When it was obvious that she wasn’t approaching them, Julianne did a strange thing. Despite the knife at her throat, she leaned her head against Ridley’s shoulder. A gesture of relief, which made some sense, but almost intimate as well, and even more fascinating, the relief didn’t seem to be entirely on her own behalf. She seemed relieved for him as well.
Maybe you are wrong about her.
No. She had a knife at her throat, that was all. Of course she did not want him to be forced to use it. Her relief was only a product of self-preservation.
Still, he felt a connection to the touch that suggested they were in this together. Did she understand now? She was an intuitive woman. Did she realize that he’d told her only the truth, always?
Ridley looked at her face and then back up at Danielle MacAlister, who was walking away from them, toward either Cecil’s apartment or the front gate. If she was headed to Cecil’s, that meant he was about to be freed and the police called. Trapdoor would be a scene of chaos soon, and that couldn’t be allowed. All Ridley needed was time. They wouldn’t understand that, though. Never had.
“I need to stop her,” he whispered. “I have to.”
Julianne lifted her head from his shoulder, twisted to face him, and shook her head. Slowly and emphatically. Then she tilted her head pointedly to the right. Toward the cave. He followed the gesture with his eyes, saw the door, so close to them now. When he looked back at her, she flicked her eyes down at the keys in his hand, then back up to him. Held the stare.
She was right, he realized. There was no need to intervene with Danielle MacAlister. Not when they were this close and he had the keys. Let Danielle call the police, let them come for him. Once he was inside the cave, they wouldn’t catch him. Once he was inside, he could stay as long as he wanted, as long as he needed.
“Yes,” he said. “We’ll go ahead. That’s all that needs to be done.”
Julianne nodded. He felt his trust for her returning despite his better judgment.
“Step carefully,” he said. “We need to stay in the shadows.”
Staying in the shadows required walking under the footbridge instead of across it, and that meant they’d have to cover the rest of the distance over the ice, which had cracked once already. The creaking and groaning sounds were all around them, but Ridley preferred that risk to climbing back onto the creek bank and standing exposed in the floodlights.
They moved slowly across the slick surface. Once, there was a sharp crack like a gunshot, and Ridley braced himself for the fall. The crack had come from a tree branch, though, not the ice. The weak limb snapped and its load of snow fell to the earth with a sound like the release of a held breath. He nudged Julianne forward again. They passed beneath the bridge and then made it up onto the rocks. He looked back up the drive and could no longer see Danielle’s flashlight. It didn’t matter. He just needed to get inside.
Cecil had better have told the truth about the keys. If he lied about that and I do not have the right keys, then God help them all. I’ve come too far to be lied to.
The first key he tried fit the lock. He exhaled and turned the key and heard the bolts slide back. When he pulled the door open, it scraped on the stone and sounded terribly loud, but he didn’t allow himself to look back, just shoved Julianne through. He saw no way to lock the door from the inside and he didn’t have the time to waste, so he left it standing ajar. He walked Julianne ten steps inside the cave and then he paused and took a deep breath.
“All right,” he said. “It should go easier from here. She will understand why we’ve come. I’m sure of that.”
Almost as if in response, a gunshot thundered from somewhere outside the cave. Julianne went rigid and Ridley spun and stared back at the entrance. He saw nothing but snow and ice.
Cecil is free, and Cecil is shooting. I could have killed him. Should have killed him. She stopped me.
Julianne’s hand found his. Squeezed. He looked at her fingers as if he weren’t sure what they were. She tugged him forward, tilting her head again, indicating the black depths that lay before them.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, we will just leave them behind. We will leave them all behind.”
She nodded and tugged again. This was wrong—he was supposed to be the guide, not her. But he also knew she was right. There was no reason to retreat to the surface. Not now. He walked ahead, moving quickly and without light because he did not need it here. This was the old tour route, the ground carefully scraped free of any obstacle, any potential lawsuit. Pershing had shown no respect for the cave in the way he had cleared the tour route.
They went far enough that the entrance disappeared from view and total darkness descended and then he stopped and drank in the wonderful smell of the place—stone and water and power. Traces of blood, yes. But the power was there.
Julianne seemed aware of it too. Her body had stiffened and she was pivoting her head as if straining to see in the dark.
“It’s remarkable, isn’t it?” he whispered. “You’ll see so much more of it than most. More than anyone else alive. I’ll take you farther, I promise. The tours they ran, those were like making people pay admission to admire a mansion’s front porch but never letting them get inside the door. I’m so excited to show someone else what lies beyond. Nobody has seen these places but me, do you understand that? And she was mine. She was going to be mine.”
His own whispers returned to him in a soft echo and he felt a pang of regret, thinking of all that this would cost him.
“What’s done is done,” he said, and then he pulled his helmet free from his pack and put it on and turned the headlamp beam to red, the night-vision setting. A crimson glow covered Julianne’s face. He slipped his knife out and opened the blade, and her eyes went a little wide but still she did not resist. Not once had she made a move to run or fight him. She had demonstrated nothing but trust in a situation where he had expected no trust. It took courage, but he understood the manipulation in the technique. She was trying to create a sense of partnership so that he might let down his guard.
He leaned as close to her as he could, nose to nose, his eyes on hers, her face awash with red light, their exhaled breath creating mingling tendrils of fog.
“I’m giving her up for the truth,” he said. “No one will ever understand what that means. No one but her. I had hope for you, even for Novak. Misplaced hope. But we’re still here. And the lie you told me once will need to become the truth now. Do you understand me? Do you understand what that means?”
She nodded.
He moved her hair away from her neck gingerly and brought the blade up against her flesh and made a soft “Now, now,” like a parent removing a splinter from a child’s finger, as he sliced through the tape. He peeled it loose and her lips parted but she didn’t speak. She just breathed. Her breath fogged in the red light like bloody vapors.
“I told you that I would show you everything I could,” he said. “And I do not tell lies, Julianne. I do not tell lies. For a long time, I thought that you did not either.”
“I want to help you,” she said.
Ridley smiled. “Sure you do. And now you have your chance. We’re here for the truth. Your job is to help me remember. Can you do that? I have faith in your abilities, if not in your integrity.”
She gave an unsteady nod. None of her usual confidence. Trapdoor could do that to you. Trapdoor could turn the brave to weak in a flash.
He put the knife back in his pocket and retrieved the sapphire necklace and pressed it into Julianne’s palm. He held her hand tightly, the stone between them.
“That was around Sarah Martin’s neck,” he said. “Then it was in my hand. I want to know how that happened. That’s your job. That’s your life.”
54
Ridley’s truck was pulled off the road just in front of Trapdoor.
Mark parked behind it. His headlights caught the rear window and showed an empty interior. When he cut the engine he felt as if he could hear his own heart
beat. He got out of the car and approached the truck. There was no one inside, and the dusting of snow across the hood and windshield told him that it had been parked here for a while. He’d been on the phone with Danielle MacAlister not five minutes ago. The truck had been here longer than that.
He started to walk around the gate and then hesitated, turned, and went back to his car. Opened the door and found the map he’d peeled off the wall of Danielle’s basement, the last map Ridley had turned over to the MacAlister family. Folded it and put it in his pocket.
“You won’t need to go inside,” he said aloud. The reassurance felt necessary. His mouth was dry just thinking of the place. Something in the stillness of the night whispered otherwise, though, whispered that Ridley hadn’t left his door wide open and his truck here because he intended to skip stones over the frozen creek.
Twin tracks of footprints leading away from the truck said that he hadn’t come alone either.
Mark thought about calling Blankenship. But what was there to report? The appearance of trespassing, which Mark was about to do himself? He’d come here to confront Danielle, not pursue Ridley. Suddenly both were in play.
He followed the tracks away from Ridley’s truck. The size difference was apparent. Ridley was traveling with a woman or a child.
Julianne?
Mark wished for a gun.
The tracks led along the driveway but behind the trees, as if whoever left them had wanted to approach unseen. They led all the way up to the garage. Mark was thirty feet from the base of the exterior stairs when he saw the blood.
There were vivid splashes of red on each riser of the steps and on down into the yard. There the footprints continued but the blood died out, washed clean by the snow. Two sets of tracks led to the garage. Three led away. And one of them had left bloodstains. That set of tracks came from the biggest footprints.
Cecil went after them, Mark thought. Ridley roughed him up and probably got what he came for, but Cecil went after them.
He followed the tracks as far as the blood went, then stopped and stared ahead. The frozen creek was lost to shadows but the footbridge and the cave entrance were illuminated with floodlights. He could see a figure on the footbridge, descending toward the cave. Cecil Buckner. Mark shouted at him, but Cecil didn’t hear; he stepped through the open door and vanished. It was not a good sign that the door was open, and Cecil didn’t appear to be the one who’d unlocked it. Ridley had gotten in ahead of him.
Trapdoor was open for visitors once more.
Mark glanced up at the big house, where even more lights were on and Danielle’s car was parked in front. Did she have any idea what was happening here? Or was she waiting, clueless, as her bloodied caretaker staggered after Ridley Barnes into the cave? Mark took out his phone and called her as he doubled back toward the drive. Five rings, voice mail.
He came out of the woods beside the garage, intending to run up to the big house and tell Danielle to call the police just as she’d threatened to, when something moved in his peripheral vision and he pivoted to look.
Motion again, and this time he saw it clearly—a scarlet bead fell from the top of the stairs and hit the snow below. Another fell, and then another. Mark lifted his head to look at the apartment. From this angle, he saw that the door was ajar and the wood in the center of it was splintered, puckered with small holes and jagged fragments.
Numbness crawled up his spine and spread along the back of his skull.
Too much blood. That is too much blood.
He went up the steps slowly, taking care to avoid the blood, which grew thicker with each riser. Now he could see a stream of it working through the cracked-open doorway. He felt just as he had when he’d opened the hidden door in Ridley’s house, certain of the horrors that waited. This time, though, he wasn’t going to be rewarded with maps.
He pushed the door open, which allowed more blood to rush out and pool against his boots, and he saw what remained of Danielle MacAlister.
She lay on her back in the center of the floor, close to the door. She hadn’t been standing that close to it when she’d died, though. The impact had blown her back several feet. It was a shotgun wound. Twelve-gauge at least. Maybe a ten. Fired at close range, the load heavy enough to obliterate most of her left side and shoulder and rip a hole through her throat. Her right hand was curled toward her throat, as if she’d tried to close the wound.
Mark stood absolutely still and looked at her and thought, I will kill you, Ridley. I will find you in whatever hole you’re headed for down there, and I will kill you.
There was paracord on the floor, snipped into several lengths, and a pair of kitchen scissors lay in Danielle’s blood. A few feet farther on was a long piece of duct tape, tangled and stuck together.
Was this how Ridley had brought Julianne inside? It didn’t have to be Julianne with him, but Mark felt certain it was. She was the only one Ridley wanted. She was the fated one in Ridley’s warped mind, the one who had to join him belowground. He would have brought her here and demanded access. Because of this, she was possibly still alive.
He called 911 from the doorway. He wasn’t very aware of the words that he offered, but they seemed to make sense to the operator. He heard snippets of her questions back to him: Were there any other victims? Was there an active shooter? He answered as best as he could. Told her that he believed the shooter was in the cave and that he might have a hostage. Told her that someone else had probably gone in after the shooter. He said Ridley Barnes’s name several times. Heard his voice rising when he said it. There were too many questions. Why hadn’t Cecil called them? What was he thinking following Ridley into that cave, where Ridley held every advantage?
The same thing you are. He wants to end it himself. Not wait on the police. He wants to end it.
The operator was still talking but Mark had stopped responding. His eyes were on the gun cabinet in the corner of the room. He stepped over Danielle MacAlister’s body without looking at her and went to the cabinet. He set the phone down while he opened the cabinet. Two shotguns and a lever-action .22-caliber rifle with a scope. No handguns. He wanted a handgun if he was going into the cave. Easier to move with, easier to shoot with. The shotguns were bad options. A wide spray pattern in a contained space was likely to hit more than the intended target, and Ridley was not alone. Mark didn’t like the .22 either, but at least it gave a shooter a chance to deliver in a tight window. Down there, it was going to be tight.
He removed the .22 and checked it for ammunition. It was loaded. The scope was a cheap infrared model, one that projected a red dot onto its target. Cutting-edge technology when Mark was a kid, now available at every Walmart. There was a flashlight at the bottom of the cabinet, resting against the stock of one of the shotguns. Not a big light. A small Maglite, probably powered by two double-A batteries. It was going to seem very weak in the cave, but there was no time to look for another option. Cecil had made the right decision, trying to stop Ridley before he got deep into the cave. If he was allowed to get far enough, there’d be no catching him. Not in Trapdoor.
Mark put the flashlight in his jacket pocket and shifted the rifle to his left hand. The voice was still coming from his cell phone. Loud and urgent. He picked it up and put it back to his ear.
“Sir? Sir, can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Sir, we have officers en route. I need you to stay where you are and stay on the line until they arrive.”
“Tell them to go to the cave. There’s nobody left here but the dead. The live ones are in the cave. For now, at least, there are live ones left.”
“Sir, I am instructing you to stay where you are and stay on the—”
Mark disconnected. The phone began to ring again almost immediately and he silenced it. He left the apartment with the .22 in his hands, walking around Danielle MacAlister’s body.
“I’m going to kill him,” he said to her. Maybe somewhere, somehow, the promise mattered. Mark wasn’t sure, but
he felt it needed to be said. Just in case.
He walked down the stairs and followed the tracks out to the creek as far-off sirens became audible and fat, soft snowflakes wafted down. Ahead of him, the gate to Trapdoor stood open, and the darkness beyond beckoned.
55
The cave was as it should be, still and silent and soothing. Ridley had permitted Julianne to use the full strength of her headlamp for navigation, an undesirable intrusion but one he would not deny her because it allowed them to travel faster. They were walking on a ledge beside the deepwater channel. The channel was runoff from Maiden Creek that formed an underground tributary that Ridley had named the Greenglass River. In 2004, Pershing had run boat tours into the cave on the Greenglass, and Ridley hated those. He’d been in a boat in the cave only once, and he hadn’t lasted long in it that time, gone just far enough to ferry himself and his gear to the regions of the cave that fell off the maps, regions that had been dismissed by previous searchers because of the high water. Nobody could believe that Sarah Martin would enter a passage filled with water so high that she barely had clearance to breathe between the surface and the ceiling. All that Ridley had known was that they hadn’t found her yet and that people did strange things during spells of panic.
Back then, he hadn’t understood that people might do strange things in Trapdoor simply because the cave coerced them.
They walked in silence, and Julianne was honoring his demand not to assault his mind with words. The tape had been a valuable teacher. Perhaps she was even savvier than that, though, and knew that what Ridley needed from the cave was found in trapped whispers that came from beneath the water and behind the walls and out beyond the black.
The boat tours—fifteen dollars a pop in the old days, and ten for kids—had gone three-quarters of a mile back into the cave, a mere taste of what the Greenglass had to offer. Still, it was fascinating to have the experience of floating along beneath the earth, watching that green water reflect the light, seeing the dips and darts of the blind cave fish, listening to the slow, steady drips of stalactites—all of that was a new world to most.
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