A Cold Dark Place

by Gregg Olsen

  “I’m going to leave just now. You can call 911. Detective Collier just might live. You might be able to find your daughter. You stop me. Shoot me. Whatever’s going through your mind right now, isn’t going to happen. Because if you stop me, you’ll never find her.”

  Emily knew he was right. She pressed her palm against Collier’s heaving chest. She’d stopped the syrupy red blood flow. For now.

  Walker scanned the room, surveying his work. He seemed so satisfied that it repulsed Emily all the more. As he walked toward the door, red clay particles fell from the soles of his shoes.

  “Please,” she said, “where is she?”

  “In the dark,” he said. “Just like Kristi.” His gaze was the dead-eyed stare of a shark. “She’s alive, for now. But remember poor Kristi . . . she waited for someone to find her.”

  Anger and fear converged. Emily thought she might lose control and just lunge for him. Instead, she pleaded.

  “Please.”

  “Jenna Kenyon. Kristi Cooper. Two peas in a pod. Pretty girls. The kind I like to—”

  “Just shut up,” she said, finding her voice, breaking his rhythm. If he had meant to hurt her deeply, he’d done so. The wound was deep. “I want my daughter and Christopher needs a doctor. Now.”

  Dylan stepped backward, once again that dead, cold stare fixed on her like the scope of an assault rifle. “I’m going now. If I stay, your daughter will be just like Kristi, a bag of bones in the dark somewhere. That is, if they ever find her. Remember they’ve never found Steffi or Brit.”

  Emily closed her eyes to shut out Dylan’s words. When she opened them, she focused on Christopher. She leaned closer. The color of his face was slightly better. She could feel the faint warmth of his breath against her cheek. He wanted to speak, and he fought for it. “Let him go. We’ll find her.” His voice was a rasp. Emily gently squeezed his hand, telegraphing that she believed him; she trusted him. Despite the gunshot, despite the turmoil of the moment, Christopher Collier was what he’d always been—calm and direct. He lived up to every promise he ever made.

  “I hope so,” she said, her voice a soft whisper. She brushed his wavy hair with her fingertips. If there was a better man, a stronger and gentler man, she’d never known him in her life. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she tucked her chin down to wipe them from her face.

  When she looked up, the door was open, and Dylan Walker was gone.

  She punched 9-1-1 on her phone’s keypad.

  “We’re going to be all right,” she said as the call went through. “All of us. Walker’s not going to get what he wants.”

  Deep down, she wasn’t so sure. She told the dispatcher where she was, and she uttered the words that no cop every wants to say: “There’s an officer down . . .” She gripped Chris’s hand and told him once more to hang on, help would be there.

  “You’re going to make it, Chris.”

  He nodded.

  The bars on her phone flickered and the call to help was gone. She’d told the dispatcher all she could. Emily Kenyon sat on the floor and cradled his head in her lap. The fire crackled, the overstuffed sofa beckoned. But everything about the scene was wrong for the events consuming her. It was not a romantic getaway for two. It was a crime scene redux. Reynard Tuttle. Christopher Collier. God, please help me. Help me. Help Chris, she thought.

  A whisper from Christopher stopped her prayer.

  “I have an idea where Walker is,” he said.

  Emily wasn’t sure if he was delirious or not. His eyes were hooded and his voice weak. “Closer,” he said.

  She pressed her ear to his warm mouth, nearly grazing it. “The red clay. I’ve been there . . .”

  “Where?”

  “Red—”

  Nothing more came from his lips. Chris slipped into unconsciousness.

  “Where?”

  But nothing.

  Emily felt for his pulse. Nothing. She was panicking and could no longer tell if she was feeling her own heartbeat or his.

  “Chris! Don’t leave me!”

  Again, nothing.

  Emily tried harder. She shook him. Was he breathing? She felt a puff of air flow from his lips. Last breath? God, no! Finally, she felt the thump, thump of his heart. It was weak, but steady. She wanted to cry. It was more than her missing daughter, as if there could be any more. It was also this man, this gentle, smart, and caring man that seemed so vulnerable and so much in danger.

  It passed through her mind and she fought it: Was this all her fault?

  “Don’t leave me,” she said, her words desperate and loud, as if the volume of her concern could snap him out of the darkness. The clock above the fireplace inched later and later.

  Emily heard the roar of a thunderclap and the pounding of gale force winds off the roiling Pacific. But the evenness of the noise indicated something else, something so welcomed. It was the answer to a prayer and proof that the dispatcher had taken down all the information. Emily placed Christopher’s head on the floor and ran toward the door and began to flash a message to the pilot by flipping the switch to the floodlights.

  She didn’t use Morse code. Just a quick succession of light and dark to signal the message that could save Chris Collier: “We’re here!”

  A hospital helicopter landed on the wide beach in front of the cabin and two EMTs and a nurse were on the ground and in the cabin in less than a minute. Within five minutes, Emily and Chris were onboard; she saw their cars parked just down from the cabin, a bright light pouring from the picture window facing the ocean.

  It was silly and she knew it, but Emily wished she’d thought to turn off the lights.

  The helicopter lifted and was sucked up into the black sky.

  “Officer, you need to be belted in,” an EMT, a man of no more than twenty-four, told Emily as she hovered over the sagging frame of a man she cared deeply about, a man who was there in harm’s way for her.

  For her daughter.

  “I’m not letting go of Christopher. You understand?”

  The young man acquiesced. There was no messing with Emily Kenyon right then.

  “All right,” he said, “I’m going to pretend I didn’t notice.”

  “You do that. And you tell your pilot to get to the goddamn hospital as fast as he can.”

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Wednesday, 3:30 P.M., Seattle

  Emily sat in a plastic chair in a grim hospital room in Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center, the region’s prime trauma unit. White walls and floors had not yet seen the mauve and taupe makeover of most hospitals. It was cold, antiseptic, and anything but homey. But for Emily Kenyon, it felt like the greatest place in the world just then. Christopher was drugged up, but peaceful. He was alive! Flowers from friends in the department filled the deep sill of the window. A banner generated by someone’s ancient dot matrix printer spelled out GET WELL CHRIS! over his bed. A nurse in a blue-and-white smock fiddled with one of the tubes that connected Christopher Collier to an array of bags—saline, pain meds.

  “You all right? You really ought to go home, Officer.”

  “I’m fine. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Suit yourself,” the nurse said. “His vitals are good. Should be waking up any time now. Might as well get some Should be waking up any time now. Might as well get some coffee. Machine’s down the hall.”

  Even machine coffee sounded good. Emily studied Chris’s face for a clue about his consciousness. But he was still. A minute away wouldn’t matter. When she returned, she nearly dropped the Styrofoam cup full of what she now considered the world’s worst coffee.

  “Emily. Are you here?” Chris said, his tired eyes lighting up just a little when she came into view.

  She hurried to his bedside and patted his hand. “Where else would I be?”

  “Did you find Jenna?”

  For the first time, tears came, rolling down her cheeks. But there was no whimpering, no sobs, just the release of a nightmare. She knew his question was out of
genuine concern, but it felt wrong to pounce on her missing daughter’s case the second the man woke from surgery.

  “No, Chris. No. You had me so worried.” She bent over him, “You feel better?”

  “I’d feel a lot better if I could get out of here to help you find your little girl and hunt down that asshole.”

  His voice was a near wheeze. He was a big man, but he looked so small and helpless it nearly broke Emily’s heart. Had this been her fault, too? Had she led him to disaster once more? The bullet missed Christopher’s heart, but had to be surgically removed from his lungs. He’d be breathing like a leaky tire for quite some time, but he’d recover. That was the one bit of good news that came that day.

  “I’m going back to Copper Beach,” she said.

  “To find her?”

  “Yeah,” she said. She touched his hand. “I have to do something.”

  Christopher looked up at her and nodded. “Emily, I’ve an idea where to look.”

  Emily’s eyes widened and she felt herself sink closer to him, to capture what he said. She almost assumed that he’d been hopped up on morphine, but the look in his eyes was clear. He did have an idea.

  “Where?”

  “Remember the red clay dust Walker tracked around the cabin?”

  She did. “Yes. You mentioned it before you blacked out.”

  “There’s a formation not far from Copper Beach. Red clay isn’t all that rare near there, but there is a place that might be the kind of hideaway a piece of garbage like Walker might like. I remember going there a few years ago with the kids.”

  Emily recalled the events of the evening of the shooting. She remembered how the red clay had clung to the soles of Walker’s shoes. It had been wet, then dried and flaked off.

  “Where?”

  “There’s an old World War II bunker near Copper Beach. Maybe ten miles away.”

  Emily’s heart started to race. A bunker? Underground? She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, his beard’s growth pricking her lips.

  “I need a place to start looking,” she said.

  As she turned to leave, she thought she heard Christopher say something more. The words were a complete surprise, though not unwelcome.

  “What, Christopher? What did you say?”

  “I love you, Emily.”

  And just as she hoped his suggestion of where to look for Jenna, she hoped that his last words were also rooted in reality—not the steady drip of the drugs that kept him comfortable and half asleep.

  “I love you, too,” she said. She went back to him, bent down, and kissed him on the lips tenderly. “You already know that, don’t you?”

  He managed a smile. “Yeah, I do.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Thursday, 12:22 A.M., place unknown

  Emily parked in front of a weathered chain and stepped outside, her flashlight’s narrow beam barely a match for the heavy shroud of weather, an approaching storm. But, of course, none of that bothered her. Nothing could stop what had fueled her hunt since it all began—her daughter. Where was Jenna? Before the last bars on her cell phone died, she’d talked to Olga Morris-Cerrino about what had happened and where she was going. Olga told her that she’d heard through her pal at Seattle PD that local cops had requested infrared flybys to search for Jenna.

  “My daughter is alive,” she said. “We don’t need to look for a goddamned hot spot.”

  No one could steal her hope. Though some tried. The worst had been her ex-husband. His last remarks could not have been crueler. His words were like wedding rice in the face, spiny and sharp, unexpected. How she had ever loved him was lost forever as his vitriolic words came back to her.

  “This comes down on you, Emily. You’ve really messed up this time. With our own daughter!”

  Only Olga had seemed adamant that Jenna would be found. “To think otherwise, is to lose her,” she told Emily when she saw her outside Christopher’s hospital room.

  “I know.” Emily’s voice was soft and her emotions fragile.

  “You need to get a grip,” Olga said. “You’re stronger than this and your daughter depends on you.” She looked around the hallway; several other cops with coffee hovered nearby. “Do you want to count on them?”

  Emily shook her head. “Absolutely not.”

  Olga went on, her voice no longer hushed. “All of his vics were taken in close proximity to where he’d lived. He’s good looking and lazy. That’s the standard combination of any straight guy with a hot body and pretty face.” She tried to get Emily to smile, but she couldn’t. Instead, she hatched a plan. “I’ll work some things around here. The cops are all over this, but they’re no match for you.”

  Emily knew Olga was right.

  “There’s an old World War II bunker not far from the cabin. Chris thinks I should go there. I sure can’t just wait here.”

  Emily felt her way along the iron chain, so heavy and rusted. Probably a relic from a shipwreck, the chain was meant to keep interlopers and vandals from the bunker. She was nearly out of breath, though she had barely exerted herself. So hard to breathe in this wind.

  The weather could not have been worse, and for once, the radio weather report could not have been more accurate: “Gale force winds on the coast; small craft advisories in all Washington coastal waters. . . .”

  She pulled her coat tighter and followed the length of the chain, searching for a bolt or a latch of some kind, but found none. I don’t want to have to walk up there, she thought, eyeing the impossibly steep and rain-washed road to top of the bluff and the bunker. She kicked at the chain, but it stayed anchored by the four-foot creosote pilings that had been jammed into the sandy soil. She’d have no choice but to completely brave the elements and walk. She went back to the car, turned off the engine, dimmed the headlights, and grabbed a heavy Maglite from the glove box.

  A second later, the flashlight’s beam poking though the darkness, Emily was over the chain and in search of her daughter. She had gone directly from Christopher’s hospital room to this desolate spot. If Jenna was in there, she didn’t want her to wait one minute longer than she had to for her mom. She had to get her out of there as soon as she could.

  Before it’s too late. Before she dies. Before my life is over.

  The bunker had been built on a promontory above the Pacific in World War II. It was one of several positioned around Washington state in the event that the Japanese had somehow launched a secret offensive to invade the West Coast. After it had been abandoned for decades, the locals had tried to make it a tourist destination but as the concrete interior that had once housed a pair of sixteen–foot cannons began to crumble, the state shut down the site and posted a series of WARNING and DANGER signs.

  As Emily trudged her way up the darkened bluff, she could see that the heavy chain had not been a complete deterrent—several beer cans and even some paper plates indicated that the bunker might have been a party spot; charred logs indicated a campsite. Tire tracks from motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles had slashed the sandy soil with ruts that now collected water. A dozen little streams ran down the hillside, the wind roared, and she pulled her jacket closer. The cold air sliced every inch of her exposed skin.

  Jenna, she thought, where are you? She didn’t call out. The noise of the storm made any kind of utterance completely impractical. And if that had not been the case, Emily would have kept her mouth shut as a precaution. She worried if Jenna’s captor was within the sound of her voice. If he was, there was no need to tip him off. Surprise and her Glock—warm from her constant touch—were among the things she had going for her. But neither were her greatest source of strength and power; finding Jenna stood above all.

  My daughter’s out there and I’m not leaving until I find her and bring her home.

  Something screamed. Startled, Emily looked up and into the night sky, a boiling brew of clouds. Just a seabird. She was almost there. The bunker was twenty yards away, behind a hedge of sea grasses and spruce trees so tortur
ed by the elements they looked like alarmed figures fleeing the waves of the Pacific. The trek to the top of the bluff had taken no more than ten minutes, but with each step she felt as if the sinking sand would steal her feet. Here. I’m here. But where are you? Where is the bunker?

  Emily steadied herself on the grassy and sandy layer that covered the concrete slab roof of the secluded bunker. She looked around with her light, finally tracing the edges of the roofline beneath her feet. Waving the flashlight’s beam toward the ocean, she could distinguish the crisp edge of the bunker’s camouflaged covering. Bracing herself against the elements, she moved slowly toward its face.

  Emily could hear the surf of the Pacific two hundred feet below, pounding the embankment with a relentless fury. Gooseflesh consumed her body. Since she could barely see, she climbed down a ledge backward, facing toward the edge of the cliff. She expected it was no more than ten yards away. There was no other way down, at least none she could see with a flashlight that only produced a strong beam when she rocked it back and forth, shifting the weakening batteries.

  She bent down, her back to the ocean, and slid. Her hands were frozen and wet, but she barely used them for grasping; they’d become more like hooks than hands. She dropped ten feet, feeling the relief that came when her feet rested on the packed red clay and sand of the earth.

  The red clay.

  She was close. Close to finding Jenna. Her heart pounded with such a hurried force, she worried that she might have a heart attack. She’d die right there. No one would find her. No one would find her daughter. Her lips were blue, and vapors curled from her mouth as she frantically searched for a way in. All the while, a fierce wind pummeled her.

  The bunker had three openings, not really windows, but more the size of very small doors. Each had been fashioned with bars by the state’s Fish and Game Department to allow access for bats, but to deter visitors of the human kind. A sign proclaimed the bunker as a protected habitat for Townsend’s Big-eared Bats. On closer inspection, she noticed that one of the bars could easily be removed. It was clear by the color and condition of the bar—darker and smoother than the others—that it had been handled. It had been moved. She tucked the flashlight under her armpit, its beam scattering in the wrong direction. She pulled and twisted and the middle bar came loose. She dropped it and it fell with a thud into the sand.