The Red Hunter

by Lisa Unger

  • • •

  THE GUY ON YOUTUBE, HE was right. He said that you could feel it when the pins lifted. She could visualize from the info on Wikianswers.com. You just kind of patiently worked the edges of the pick in and pushed. If you closed your eyes, you could see the pointed copper surfaces. You used the tension wrench to turn. This lock must have been older or different than the one in the basement, because Raven could kind of feel it. She just worked it, worked it, until there was an audible click and the lock snapped open. She stared at it for a moment in disbelief. Then she stood, grabbed the latch and with effort, swung the door wide.

  “Holy crap,” said Troy, coming to stand beside her. The both gazed down into the black maw in the ground. There were rungs sticking out of the wall, a ladder into the dark.

  Raven sat on the edge, dangling her legs down.

  “Whoa,” said Troy, lifting his palms. “Wait a minute. You are not thinking about going down there.”

  “Well, yeah,” she said. Was he kidding? After all of this, not go down? No way.

  “You are crazy,” he said. He threw his hands up. He always gesticulated wildly when he was passionate about something. “You have no idea what’s down there, first of all. Whether the structure is stable. It’s dark. What if there are rats? What if it collapses?”

  Ugh. He was such a baby. She kicked at the top rung with her heel. It was solid. The walls were cinderblock; it wasn’t going to collapse. She didn’t think. It was dark. Like, for real dark. Troy, as usual, was probably right. But what if? What if there was a bag filled with money down there? And all she had to do was go get it.

  “Raven.”

  She spun herself around and started down, looking up into Troy’s stricken face.

  “Raven Grace Bishop-Martin,” he said. He sounded just like her mom. “Don’t you dare.”

  She smiled at him wide, a dare. He shone the beam of the flashlight down on her. She turned and could see the dirt floor below her. It wasn’t that far, even if she fell. She carefully tested each rung before committing herself. Then she was down the ladder, the tunnel stretching out ahead of her, total blackness. It was very small; she’d have to crouch or maybe even crawl. Some of her bravery left her, and she looked back up at Troy.

  “Are you coming?”

  “No way.”

  “What are you going to do if I go?” she asked. “Tell my mom?”

  He looked longingly back in the direction of the house.

  “Raven, please don’t do this,” he said. “Let’s just go tell your mom what we found. Let her decide what to do next.”

  It was tempting. But. “What if it’s down here?”

  “What if it is?” he said with a shrug.

  “Then we’re rich,” she said. She knew it sounded childish, and he rolled his eyes.

  “The money doesn’t belong to us,” he said.

  “Finders keepers,” said Raven, even though she didn’t really mean it.

  “It’s evidence,” he said. “People died.”

  “Then we’re heroes,” she said. “We solved a ten-year-old case.”

  She saw that he liked that better than the idea of stealing money—even though it wasn’t really stealing. He was a rescuer at heart. A good guy. Still, he stayed up there, looking down at her.

  “Raven,” he said. “Just come up.”

  She really didn’t want to go alone, but she would. Maybe it was better if he stayed up there. If the tunnel did collapse, at least he could call for help.

  “Toss me the flashlight if you’re going to stay up there.”

  He looked at her, frowning with worry, a moment longer. Then he climbed down the ladder after her.

  • • •

  CLAUDIA WAITED, LISTENING TO HIM move around in the basement. It had been about six minutes (she was watching the clock), but it felt like a half hour, more. The phone still hadn’t come back on; she kept picking it up to check. Raven and Troy were still in the barn. Scout had drifted back into his shadowy world, and the sun was dipping low, shadows growing long, the sky a dusty blue. She had decided to quickly head upstairs for her cell phone when she heard a crash down in the basement. She froze, listening, then moved to the top of the stairs.

  She stood in the doorway to the basement. “Josh?”

  No answer.

  “Everything okay down there?”

  Nothing.

  She should run upstairs and get the phone. Why hadn’t she brought it down with her? She could call the police? And say what? That the handyman she hired was taking too long in the basement finding his level? Maybe she could say that she thought he fell, hurt himself.

  “Josh.”

  She heard movement, a low groan—pain, frustration?

  She started down the stairs. She took one creaking step at a time, looking down at her sparkling genie flats that she’d paid too much for on Etsy. Just as she came to the bottom step, he slipped out of the darkness, sweating, looking frazzled.

  She backed away from him, up a step. Her trainer wouldn’t approve. Never back away, he’d say. Move in. Stand your ground. Only run after you’ve delivered the incapacitating strike to the eyes, the throat, or the groin. She knew the drill. Eyes. Throat. Groin. Fingers to the corners of the eyes. Claw of the hand to the jugular. Knee to the groin, hard and fast. Then run. She remembered her training well. Too bad she couldn’t seem to put any of it into action. Fear was the factor you couldn’t predict or control.

  They stood a second, regarding each other.

  “What are you really doing down here?” she asked.

  He let out a long sigh, leaned back against the wall. “How did you know about it?”

  “About what?”

  He motioned toward the hole in the drywall; it gaped like a mouth.

  A vein started to throb in her neck, a dryness tugging at the back of her throat.

  “How did you find this? I’ve been looking in this house for years. More than ten years.”

  There was something raw and desperate about his energy now, something that made her body tingle with fear. She didn’t say anything, felt her awareness reach out for Raven. Please stay in the barn, she silently told her daughter.

  “You need to leave,” she said, marshalling strength to her voice. “Now.”

  He shook his head quickly. “That’s just it. I can’t unless I find what I’m looking for.”

  What? What did that mean?

  “You need to go now before I call the police,” she said. She stood aside so that he could walk up the stairs.

  He took a step closer to her, palms up.

  “Look,” he said. “Help me and I’m gone. Otherwise, there are some bad people looking for something that may or not be hidden in this house. If they come here, I won’t be able to help you. I won’t even be able to help myself. I need to find it and take it to them, and they’ll go away.”

  She shook her head, but she couldn’t find words. This wasn’t happening.

  “They have the survey,” he said. “They think there’s a tunnel.”

  He took something from his pocket and held it up. A shiny copper key. For a bending, twisting second she thought she might be dreaming. She remembered when she was in the throes of despair after Raven had been born, and her marriage was falling apart, and the dark fingers of depression tugged at her every morning, she saw a past-life regression therapist who told her that she’d lived a hundred lives as a victim—a slave girl in Mississippi, a prostitute in New Orleans, a housewife with four children, no education, and a mean husband who beat her—and that now, in this life, it was her turn to reclaim her power. She’d survived her circumstances and had the strength to create a bright future. Claudia didn’t believe a word of it. She’d never been those things. But she did believe in herself, in her will to survive. I will never be a victim again, she’d sworn to herself that day. And now, here she was, standing before a man she’d let into her home who wouldn’t leave, who said that worse men were coming.

  “Look,
” she said. She kept her voice low and deep. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Get out of my house now.”

  If that was the key to the locked door, and he found what he was looking for, would he just leave and take her at her word that she’d never tell a soul? If what he was looking for was there, would he leave with a sack of money and trust her to keep his secret? No. He wouldn’t. Her whole body was vibrating. She started backing up the stairs.

  “There’s no tunnel,” she said. “Go.”

  “There is,” he said. “That’s the door, and I’m going to open it with this key. You stay where you are and don’t say a word, then I’ll be gone. And there isn’t much time.”

  “There isn’t any time.”

  Claudia spun to see another man, just a tall form at the top of the stairs, blocking her only exit from the basement. Panic traveled through her body like an electric shock.

  “I said an hour,” said Josh.

  “I don’t have an hour,” said the other man. He slowly moved down the stairs. She backed away so that their bodies formed a tense triangle.

  “It’s really easy,” said the other man. He was dark, wolfish, a scar on his face, a roughness to his bearing. Nothing like Josh, and yet there was something in the jaw, around the eyes. “My brother should have kept his mouth shut. But he didn’t.”

  The brother. Wanda Crabb’s warning rang in her ears.

  The dark man ran a rough hand over the crown of his head. The muscles in his forearms looked like ropes beneath the skin, the thick hair, dark, blurry tattoos.

  “So now we have a problem that we wouldn’t have had if he let me handle it the way I wanted to.” What had Wanda Crabb said his name was? Rhett, that was it. Rhett Beckham.

  He moved so fast, it was like a cobra strike. The back of his hand connected hard with Claudia’s jaw, knocking her head back against the concrete wall. The world wobbled, a field of stars dancing before her eyes. And then her head was ringing with pain. She lifted her hands to her ear, sinking to the ground.

  “What the fuck?” yelled Josh. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  But the other man moved away heading straight for the hole in the wall. He used his knee to knock more of the crumbling drywall down, then he crouched low and looked inside. He issued a big laugh, more like a whoop of victory.

  Claudia’s head rattled, the room spinning. She couldn’t think; her breath ragged and deep with panic. Please, please, let the kids have seen the men come in. Call the police. Run. Just don’t come back to the house. Please. Please. She thought of her phone up in her office, her only lifeline. It might as well have been on the moon. Still, she edged toward the stairs, both of them bent in front of the locked door.

  “Give me the key,” said Rhett. He wore a wide grin, turned to smack his brother on the shoulder. “I knew it, man. I fucking knew it. That dirty cop. It was here all along.”

  Josh was shaking his head, silent.

  Claudia still sat stunned on the floor, tasting blood. All that training and just one blow, she could barely move. She kept inching, finally resting her hand on the bottom stair.

  “Only if we let her go now,” said Josh. “Then I’ll give you the key.”

  Rhett released an exasperated breath.

  “Can’t do that. Not now that you’ve been running your fucking mouth off,” he said, nodding toward Claudia. “Give me that key, little brother, or I’ll take it from you.”

  “No,” said Josh. “I’m not going to let you hurt anyone else.”

  They circled each other, two dogs snarling in a standoff. Josh threw the first punch, missed. He took a hard blow to the gut from his brother, and then they were down on the floor rolling and grunting, delivering punches to head, neck back, rolling. Rhett bested Josh almost immediately, had him pinned, punched him mercilessly in the face.

  Claudia got to her feet and ran, thundering up the stairs. The light from the door at the top seemed like it was a mile away, growing farther the closer she got. Fear pulled time long. Then she was almost there, almost to the door. She could get through, slam it closed, lock it from the outside. She’d run to the barn, get the kids, Troy would have his phone, get in the car; she’d left the keys in the ignition, as was her bad habit, but a good thing today. The kids could call the police while she drove them away.

  She was almost there, almost there, when she felt the hand, a brutal vise grip on her ankle, yanking her foot and all her weight out from underneath her. She landed hard on her elbows, chin, and knees with a series of thuds and cracks. He pulled her back down the stairs, as she struggled and screamed against him, clawing at the stairs, for the banister. How could he be so strong?

  She turned to use her legs, kick him in the face, but she missed, her heel connecting only with the air to the side of his head. She came to land beside Josh, who was unconscious on the floor, a line of blood trailing from his mouth, face red and already swelling.

  Rhett climbed on top of her as she writhed, kicking. He lay the heaviness of his entire body on hers, holding her wrists with one impossibly strong, huge hand. The other one he clamped hard over her mouth, the hard stones of his fingertips digging into the soft flesh of her face. She heard herself whimpering. He put his mouth to her ear and her nose filled with his scent—sweat, booze, cigarettes. Rank. Vile. Melvin Cutter. How could she be back here again? She’d come so far.

  “I have the key to that door now,” he said. “If you just lie here and shut up, be a good girl, I’ll be gone.”

  She nodded. He was lying. She knew that. Why didn’t he just kill her now? What was he waiting for? She made herself look into his eyes. She saw something there; he wasn’t blank like Cutter. There a flicker of something human. He didn’t want to kill her.

  “I promised my little brother that no one would get hurt,” he said, answering the questions she hadn’t asked. He glanced over at Josh, whom he’d just beaten into unconsciousness. That apparently did not count as anyone getting hurt, nor did it negate his loyalty.

  “He screwed up. But a promise is a promise. I’ve been watching you. This house. Your pretty girl. I’ll come back here or people I know will. You stay quiet. Or better, leave town. You’ll never hear from us again. I’m no killer—unless I don’t have a choice. Can you be quiet?”

  She nodded again. He lifted his hand from her mouth. She couldn’t believe how helpless, powerless she felt. Her whole body was shaking. Those classes. It was just theater.

  “Good girl,” he said.

  There was something about the phrase, about the way he said it. It was like a match to a gas leak, lighting her up inside. Something pushed up through the fear that had paralyzed her, hot and red. Rage.

  “Just stay down,” he said. “Five minutes, not even. We never see each other again.”

  He backed away, watching her. When he turned to the workbench, she pushed herself up. There was a hammer lying on the ground, rusted, dirty. She was going to pick it up and bash his fucking head in. She reached for it, his back to her as he worked the key into the lock. Josh stirred, issuing a low groan, and their eyes met.

  “No,” he croaked.

  Rhett spun on them, saw her hand on the hammer. She was only aware of his fist coming at her like a freight train. She felt her neck snap back with the impact. Then it was dark.

  thirty-three

  Raven used to dream about tunnels. A long, twisting network of blue tubes that connected all the places in the world. You just stepped through a door in your bedroom, hopped in a cozy pod, and zipped to school, or to Aunt Martha’s in New Mexico, or Dylan’s Candy Bar—wherever you wanted to be. It only took a few seconds. Step through one door and out another—in your pajamas. No need to get dressed, to go out in the cold or the rain, hail a cab, or wait miserable on a crowded subway platform for a train that may or may not come. This tunnel, the one they were in, was not like the tunnels of her childhood fantasies. It was cold, dark, scary; the rough-hewn walls were damp, only pitch-blackness ahead.

&nb
sp; Troy pressed up behind her, shining the flashlight beam onto the ground in front of them. When he held the beam up, it seemed to get sucked up by the darkness, no end to the tunnel in sight. A few feet in front of them was an abyss, emptiness.

  “We’re heading back toward the house, right?” said Raven. “This tunnel? It must connect the house to the barn.” Troy didn’t say anything, his breathing shallow. Raven was scared, too, wanted to turn around, the faint light from the opening above shining behind them. They were crouched low, hands nearly touching the ground.

  “This is such a bad idea,” said Troy. “Let’s go back.”

  “It can’t be far, right?” said Raven, pressing ahead. There was a faint dripping sound. Then something else, a distant knock or a crash. She stopped short, and Troy bumped into her, lifted the flashlight.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “I didn’t hear anything. What did you hear?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Nothing, I guess.”

  She kept moving, but this time Troy stayed behind.

  “Let’s go back,” he said, for the twentieth time. “I don’t have a signal down here. We can’t call for help.”

  Raven pressed her hands against the walls, reached up to the low ceiling. Everything was damp, but the structure felt solid. It couldn’t just crumble around them, right? Even though she wanted to go back, too, and she could see why it was a good idea, she just couldn’t do it. The tug, the wanting to know, the potential of it—it was too great. In the light, up in the barn, in the house, doing the right thing, it was all known. Dull. Nothing. Just like any other day.

  Another thump; Troy lifted the light toward it. Again. Maybe her mom was banging on the door from the other side, trying to get in with a hammer or a crowbar or something. She talked about getting the drill, though she didn’t think the bits she had were strong enough to drill through metal.

  Raven kept moving, coming to a stop at the curved edge of light cast by Troy. She stepped into the dark. He followed, and the light kept moving ahead of her and she stayed in it, blackness a wall all around them. Then Troy tripped.