The President's Daughter - Mariah Stewart [106]
“No, I’m fine, thanks.”
Dina hopped into the Jeep and took a moment to familiarize herself with the gears and the placement of the instruments. She’d never driven a Wrangler before, but they always looked like they’d be a fun drive.
And it was. Even on I-95 with the canvas sides open, the Jeep held the road pretty well. It was a quick and easy drive to Maryland.
The property she was looking for was off Good Hope Road and was actually a good eight miles from Henderson, but Dina knew the area well. There was a realtor’s FOR SALE sign near the road, Mrs. Dillon had told her, but the property could only be reached by driving past the sign to a duck pond a quarter mile farther down the road. Once she reached the pond, there would be a dirt road. From there, she would drive about fifteen hundred feet, taking a right onto yet another dirt road. Once past a wooded area, she would see the old farmhouse and several outbuildings.
And it had all been exactly as her prospective customer had detailed, right down to the ducks on the pond. Dina drove the Jeep carefully over the deeply rutted road, thinking that the first thing the potential buyers should look into might be the cost of some macadam. There was dense brush and much undergrowth lining the lane, and she wondered just how long the property had been vacant.
“Yow!” she said aloud as the house came into view. “Talk about your handyman’s special. . . .”
The weathered farmhouse with its boarded-up windows on the first floor sported a front porch that suffered from serious sag on one side. The top course of brick was missing from the chimney, and a cluster of lilac reached clear up to the second-story windows. Behind the house several outbuildings stood—though only barely—and pastures outlined with rusted barbed wire ran along the far side of the lane. A black convertible was parked near the barn, and Dina drove the Jeep around the house to park next to it.
At the edge of an overgrown field, two black-and-white kittens played tag in an abandoned truck tire. They ducked inside it to hide when Dina got out of the car.
“Hello?” she called as she pocketed the key.
Her voice drifted over the fallow fields.
“Hello?” she called again. “Mrs. Dillon?”
No answer.
Maybe they’re up at the house, Dina thought, but both the front and the back doors were locked. Perhaps in the barn . . . ? But a look inside proved that it, too, was empty.
A large black cat with white markings crouched behind an ancient combine just outside the barn door.
“Here, kitty-kitty!” Dina called to it. The cat swished its tail but did not approach.
“Come here, kitty; I won’t hurt you.”
The cat rubbed up against the combine’s broken wheel.
“You’re not a very wild cat, are you?” Dina reached a hand out to the animal. “Are you a runaway? Or maybe did someone drop you off here?”
The cat sashayed out from behind the wheel and permitted Dina to scratch behind its ears.
“Are those your babies out there by the road?” Dina crooned. “Pretty babies. And you’re a pretty baby, too, aren’t you?”
The cat purred deeply and wound itself around Dina’s knees.
The sound of a door creaking on one of the smaller of the outbuildings caught Dina’s attention.
“Come on, kitty. Let’s take a look.”
Dina walked to the shed and pushed the door open.
“Mrs. Dillon . . . ?”
Dina stepped inside but only heard the whoosh seconds before the two-by-four crashed into her skull and sent the blackness to claim her.
Dina awoke facedown on a dirt floor, her arms secured behind her, her wrists bound by tightly knotted rope, and her head pounding unmercifully. It took several long moments before she could remember where she was and what had happened. She struggled to roll over and then lay looking around the small space in which she was confined. There was one dirty window with a broken pane of glass on the top, evidence that someone had used it for target practice with a BB gun. From somewhere outside a long light flashed against the wall. Headlights, she suspected.
Shelves lining the two longest sides of the room gave evidence