.

When they had cleared the room, Vickie headed toward the stairs.

Detective David Barnes was on his way down.

He almost ran straight into Vickie.

“Miss Preston?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m Detective Barnes. You found her—you found her already?”