Page 40 of Going Down Hard
A shudder rattled her teeth and her stomach rolled. “Bloody hell,” she muttered. “He’s a nut-job.”
“There you are.” He stepped behind her. Too close. “What have you found?”
Sophie scrambled to remember the moves Stone had taught her. Soft spots. Groin, eyes, throat, nose…
He reached past her. “Give me—”
She sank her teeth into his arm.
“Ouch!”
Spinning around she kicked up and hit him square in the balls with her wedge heel. As he bent over cupping his groin she swung the gun and smashed the thick barrel across his face. Blood sprayed out and he yelped in pain and dropped to the floor at her feet.
***
Stone was going out of his mind and pretty sure he was driving everyone around him insane while he was at it.
“Where the fuck is she?”
Nobody answered. Then again, no one had the million-and-one other times he’d muttered the same question in the last six hours, so it seemed unlikely they would now.
“We might have a lead.”
He spun around and stared at the local cop, deputy, whatever the hell they called themselves. He didn’t give a rat’s ass as long as they helped him find Soph. “What?”
“A group of high school kids were hanging around the back of Herschfield House—”
“Where?” Stone had no idea what that was, never mind where.
“The haunted house,” Officer Hansen clarified.
“The place where Soph went missing?”
“Yes.” He motioned a teenager forward. “Tell them what you saw, Drake.”
“A fireman carrying a woman over his shoulder climbed out one of the windows.”
“Carrying?” Stone asked.
The boy shrugged. “She looked asleep. She was all floppy.”
“Was she injured?” Stone asked the boy. If she was out cold…
He shook his head. “Didn’t look like it. There wasn’t any blood or anything.”
“He must have drugged her.” Jack moved next to him, speaking the thought running through Stone’s mind. “Makes sense when you think about it. No way Sophie would go with him without a fight.”
“He had to have injected her with something.” Stone could see it playing out in his head.
Hagar would have either been waiting for her or following her. The fact the boy said it was a fireman meant Hagar had been in disguise. Again. It explained why they hadn’t spotted him.
None of them would have looked twice at a fireman or a cop when searching the crowd.
“With all the noise and darkness, it’s unlikely she would have noticed him coming at her with a syringe, or she might have thought it was part of the show,” Jack speculated.
Stone turned to Ford and asked, “Have we got anything else?”
It was Hansen who answered him. “The station took a call yesterday morning from Mrs. Brindle about some suspicious activity around the old Hawsham place, west of town. We sent a car out there but the officer didn’t see anything or anyone around. I figured we should take a closer look. Besides the old homestead, there are a few barns and machine sheds that could be used to hide something or someone.”
