The Bone House - Brian Freeman [93]
'I will.'
Hilary hung up the phone. She didn't know how to interpret what she'd found. Pam knew Jensen from his years in Fargo, which overlapped with the timeline of the fire. That meant one thing: Gary Jensen was not Harris Bone.
So who was he?
Amy and Pam had both used the same word to describe him. Creepy. If Pam was right, the coach also had a history of sexual relationships with underage girls.
Like Glory.
Hilary stared at the fuzzy image of Gary Jensen in Amy's photograph. She wished that the phone call with Amy hadn't ended so abruptly.
She wished she knew where Amy was.
* * *
Chapter Thirty-Two
Amy awoke to find that her senses had been stripped. She opened her eyes and saw nothing. She tried to scream, but her mouth was stuffed with a wadded-up cloth that made her cough and choke. When she moved, she found that her wrists and ankles were tightly bound. She was on her back on what felt like a soft mattress. When she turned her head, her brain was still dizzy with pain. She tried to piece her memory together, but her mind was blank, and she struggled in confusion and panic before she remembered Gary Jensen.
He'd done this to her.
He handed her a glass of wine, and she drank. That was when it all started, when she'd become disoriented. He'd put something in her wine. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She'd heard all the stories about date rape drugs, but she had taken the wine without even thinking about it. She wondered what he'd given her. Ecstasy. GHB. Whatever it was, the effects lingered. She kept feeling her head float away.
Think.
She had no sense of time or how long she'd been lying here. It could have been night or noon outside. She breathed through her nose and tried not to think about the saliva gathering in the back of her throat that made her want to gag. The aroma that she smelled was of flowers and dust. It was the same Victorian home smell from last night, and she realized that she was still inside Gary Jensen's house.
Amy heard the noise of the furnace and felt warm air from a vent near the bed. Outside, as the wind blew, a ghostly rattle scraped across the roof above her. She was upstairs. The noise was caused by tree branches rubbing on the metal gutters. Inside the house, below her, she thought she heard voices. It might have been the radio or television, but she felt the floors shudder, and she knew she wasn't alone. Gary was still in the house with her. She didn't know how much time she had before he returned.
There was no way to free herself. Pulling at the tape on her wrists and ankles only seemed to make it tighter. She tried to spit out the scratchy cloth in her mouth, but tape on her face held the gag in place. The only noises she could make were stifled, guttural groans, and she was afraid the effort would cause her to vomit and choke. In frustration, she squirmed frantically on the bed, struggling against her restraints, and she felt the whole structure lift off the ground and bang on the floor.
Shit. He'd heard her.
Footsteps moved below her, coming closer. She heard him on the stairs. In the hallway. Outside the door. As he came inside, she lay completely still, playing possum with her eyes closed, but she knew she wasn't fooling him. She could sense his presence looming over her. She heard him breathing and smelled the musk of his cologne. He switched on the bedroom light, and she reacted involuntarily, opening her eyes and squinting.
'Hello, Amy,' Gary said. His voice was hushed and sounded almost sad. 'I'm glad you're awake.'
She struggled, desperate to escape.
'I'm going to take off the gag now, so we can talk,' he continued. 'Don't scream. No one's going to hear you, and I'll have to get mean, and I really don't want to do that.'
She felt his fingernails on the side of her face, digging under the tape. 'It's better if I do this quickly,' he said. In the same instant, he ripped the tape from her face, and she moaned with the pain of her skin tearing away. He pulled the long ribbon of cloth from inside her mouth, and she gulped air. Her cheeks burned, and she