Gingerbread Man

hospital?"
    Holly met her eyes. There was only one person she wanted to call right now. "Vince," she said. "We have to call Vince."
    Amanda's lids lowered quickly.
    "I know you don't trust him, Amanda, but I do. And you trust me, don't you?"
    Lifting her gaze again, Amanda hesitated, then finally, she nodded. "What's the number?"
    Holly rattled it off and Amanda punched the buttons, then handed her the phone. She heard Vince's cell phone ring once. Then again.
    "He'd better answer fast," Amanda said. "The bakery truck is stopping."
    Holly hit the brakes, pulling off to the side of the road as much as she could, as the truck did the same a short distance ahead. She drove into the darkest, most shadowy section of the roadside she could see. Then she cut the engine, staring dead ahead.
    "Answer, Vince. Dammit, pick up your phone!"

TWENTY-ONE
----

    VINCE'S CELL PHONE bleated as he was wandering around a make-believe Halloween graveyard in the pouring rain in the dead of night. Which explained why he jumped out of his skin, fumbled for the phone, and then dropped it.
    It had rung three more times by the time he fished it out of the mud, wiped it on his coat, and punched the right button.
    "Hello?" he said, when he brought it to his ear.
    "Vince! We need help."
    "Holly, where the hell are you? What's going on?"
    A static buzz hit his ear. Then, "It was Uncle Marty. Aunt—
zzz
—house—
zzz
—dead."
    "What? Holly I can barely hear you. Are you all right?"
    "Lake Road," she said, between further buzzing. "—ing north."
    "Holly—"
    "Hurry.'"
    And that was it. The connection was dead.
    "Jesus Christ," Jerry said. "Look at this."
    Vince turned, and looked beyond the broken section of fence, just inside the woods. Jerry was there, holding up what seemed to be a rectangle of the ground, like a door. "It's some kind of old root cellar. The top was completely covered in soil and leaves." Jerry flipped the door all the way over and left it open.
    Gabbing Jerry's arm, Vince started back to the car. "Ten to one that's how he got the kid," Vince said. "He slipped away from the party, came out here, and waited. Grabbed her when she passed closely enough. Drugged her, hid her there in that freaking tomb, and rejoined the party. It would have only taken a few minutes. Then he came back for her later, after the party was over, and the searchers had moved farther out into the woods."
    "And when he did, he left the top, slightly askew. Otherwise I'd have never seen it. But how do you know he was at the party?"
    Vince looked at the phone. "I'm pretty sure Holly just told me it was her uncle Marty."
    "The guy you rented the cabin from?" Jerry asked, hurrying to keep up with Vince.
    "The same." He was thumbing the buttons of the cell phone even as he opened the car door and got behind the wheel. "Mallory? It's Vince. Holly's in trouble. It was a bad connection, but I got 'Lake Road' and 'North.' How do I get there fastest from the D'Voe place?"
    The chief gave directions as Vince drove, back wheels slipping sideways in the mud.
    "Meet me out there," Vince said. "Bring everyone you can muster. Feds included. And some ambulances. God only knows what we'll find when we catch up to them."
    He hung up and looked at Jerry as he negotiated the rain-wet, unpaved road, and turned onto the one called Lake Road. No one would ever know it. It didn't bear a sign. "Mallory says this road runs for seventy miles, around the lake. God only knows how far ahead of us they are."
    "Just don't kill us before we get there," Jerry suggested.
    * * *
    HOLLY WAS STILL speaking into the cell phone when she realized that Vince was no longer replying. Twisting the phone in her hand, she scowled at the panel that had gone dark. "Damn, damn, damn." She punched buttons to no avail. The thing lit up only once, just long enough to flicker "low battery" on its face before it died again. Holly flung it into the back seat.
    A hand clutched her arm. "Look."
    She glanced at Amanda, then toward where Amanda was staring. The taillights on the bakery truck went out, leaving the deserted road almost pitch dark. Then the truck's door opened, and an interior light spilled out just enough to illuminate Uncle Marty as he got out.
    He hopped from the step, down to the road, then slammed the truck's door closed. Pausing a moment, he looked up and down the wood-lined road, then he came walking straight toward Holly and Amanda.
    "Oh, God, he sees us!" Amanda said. She reached for the