It turned out that summoning an ambulance was the right call, because Eleanor Sage Dixon refused to be kept waiting. She made her appearance just as the EMTs were wheeling Joanna’s gurney into the ER at Bisbee’s Copper Queen Community Hospital. They never made it anywhere near the delivery room. Dr. James Lee, Joanna’s longtime GP, didn’t make it to the hospital in time. Dr. Mallory Morris, the recently appointed head of ER in the hospital’s newly remodeled emergency unit, later joked that he needed a catcher’s mitt more than latex gloves when they rolled her in from the ambulance.
An hour later, having been pronounced early but healthy, the six-and-a-half-pound baby girl was wrapped in blankets and sleeping in a bassinet in her mother’s room, blissfully unaware that her parents were in the process of sorting out birth-certificate paperwork. Joanna and Butch had been seesawing back and forth on the name issue for weeks. Sometimes the preferred name was Eleanor Sage, and sometimes it was the other way around.
“Maybe we should call her Electra Sage in honor of election night,” Joanna suggested.
“Not a good idea,” Butch said at once.
“Why not?” Joanna asked. “Isn’t Electra some kind of Greek goddess?”
“Sort of,” Butch allowed, “but not necessarily in a good way. She joined forces with her brother, Orestes, to murder both their mother and their stepfather. Orestes got punished for the crime, while Electra pretty much got away with it. So let’s just stick with naming the baby after your mother, shall we?”
“All right, then,” Joanna agreed. “She can be Eleanor Sage as far as officialdom is concerned, but I plan on calling her Sage no matter what.”
“That’s not exactly news from the front,” Butch told her with a grin.
Jim Bob Brady showed up about then. The fact that he was all smiles pretty much gave away the game.
“So did we win?” Joanna demanded.
“We certainly did,” a beaming Jim Bob replied, “by a total of sixty-seven votes. Hubble was on the air giving his concession speech as I left the church. Now let me get a look at this brand-new grandbaby of ours. If this isn’t a red-letter night, I don’t know what is!”
Chapter 1
THE FIRST TIME LATISHA MARCUM HAD AWAKENED IN DARKNESS IN that house-of-horrors dungeon, she thought she’d gone blind. She was lying on a bare mattress on what seemed to be an earthen floor. When she tried to get to her feet, she discovered two things—she was completely naked, and her leg was secured to the wall with a heavy-duty chain. That’s when she started to scream.
“Help!” she pleaded. “Somebody help me! Get me out of here.”
“Shut up,” said a voice out of the darkness—a woman’s voice or a girl’s, Latisha couldn’t tell which. “No one’s going to help you. If you keep making all that racket, you might make him mad, and he’ll come back down. Believe me, you don’t want that to happen.”
“Who will come back down?”
“The Boss,” she said, “from upstairs.”
“Who’s he?”
“The devil,” said a second voice, another female speaking in a soft southern accent. “And in case you’re wondering, you’re in hell.”
“How many people are here?” Latisha asked.
“Three, counting you,” the first voice said. “I’m Sandra Locke, but people call me Sandy.”
“And I’m Sadie Jennings,” the other voice said. “Who are you?”
“Latisha Marcum.”
“With a name like that, are you black?” Sadie asked.
“Does it matter if I am?”
Sadie laughed. “Just wondering,” she said. “In this hellhole you could be deep purple for all I care, and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”
“But where is here?” Latisha wanted to know. “Where are we?”
“In the desert somewhere,” Sandy said. “One day when I was upstairs, one of the blackout curtains wasn’t all the way shut. I saw some old buildings that looked like they might have been part of a movie set from one of those old westerns. I could see some mountains in the distance, but everything between here and the mountains looked like desert.”
“A desert, then, but where?”
“Who knows?” Sadie answered. She might have shrugged or not. It was impossible to see. “In Arizona maybe, or Texas or New Mexico—all those places look alike to me, although there aren’t many mountains in Texas.”
As far as Latisha was concerned, the words Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico meant nothing to her. She had no idea what those states might be like. Until Trayvon had taken her to New Orleans, she had never set foot outside Missouri.
Latisha fell silent for a moment, and so did the others. The urge had been coming on for some time, and now she was desperate. “I need to go to the bathroom,” she said.
“See that spot of light over in the corner?” Sandra asked.
Latisha looked around. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the gloom, she realized it wasn’t completely dark. There was a bit of murky light coming into the space from a row of three glass blocks set high in what had to be an outside wall.
“That’s where the toilet is,” Sandy said. “When you go, take your cup along. If you want water to drink, you’ll have to get it out of the flushing tank.”
“From the toilet?” Latisha repeated.
“The water in the flushing tank is clean,” Sadie said. “Since it’s the only water there is, get used to it.”
Latisha reached out and felt around the head of her mattress. Eventually her fingers closed on a cup of some kind—a metal cup with a handle—and a plastic storage container with a lid on it. When she picked it up and shook it, something rattled inside.
“What’s this?”
“That’s your dinner,” Sadie said. “It’s also breakfast and lunch. Don’t spill it, because if you do, the rats will come looking for it.”
“But what is it?” Latisha insisted.
“Purina Dog Chow would be my first guess,” Sandy suggested, “or maybe a brand that’s not as good.”
“Dog food?” Latisha echoed in disbelief. “We’re supposed to eat dog food? I can’t. I won’t.”
“You’ll be surprised,” Sadie told her. “Once you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat most anything.”
Taking the cup with her, Latisha struggled to her feet. The cumbersome chain around her ankle made it difficult to walk. She’d taken only two steps when she tripped over something on the floor. The next thing she knew, she had tumbled onto another mattress, one as empty and bare as her own.
“Whose mattress is this?” she asked, picking herself back up and retrieving the cup she’d dropped when she fell. It had fallen to the floor. If she’d been wearing any clothes, Latisha would have wiped the lip of the cup on her clothing. Since she wasn’t, she couldn’t.
“That one still has a Vacancy sign posted on it,” Sadie said. “At least so far.”
Latisha struggled to her feet once more. Feeling her way through the gloom, she was finally able to make out the ghostly presence of a toilet.