Page 47 of Hellhound AU

“He’s out, but I’ll go check if it’ll make you feel better. Will you be okay here on your own?” I asked.

“Yeah, just don’t shut the door. Call down when it’s clear, okay? Did you already call the police? If not, you gotta call them, okay? He’s gotta be arrested.”

I sighed and nodded, then turned around and headed out of the room and up the stairs. Of course she wanted the cops. They were such a pain in the ass, and now they were gonna be involved. The guy wasn’t a hellbound soul, though—not yet, at least. Killing him wasn’t an option, but Betsy was right that leaving him free wasn’t really an option, either.

When I got upstairs, Sky was, as predicted, still unconscious. This wasn’t the movies, so he hadn’t jumped up and ran off in the ten minutes I’d taken downstairs.

“All clear,” I called out, and I heard Betsy walking upstairs.

I kept my eye on the guy, figuring that would put Betsy more at ease. I heard her coming up the stairs, and then she came into the room, carrying the chain that was still attached to her leg on one end.

“Do you want me to break that off?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No. It’s, like, evidence or whatever. Did you call the police?”

I shook my head and took out my cell phone, handing it to Betsy. She dialed 911 and then walked into the other room with the phone when the operator picked up. She started off calm, but before long she was crying into the phone, telling the dispatcher what had happened. It wasn’t totally unexpected—she’d been surprisingly calm so far, and a little hysterics and panic was definitely called for. The girl had been abducted, for goodness sake.

Within a few minutes, I heard the cop cars approaching, and I debated my course of action. Did I really want to get caught up with the cops? No. Should I ask Betsy to lie and say she had escaped on her own? Probably not.

Still, there was that nagging feeling in my gut that something was off. Betsy ran out to meet the cop cars, and after making sure Sky was still unconscious—he was—I stepped out the back door and called Milo.

It rang for an eternity, and then it went to voicemail. I tried again right away, and the same thing happened.

Shit. Something was wrong. I could feel it.

He’d said he was going to ask Ethel to pick him up, so I scrolled down to her number next. She’d given it to me, along with the rest of the crew, the other afternoon.

Her phone also went to voicemail.

I tried Mildred next.

“Hello?” she answered.

“It’s Rowan. I found Betsy, and she’s fine. She’s with the cops now, and I’m sure they’ll be calling you soon.”

“Oh, thank god. Thank you, Rowan. You don’t know how relieved I am. I’ll call her mother right now.”

Before she could hang up, I asked, “Did Ethel and Milo get back there? He said he was going to ask her for a ride home.”

“Oh, yes, she flew out of here a while ago. I assumed they were on their way to meet you, because they didn’t come back here.”

I didn’t want to panic Mildred, so I just said, “Okay, thanks. Spread the good word about Betsy.”

We said our goodbyes and hung up. The cops still hadn’t come out back looking for me, and even though I knew I really should stay, I walked down the back porch steps and off into the woods. Once I was out of sight of the cabin, I started running toward the car. Something was wrong. Milo wasn’t answering, Ethel wasn’t answering, and they should have been.

I found my car without an issue, and I managed to get in and get going without being stopped by the cops. I drove back toward campus, thinking about which route Ethel and Milo would take. If I didn’t see them on the way to the cabin, maybe Ethel had decided to head back toward the retirement home. I’d made the drive with Milo and remembered which way to go if I didn’t see their car en route to campus.

I was maybe five minutes from the college when I saw the flashing lights ahead. I threw the car in park and jumped out, the police yelling at me as I ran over toward the car that was sitting on the side of the road.

It was Ethel’s car, and it was pretty banged up. It looked like she’d been sideswiped. I didn’t see or hear anyone in the car, so I turned to the cop who was running toward me to stop me from messing with their accident scene.

“Where are they? Are they okay?” I asked.

The policeman waved another cop over. This one opened a notebook. “Do you know the owners of this car?”

“Yes. Are they okay? Did the ambulance take them already? What hospital are they at?” I tried not to let panic take over, but it was hard, especially when the cops didn’t seem forthcoming with information.

“When did you last hear from them?”