by Hunt, James
“And today?”
Mocks paused. She looked down at the lighter and gave the flint another flick, which brought the flame to life. “Today I’m going to get my husband back.”
A few more miles down the road, and Grant pulled off the interstate. The city was far behind them, and their new environment was thick with trees.
“You ever think the Givens girl would have led to all of this?” Grant asked as they turned off the paved road and started making their way onto the dirt path.
“I didn’t see a lot of this coming, Grant,” Mocks answered, then quickly changed the subject. “Parker said it was an old abandoned sawmill.”
The prospect sounded more ominous than hopeful, and Grant wasn’t sure if they’d find Rick in one piece. He followed the two-lane road until it forked and turned left as Mocks instructed.
The dirt from the road swirled in the headlights, which was the only source of light back here. And from the dips and bumps in the road, it didn’t look like anyone had used the road in a while. “We should have four-wheel drive for this,” Grant said.
“Cut the lights,” Mocks said. “I don’t know how much farther it is, and I don’t want them to see us coming.”
Grant would have objected, but Mocks made a solid point. He turned off the lights but slowed his pace to compensate for the lack of sight.
“Call Dispatch,” Grant said. “Let them know our location.”
Mocks reached for her phone. “No signal.” She scanned the radio for their channel. “Dispatch, this is unit thirty-five. We are forty-five miles north of Seattle. We turned west off of I-5 onto Timber Creek Road and followed it down to the fork where we took a left. We’re currently checking out an abandoned sawmill. We need units on standby, over.”
Static crackled back.
“I repeat, this is unit thirty-five, we are—”
“Mocks,” Grant said, stopping the car. “Look.”
Mocks leaned forward and squinted. A dark outline took shape in a clearing in the forest. “Yeah. Looks big enough to be a sawmill.” She noticed a glow from the backside of the building. “We should park here and walk up.”
Grant tucked the car near a cluster of trees and bushes and when he tossed some branches over the top, you couldn’t even see it from the road unless you knew it was there.
Together, Grant and Mocks kept to the tree line and off the road on their approach. The glow grew brighter, and Grant noticed a second glow through one of the windows on the lower level of the mill. The light was orange, almost like it was from a fire, the way it moved and swayed against the glass.
Mocks paused when they reached the edge of the trees just before the clearing began. Grant crouched next to her, one knee planted in the dirt. No cars or guards from what he saw, but that didn’t mean there weren’t people inside.
“Grant,” Mocks said, glancing down at the tip of her boots. “If Rick is dead and the guys who did it are still inside, you have to let me decide for myself what to do.” She looked up, her eyes big and wide like a child asking her father for permission. She always looked so small whenever she did that.
“It won’t make you feel better,” Grant said. “No matter what you decide. But it is your decision to make.”
“Thank you.” Mocks cleared her throat and then motioned toward a side door that was the farthest away from the flickering light inside the sawmill. “Let’s go.”
The pair kept low on their sprint into the clearing. Their figures blended into the night, and the cloudy sky provided further cover.
Grant nestled up against the edge of the building, the wood rough and cold against his shoulder. He panted heavily from the short run, his body already tired from the long day. He peered around the corner, and the coast was clear all the way to the door. Grant stepped around first and Mocks followed, watching his back.
When Grant reached for the door handle, he found it locked. He turned to Mocks and shook his head, and they moved on to the next entrance. They passed under the window where the light was strongest and fought the urge to peek inside. They knew it wouldn’t be the best vantage point anyway.
The next door was locked as well, and when they circled around to the east side of the sawmill, Grant stopped at the corner, Mocks bumping into him from the abrupt halt.
There was another building, a small trailer like you’d find at a construction site. Lights were on inside, and Grant figured that was the source of the second glow he saw in the car.
Grant motioned toward the structure, and Mocks nodded. He made one last scan to ensure the coast was clear and then sprinted toward the front steps. The plummeting temperature revealed their breaths with each pant.
He pressed his ear to the door, listening for movement, but heard nothing. He grabbed the doorknob and gave it a twist. Locked. Grant tapped his shoulder and then pointed toward the door. Mocks nodded and moved into position, gun raised.
Grant knew the cold would make the contact worse, but he gritted his teeth and rammed the door with all his weight. The frame cracked and Grant tumbled onto the floor. Mocks followed inside, pistol raised. But the place was empty.
Mocks stepped inside and shut the door. Her arm fell to her sides, the pistol hanging loose in her hand. “What the hell?”
While the outside resembled a trailer for a construction site, the inside was a completely different story. Ornate wooden furniture lined the walls, and a plush rug gave accent to the hardwood floors. Paintings decorated the walls, pictures of nature in all its elements. One photo caught Grant’s eye. It was a small ship in the middle of the ocean during a massive storm. The waves tossed the ship about, the dark skies spitting rain and lightning. Grant saw the tiny figures aboard the ship, no larger than ants in the grand scope of the sea, clinging to dear life as they fought against the enormity of Mother Nature.
A leather couch was at the far end of the trailer, and on the opposite end was a desk, which Mocks immediately searched. She skimmed papers and then hastily tossed them aside.
“These are the same documents we found during the Givens case,” Mocks said. “They’re immigration forms, except these ones have been filled out already. Names, date of births, Social Security Numbers.”
Grant picked up one of the paper stacks and saw that each of them had pictures paper clipped to them. They were all girls. Young girls. “Jesus Christ.”
“Wait,” Mocks said. “Look at this.” She raised the paper so Grant could see. “You know who that is?”
“No,” Grant answered.
“Sophie Mathers,” Mocks answered. “She was one of the reported abductions today.” She flipped to the next set of papers. “And this one, Mary Hives, she was reported missing today too.”
Grant took the papers from her, shuffling through until he found the picture he was looking for. “Annie.” Name, height, weight, hair, and eye color, all of her personal information filled out. Except, like the other girls, their names had been changed on separate forms. She wasn’t Annie anymore. She was Beth Myers. From Canada.
“All these forms,” Mocks said. “These are legitimate documents. Federally stamped and everything.” Mocks set the papers on the desk, shaking her head. “The Web has contacts in the federal government.”
Grant set Annie’s documents down. “The kids are here. They have to be.”
They opened the rest of the drawers and Mocks found a set of keys. “Think it’s for the mill?”
“Let’s go find out,” Grant said.
Grant watched Mocks’s back while she tried different keys until she found one that worked. In one swift motion, she stepped inside and covered the right while Grant filed in after, covering the left.
But like the trailer, the place was empty. At least with regard to people. The flicker of light that Grant had seen through the dirtied window was from kerosene lanterns that hung from the walls and support beams. The building was old, but the equipment looked brand new. Fresh steel blades gleamed from the lamplight, and Grant pressed his finge
r into one of the teeth. It pricked blood.
“Grant,” Mocks said.
He turned and saw her standing next to a long table with straps to keep someone tied down. A smaller table sat next to it, covered in what looked like medical instruments that rested over white cloth. Tiny incision cutters, large clasps, braces, knives, and pieces Grant had never even seen before.
Mocks walked to the end of the table and picked up one of the instruments. Fresh blood shimmered off the steel, and Grant looked down at the floor beneath the table. Sawdust had been dumped in patches, but there were still a few stains of blood that they had missed.
“We don’t know if this was him,” Grant said, although he wasn’t sure if the expression on his face matched the hopeful tone.
A muffled moan to their left caused both Grant and Mocks to aim their pistols in a dark patch of the mill. They stepped toward it slowly, Grant reaching for one of the lanterns on the way to help light their path.
A door, boxed into the corner of the room, concealed the source of the noise, and when Grant opened it, the lantern revealed a staircase that traveled beneath the mill. Mocks held the door while Grant stepped down first, the wooden stairs groaning from the descent.
The lantern’s light only protruded a foot into the pitch black, and Grant descended slowly, unable to see what his nose could smell. The scent was unmistakable. Years in Homicide had left the stench of human waste and blood in his nose, and whenever he got a whiff of it, all of those memories flooded back to him. And judging from the light gasp that Mocks quickly muffled with her hand, he knew she understood what it meant.
Whispers drifted out of the darkness, along with the scraping of metal on concrete. When Grant took his last step and stood on the basement floor, the lantern illuminated the first girl chained to a metal bar in the corner. She couldn’t have been older than ten, and her hair was messy and greasy. Dirt smeared the girl’s cheeks, and she was curled up in a ball in clothes too big for her small body.
Grant stepped toward her and then noticed another girl next to her. She was chained to the same bar and in the same ragged condition as the girl before. Grant guided the lantern along the edges of the room, more girls and one boys chained to the metal pole that ran along every wall in the basement. They were all here. Even Annie. “Oh my god.”
A groan came from under the stairs and when Grant shone the light in the area, Mocks rushed over.
“Rick,” Mocks said, gently patting her husband’s bloodied face. He lolled his head back and forth in an unconscious dream, and Mocks yanked at the chain and irons clamped around his wrist, tethering him to the wall. “Rick, can you hear me?”
Grant checked on the kids while Mocks attended to Rick. Their ages ranged a bit, but from the count, it looked like they were all of the kids reported in the abductions today. Some of them were awake, others asleep. Needle marks scarred the arms of the unconscious ones. They were drugged, but they were all alive.
“This must be one of their transition sites,” Grant said, but he was surprised there weren’t more. And the fact that Rick was brought here where the kids were kept felt strange. All of this, combined with the fact that the trailer out back felt more like a home than an office, he began to think that this place was special to someone.
“Grant,” Mocks said, reaching for the ring of keys that had gotten them inside the mill. “Help me get him up.” She had to try a few of the keys before she found the right one, and Mocks and Grant dragged Rick to the foot of the stairs where they propped him up against the wall.
Grant held up the lantern and got a better look at the rest of his body. His face was cut up, along with his left arm. A large bandage was over his right thigh and another wrapped around his abdomen. The cuts looked deep, and the paleness of his cheeks meant he’d lost a lot of blood. But he was still breathing, for now.
“We need to get him to the car,” Mocks said.
Grant turned to the rest of the kids. “We need to get them out of here. They wouldn’t leave them down here without supervision for long. If they—”
Footsteps thumped above and a door shut. A pair of muffled voices spoke, and Grant immediately blew out the light. He helped Mocks drag Rick back under the staircase, and there they hid.
The voices mumbled in casual conversation, but when the communication ended abruptly along with their footsteps, Grant knew they were found out.
The footfalls started up again, but the voices remained silent. Grant lifted his weapon. With the lantern snuffed out, Grant followed the sound of their feet.
Grant froze, his muscles aching and irritated from the concentration and energy it took to remain so still. The girls that were awake sobbed quietly to themselves. They knew what the return of those footsteps meant. The Web had done their work well.
The footsteps ended, and shadows and light fell down the staircase through the open door. Grant knew they couldn’t see him, not when it was this dark. He had to be patient, to wait for them to come down. Right now he had the element of surprise. There were no more than two, and from the silence, he knew they hadn’t radioed anyone.
Slowly, Grant’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he saw Mocks in his peripheral, closer to the foot of the stairs. She had her pistol aimed at the door.
“Whoever’s down there, come up now,” a voice said in broken English. “You have ten seconds.”
Grant and Mocks remained quiet. The breaths through Grant’s nose grew stronger and faster. His heart rate spiked. The first flash of Ellen and Annie pierced through the fog as the adrenaline rolled in. He gripped the pistol tighter, and the vision grew stronger. For a moment, he lost where he was, the visions overwhelming. A gunshot fired, and the girls screamed.
More bullets fired down the stairs, and Grant tucked himself underneath it with Mocks and Rick for cover. The door slammed shut and Grant hurried up the stairs, knowing that if they didn’t move now, then they’d die in the hole they dug for themselves.
Grant shoulder checked the door open and spilled out onto the floor. He immediately spied the first gunman to his left and fired three rounds into his chest.
The second gunman fired from the door, the distance causing him to miss as Grant ducked behind the table with the straps for cover. Once he was outside, Grant screamed down to Mocks. “He’s on the run!”
Grant sprinted to the door, pausing at the exit before he peered outside into the night. Heavy breaths misted in the cold air and his fingers were numb against the pistol.
Still pressed against the wall, Grant craned his head through the open door and watched the gunman fire from the steps outside the trailer.
“Got you,” Grant said. He spun around the cover of the wall and planted his knee and foot on the ground, firing into the door of the trailer that the gunman had just entered.
Grant pushed himself up and sprinted toward the trailer. Glass shattered from the window to the left of the trailer door and a rifle muzzle was thrust outside. It fired blindly as Grant sidled up flush with the trailer wall.
The rifle disappeared back inside, and Grant kept his breathing as quiet as possible. He inched toward the stairs, moving as softly as he could. The goon inside didn’t make any effort to be quiet though, and Grant tried to keep tabs on him by the sound of his feet shuffling across the hardwood floors.
Grant placed his foot on the first step of the staircase, then the second. He could shoot through the flimsy walls, but the projection of the bullet would drastically change once it penetrated the trailer, so there wasn’t even the guarantee that he would hit his target.
Grant threw the door open wide and crouched low in the entrance. He only had three seconds to assess the situation, aim his weapon, and fire the trigger before the goon unloaded on him, but he felt the recoil of the gunshot in his hand just in time.
Blood splattered over the man’s chest and the phone fell from his limp hand. Grant rushed over and picked up the phone. The person on the other end was speaking another language, but Grant di
dn’t stay on the line long enough to decipher it. He hung up and immediately dialed the precinct.
“This is Detective Chase Grant,” he said, looking down at the man he’d just killed. “I’m with Detective Susan Mullocks, and we’re north in the timberlands off of I-5. We have hostages, minors, up here at an old abandoned sawmill. I’ve taken out two guards, but they have more on the way. We need S.W.A.T., the National Guard, anyone with guns, and we need them up here now.”
“Hold on, Detective, where exactly are you?”
“I don’t have the exact coordinates, but I’m calling you from a landline, so there has to be cables running out here somewhere,” Grant said. “Look for any old lines that run off of I-5 into the timberlands that are around an old mill. If that doesn’t work, I’ll just leave the phone off the hook and you can trace this call. Just hurry.”
Dispatch tried to respond, but Grant had already set the phone down and was halfway out the door when he stopped. He turned back to the goon and patted him down, taking his rifle and ammunition. He spotted the web tattoo on the gangbanger’s neck and wondered how many more of these scumbags existed. But what he wanted to know more than anything was the identity of the man in charge. The master weaver, connecting all of the different threads together.
Grant returned to the cellar where Mocks had managed to get half the girls out of their shackles, all of them clustering near the base of the stairs and cringing when Grant appeared. He imagined it would be a while before they trusted any man that came near them.
“I called for backup, but the gang member managed to call reinforcements as well,” Grant said.
Mocks kept her eyes focused on the locks around the girls’ ankles and wrists. “Did Dispatch give you an ETA?”
“Didn’t stick around for one, but it could be a while,” Grant said. “We need to get these kids out of here before whatever Web reinforcements show up.”
“Here,” Mocks said, tossing the keys to Grant. “Start helping me get them uncuffed.”
Grant and Mocks worked their way around the room, and once the kids were freed, Grant helped Mocks drag Rick to the staircase. “We’ll get him up first,” Grant said. “We can hide the kids in the woods until backup arrives.”