by Julie Miller
She took a step back. She felt shaky as though waking from a nightmare. But she hadn’t woken up yet, the nightmare was in full swing. It wouldn’t be over until Charlie and she were racing off to anonymity and this time she would not goof it up.
“You look unconvinced,” Chance said. “Well, think about it. We moseyed about, we went shopping, we ate dinner, we made out in a parked vehicle and then we had an exhilarating stroll through a tunnel. Now I’m kissing you good-night on your doorstep. In my book, that’s a date.”
She’d been dating while Charlie was in the hands of kidnappers? Is that how Chance saw this night? Is that how she saw it? “It’s been an...odd...day,” she said.
“But tomorrow we’re going to find Charlie,” he assured her.
That’s what I told myself this morning and I’m no closer than I was! It’s not Chance’s fault—it’s my own. She murmured good-night as she quickly slipped inside her apartment and closed the door.
She emptied her pockets onto the counter, wincing when she saw the barbiturate bottle. Damn Jeremy to hell.
A rap on the door drew her attention and she sighed. She did not want to see or talk to Chance without some time apart to think. She opened the door intending to tell him to go away, but it wasn’t him standing on her doorstep.
“May I come in?” the man asked and proceeded over the threshold before she could utter a word.
CHAPTER NINE
After five minutes of preoccupied walking, Chance turned around and retraced his steps to Lily’s door. He raised his hand to knock and then dropped it. Once again he left only this time he kept going.
Of all the women, he had to be stuck on her. What in the hell was wrong with him? Okay, okay, it wasn’t really him, it was her. Prickly and sensitive and utterly infuriating. For two cents, he’d...
He’d nothing. But there’d been a change in her before she closed the door. It was like she’d pulled the shades, turned off the light, retreated inside herself, shutting him away.
Apart from her now, he reviewed his behavior in light of the fact that her son was missing. Had he come across as a shallow beast interested only in his own pursuits? Damn it, didn’t she know or trust him more than that?
The answer was so obvious it hurt. The answer was no. She’d proven it over and over again and she’d tried to warn him that was how she felt. Well, he wouldn’t walk out on her or Charlie, but he had to get his mind out of the bedroom and fix this situation so he could go home where he wasn’t constantly being second-guessed.
He entered the bunker and picked his way back to the tunnel entrance, feeling around in the dark until he found the right box and the door swung open. A second later, entrance once more concealed, he jogged toward the church, his movement causing light from the lantern to dart over the dirt and boards. He kept up that pace until he got to the wide spot where he remembered the key Lily had found. Sure enough, it opened the lock on the trunk.
He lifted the lid with the sense of discovery almost everyone feels when unlocking a potential secret, but it was anticlimactic without Lily there to share it. Was that what he could look forward to from now on? Was this why his father kept getting married? Was being alone so terrible?
Hell no.
He hadn’t known what to expect he would find in the trunk but it wasn’t a half-dozen colorful spiral-bound notebooks, the kind kids take to school. He opened one of them and found it crammed with small irregular handwriting that was really tricky to read. At first he thought it was written in code, but then he decided that it was just borderline illegible. Here and there he could make out a word. He thumbed through the book looking for some clue to the writer’s identity, disappointed it hadn’t been more revealing.
And then a name popped out from the writing: Darke Fallon.
At last!
Interested now, he looked through each of the books and discovered the name reoccurred in each of them several times, always buried in the text. He squeezed his eyes closed for a moment to ease the burning sensation and tried reading again. Eventually he deciphered a whole page and realized Darke Fallon was the hero in what appeared to be a poorly written and sexually explicit series of adventure stories. In the passage Chance read, the Fallon character risks certain death to kill a man threatening his beloved.
A beloved named Tabitha.
“Damn,” Chance said to himself. That girl gets around! So did she come here or did someone from here go to the church? Judging from the bed on one end and the small trunk in the middle, someone from White Cliff went to Greenville. Unless someone from Greenville knew about this tunnel and used it as a hiding place for his or her work.
Okay, so Darke Fallon wasn’t a real person, was that what this meant? He was a character created by someone with a good imagination and exceptionally poor writing skills? If that was true, it would explain why the police hadn’t been able to track him down. Chance rubbed his eyes again. He was tired deep down inside and it was getting hard to think.
Maria had teenage boys, one of whom Betsy Connor said was cute. He’d met Dennis, a nice enough looking kid, but he seemed kind of unworldly when it came to relationships, and it was hard merging the image of a guy who spent his off time planning which new assault weapon he was going to buy with the lothario in the stories.
Had the person who created Darke Fallon been the same person who later killed Wallace Connor? Regardless of this fictional character, a real-life human had confessed and then killed himself and it was that man, no matter what name he gave, they had been unable to trace. Yet virtually on the eve of his competency trial, he’d chosen to die rather than come clean. Why? What, if anything, did these notebooks mean? Chance checked each again, looking for another name, but the only ones he could see were Darke Fallon and Tabitha. There wasn’t a single thing Chance could see in any of the notebooks that identified who might have written them.
As he stacked the binders back in the trunk, he found a sealed envelope and an unopened packet of sunflower seeds. If the seeds were a clue, they seemed as generic as one could get.
But hadn’t Dennis said something about his cousin liking sunflower seeds? Not step-cousin, either. Hadn’t he mentioned smuggling bags of them out of his mother’s store?
He opened the envelope and shook out a few photos with an old fashioned look to them. One was of an older woman with a long blond braid but the rest appeared to be trophies of hunts. A buck, a string of fish, quail.
He put everything back and relocked the trunk then continued on through the tunnel, debating whether or not he should call Lily and tell her what he’d found. If Fallon was a character written by someone who lived in White Cliff, then that could mean the family lived there just as they’d all assumed—and that would mean Charlie was close and maybe even safe. But if the notebooks belonged to someone from the Greenville end of the tunnel, everything got rearranged and without a name and an even larger population to deal with, where did that leave them?
It was beginning to appear they were going to have to bite the bullet and call the police and hope to God that Charlie wasn’t caught in the middle. Lily had suggested that was just what she would do if this wasn’t resolved soon and he didn’t blame her.
Back at the church, he was relieved to find the maintenance room empty of randy teenagers. He moved quickly but almost entirely in the dark as Lily had the tiny flashlight with her and he didn’t dare take the lantern in case someone missed it. The building looming above him seemed very large and heavy with the past. It was extremely quiet as though it held its breath, so quiet he could hear his feet crunch on something as he crossed the maintenance room. His imagination supplied the image of scattering cockroaches and he quickened his pace.
He received another surprise that night when he discovered the back door of the church was now locked and couldn’t be opened, even from the inside. He stood there a s
econd, trying to figure out if Tabitha or Todd had locked it, and then decided it didn’t matter. What was important was to get out of there without becoming entangled in some legal issue.
Another question sprang to mind as he searched for a glimmer of light that would indicate a window facing the back of the property instead of the street. The waitress at the diner had said Tabitha’s grandfather used to be a preacher. Had this been his church? If it had, was he the one responsible for the tunnel? Who owned the church now?
And what about those memorial grassy mounds built by Thomas Brighton, Robert Brighton’s father. The tunnel was old, the church was old, the mounds were old. Was that where all the dirt that came out of the tunnel had gone to: those mounds? If so, it would mean the White Cliff end of things had originated the tunnel.
So what? That had to be decades ago, long before Lily was born, to say nothing of her son.
His hand finally touched the cool smooth surface of glass. He would have to break the window, he knew that, and it worried him that if someone noticed, they would find the glass outside instead of inside and know someone had been in here. He couldn’t wait forever, though, so with the quick decision-making prowess a man working with unpredictable animals his whole life learns to hone, he wrapped his fist in his bandana and smashed it through the glass.
The noise it made seemed way out of proportion to the small hole he’d created. Using the bandana, he quickly took out enough shards to get a hold of the boards nailed to the outside. Eventually, he managed to loosen a couple of those and that resulted in additional broken glass. It was a tight fit and a nine-foot fall to the ground once he got through, but he got up quickly. There was no way to replace the boards so they’d look exactly as they had, but he propped them as well as he could and took the time to sweep the broken glass on the ground beneath the branches of the bush that had helped break his fall.
The good news was that the window not only did not face the street, it didn’t even face the back of the church. Instead it was one of the windows on the wooded side of the property. No one would notice it had been broken unless they looked for it. He walked around to the street and buried his hands in his pockets as he finally noticed he’d cut himself in a few places. The walk back to the diner and his truck was longer than he remembered and he arrived there beginning to feel the effects of the miles he’d put in that night.
Once in the truck, he took out his cell phone and saw that it was three-fifteen in the morning. He wanted to call Lily in the worst possible way, but she’d be asleep by now and he wasn’t sure she wanted to talk to him anyway. Instead he drove outside of Greenville where he’d noticed a frontage road, found a spot under some trees and leaned back in the uncomfortable seat. Twenty seconds later, he was out like a light.
* * *
HE AWOKE AT the crack of dawn with a stiff neck. It was very early, but he figured the bulk of White Cliff was already up and going. There was no better way to conserve power like electricity and gas than by adopting nature’s light patterns as your own. Life was like that on the ranch quite often, as well, especially in the winter when frequent power outages were more likely.
He was anxious to see Lily and knew he couldn’t wait until after she came back from the school. He wasn’t sure if she intended on teaching her class today or just investigating. Last night it had sounded to him as though she’d lost all patience with playing this the White Cliff way, or his way, either, for that matter. As much as she feared he would muck things up by becoming a loose cannon, he feared she would do the same. Patience wasn’t exactly the woman’s middle name.
The guard let him in the gate and Chance drove directly to Lily’s apartment. Her car wasn’t parked where it had been the night before. Maybe school started early and maybe she’d driven to it. He wasn’t sure exactly where the school was, but the community area wasn’t that crowded—he should be able to find it. To be on the safe side, he knocked on her door in case there was another explanation about the car. He saw a note taped to the wood and read it. Come see me, it said. I know about you. It was signed Maria.
No one answered the door and as an afterthought, he twisted the knob in his hand and just about fell over when the door actually opened. The room was as impersonal as a generic motel room with the exception of a poster that showed the image of an automatic assault weapon being held aloft and the words Get yours while it’s still legal. The bed was made and the dishes were done. There were no personal effects to be seen. Lily wasn’t here and it didn’t appear she was coming back.
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” he murmured. “Try the school.” He hopped back in his truck. Happily, the town signposts were pretty clear about where things were. If he turned right, he’d apparently find an alternate route to Lake Freedom which he recalled seeing a sign for out on the road approaching White Cliff. Left would take him to Jefferson Park and the school was straight ahead. He wasn’t foolish enough to think anyone would let him waltz into a classroom, but he could search the parking lot for Lily’s car.
It wasn’t there.
It hadn’t been at Maria’s store when he drove past. Was it possible Lily had somehow found Charlie last night and taken off without saying a word to him?
Hell yes, it was possible.
But it was also possible something else had happened to her. And if something had, the possible suspects included Jeremy Block, McCord, Charlie’s kidnappers and maybe someone else he wasn’t aware of. Where did he start looking?
A van drove up and stopped behind him. A fully armed man he’d never seen before hopped ably from the van and approached the truck on foot. Chance rolled down his window.
“Mr. Reed,” the man said but it didn’t sound like much of a greeting.
“Morning,” Chance responded as amiably as he could. A movement in his mirror caught his eye and he saw two more men dressed in military fatigues and carrying weapons get out of the sliding door of the van. “Something I can do for you?” Chance added.
The man lifted his gun and pointed it at Chance’s heart. “Come with us,” he said.
Had he and Lily been seen coming and going from the bunker? “What’s going on?” he asked.
“Robert Brighton has decided you are not White Cliff material.”
“Okay, sure. If that’s his decision, but I never met the guy so it seems unfair.”
“It’s the way it is,” the man said.
“My wife is around somewhere,” Chance added. “Just let me find her...”
“She has already left.”
“Wait a second. Just—”
The other two men advanced. The one he’d been speaking to walked around and got into Chance’s passenger seat.
“Drive to the main road, please,” he said. His weapon was at ease, but Chance knew the guy would use it with little hesitation.
“Do you know what this is about?” Chance asked his passenger. He got no reply. They drove past the gate and then past Maria’s little store. The store’s neon open sign was dark. The other vehicle stayed glued to his bumper until they got to the misspelled sign about trespassing. Following barked directions, Chance stopped the truck and the man got out. “Keep driving and don’t come back,” the man said. Chance pulled onto the road. When he glanced in his rearview mirror, the gunman was still standing there, watching him.
He drove a mile or two and pulled off to the side. He tried Lily’s cell phone, but she didn’t respond.
As he figured it, these were the possibilities: she had taken off on her own and disappeared into the ether or she was still at White Cliff. If she was gone for good, she was gone. No way could he trace her again. In fact, he wouldn’t chase her even if he knew where to go. The next time she left him, she left him for good.
But that was if she left willingly. He just couldn’t believe she had, not without Charlie. And if she had Charlie, he could not beli
eve she wouldn’t have left him a message telling him so, especially after he’d accused her of being capable of such a thing.
If she was still at White Cliff, she needed help. Those folks had not been kidding around.
He got back on the road and took off for Greenville. Once in town he made a diversion to a department store where he bought fatigues and big clunky black boots. While he waited for change, he looked on the internet for a pastor Stevens, Greenville, Idaho, and found his first name was Roger. He searched for Stevens in Greenville and came up with one: Roger. The address given was a few blocks from the old church. He picked up a stepladder at the hardware store, ate the pastries out of the sack that he and Lily had bought the day before, then parked in front of a tidy redbrick house.
A knock was eventually answered by an old man in a severe black suit. A fringe of white hair surrounded his bald head and two very black eyes seemed to absorb everything in a single glance. It was almost impossible to believe this austere old guy was Tabitha’s grandfather.
There was no time for pleasantries or subtle lead-ins to his questions, and Chance paused for a second, trying to figure out how to find out what he wanted. Too late he realized he should have just gone to city hall and looked it up.
“Yes?” the old guy said. He moved his hand and Chance saw that the book he held clutched to his chest was a frayed copy of the bible. “I don’t have all day.”
Chance offered his hand and introduced himself. His gesture was met with a stern frown and nothing else. “I came to ask you about your church,” he finally said as he lowered his unshaken hand.
“I don’t have a church anymore.” Stevens started to close the door.
Chance hurried to say something that would stop him. “I mean your old church, Pastor. Or do you not keep that title after you stop preaching?”
“I keep the honorific, yes. And the answer to your question is that the good people of Greenville turned the building into a museum a few years back.”