by LENA DIAZ,
“Show me.”
They went to the stall, and he pointed his light at the floor along the wall. “See those scrapes right there?”
She bent down and ran her fingers over them. “You’re right. They’re fresh. But there are old scrapes, too. Maybe a wild animal has been nesting in here—a raccoon or possum.”
“And they were spooked by the search teams. Moved their nesting material somewhere else.”
She straightened. “Maybe. Whatever, or whoever, was here at one time is obviously not here now. We need to keep looking.”
A couple of hours later, Blake paused in the parking area and turned in a slow circle. Donna was a good twenty feet away, slowly walking across the clearing, studying the dirt for clues. But Blake didn’t think she’d find any. The lack of tire tracks and footprints from that night still baffled him. Even with all the rain, there should have been something to show that Dillon and the others had been here. No one was that good at covering their tracks—literally. Even if they’d gone back and tried to wipe them away, they’d have missed something. The area was just too large not to.
Donna crossed the clearing and stopped beside him. “What are you thinking?”
“Just...how impossible all of this is.”
“Impossible? What do you mean?”
“The kidnappings. This parking area showed no tire tracks, even though we know that Dillon and the others—including you and me—were here that day. There are only two explanations that I can think of. Either the rain really did obliterate every single track, or the combination of rain and someone using, say, a rake, or something like that, purposely wiped away the tracks up here. The gravel road starts just a little farther down the mountain, so it wouldn’t have been that difficult to do. There wouldn’t have been an enormous area of dirt they had to worry about raking—again, assuming that’s what they did to cover their tracks.”
“Okay. Seems plausible not to have any tire tracks then. So where’s the impossible part?” she asked.
“The road at the bottom of this mountain passes by several houses and a country store. But no one reported seeing any vehicles up here that day, other than the SWAT team’s. We know they drove up here and never drove back down. But there’s no evidence they were driven back down in another vehicle either. Like I said, no tire tracks of other vehicles, and no sightings by anyone who lives at the bottom of the mountain. That has to mean that the perpetrator or perpetrators didn’t drive up here.”
“Okay, I’m with you so far. Where does the impossible part come in?”
“The chief is a lot older and might have been easy to subdue. But the others—Dillon, Chris, Max, even Randy—were all young, in great shape. And they aren’t exactly light. If someone snuck up here through the woods to surprise them, they wouldn’t have been able to just carry them off somewhere, not without leaving some kind of trace. It’s just not feasible. There would have been broken branches, footprints, something. So that means the team wasn’t forcibly carried out of here.”
He scrubbed his jaw and swept his arms out toward the woods surrounding them. “Did they walk out? Same problem exists with that scenario. Even if they’d been handcuffed, or tied up, and forced at gunpoint to walk through the woods to some other destination, they’re not rookies. They’d know trackers would come in looking for them. They’d leave a trace of their passing in some way so we could follow them. I have zero doubt about that. Dillon and the others are just too smart not to have found a way. So all I can conclude is that they didn’t walk down from this ridge. Which, of course, is impossible, too, because they’re obviously not here.”
She looked down the road, back toward the trees and then up at the sky, as if searching for answers there. “They couldn’t have been lifted out by helicopter. This clearing isn’t big enough to land one, and the team’s vehicles were up here. There wasn’t room. The trees are too thick. Could they have lifted the guys up into the chopper? Maybe it hovered?”
“No way,” he said. “It was storming too bad that night. Thunder, lightning—too dangerous. Not to mention the heavy winds that blow down through these mountains in a storm like that. They didn’t ride out of here in a vehicle. They didn’t walk out of here. And they didn’t fly out of here. So where does that leave us?”
Her eyes widened. “They’re still here.”
He nodded. “They have to be. But they’re not anywhere that we can see. So they’re—”
“Underground.” Her voice rose with excitement. “The tunnels, from the old abandoned mines I mentioned earlier. They have to be in one of the tunnels.”
“Tell me about those old mines. Would the openings to the shafts have been boarded up with warning signs? I don’t recall seeing any during the paint ball exercise, or during our search today.”
“I’ve never seen anything like that, and I grew up here. I remember my dad talking about the mines when I was little, and how clever the company was who created them. They were a lot more environmentally conscious than the owners of the quarry. They liked to conceal the openings with sheds that blended into the landscape and seemed as if they were a part of everyday life.”
He grew still. “Sheds? What about old barns?”
They both took off running.
* * *
BLAKE SHOVED THE tire iron into the crack in the floor of the stall with the scratches they’d seen earlier, a crack that had taken him and Donna far too long to find. So long that they’d almost given up on their theory that the opening to a mine shaft might be hidden beneath the barn. Now, after searching for an opening in the floor, and then having to hike a mile to their rental car to get a tire iron and hike a mile back, they were on the verge of finding out if this was finally the end—or yet another disappointment in a long string of them.
He shoved the edge of the bar in farther, then pushed down on the other end. A loud click sounded, and a three-by-three square section of the floor popped up on one side, as if it were on springs. He dropped the tire iron and grabbed the edges, lifting to see what kind of tension might be on it. There was no tension. The floor swung up without a sound, and a dark hole was revealed below.
Donna aimed both her flashlight and her pistol down into the hole. A metal ladder was bolted into the side. There were six rungs, which led to a slightly sloping floor made of dirt. Thick timbers that were similar to old railroad ties shored up the hole. She moved her light all around. “Do you see what I see?”
“The dirt sparkles.”
“It sure does. Well, partner? Obviously we’re calling for backup at this point. But who do we call?”
He thought about it. “Lynch. I have no way of knowing whether the warnings I called in to my contacts have gone anywhere with the FBI. We can’t risk bringing Grant in on this. And we have no way of knowing how far his corruption has gone—whether the state police are involved, too. The only people I trust to help us are the ones on our team, the Destiny police.”
She grinned. “There’s hope for you yet.”
While Donna called Lynch and explained the need for secrecy, Blake edged forward on his stomach and leaned down into the hole. There appeared to be only one tunnel, or at least, in this part of the mine, there didn’t appear to be any openings to other tunnels. And it appeared to go in a generally western direction, back toward the quarry.
“He’s rounding up our guys,” Donna said. “They’ll make excuses and head out one or two at a time. A mass exodus might make Grant suspicious. Lynch thinks they’ll be here in about half an hour.”
He pulled back out of the hole and looked up at her. “Half an hour is too long. We have no way of knowing what Sanchez’s people will do now that his escape attempt failed. I don’t want to wait, especially if this ends up being a wild-goose chase and the team isn’t down there.”
She chewed her bottom lip. “Okay, okay. But let’s do this by the book. Well, without the waitin
g for backup part. I’m your wingman. You’re mine. We’re each other’s backup. No running off and leaving each other no matter how tempting. Agreed?”
Her little speech stung, but he couldn’t fault her. The last time he was supposed to watch her back, he’d let her down. If it had been a true SWAT situation instead of an exercise, she could have been killed.
“Agreed. But I go first.”
She frowned. “Why? Because I’m a woman?”
“Yes.”
Her face flushed with anger.
He pulled her face close to his. “It has nothing to do with your abilities as a police officer. And it’s not because you’re a woman. It’s because you’re the woman, the one I care about. And I couldn’t bear it if you got hurt. Call me a chauvinist or whatever you want. But those are my terms. Either I go into that hole first, or we don’t go at all.”
He punctuated his little speech by kissing her, a quick soft kiss that he hoped conveyed just how much she mattered to him.
She let out a soft sigh. “You’re ruining me. I was a badass cop before I met you.”
“You still are. The biggest and baddest around.”
“It’s too late for flattery.” She waved toward the opening. “Go. Let’s get down there and see what we find.”
He braced his hands on both sides of the cut-out, swung his legs into the opening and dropped down onto the dirt below. He grabbed his flashlight and pistol and trained them in front of him, watching the shadows and listening. “Clear.”
“Show-off,” she muttered above him. “Must be nice to have long legs.” Her shoes rang out against the metal ladder as she climbed down behind him. Her flashlight clicked on, adding more light to his. “Ready.”
“Donna?”
“Yes?”
He looked over his shoulder at her. “Your legs are perfect just the way they are.”
Her eyes widened, and he turned around so she wouldn’t see his grin. “Let’s go.”
They moved quickly, without pretense of stealth. There really wasn’t any point. Every little sound echoed in the tunnel. If there were any bad guys up ahead, they’d hear him and Donna coming a mile off.
A few minutes in, the tunnel ended at an intersection. They stopped and studied the ground.
“Footprints,” she whispered, “down both tunnels. Split up?”
“No way,” he said.
“Because I’m a woman again?”
“Because we’re each other’s wingman—wing person, people, whatever. We’re not splitting up. That’s what Dillon taught me, and what you taught me. We’ll check the tunnel on the left first, then come back and check the other one, if that’s what it takes.”
A smile curved her lips. “I think my work here is done.” Then she hurried down the left tunnel before he could stop her.
He cursed, hating that he’d fallen for her trick. “Come back here,” he whispered. “I’m supposed to lead.”
“My turn.”
He bit back what he thought of that. The ground was softer here, their footfalls more muffled. Stealth was back on the table. Donna must have realized it, too, because she seemed to be making an effort to walk more softly and she didn’t talk anymore.
Blake bided his time, keeping an eye out in front of them, just as much as he checked behind. He didn’t want Donna running straight into an ambush.
The tunnel turned again, a sharp turn, and a light shone from up ahead.
They both flipped off their flashlights. Blake pulled her back, pressing both of them against the wall of the tunnel. They waited. When the light up ahead didn’t move, he whispered, “Keep going or wait for backup?”
“I’m not waiting,” she whispered.
He hadn’t figured she would. He tapped her shoulder, and they both started forward, hands touching the wall on the left to guide them. Thirty feet, twenty, fifteen. The light was coming from some kind of chamber, probably an overhead light built into the tunnel ceiling. It definitely wasn’t moving like a flashlight or lantern. And it was too bright not to be from a light fixture of some kind. When they were just a few yards shy of the opening, they stopped.
There was no way to see into the chamber without anyone in it seeing them at the same time. All they could do was go for it and hope for the best.
He wrapped both hands around his pistol. Donna did the same. There was enough light for them to see each other, so he mouthed the countdown.
Three.
Two.
One.
They ran into the chamber. Everything seemed to fill Blake’s vision at once: tunnels opening off to the left and right of the cavern, the gunmen about forty feet in front of them, their teammates—Dillon, Chris, Max and the chief—caged like animals behind a wall of bars in the back left corner.
“Freeze, police,” Blake shouted at the gunmen.
The rest seemed to happen in slow motion, and yet all at once. The gunmen swung their weapons toward the two of them. Blake shouted a warning at Donna and fired at the gunmen. One of them screamed and fell against the man beside him, clutching his middle. Another man went down, a split second after Donna’s gun boomed next to Blake. There was nowhere to hide, no cover. It was all about speed, who could outshoot whom.
Bam, bam, bam! Donna and Blake crouched together, shoulder to shoulder, firing as if they were on a gun range, but with the knowledge that every shot counted, and lives were on the line. Not just their own, but the lives of their men.
It was over as quickly as it had begun. The sudden silence was almost as shocking as the deafening gunshots had been. Blake and Donna stood together, chests heaving, staring at the carnage in front of them. Six men lay dead on the ground.
He could hear her swallow hard beside him. “Are you okay?”
He kept his pistol pointed forward, just as she did, adrenaline still pumping through his system.
“Yes,” she said. “You?”
“Your three o’clock!” Dillon’s voice shouted from off to their left.
Blake and Donna jerked to their right, firing as one. Bam, Bam, Bam! Three more gunmen fell to the ground, dead.
Footsteps sounded from the tunnel to their left. Blake swung his pistol toward the opening. Lopez ran through it, gun in hand. His eyes widened when he saw Blake.
“Freeze,” Blake shouted.
But Lopez didn’t freeze. He swung his weapon toward Blake.
Boom! Bam!
They both fired. Lopez went down.
“Blake!” Donna yelled.
He jerked around, expecting to see more gunmen. He did. Just one. Lying on the ground a few feet from Donna.
“Lopez shot him,” she said. “He was protecting me.”
He whirled back around. Lopez was writhing on the floor, clutching his chest.
Blake swore and ran to him. He kicked Lopez’s pistol away from his body and dropped down on one knee. After holstering his own gun, he ran his hands across Lopez’s chest, searching for the wound. Lopez’s lips were turning blue, but there didn’t seem to be any blood.
Blake grabbed the edges of the man’s shirt and ripped it open. Buttons went flying, pinging off the ground like pebbles.
Donna stood guard over both of them, scanning the tunnel openings with her pistol.
“He’s got a vest on,” Blake said. “He’s just got the wind knocked out of him.”
“Sit him up,” Max called out. “Bend his knees.”
“Like I care if the scum bucket dies,” Blake grumbled. He ignored the way Lopez’s eyes widened with even more panic as he struggled to draw air, like a fish gasping its last after being plucked from the water and landing on the dock.
In spite of his overwhelming desire to punch the traitor, Blake did as Max suggested and helped the agent sit up. Blake shoved the man’s legs up toward his chest, and could tell exactly when air rushe
d back into his struggling lungs. He gulped several times, like he couldn’t quite get enough of the stuff. His lips lost their bluish tinge, and he finally let out a deep, shaky breath.
“Thank you,” he said, still gasping.
“Don’t thank me just yet,” Blake said. “Tennessee has the death penalty. And I’m going to do everything I can to see you on death row for Randy’s murder.” Blake jerked him up to standing and whirled him around to handcuff him.
“Wait,” Lopez cried out. “I’m not the one who killed your teammate. And I’m not the one who kidnapped your team.”
“He’s right about one thing,” Dillon called out. “He didn’t kill Randy. One of the guys you shot did.”
For the first time since coming into the chamber, Blake looked directly at the cage that had been set up in the corner. Relief swept through him to see all four men standing at the bars, looking dirty and tired, but other than that, unharmed.
“Are you okay?” he asked, needing to hear it for himself.
“We’ll be okay as soon as you let us out of here.” Dillon motioned toward the other side of the chamber. “The keys are on a hook on that wall.”
Donna retrieved the keys and let them out. All of them surrounded Lopez, who cowered against the wall, his eyes round with fear. But it was Dillon who spoke.
“After we were ambushed in the barn, and brought down here,” Dillon said, “Lopez came here once a day and took our picture on a cell phone. Since the guys who were guarding us let him in and out, he’s obviously working with them.”
Lopez shook his head back and forth. “No, I’m not. I mean, kind of, yes. But I had no choice. And I was coming here tonight to save you. All of you.”
Blake gave a harsh laugh. “You and what army? There were nine armed men in here.”
“This army.”
Blake whirled toward the sound of the voice coming from the tunnel where Lopez had emerged moments earlier.