Heads Will Roll – Chapter Three

NOT EDITED

Bonnie’s head felt like it was being torn in two. The concrete room spun a little around her. She squeezed her eyes shut again, which seemed to make it worse. Though she could no longer see the spinning, she could feel it, like she was in one of those amusement park rides that spun fast enough to keep the riders pinned to the walls when the floor dropped beneath them.

She leaned her head forward, forehead clunking dully against something cold. A metal pole, maybe. She kept her gaze on the floor for now, giving her brain fewer things to imagine spinning in that horrifically nauseating way. The pole or beam or pipe — whatever it was — was smooth and cooling and nice.

Bonnie closed her eyes again. This time, that nauseating feeling didn’t rise in her throat and squeeze her head.

Everything felt sort of… hazy. There at the edge of her mind but just beyond her grasp. Like if she reached out as far as she possibly could and wiggled her fingers, the very tips of them would just break through the haze.

She remembered… the high school. A sharp pinprick in the side of her neck. She tried to move her hand toward the phantom pain, but it didn’t get far. Something rattled and tugged painfully at her wrists. She opened her eyes. Handcuffed. Handcuffed to the metal pole her head still leaned against. Beneath each cuff, her wrists were wrapped in a thin layer of bloodied gauze.

She remembered ropes biting into her wrists as she tried to untie the knot or slip free. The school basement.

Bonnie lifted her head and scanned the room. It looked like a basement. Concrete floor. Unpainted brick walls. Tw+-o very small windows right beneath the ceiling. A drain in the middle of the floor. A water heater in the corner.

This one wasn’t the school basement. Or… certainly not a part of the school basement she had ever seen. She’d been moved.

A masked man. She remembered him. Remembered her phone ringing several times before he ripped it from her pocket and threw it across the room. Remembered fading out. Waking back up in the school basement.

Bonnie swallowed, wincing. Her throat hurt almost as much as it had when his hands had still been wrapped around it.

“You’re awake.”

Bonnie’s head whipped around toward the voice. The man stood at the top of the basement stairs. He had changed clothes, but he still wore the same mask he’d had on in the school basement.

He came down the stairs, one hand on the railing. Unlike at the school, he wasn’t wearing gloves. He squatted down in front of her, hands clasped between his knees. “The gag, it’s a handkerchief. I’m going to untie it. Go ahead and scream. No one will hear you but me. I can’t promise what I will do in response, but you go ahead and do what you need to.”

Bonnie fought the urge to headbutt him as he reached behind her head to untie the gag. It wouldn’t gain her anything. It would piss him off. Maybe earn her another head bashing or choking. But it wouldn’t gain her anything. If he killed her, there was no chance of escaping, and alive but brain-damaged greatly reduced her chances too.

So she swallowed the urge and kept her eyes shut until he pulled the gag from her mouth. He tossed the fabric to the floor and sat back on his heels. “Bonnie—”

“I don’t know who you are,” she interrupted, her voice shaking. “I-I haven’t seen your face. I don’t recognize you. You can let me go a-and I’ll go home, and I won’t tell anyone about this. No one has to know. I promise.”

“Oh, Bonnie. They’re already looking for you, dear. The deputies have already been to your mother’s house.”

“H-how long have I been gone?”

“Not horribly long. It’s a little after ten now.”

“Ten… at night? O-on Wednesday?”

“Mmhmm.”

Under twelve hours.

“I still won’t tell anyone. I’ll say I just… went on a long walk. That I needed a break from life for a couple hours.”

“I’m not letting you go, Bonnie. You weren’t some random choice. You weren’t taken because of random chance or random opportunity. I’ve been planning this for a long time,” he said as he rose to his feet.

Bonnie watched him as he walked across the room. “Why me?” she asked, unable to force her voice to be any louder than a whisper.

“I told you we had a lesson to teach Mister Downs. I wasn’t lying about that.”

“Why?”

His back to her, he lifted one shoulder. “He’ll understand the why. That’s all that matters.”

***

A little after eleven-thirty, Jeff pulled the cruiser into Rick’s driveway and shifted into park. When Rick didn’t undo his seatbelt or open the door, Jeff cleared his throat. “All right, Ricky, here we are.”

Rick lifted his head to look out the window. “I want you to meet me at the school in the morning. I’m thinking around seven.”

“So you don’t think she’s on her way to Florida, then.”

“I think… we shouldn’t put all our eggs in one basket, is all. If we wait until she could be in Florida, and then we wait for his parole officer to do a search of his house…” Rick let out a breath. “If we wait on that and she isn’t there, we’ve wasted so many valuable hours. Important hours. I can’t do that, even if this is Iowa. Even if it’s Ellepath. I just can’t.”

After a moment, Jeff nodded. “Okay. Tomorrow morning, seven o’clock. I’ll meet you at the school.”

Rick turned toward his partner and offered a tired smile. “Thanks, Jeff.”

“If this case were the other way around, if I believed she were in danger and everyone else in the whole fucking world believed she was a runaway, you wouldn’t sleep until you explored that angle with me, until you were absolutely certain she ran away on her own volition. If I can’t do even half of that for you, then I’m not worthy of being your partner.”

“Still, thank you. If she weren’t dating Peter, I’m not sure I’d worry she was in danger. I don’t know that I’d give it a second thought. I’m not… blind to the fact that her relationship to my kids is clouding to my judgment. And I know you know that. So the fact that you’re working with me on it even knowing that? I appreciate it. Deeply.”

“I know, man.” Jeff reached out and gave Rick’s shoulder a tight squeeze. “Go inside, shower, get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Rick patted Jeff’s hand before finally undoing his seatbelt. He headed up to the house as Jeff backed out of the drive and back onto the road. Rick unlocked the door and walked inside. He closed and locked the door, leaning his forehead against the door. He heard quiet footsteps behind him. Before he had the chance to lift his head or turn around, his wife’s arms wrapped around him. Rick let out a breath, shoulders relaxing as he lifted a hand to cover both of hers.

“I was starting to worry you weren’t ever coming back,” Heidi said.

“I always come back.”

“That’s the hope.” Heidi pressed a kiss to his bicep before shifting to rest her cheek between his shoulders. “Did you find out anything?”

“No. I mean… nothing that finds Bonnie and brings her home tonight.”

“Do you wanna talk about what you did find?”

“Bonnie’s dad was released on parole three weeks ago. Has a job in Florida. Tina wasn’t alerted about his impending release, or that he even had a parole hearing, so I think… that Bonnie found and read the letter, and then she hid it. Or threw it away. I just don’t know if she hid it or tossed it to protect her mom or because she was planning on going to see him, see if the stories about him were true. Or maybe just to tell him to stay away. But I don’t know.”

“Did you search her room?”

“No, I talked to Tina about it, but I didn’t ask about searching her room. It felt… I don’t know. Invasive. She’s dating Peter.”

“You can’t see her that way while you’re investigating. She has to just be another missing girl. Anything more than that will mess with your head far too much, and we’ll lose you again.”

“I know,” Rick whispered. “You’re right. I’ll… I’ll talk to Tina about searching Bonnie’s room tomorrow. Where would you hide a parole release letter if you were a teenage girl?”

“If I trusted my mom? Folded inside my diary. And if you find one, you should read the most recent entries too, no matter how it feels. Okay?”

Rick nodded. She was right. He knew she was. But it unfortunately didn’t make the idea of reading his son’s girlfriend’s diary any more appealing. “Jeff and I are going to the school tomorrow before it opens to the students. I want to talk to the staff, see if anyone noticed anything strange about her. She was leaving the school when Tina called reception. I want to make sure they physically saw her leaving.”

“That’s a good idea, baby. You know what you’re doing.”

Rick chuckled. “You’re like a mindreader. That’s been eating away at me all evening. What if she really is in danger and I’ve been out of practice with real cases for so long that I can’t save her?”

“You know all the laws, all the rules, all the procedures. Unlike everyone else, you have actual practice with real cases. If Bonnie’s in danger, you’ll save her. You’ll find her. I have no doubt about any of that, Rick.”

“We left California because I got too involved in cases with people I didn’t even know. If she’s really in danger, how the hell am I going to survive working this one?”

“Every single night, when you come home, we’ll re-ground you. We’ll bring you back to earth each time, make sure your mind is back home too, not just your body.”

“Thank you, Heidi.”

“Of course, baby.” She pulled back, pressing a kiss to his upper back. “Let’s go take a shower, make sure your mind is here, and then get some sleep. Sound good?”

“Sounds perfect.”

---

Enjoying the story? Consider dropping a comment or a like down below!!

---