Kendall had heard that sentiment a hundred if not a thousand times before on Kitsap County calls. Kidnap County, as some called it, could be the kind of place where people had gates, dogs, guns, and an attitude that said “back off!” in no uncertain terms.
It was, she reflected, a good place to hide out and be alone.
“If you see her, call us. Okay?”
He took her business card and put it in his back pocket. “Sure. Will do.”
Kendall looked around and noticed the weave of various car and truck wheel treads in the muddy parking area. She walked toward the woods, an archway of ocean spray marking its entrance. She found some remnants of salal cuttings, a bundle of rubber bands, and the muddy footprints of at least a dozen people and a few dogs. Sunlight sifted through the maples and cedars, sending globes of light to the damp forest floor. She walked about a hundred yards before something pink caught her eye: a cellophane wrapper emblazoned with a depiction of a smiling shrimp and Asian characters.
Kendall bent down, her heels digging into the muddy soil, and wondered if it was evidence or carelessness. She bagged the wrapper, just in case, and got back into her car as a deer wandered into the parking lot. The scene was breathtaking in its incongruity.
The forest is so beautiful, yet so dangerous.
She got back in her car and started back to Port Orchard. The sky had darkened. She turned on her headlights and wipers as rain began to splatter on the windshield. Many of Kitsap County ’s rural roads have no edges, no borders, as they wind through forests of Douglas fir and western red cedars.
Tree trunks along rural roadways are thickly collared with salal, huckleberry, and the spires of the native sword fern. Some roads follow old deer trails from Puget Sound inland to valleys fed by a network of streams.
The woods were lush and lucrative.
And, just maybe, Kendall Stark thought, deadly.
Celesta Delgado was naked, shivering, on a sheet of plastic when she awoke. It was so dark in the room that she reached for her face, struggling to see if her own black hair had blocked the light. She couldn’t reach. She rolled back the moments as best she could. She’d been out in the woods. But where was she now? Had she passed out? Why couldn’t she move her arms? She tried to sit up, but her legs were paralyzed too.
Had she been in an accident?
Nothing in her memory suggested an accident, and the realization that her predicament was intentional came over her. Fear consumed her. If she’d been hurt and was in the hospital, would she be nude? She’d never been hospitalized before, yet she knew that every patient was allowed the dignity of some covering. She shivered again as cool air moved over her body.
A fan?
She wanted to call out, but her voice failed her too.
What is happening to me?
There was nothing to do but wait and cry tears that simply oozed into the fabric of the blindfold over her eyes.
She lay there, frozen and terrified, in the dark until a harsh voice was directed at her.
“Your hands and feet are no longer tied. Get up.”
Celesta heard the commands; nevertheless, she was unsure how to maneuver in order to perform them. She knew she was on her back, of course, but she had no idea how to pull herself upright. She was still blindfolded and confused about how to orient herself from the plastic sheeting that held her. She was so cold by then that her buttocks felt stuck to the sheeting. It was as if she were bound in plastic like a half-frozen roast.
“I know you can’t see, bitch, but you can hear. Now, get up. Roll over. On your knees.”
Celesta couldn’t cry out, although inside her head she’d screamed Tulio’s name over and over.
Tulio, please help! Tulio, save me!
The man in the dark grabbed her ankles. Celesta winced in pain as his callused hands scraped her skin. He pulled her down the plastic sheeting, now wet with her own urine.
“You’re going to do as I say or you’re going to die.”
She nodded, her cheeks now wet.
Tulio! Tulio!
He spread her legs and started to rub against her buttocks. She could feel the hair on his stomach and the hardness of his penis as he grunted and rubbed.
“Now, don’t move while I do you, bitch. You move, you die.”
Please no!
She tightened her thighs as he raped her.
“I said don’t move, bitch.” He slammed a fist into her kidney. “Don’t budge!”
A sharp pain worse than she’d ever known tormented every nerve in her torso. It was like an electric shock running from the base of her spine to her brain. She felt the man’s sticky-hot semen roll down her inner thighs.
She’d been praying for rescue. Now she wished for death.
“You ready?”
For what? What more could you do to me?
But the man wasn’t talking to Celesta. She heard another person moving in the room, coming closer but not speaking. The hands that grabbed her this time were smaller.
“No lube needed, I just primed the pump,” the man said.
Everything that was happening to Celesta was beyond wrong, but what was happening now was beyond her comprehension. She screamed out in pain.
“Shut up, bitch!” said the man who had raped her first.
The other remained silent while violating Celesta with some kind of a cylindrical device. It was rigid, cool, not made of flesh.
The first man started to laugh. “You have to get better at this.”
Celesta vomited blood.
God, take me from here. Jesus, take me home.
Just as darkness cascaded over her, she thought she saw the face of an angel. From a small slit in the tape across her eyes and head, she caught a glimpse of a divine figure. Yes, she was sure of it. She was small and beautiful, with a smile that brought a sense of peace.
“Help me,” she whispered.
Chapter Five
March 30, evening
South Colby
Steven and Kendall Stark lived in a gray and white 1920s bungalow above Yukon Harbor in South Colby, a few miles outside Port Orchard on the way to the Southworth ferry landing. Since her childhood in nearby Harper, Kendall had admired the house and how it sat on an incline backed with an impressive grove of moss-covered maples and silver-barked alders. It didn’t take any convincing to get her husband to share her dream. In fact, when the house went on the market five years into their marriage, it was Steven who surprised his wife with an open-house flyer and a promise “to make this happen for you, babe.”
A stone-edged walkway led from the street to wide front steps and a covered porch that seldom saw a summer evening without the presence of someone kicking back with a beer or a soda, watching the bay turn from blue to ink. It was a home that felt instantly comfortable, like those favorite brown leather slippers some dads wear for decades until they split at the toes. The place had been remodeled in the 1980s by a couple who likely didn’t realize the benefits of restoring a vintage home to its original charm. Wall-to-wall carpeting was easy enough to remove to expose original fir floors, but layers of mauve and kelly green paint over the rest of the woodwork was a daunting challenge. It took Steven and Kendall almost a year to scrape, sand, and re-stain the doors and trim. In the end, the house was any young couple’s vision of the perfect first home-enough room for children, a lawn that rolled from the front door to the main road, and a view of Blake Island and the harbor interrupted only by a few power lines and the frontage road.
Steven destroyed the kitchen making his specialty for dinner, lasagna layered with roasted red bell peppers and sweet apple sausage. Between sales calls, he picked up a loaf of French bread at the Albertsons on Mile Hill Road and slathered it with garlic butter-Cody’s favorite.