She tucked her gun in her holster and pulled out her phone to call it in. Icy fingers worked at the touchscreen. She scrolled past Loshak’s name on the contact list and found the number she meant to call.
With the prospect of cell coverage underground spotty, she called the task force hotline. One of the dispatchers answered.
“This is Agent Darger requesting backup at 8901 Ash Avenue. We’ve got another suspect to deal with in the Heider case.”
Darger listened to her pulse in her ears as she explained that Worm had fired at her, and that she’d watched him dive into another basement tunnel. The dispatcher asked all the routine questions, and Darger answered what she could.
Then her mind snapped back to the moment when Worm’s gun had clicked. Out of ammo. She’d expected to watch him move through the doorway leading toward the foyer. Instead he bolted the other way, vaulting himself down the basement steps.
There had been nothing between him and the front door. So why would he do this? Run for the basement, dive for the tunnel?
Darger’s mind drifted as the dispatcher talked on the line. Eyes spearing empty space, the voice in her ear going quieter and quieter until she’d tuned out reality entirely.
Words she’d overheard at the mouth of the other tunnel echoed in her head. “For all we know, there could be miles of tunnel here. Connecting to natural cave systems. Weaving around like interstate traffic loops under half of the damn county.”
There could be an escape route, even multiple, for all she knew. Why else would Worm run for the tunnels instead of the front door?
“Wait at the scene, Agent Darger. Backup is on the way.”
Darger closed her eyes before she answered.
“I’m going to give pursuit,” she said, her body already trembling at the thought of descending into that dirt tunnel. “The suspect is unarmed and barefoot, and I want to keep eyes on him if I can. There could be any number of escape routes from here.”
The voice went quiet on the other end of the line for the duration of a few heartbeats.
“But I’ve already—”
Darger hung up the phone and took a breath.
Then she lowered herself into that concrete mouth in the basement floor.
Chapter 66
Loshak’s heart thudded in his chest as the girl locked in the tiny dog cage came into view. That hollow sound of blood squelching in his ears drowned out his footsteps. Still, he could feel the dirt gritting beneath his feet as the passage had transitioned from rock back to manmade tunnel this way, something that brought a new sense of horror all on its own.
Christ. How many tunnels did they dig? How long will we be down here, poking our flashlights into the dark?
He drew closer to the officers standing over the cage, slowing some.
The details of the dog pen sharpened, the black lines of the metal enclosure growing stark, the thick padlock coming clear on the hasp, and then the dark shape inside winnowed into focus.
A girl. So skinny he could see the shape of her hip bones protruding clearly even at a distance.
One flashlight’s beam shined onto her face smudged with dirt, on the long eyelashes knitted closed there. Ghostly shadows formed in the pitted place beneath her brow, in the hollows under each of her cheekbones.
She was so still, Loshak thought at first the voices on the radio had been wrong. Was certain this girl was dead.
But then he noticed the very faint rising of her chest. Every inhalation lifting the blue and white chevron afghan draped over most of her.
“First girl — here — is breathing but so far not responsive. We’re waiting on a pair of bolt cutters so we can get her out,” the SWAT officer standing next to the cage said. Then he gestured to the tunnel leading past him. “But there’s another one. Further down there. That one’s conscious.”
Loshak managed to pry his gaze away from the comatose girl. He kept moving. Feet shuffling beneath him. That accelerated beating of his blood still emanating from his chest and pulsing in his ears.
A small chamber opened up to one side. A gap in the dirt wall.
And then he saw the second cage tucked off to the left. More SWAT officers knelt there. Talking to the girl within.
She looked so scared. Eyes wide and wet and blinking in rapid bursts. Her fingers wound around the wiry bars of her cage to the degree that they could, clutching like she was scared to let go.
“Bolt cutters will be here any minute, and we’ll get you the hell out of there,” one of the officers said to her.
Loshak pulled up to stop next to the cage, heaving for breath a little. He stared at the girl locked inside.
“They tell me your name is Cora?”
She met his eyes. Hesitated. Nodded.
“Do you know how long you’ve been down here?”
Her voice came out in a croak.
“Two days. I think. Maybe three. Ran out of water yesterday.”
He glanced back, hoping he’d see whoever had the bolt cutters on the way. They had to get this girl out of this cage.
He turned to face her again, squatting down low in an attempt to be at eye level with the girl, which was pretty much impossible given the tiny dimensions of the crate.
“I don’t want to press — we need to get you above ground and get some fluids in you — but you wouldn’t happen to know what all was going on down here?”
She thought about it. Shook her head.
“But Lily did.”
“Lily. That’s the girl down a ways?”
Another nod.
“Is she OK?”
Loshak waffled a second, not sure if he should sugarcoat it for her. He told her the truth.
“She’s breathing. We haven’t been able to wake her up so far, but…”
Cora’s gaze fell to the dusty floor then. Her eyes looked faintly wet. Loshak could imagine exactly how the tears would brim along her bottom eyelids if she weren’t dehydrated.
“She’s been down here… a long time. When I got here, she didn’t even know what month it was.”
Again, Loshak looked back the way he’d come, anxious to see someone with the tool that would free this girl. When he saw the way behind him was still empty, he decided enough was enough.
He swiveled on his heels to face the nearest SWAT officer.
“Do you have a baton?” Loshak asked.
“What?”
“Your police baton,” Loshak said. “Give it to me.”
His tone and the way he stuck out his hand left little room for argument. The man tugged the club from his tactical belt and handed it over.
Loshak made eye contact with the girl in the cage.
“Can you back up a little for me, Cora?”
She blinked and then scooted toward the back of the cage.
“This is going to be loud,” Loshak said, and then he brought the club down on the padlock.
The first blow glanced off the side of the lock, but the second struck true. The small hook cleaved away from the bottom of the lock, breaking clean, the lock releasing.
Loshak yanked the shank from the hasp. He ripped the door out of the way and stepped back.
The girl crawled out. Slowly. Hands and knees drawing her out onto the dirt floor on shaky limbs. As soon as she was all the way out, her chin puckered and trembled, and actual tears spilled over her cheeks at last.
Chapter 67
Darger’s heart thundered as she swung her first foot down into the breach, kicked out in the empty space, trying to reach the ladder.
Even with the cold underground air reaching up from below, sweat leaked from her temples. Drained down her cheeks. Glued her hair to her forehead. She reached one set of fingers up to wipe the sweat away, smearing it around above her brow.
Finally her toe hit the solid metal it sought. She mounted the ladder and started climbing down.
Each aluminum rung pinged like a popping kernel of popcorn as her foot found it, and the whole ladder bobbed up and down with
her shifting weight. She started slow and picked up speed.
Those sheared off dirt walls surrounded her as she made her descent, the tunnel enveloping her. The soil smell was thick in the air, pungent and earthy.
Her feet touched down on the grainy floor of this underground passage, the soles of her shoes rasping as she shuffled a few steps from the ladder. Her eyes flicked up to that opening in the concrete, and some deep instinct begged her to race up the ladder again, to scurry back to the safety above ground.
Instead she moved into the tunnel. Cold wind sucked into her throat. And she fumbled to get her gun free from its holster, hands going shaky again.
She pressed forward. Gun clenched in both hands and pointed at the ground. The sound of her own blood thrummed in her ears.
The broader opening beneath the basement tapered, the tunnel walls seeming to close around her with every step. A dirt tube growing tighter and tighter. Cinching like a sphincter.
But the path only went one way. Nowhere for him to hide so far, no way for her to lose track of him. She needed to keep going.
Her eyes stayed trained on that well-lit tunnel ahead, the glowing shaft sliced into the dirt. She saw no movement there, no sign of life. It bent into a curve up ahead, with everything veering out of her view at that point. The sight of it twisted her gut into knots, the unknown section of tunnel laying beyond it somehow both desirable and awful. She simultaneously wanted to get there as soon as possible and utterly dreaded reaching it.
She pushed herself. Picked up the pace. Not too worried about her footfalls crushing and grinding at the dirt, the sound of them reverberating against the walls around her. She was armed, and he wasn’t.
She squeezed the gun tighter in her grip. That was what gave her the edge here. She needed to close on him now, press that advantage while she had it.
When she reached the bend, she still couldn’t see him. Just another section of blank tunnel ahead. Hollow. Vacant.
Again, she forced herself onward. Dialed up the speed until her pace morphed into a jog.
It occurred to her that this dark passage was now veering downward at a sharper angle. Descending. She gulped at the thought, a fresh wave of chills crawling up her spine, cold shuddering through her.
But she pushed the fear down and kept going. She just had to keep moving.
A snippet of his scuffing feet sounded somewhere up ahead. Harsh and scratchy. The sound fluttered strangely down the hall, echoed around like a living breathing thing, a panicked bird flapping everywhere, flapping everywhere, trying to find a way out.
It gave her some confidence, though. Now she knew he was still up there somewhere. Not so far away after all.
She broke into a run, plunging deeper into the hole.
Chapter 68
Ahead, the dirt walls of the tunnel widened slightly and then dead-ended against a craggy rock wall. Brown and gray swirls almost seemed to decorate the stone, the multicolored bands distinguishing it from the flat sandy monotone of the dirt. Darger’s eyes moved lower on the rock face, following the strand of lights again.
A hole yawned in the center of the wall, and a stony passage carried on there just as the tunnel had. It looked shorter and narrower than the manmade dirt shaft she was currently in. The knobby rock surface seemed foreign, almost menacing compared to the smooth dirt walls. But the lights glowed there just the same.
Darger ignored the lurching liquid of anxiety in her belly and maintained her speed, racing for that cleft in the rock. She still couldn’t see him up ahead, but he was closer now. She could feel it.
She passed through the threshold without slowing, stepping into the cave. The grainy sound of the dirt tunnel floor under her shoes gave way to the clap of limestone.
Right away the air grew cooler around her. Thicker. It gripped the backs of her arms with a chill that reminded her of a dank basement, formed goosebumps that rubbed against her sleeves as she ran.
She smelled a swampy odor for a second, the overwhelming stench of pond scum making her nose wrinkle, and then it was gone. She knew what it meant. There was moisture down here somewhere, and the thought disturbed her.
The cave seemed to curve more than the tunnel did. Bending and dipping, its lines all crooked. That reduced visibility. Made her uneasy.
And then something caught her eye on the wall ahead and to the right. Glinting.
Hair. Glistening strands of hair in a dark cluster a few inches beyond one of the light bulbs, wet with sweat.
Her breath caught in her throat. A little moan seeping out of her.
She lifted her gun. Hands shaking from the adrenaline and the cold. Forearms flexing. Eyes dancing over those gleaming tendrils.
But it wasn’t hair.
Moss hung down from the wall here. Dripping wet tufts of it that looked like long green beards dangling off the rock’s surface at first. The clumps grew thicker and thicker as she proceeded until the whole wall to her right was covered in green and beige, the barrier turned organic and soggy, that multitude of beard-like masses coagulating into one. The strand of lights snaked right through the plant life, glowing bulbs protruding from the mess of fibrous green.
A dripping sound emerged. Water seeping into the cave, she figured. Draining down that wall of moss. Some of it gathering in puddles somewhere that she could hear but could not see for the moment.
She kept going. Kept running. Kept taking deep breaths of cold cave air, feeling it spiral deep into her lungs, her body slowly chilling from the inside out.
The dripping sound grew louder as she moved. More urgent.
Another bend moved her up a small rise and away from the moss, a development she was thankful for. At first.
And then she saw the sheening black surface sprawling ahead.
Her stomach clenched, all internal valves clamping into taut, trembling knots.
The cave opened up some, and an underground lake filled the large chamber before her. The water lay motionless and eerie. Its vast black surface darkled, looked opaque from her point of view, faintly glittering in a dotted line where the glow of the light bulbs touched its rounded edge.
Some garbled H.P. Lovecraft quote flared in Darger’s head then. Something about the black seas of infinity, about how mankind’s small minds weren’t meant to voyage far.
She pushed it away. Kept going.
She followed the thin pathway off to one side of the black expanse where the strand of lights still dotted the wall, her eyes tracing along that line where the stone and water met.
The stagnant water was so close, within an arm’s length. She could trip here and fall in. Get sucked down into the dark. Who knew how deep it was, how cold it was? She shivered even thinking about it. Didn’t want to find out.
An oblong tunnel veering up and to the right took her away from the lake, away from the moss. Those knots in her abdomen loosened some as she climbed, her breath coming easier again.
The slope gradually leveled out as she proceeded, though troughs of dark water persisted off and on, running alongside her path like drainage ditches scooped out along the shoulder of a country road.
The cold had saturated her limbs and was working on her face now. Her cheeks had gone half-numb, the tip of her nose turning to ice.
Worse, the cave seemed to be narrowing around her. The walls closing in.
She had to turn sideways and sidle through one section, arms up, hands pressing into the wall, rock protrusions jabbing her in the back and belly as she moved. She kept her eyes on the light in the gap ahead, the place where this bottleneck relented.
When the cave widened again, she saw his dark figure just ahead of her.
Chapter 69
Darger sprinted now, the fresh jolt of adrenaline popping in her head like a champagne cork, bright electricity thrumming behind her eyes, coursing through her veins, pushing her ever forward. She pumped her arms, watched the Glock rise and fall in the right side of her field of vision.
His small figure grew la
rger as she ran. She was closing on him rapidly now. Good.
The silhouette hobbled down the declining passage before her. His bare feet clearly bothering him on the rocky terrain, adding strange bounces and hitches to his running motion, something panicked and choppy about it like someone running on hot coals.
The ground seemed more uneven as she accelerated. It dipped and sloped and cratered beneath Darger’s feet, tilted her ankles at odd angles, threatened to roll one or the other. She could only imagine how much worse it’d be without shoes, those serrated rock edges knifing into the flesh with every step.
Still, she didn’t slow. Kept gaining on him. Pressing her advantage now, once and for all. Ready to finish it.
Slowly details populated the silhouette before her. His shadow seemed to become real, become solid, before her eyes. The bristled texture of his close-cropped hair faded into view, the banded red collar of his black t-shirt, the small Dickie’s logo on the back pocket of his work pants.
He craned his neck around, must have heard her getting closer. His wide eyes peered at her. Wild and panicked. Mouth hanging open like a panting dog.
Then he swiveled forward again and picked up speed. His running motion became even more frantic.
She gritted her teeth. Pushed herself harder. Faster now. Faster, faster.
She zipped toward him. Bounding like a predator. Breath hot against her teeth. Closing.
He glanced back once more. Tongue now lolling out of his mouth. Chest heaving.
His foot caught on a protruding shelf of rock. Momentum flung him forward. Laid him out flat so he looked like Superman for a second, and then he crashed down into the rocks.
He tried to catch himself with his arms out in front, take the brunt of it with his hands and elbows, but the force pushed right through. Bent his arms down under his belly as it wrenched him forward. He skidded over solid stone, whole body throttled by the bumps and divots, arms and limbs and torso convulsing. When the skid finally ended, he started dragging himself to his feet.
Violet Darger | Book 7 | Dark Passage Page 26