by Rona Jameson
PRESSED up against the side of the Reverend’s house, we pause to catch our breath and listen for movement. The house is in darkness and creaks with the wind. The agents watching in town say the Reverend is still in the back room there, but we have our doubts. If Wren slipped out with Silas, who’s to say the Reverend hasn’t. He could have easily gotten to the church and then used the tunnel to get home.
The old house creaks as Dad indicates for me to follow him in through the kitchen door, which is unlocked. Staying low, we move over the linoleum floor. I stumble slightly and knock into a chair tucked under a wooden kitchen table. Dad turns to check on me, then focuses on trying to unlock the basement door. While I wait, I move slightly and look around the living room but find nothing homely. No photographs. Everything is very basic and plain—white walls, dark sofa, no television. A dark side table stands alone with three religious books stacked neatly to the left.
“Rafael,” Dad whispers from behind me. “We’re in.”
With one last glance around the room, I slip into the basement. A shiver runs down my spine once the door closes behind us, and the cold of the room hits me. I know its nighttime and it gets cooler, but this feels wrong.
Dad passes me a small flashlight as we slowly make our way down the steps. Seconds later, he shines the light up into the corner of the room. “The frigid air is coming from there,” he says. “If there are cameras around the town, what do you want to bet there are some down here?”
“This is all ending. They’re going to try and move the drugs after the DEA’s visit. I don’t care about cameras anymore. I just want to find Wren, the drugs, and then get the hell out of this town.”
“I hear you.” Dad pauses at the door Wren had described. It’s slightly ajar and Dad indicates for silence.
I nod and follow him into the tunnel. Immediately we’re hit with the smell of damp earth. I shine the flashlight around the narrow tunnel and make a note of the wood supporting the walls and roof. The walls may have a wooden support, but they appear muddy. Water slowly drips from the tunnel roof, making large puddles on the ground. Moving further into the darkness, there are spiderwebs clinging to the support beams and they’re filled with huge spiders waiting for a snack. I momentarily freeze when I feel something move over my foot. Quickly shining the beam downward, I catch sight of a rat scurrying away.
This place is hell and I feel like I can’t breathe the further we move. Rolling my ankle slightly, I grab onto a rough-hewn support beam and curse when a sliver of wood wedges itself into the palm of my hand. Dad turns and takes a look. It isn’t as bad as it felt. I shudder wondering what the hell germs are going to be spreading in my blood from this dirty as fuck place. No way am I using my mouth and teeth to try and get it out without cleaning up first. Dad grins and his white teeth flash in the dark before he indicates to keep moving.
Seconds later, we come to a crossroad junction of tunnels—one forward, one to the left, and one to the right. The one in front of us has to lead to the church, if I’m not mistaken. Not sure where the other two lead. I still sense we’re alone and so does Dad as he shines his flashlight up ahead. I nod in agreement and continue to follow behind him. Not particularly liking being underground in case we find ourselves trapped down here, I’m slightly reassured because we’re both armed. Dad hates me having a gun. However, he’s aware I know what I’m doing. Won’t be of much good if the roof collapses, though.
Stop thinking in that direction!
This tunnel is the same as what we’ve already moved through, except it appears to be where the majority of the rodent family are living. Ignoring the critters scurrying out of our way is the only way I can move forward. I hate the damn things. This tunnel isn’t as long as the one from the house to the crossroads and we seem to reach the end in no time. Dad shines the beam of the flashlight around the plain wooden door. Nothing unusual about it. We listen at the door but can’t hear anything. Not one sound.
Closing his eyes for a few seconds, Dad opens them again and stares at me. They’re filled with worry, but there is no way we’re heading back without checking out what is behind that door. Shaking my head, I indicate the lock. Dad works his magic and the door slowly opens out.
Something wooden is blocking our exit or entrance, depending on which way you look at it. A bookcase? Dad moves in close and whispers directly into my ear. “Be prepared. We don’t know who or what is behind that.”
I take out my gun in response. He does the same.
We check along the edge for a locking mechanism and, not seeing one, I help Dad and push the object out of the way. It moves easily, as though it’s hinged and not freestanding. I’m also correct—a bookcase full of multiple copies of religious books. No way would we have managed to move the case without the way it had been fitted.
We’re also lucky because there is no one around. It’s deadly quiet as I glance at Dad. He frowns and looks up the stairwell. I follow his gaze and confirm that we are in the basement of the church as I make out a statue of Jesus Christ in the darkness.
We came out at the bottom. There’s a single door to one side and a long hallway on the other, which must be the one Wren said she had been heading to when she first saw Silas.
Which means… “Computers,” I mumble. “They were taken into that room.”
Dad keeps his weapon in hand while I slip mine into the back of my jeans. The gray door opens with a slight tug and then we’re inside a large room. Again, it’s strange to find no one. Why isn’t anyone here? It makes no sense.
The light has been left on in the room, which is filled with tables covered in with computers. Some are still in the casings while others look to be in the process of being dismantled or put back together. I’m not sure which.
“Holy fuck!” Dad curses, startling me into motion toward him. He never curses. Well, hardly ever.
My eyes widen when I notice what he’s holding. “Is that what I think it is?”
Without a word, he drops it to the table beside the computer and, using a screwdriver, makes a small hole in the bag. Licking his finger, he gets a smidgen of powder to stick to the fingertip, and then he tastes it. “Heroin.” Wasting no time, he grabs his cellphone and snaps pictures of the room and what he’s found. “It’s a kilo.” He moves along to more computers and he grins when he looks over his shoulder at me. “They’ve removed the power source from the box inside the computer and replaced it with a kilo of Heroin. Clever.” He checks all the open computers. “Just these eight computers alone, we’re talking a market value of around three hundred sixty thousand dollars.” He quickly counts the computers in the room. “If there’s a kilo in each computer, then we’re talking around one-and-a-half million.”
He quickly sends the images to Ken and tells him that we need to talk. However, the message won’t go through while underground. He curses. “It will send automatically when we’re outside.”
I’m going to be asking him where the hell Wren is. There are agents watching her, so she better be safe. “We need to leave.” I suddenly urge. “This feels wrong. Don’t you feel it?”
“This whole situation feels wrong, but you’re right. We’ll leave everything as we’ve found it.” He shoves the drugs back inside the power source box and, making sure there is no residue on the table, we leave the room and quickly get back inside the tunnel.
Closing everything up, the darkness surrounds us once again until Dad has the sense to turn his flashlight back on.
“I want to check out one of the other tunnels while we’re down here. Might not get the chance again.” I tug him to the right as we reach the crossroads. “If it’s long, we can turn back.”
For a second, Dad hesitates before he agrees, insisting that he leads the way. I’ve yet to point out that trouble could come at us from behind, not just in front. Each tunnel is the same as the next, and it’s obvious that whoever built them had spent time making sure the structures were secure and wouldn’t cave in. The wood doesn’t look n
ew, but I don’t think it can be all that old either. Maybe a few years. They’ve certainly got a good operation running, and it makes sense why the DEA has never been able to get anything on the Reverend. Nothing is moved from his home or the church. It’s all done underground.
Lost in thought, I bump into Dad, who has stopped in front of me. I shine my flashlight around him and notice we’re in a larger area. At a guess, it’s about twenty by twenty feet. There is a built-up section in the corner with a door. The tunnel continues on past the room. Dad glances at me before he steps forward and gently tries the door handle. Something else I realize is that this part seems cooler than the actual tunnels. The air outside isn’t cool, so it can’t be from an air vent. Air conditioning—down here?
The door opens and a sound like a girl whimpering hits my ears. Dad must hear it too because he burst through the doorway and into the darkness behind it. I’m so in tune with my dad, that I follow on his heels instinctually, but I pause long enough to shine the flashlight into the room. What looks like a jail cell is in front of me. Inside are two girls huddled together in the far corner. It’s hard to tell their age from how they are trying to hide themselves.
“We’re not here to hurt you,” Dad says. “Lo entiendes?”
“Yes, we understand,” the girl with dark hair whispers. “You are not like the other men.”
“No, we are not. We need to get you out of here.”
Her eyes move to me, so I crouch down, and ask, “What are your names?”
“I’m Jessica and my friend is Pen. We just want to go home.”
“I’m Rafael and this is my father, Marcel. We’ll help you.”
“How long have you been here?” Dad asks, trying to pick the lock of the cell, but he’s not having any luck.
“I think two days, but I’m not sure. We don’t have any light.”
“Where did they take you from?” Dad curses under his breath, becoming frustrated with the lock.
“Omaha, Nebraska,” the girl whispers and flinches when the soft sound of voices can be heard. “You need to go. They’ll find you and then you can’t help us.”
“No,” Pen whimpers.
“Shush. It’s okay.” Jessica meets Dad’s gaze.
“I promise you we will be back for you both and, when we are, you will be leaving with us.” Dad quickly snaps a photograph of the girls and adds it to the message waiting to send to Ken.
Heavy footfalls sound even closer when he closes the door. We take a second to determine where they’re coming from…it’s clear they’re coming from further up the tunnel, so we turn back toward the main tunnel. It’s too dangerous to turn on the flashlights, so we use our hands for guidance and find our way back to the Reverend’s house in silence.
I don’t know what Dad is thinking, but my head is spinning. Girls! Does the Reverend even know about them? Of course, he does. He uses the tunnels, that I’m sure of, which means he knows about the room back there. And are there other rooms like that one in those catacombs?
What the fuck is going on?
40
WREN
THE SMALL DOCK is quiet except for the slight whoosh sound coming from the water. Silas would have preferred me staying in the car, but I felt safer sticking close to him. “I don’t like this,” I whisper into the dark night.
Silas squeezes my hand and let’s go as a small fishing boat slowly slides alongside the jetty. I can’t see who is manning the boat until he turns around and I’m surprised. The man has to be in his eighties with a medium build and height. He’s wearing a black knitted hat on his head. He looks warily between Silas and me before narrowing his eyes. Silas speaks Spanish to him while my attention is caught on the green tarp at the bottom end of his small boat. It looks bulky.
Gasping, I quickly take a step back when I see a foot poking out. I’m caught by Silas who drags me in close to his body. He whispers, “Don’t move,” hardly moving his mouth.
“The girl.” The. old man nods in my direction. “Who is she?”
“Don’t worry about her. Do you have payment?” Silas asks, his other hand is beneath his jacket where I know he has a weapon.
“She is Ezequiel’s payment. That’s all he wanted. The girl.” The old man continues to stare. “Tell me who she is, or I leave now.”
“She is a friend of Ezequiel. You wouldn’t want word to get back to him that you scared her, huh?” Silas releases me with a warning glint in his gaze. “Go and get the book bag.” He nods toward the car behind us. I really want to get in the car and drive away.
I don’t.
Silas stays and I see them whispering back and forth. As I approach with the bag, he asks him, “Who is the girl? Someone special?”
The man laughs. “Ask Ezequiel.” He shakes his head. “Pass me the bag.”
Silas moves to take it from me, but the old man says, “No! The girl must pass it to me.”
With barely controlled anger, Silas backs away.
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Lean over and pass me the bag. I haven’t got all night. The coast guard will be back soon.” That certainly gets me moving, and the man snatches the heavy bag from my hands. If it hadn’t been for Silas’s quick reflexes, I’d have fallen headfirst on top of the girl.
“You have the packages, now I want Ezequiel’s.” Silas glances around and steps into the boat.
The tarp is moved and beneath is a dark-haired girl, maybe a year or two younger than me. Silas checks her pulse before lifting her to the small jetty and pulling himself up. “If you’ve double-crossed us, old man, the Reverend and Ezequiel know where you live.”
The man gives a toothy grin. “It’s what they ask of me. No problem.”
He pulls a large container out of the water and opens it up before shoving the heroin inside and lowering it back beneath the dark waves. Hearing a clunk, I frown, wondering what goes on beneath the boat.
Hissing, Silas says, “Go to the car and open the back door, Wren. We need to go.”
He collects the girl into his arms and places her gently on the backseat. I follow her inside and, after a quick hesitation on Silas’s part, I’m shut in here with her as we speed away. I couldn’t tell you where this place is because I haven’t seen it before. Maybe in daylight I could have gotten an idea from what I’ve seen of Padre Island. In the dark, though, I have no idea.
“You didn’t know about the girl, did you?”
“No,” he growls. “There is a bottle of water in the bag on the floor. Use that to dab at her lips.”
Following his instructions, I uncap the water and use the T-shirt in the bag to clean her face. I find a fresh part and dab it over her lips. She doesn’t react and stays sleeping. “What’s going on, Silas?”
“I don’t know. I was expecting cash, not a girl.” He glances into the back. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll drive us to Wild’s place and call Marcel. He can meet us there and take you and the girl away from here. Call in the cavalry. This is fucked.”
“You have to come too, right?”
He stays silent.
“Silas?”
“Don’t, Wren.”
“You’re my family, Uncle Silas. You have to come. They’ll hurt you if you go back without us.”
“Wren, listen to me. I have to finish what I’ve started, but I can’t hand over a girl to them. You will be safe, for now at least, but she isn’t. Ezequiel is unstable and I don’t know what he’ll do or how he would punish us if I don’t go back with her. You hear me. I can take care of myself if I don’t have to worry about you.”
“I hate this. Why now? How could I have not known all of this? I’d been aware of everything going on in the town…or, at least, I thought I had.”
“They didn’t want you to know. That’s why. It isn’t your fault. Now, we have to get those photographs and burn them, and then get you away from here.”
“Can’t I call Marcel now?”
“No. The car isn’
t bugged but I’m sure my phone is. I’ll call once we have the photographs and leave you in the forest for Marcel and Rafael to find. It won’t take long.”
“I feel sick.”
“This will be over soon. I promise.”
His phone rings, and he curses.
“Ezequiel is calling.” He slams a fist into the steering column. “I have to answer this.”
He does and speaks rapidly in Spanish while casting a glance into the back. Our eyes meet and I know it isn’t good. “Si.” He ends the call.
“We have to go and meet him. He says if I don’t go back with you or the girl, that they have men watching Marcel’s house.”
“No,” I cry.
“I don’t know why he thinks ‘Jonas’ would care, but that’s what he said.”
“The photographs?”
“We know where they are. We’ll get them. Just not right now.”
“Can’t we call Marcel and warn him, or go to their house? All of us can leave.”
He shakes his head. “They have a tracker on the car, which prompted the call.” He sighs. “I took the right fork in the road, which leads to Wild’s place. The left is the one I should have taken. They knew. They called.”
Silas looks worried as he continues to drive, cutting through a side road to get back onto the road he should have taken originally. The girl still hasn’t moved, not even a snore. If she wasn’t breathing, I’d think she was dead.
I stay silent in the car unable to think of anything reasonable to say. I know Silas is thinking too and I’m not sure I’d like his thoughts with how tense his body language is.
The trees and run-down houses pass in a blur as the car eats up the miles to wherever we are supposed to go. It isn’t town. Making a sharp left, the tires spin on gravel. Glancing around as the car slows down, I recognize the old logging road. I’ve been here before. A few years ago, I think.
“Silas, stop!” He slams on the brakes and turns to look at me as I move between the front seats. “We can’t go up there. This is the only road in and out. We’ll be trapped.”