Dead Too Soon: A Thriller (Val Ryker series Book 3)

by Ann Voss Peterson

“Shh,” he repeated.

  Grace peered over the wooden walkway. Still no sign of Hess. Maybe he was still up in the smelting house. Or maybe he was on his way. She needed to get ready.

  A branch lying on the ground caught her eye, not too big, but with enough heft to hurt. It was a risk, Hess was more than able to overpower her, but there was a chance she could catch him by surprise.

  Grasping the branch, she climbed back over the railing and headed up the trail. She reached the caves and slipped into one, watching the stone steps, waiting, the branch heavy in her hands.

  Her pulse thundered in her ears. Her injured hand throbbed. This was a stupid idea, fighting Hess. He was stronger. He would win. But she didn’t know what else to do.

  A light twinkled from below, down near the river. No, two lights.

  Headlights?

  When she spotted the river, she’d assumed the highway was in the opposite direction. Could she have been wrong?

  Maybe she didn’t have to fight her way out of this. Maybe she and Ethan could just get to the bottom before Hess. Before the car reached them. Maybe they could find help and get out after all.

  Hold on, Ethan. We’re almost safe.

  Grace slipped out of the cave, turning back to the wooden walkway.

  When Hess stepped out from the vestibule, Grace let out a shriek.

  “Thanks for coming, Grace. You saved me the trouble of bringing you here myself.”

  Chapter

  Thirty-Eight

  Val

  A scream.

  Bouncing off the sandstone bluff. Echoing in the night.

  Val’s heart hammered hard enough to splinter a rib. She reached out for Lund, grabbing his arm. “It’s Grace.”

  Lund didn’t answer, didn’t even nod, he just started running in the direction of the sound. Val hobbled behind, crutch under one arm, rifle in the other, moving as quickly as she could. They reached a paved path. Lund hesitated, looked back, then pointed a finger up the steep grade.

  Val did her best to nod. The scream had come from the direction of the river. She was sure of that much.

  Lund ran up the hill, Val struggling behind. Dead leaves and pine needles scattered the path, underlying patches of melting snow and ice. Val’s crutch skidded, almost sending her sprawling.

  She reached a fork in the path, one split circling to the edge of the bluff, the other stretching up a steep incline to the smelting house perched on the edge of a sheer cliff. Val hesitated, unsure which path to take, and dreading that the right one was the smelting house.

  She was just about to start climbing the god-awful hill when Lund emerged from the smelting house and joined her. “No one is there. I heard something, though. Coming from the drop shaft.”

  “Grace?”

  “I don’t know. It was faint, but it could have been crying.”

  “Oh, God.”

  They took the curving path. Soon the asphalt became stone stairs, slippery and steep. They followed the edge of the bluff. Val had to abandon her rifle, letting it hang around her shoulder by the sling while she focused on balancing, crutch in one hand, the other grasping the flimsy, two-by-four board railing, the only thing between her and a plunge down to the riverbed.

  They made it down the steps and moved past a series of shallow caves and down another series of flagstone steps before reaching the base of the wooden shaft stretching down from the smelting house above. They climbed two creaking steps onto the short wooden walkway and slipped into the vestibule.

  Val peered into the drop shaft, listening for any of the faint sounds Lund had said he’d heard from the top. Lund did the same.

  “Nothing now. I don’t hear anything.”

  “Shh.”

  Val snapped her gaze to Lund’s. She could tell by the flare of his eyes that he’d heard it, too. A soft shush.

  “Shh,” she said back.

  The same sound answered. “Shh.”

  Lund held up a hand. They both stepped out on the walkway, then, leaving Val at the railing, he climbed through and peered under the walkway. “Hey, Ethan.”

  Lund holstered his pistol and reached both hands into the space. When he straightened, he had Ethan in his arms.

  “Box,” the toddler said, pointing to the space under the boardwalk. “Box.”

  Val felt the bubble of a laugh press behind her lips. “Did Grace hide you in a box, Ethan?”

  “Gace?”

  “You hold on tight, all right?” Lund said, lifting the little guy to sit on his shoulders. “We’re going to find Grace.”

  Val’s phone buzzed in her pocket. Letting the rifle rest in its sling, she checked the readout and held it to her ear. “Olson.”

  “You found her?”

  “We found Ethan. Grace is here, too, but we haven’t located her.”

  “We got a ping on her phone. It’s right near you, maybe twenty feet due east.”

  Val looked to the east, her gaze landing on the vestibule housing the entrance to the drop shaft.

  “Listen, Val, I’ll be there as fast as I can. The dam is out at Prairie du Sac. Washed out the bridges. Everything is underwater.”

  “Do the best you can.” Val ended the call and explained the phone’s location to Lund. As many advances that had been made into tracking a cell phone signal, they still couldn’t account for differences in elevation. Olson could see that Grace’s phone was due east, but he wouldn’t be able to tell whether it was at the top of the bluff or buried deep in the sandstone.

  “At the bottom of the drop shaft, Olson couldn’t have gotten a signal. Could she be somewhere up in the smelting house?”

  “Her phone might be.” A muscle flexed along Lund’s jawline. “I think we’re asking the wrong question.”

  Val tilted her head, waiting for him to go on.

  “Why did the phone suddenly turn on now?”

  “You think that’s where he wants me, at the top of the drop shaft.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And Grace? Where is she?” Val peered at the steps twisting the remaining distance down the bluff to the riverbed. She’d just started hobbling in that direction when a single gunshot thundered below.

  Val couldn’t breathe. She looked to Lund, meeting his wide eyes. “Grace?”

  “Let’s go.”

  They raced down the winding path, as fast as they could go. With Lund holding the little boy, and Val’s physical issues, Val wasn’t sure how quickly they could react if Hess appeared. She could only pray they saw him before he saw them. Either way, they would be at a distinct disadvantage.

  They reached the bottom of the trail, but instead of the wide path McGlade had planned to use to enter the park, the river covered the last couple of steps. Mill Creek had already swamped its bank.

  They waded into the icy water. Up ahead, McGlade’s duck sat next to a tunnel that had been hand-hewn into the rock to connect the drop shaft and cooling pool to the spot where the shot would have been finished and loaded onto barges. The sound of sloshing water echoed from the tunnel’s mouth.

  Val brought her rifle to her shoulder.

  The figure of a man emerged from the cave, a gun in hand. “Whoa, Val. Hold up.”

  “McGlade.” Val lowered her weapon. “Trying to get yourself shot?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do. And after you shoot me, take all my money.” He looked around. “Where’s the nutcase?”

  “Hess?” Val scoured the shadowy riverbed, then the woods, trying to see past the blur in one eye.

  “I caught him coming out of the tunnel,” Harry said, pointing. “Shot him. Right over there.”

  “Did you hit him?” Lund asked, sweeping his flashlight around the area.

  “I shot. He fell. Asshole was either wearing body armor, or…”

  “Or?” Val asked.

  Harry’s eyes went sheepish. “Or he’s a Terminator.”

  “Take the head shot next time.” Lund tapped his noggin. “No Kevlar there.”

&
nbsp; “I was in the duck from thirty meters away, Lump. And if you haven’t noticed, it’s dark out.”

  “So how did you know it was Hess at all? It could have been me.”

  “And what a tragedy that would have been.” McGlade climbed into the back of his duck, rummaged around, and pulled out a tire iron and a Maglite. “Come on.”

  “Come on where?” Lund asked.

  “I found Grace.”

  Val couldn’t help herself. She lunged at McGlade. “Grace? Where?”

  “Follow me.” Harry switched on the Maglite and led the way.

  Val didn’t need the sign at the tunnel’s mouth to explain the stone had been burrowed out using hand tools. The rough walls were scarred with the slashes of pick axes. More than a foot of river water swirled around her legs. Dead leaves floated like boats on the surface. The already low ceiling felt as if it was getting lower with each step.

  The tunnel seemed to go on forever, nothing in front of them but the beam from the Maglite, nothing behind them but lapping water. Finally Harry’s steps slowed, and an old iron gate materialized at the end of the tunnel. Like something out of a medieval dungeon.

  “The line for kissing my ass forms to the left,” McGlade said, spreading his hands.

  Beyond the gate huddled Val’s niece.

  Her precious Grace.

  Lund

  What Lund saw on the other side of the gate made him gasp.

  Not the fresh, pretty teenager who’d come to the breakfast table just yesterday morning. This Grace’s face was battered, her lip swollen, bruises cupping swollen eyes. Shivering, she gripped one of the gate’s iron bars, her fingers swollen to twice their size.

  “Oh, God. Grace,” Val said. She reached through the iron bars, smoothing Grace’s blond hair back from her abused face. Then she gripped the gate’s bars and yanked against the fat padlock securing it.

  Lund wanted to hit something. No, someone. Hess.

  “Gace!”

  Grace looked past Val to Lund, and her eyes pooled with tears. “You found Ethan.”

  “Thanks to you,” Lund said. “I assume hiding him was your idea.”

  “I thought I could…” She looked down, shaking her head, the movement almost indistinguishable from the shivers already claiming her.

  Lund handed Ethan to Val, then shrugged out of his coat and threaded it through the bars. She put it on, then clutched Val’s free hand with both of hers. Although the area Grace was trapped in looked like something out of a horror novel, the space didn’t originally have that purpose at all. Positioned at the bottom of the long shaft, what was now Grace’s cell was once the cooling pool, the pit of water the lead dripped into from the drop shaft above.

  “Let’s get her out of there,” McGlade said. He fitted the tire iron just below the padlock. The long bar provided leverage, but the gate still wouldn’t budge. Not for Harry. Not for Lund. No matter how hard they tried.

  “He’s after you, Aunt Val. And Ethan. You have to get out of here.”

  “I know, honey.”

  Grace nodded. “Aunt Val, the Lake Wisconsin dam…”

  “We got your message. Good job, hon.”

  “So everything’s okay?”

  Val’s shoulders sagged. “We couldn’t stop him. Not in time.”

  Lund directed the beam from his phone around the cell Grace occupied. Water inched over Grace’s knees. Behind her, the cooling pool would be deeper. As the water rose, it would eventually fill the tunnel, fill the gated cooling pool, and start inching its way up the drop shaft. Grace would drown. If she didn’t freeze to death first.

  “The water…” Lund stared at Val still gripping the wrought iron bars. “That’s his scenario. You at the top of the shaft, listening…”

  Tears spilled from Val’s eyes. She pulled at the bars, but of course, they didn’t budge.

  Helpless. Powerless.

  Like hell.

  Lund turned to McGlade. “You still have that rope?”

  The PI looked up at him, another try at prying open the gate leaving him red-faced and breathing hard. “Yeah. But I don’t think it’s a good time for Octagon Platypus, Lump. I’m flattered, though.”

  Lund exchanged looks with Val. “Think you can make it back up the bluff?”

  She didn’t look at all convinced, but she nodded. “McGlade? You need to take Ethan.”

  “Sure. Kids love me.”

  Lund turned back to Grace. “Hold tight, sweetheart. We’ll get you out yet. I’ll see you in just a few minutes, Grace. Okay?”

  Grace nodded. She looked so small in his coat, small and young and vulnerable, her face contorting in an attempt to keep back the tears.

  “Okay?” he repeated.

  “Yes.”

  McGlade, Ethan, and Lund returned to the duck, and Harry dug out the rope. It was a big coil. Heavy. Probably two hundred feet. Lund canted his eyes upward, not able to see the wooden shaft and smelting house from here.

  In the information Val had pulled up on the internet, the shaft had been measured at 180 feet, sixty feet above ground, 120 cut through stone. A two-hundred-foot rope folded in half would be twenty feet short. Tough but doable. He hoped.

  “Can I borrow the tire iron?” he asked McGlade.

  “Sure. Anything else?”

  “You happen to have a climbing harness in there?”

  “Nope,” McGlade said. “Got one back at my house, though. Over the bed.”

  McGlade’s phone rang, and he took the call while Lund settled Ethan into the duck, next to the driver’s seat. The little boy looked tired, his eyes drooping, and Lund found a blanket in the duck and covered him. “I’ll see you soon, Ethan. Bye-bye.”

  The little boy opened and closed his fingers in a wave, then let out a big yawn.

  Harry met Lund on his way off the duck. “That was Jack. Things have gotten bad. Real bad.”

  “Did Jack locate Chandler?”

  “She said Chandler was only a few yards downstream from the dam when it blew.”

  Lund closed his eyes for a moment. Chandler would be okay. She always was, wasn’t she? Even when the media had announced she was dead.

  Please let her be okay.

  “There’s a whole shitload of water coming this way,” Harry said. “Fast. I hope you got a plan.”

  “I have some ideas. Take care of Ethan.”

  “I will. And you watch yourself.” Harry offered his hand.

  Lund shook it. “You getting mushy on me, McGlade?”

  “Hell no. I’m worried about my rope.” He winked. “It cost over three bucks a yard.”

  When Lund made it back to the tunnel, Val was emerging. The rims of her eyes were red, and she rubbed the fingers of her right hand before gathering her weapon into the ready position.

  Lund decided not to tell her about Jack’s call. Val already knew the water was on the way. Adding more was unnecessary. They needed to focus.

  They retraced their route to the steps winding up the side of the bluff. What was a tough trip going down was tougher heading up. Ice and rain made the steps slick. Every time an owl hooted or a stick cracked, they stopped and surveyed the area, guns ready.

  They reached the walkway where they’d discovered Ethan. Above them, the wooden part of the drop shaft stretched up to the smelting house, perching on the edge of the cliff. Below, the shaft penetrated the sandstone until it reached the tunnel a hundred feet in, the prison that now held Grace.

  They entered the vestibule. The metal grate covering the entrance to the opening where wooden shaft met rock was lighter than the gate in the tunnel, and Hess hadn’t bothered to upgrade the hasp and lock. Lund slipped the flat end of McGlade’s tire iron under the hasp and popped it in one attempt.

  Val peered over the edge.

  “Grace, can you hear me? Are you okay?”

  “I’m here.” The teen’s voice was faint but audible. “The water is coming in… up to my waist.”

  After the exertion of the climb up th
e side of the bluff, Lund wasn’t sure how his pulse could pick up its pace, but it did. He set the tire iron down on the edge of the pit and slipped the rope from his shoulder.

  Val turned to Lund, her face pale and pinched. “How are you going to get down there? Don’t you need a belt or harness or something?”

  Lund uncoiled the rope, loop by loop, inspecting it quickly as it slid through his hands. At the halfway point, he paused and circled it around the walkway’s sturdy railing post. “Going down is the easy part. It’s climbing back up with Grace that’s going to be tough.”

  “Her hand…”

  “She’s going to have a tough time holding on. And the cold is only going to make things worse.” He’d been going over the problem in his mind, and he still didn’t have it sorted out.

  Val looked down at her rifle and then lifted it over her head. “Take the sling. You can use the paracord to strap her to your back.”

  “Are you sure you can keep ahold of your gun?”

  “Of course.”

  Lund sensed a hesitation in Val’s voice. Or maybe it was coming from his own gut. But when she unfastened the sling from her AR-15 and thrust it at him, he took it. Lund’s makeshift harness was no work of art, but between the extra straps of the three-point sling and some fancy knot tying on his part, he came up with something that should help.

  Lund eyed the entrance to the tunnel, then combed the dark trees with his gaze. It was time. “Unless he’s truly injured, Hess is going to make his move while I’m down in the shaft…”

  “I know.”

  “And if you can’t—”

  “There’s no other way, Lund.”

  “Olson…”

  “We can’t wait for him. You heard Grace. The water is already rising. If she doesn’t drown, she’s going to freeze to death.”

  They probably shouldn’t have let McGlade leave. But if he was still here, Ethan would be, too. And if Grace was experiencing that much rise in the water, and she wasn’t even on the main channel, Lund was sure Spring Green was in trouble. And he didn’t even want to imagine the chaos upstream, closer to the failed dam. Homes and businesses underwater or completely washed away. Hundreds of people drowning or freezing to death in the frigid current.