Tag: suspense

Missing woman rescued from rooftop.

It was cold out. Or maybe it was just that she was cold. Either way Calico couldn’t stop shivering.

Inside the bedroom below her she could hear Dr. Daniels raging in a fury, cursing her, his son, and life in general.

Her perch on the roof was precarious at best, the tiles were slippery because it had been raining recently. One wrong move and she’d go tumbling down to the ground below. If the fall didn’t kill her then Dr. Daniels would.

There were lights shining from the houses around her, and help felt so close but so far away. If she could just reach one then this would all be over. She could call Garret and he’d come to her and she’d finally be safe.

“Please leave,” she murmured under her breath. If Dr. Daniels would just leave the house then she’d be able to figure out a way down.

Or just scream until someone came or called the cops.

Then like a miracle the sound of sirens filled the air.

Help was coming. Someone must have seen her up here on the roof and called in the cops.

Relief had tears brimming in her eyes, tumbling free as she pushed up onto her feet, waving her arms as the flashing lights came into view.

She was saved. She was going to live.

Then she heard a sound below. Looking down she saw Dr. Daniels head sticking out the open window she’d just escape through.

He looked up.

She looked down.

He grinned.

She screamed.

Then lost her balance and fell.

Friends and family of missing nurse desperately cling to hope.

Garret stood over the discarded body, fear and hope warring inside him. The body wasn’t Calico’s, not this time anyway, but it was her ex. Derek Daniels had been almost decapitated when someone slit his neck.

Derek’s father.

DNA had proved that he was the killer, but it didn’t tell them where he was hiding out.

If the man could kill his own son with such apparent ease then killing Calico wouldn’t be at all difficult for him.

How much time left did she have?

Hours? Days? Weeks? Months?

While he would never stop hoping she was alive, Garret also knew that being alive meant she was suffering. He had no idea what her relationship with the man had been like when she’d been dating Derek, there had been no reason at the time to ask about it, the man hadn’t abducted her for no reason.

Staring down at the body, Garret knew this was Calico’s fate if he couldn’t find her in time. Maybe Dr Daniels wouldn’t slice through her neck but he’d kill her just the same.

“We got a call,” Tony rushed up beside him. His partner was a good friend, bringing him to the site despite him not even officially being released from the hospital much less back at work.

“Who? What?” Fear churned in his get. Had her body been found? Was it already too late to save her?

“Someone just called in seeing a woman climb out a second story window of a house and up onto the roof.”

“And?” There had to be more than that if the message had been passed on to Tony.

“Description matches Calico.”

Heart in your throat.

This had to work.

If it didn’t then Calico honestly wasn’t sure how much longer she’d last here. Dr. Daniels was devolving a little more each day. While he didn’t seem remorseful for killing his own son it was clear the act had affected him mentally.

He was falling apart.

Right before her eyes.

While he was feeing her, or dressing her, he would go on these huge long rants about nothing in particular. Jumping from idea to idea with no clear path between them.

She’d taken to faking sleep whenever he was around and he seemed to buy it because he’d skipped the last two doses of the sedatives.

Without as much of the drug in her system she felt more alert, stronger, and more in control than she had in days. Since he could start drugging her again any time she had to move now. If Garret was going to magically find her and rescue her he would have come for her already.

For now she was on her own.

Creeping across the bedroom, Calico carefully eased up the window. She was on the second floor, it would be a nasty drop if she slipped. Possibly survivable, but not without injury.

Only she didn’t plan on going down, she planned on going up.

She was betting on the fact that when he came in and discovered her gone, and the window open, Dr Daniels would assume she’d gone down to try to escape and would take off after her. Only he wouldn’t find her because she’d be hiding on the roof. Once she was sure he was gone she could climb down and go to a neighbour for help.

Her body was still weak, and as she swung her legs out the window she prayed she had enough strength to make this work.

Standing on the windowsill, when she reached up she could just reach the gutter. Gripping it as hard as she could she swung her legs from side to side trying to get up enough momentum that she could hook one on the gutter and pull herself up, because there was no way she could use just her hands to get her entire body weight up there.

By some miracle her plan worked, and she was just scrambling up onto the tiles when she heard the bedroom door open.

If this didn’t work she was as good as dead.

Coroner finds foreign DNA on body.

“You were right.”

Garret looked up as Tony came into his hospital room. It had been three days since he’d been found after the accident. Another almost twenty-four hours he’d wandered lost and concussed in the forest.

Four days that Calico had been in the hands of a madman.

“About what?”

“DNA found on the last victim was a match to a close relative of Derek Daniels,” Tony informed him.

“His father.”

“Yep. You were right the old guy is involved. I don’t know whether it was both of them at first, or if it was Derek, or Dr. Daniels, but regardless he was the one who caused the crash.”

“And the one who took Calico.” He might not have known her long, but the ache in his chest told the story of how deep he’d fallen for her.

It sucked being stuck here instead of out looking for Calico, and he was forever grateful that Tony was keeping him in the loop.

When his partner’s phone rang, he felt a sinking feeling in his gut.

Bad news.

“Hello?” Tony said into the phone.

For the next sixty seconds or so Garret was forced to sit there and wait for news, unable to make a guess at who was on the other end of the line or what they were saying.

“What is it?” he demanded the second Tony disconnected the call.

“They found a body.”

The bottom dropped out of his world. “Who’s?”

Ex boyfriend found dead.

Calico knew if she didn’t find a way to do something soon, make a move of some sort, then it was going to be all over for her.

Dr. Daniels was growing progressively more unhinged. Not that she’d ever found the man to be overly competent anyway. In fact she’d never known how he managed to finish medical school, graduate, and hold down a job.

But she hadn’t known he was like this.

He’d been creepy, and she’d always got a bad vibe from him, but she hadn’t realised he was this level of twisted.

As badly as she wished for an opportunity to try to take hold of her destiny, Dr. Daniels kept her drugged with sedatives and muscle relaxants so she could barely move her limbs in any controlled fashion let alone find a way to escape. He did everything for her, fed her, dressed her, washed her, he even gave her sleeping pills at night and rocked her to sleep like she was a baby.

It was terrifying.

When he moved into her line of sight, Calico tensed, trying to will her body to cooperate. Which it didn’t.

“Time to say goodbye,” Dr. Daniels announced, and her heart dropped.

While she had no idea how long he’d had her she assumed it was several days at least, but she didn’t think he’d get tired of her already.

“D-don’t, p-please,” she stammered weakly as he leaned down and scooped her up.

Ignoring her, Dr. Daniels carried her through the house. Only he bypassed the kitchen where he loved to prop her up at the table and take his time feeing her, laughing each time she flinched.

Today he headed for a side door that led into the garage. Calico assumed he was going to either kill her here and now then drive her somewhere to dump her body. Or he was going to kill her at the dump site.

Neither were appealing.

But instead of putting her in the car, he carried her to the back where she caught sight of Derek’s dead body. She had realised he wasn’t in the kitchen this morning when Dr. Daniels fed her breakfast but she hadn’t realised it was because he was ready to get rid of his son’s body.

“Kiss him goodbye, little girl.”

Derek’s body was already decaying, it was obvious he’d been dead several days at least before Dr. Daniels took her. But his father didn’t care about that. He gripped her cheeks hard between his fingers and forced her mouth to touch the dead’s man rotting flesh.

How much longer until she ended up like Derek? After all if Dr. Daniels could kill his own son in cold blood and not feel an ounce of remorse, then he wouldn’t feel bad killing her too.