Erin Solomon Mysteries, Books 1 - 5

by Jen Blood

  And neither did Jesup Barnel, apparently.

  “One more thing,” I said before we left. Ashley actually smiled—a sad smile, the one I’d seen the most during our marriage.

  “There always is, Diggs. What else?”

  “Who else knew? I mean—knew for sure.”

  “Barnel, of course…”

  “But how did Barnel find out?” I pressed. “Sally never would have said anything. And I can’t imagine Danny or Casey would breathe a word about it.”

  “I never figured that out,” she admitted. “Far as I know, the only people who knew were Wyatt, Danny, Casey, and me. Sorry. I wish I could be more help.”

  “No,” I said. “This was good—thanks. I should have come to you from the start.”

  She laughed. Angus grinned, watching her like she was the center of the universe. “Well, I don’t know how likely I would’ve been to talk to you if the world weren’t ending.”

  “Right,” I agreed. “Good point.”

  Juarez and I stood. “If they’ve already killed Wyatt and Sophie, we should make sure someone’s watching Casey,” Juarez said—something I’d just been thinking myself.

  He excused himself to get on the horn with the hospital. I rested my hand on Angus’s downy head.

  “He’s a beautiful boy, Ash,” I said. “Terry’s a lucky man. I always said you’d make a good mom.”

  “You did,” she agreed. “I never thought I’d say this, but one of these days, you might even make an all right father.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I said with a laugh. I shuffled my feet, and with some effort managed to hold her eye. “I’m sorry about that crack earlier—if I made it seem like I’m just dismissing what happened to Sophie and Casey. You and I will never see eye to eye on the issue, but I don’t take it lightly.”

  “I know that. Try as you might to make people think otherwise, there’s not much you take lightly,” she said. She took a breath and nodded toward the door. “And that’s enough mending fences today. Now I need you to go out there and figure out what the hell is happening—and stop it—so this isn’t all the time I get with my boy here.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Lay low today, okay? Keep the doors locked, and try to get that husband of yours back before curfew tonight. Mae mentioned she might be coming over with the kids later?”

  “They should be here soon,” Ashley agreed. Juarez returned, looking pained.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Casey’s not in the hospital—someone claiming to be her father checked her out about an hour ago. And I talked to Blaze. They started looking out past the old property lines and found something at Barnel’s camp. We need to get over there.”

  We said a hasty goodbye and were soon on our way. I was almost out the front door, leaving behind this strange house that had once been my home, when I heard Ashley call after me.

  “Take it easy, all right, Diggs?” I looked back at her, standing in the living room we once shared. “You’re not my favorite person, but I still like the world a little bit better with you in it.”

  “It’s mutual, Ash,” I said. “I’ll be careful.”

  Chapter Eighteen - Solomon

  15:05:00

  It was clear from the start that Agent Blaze and I would never be BFFs. My first clue was when she insisted we leave Grace and my “mangy sheepdog” at the hotel, because she had enough to worry about saving the town and keeping my ass out of trouble without adding a bunch of mutts to the mix. I would have argued that Einstein was neither mangy nor a sheepdog, but… Well, Blaze scared the living bejeezus out of me. And I could actually see her point—I’m not completely irrational all the time, contrary to popular belief. We settled the dogs at the hotel and I left them with extra biscuits and a stern warning not to raid the mini bar, then I got in the back of Blaze’s SUV with another of the agents, and we set out.

  By nine a.m., it felt like I’d been up for a month instead of just a couple of days. This is what happens when you start taking care of yourself—your tolerance goes straight to hell. We’d been driving aimlessly for hours, tracking down Barnel’s followers and putting out fires—literally. We were doing just that when Buddy Holloway called saying he’d found something at the Barnel compound.

  My adrenaline surged. We’d just gotten word that Casey Clinton and a couple of the other kids in the explosion had disappeared from the hospital. If Barnel’s people were behind that, we assumed they’d taken their hostages into the woods somewhere. The energy among the other agents—including Agent Keith, sitting just a little too close beside me—had been flagging, but the news got everyone jazzed. Blaze pulled a U-turn in the middle of the road, and we headed off in the opposite direction to rendezvous with Buddy.

  The Barnel compound was deep in the woods, the only path to get there a virtually impenetrable dirt road. From there, it was another half mile or so along a damp, well-traveled trail with National Guardsmen leading the march and Agent Keith and me bringing up the rear. The woods were cool and wet, new leaves on the trees and the fresh air sweet enough to taste. We reached a muddy clearing where half a dozen ramshackle one-room cabins were built close to one another, a well and a fire pit at the center. A wooden sign hanging above read, “Let Jesus Lead You Home.”

  I turned at a particularly nasty stench off to our left, and quickly switched direction once I realized the source: a pigpen, one sow and three piglets dead inside. Their throats were slit, flies buzzing over the open wounds.

  Lovely.

  A few yards farther down another path we found what I assumed was Barnel’s version of a meeting house: a massive octagonal building with a sign reading “Redemption Hall” above the stately double doors. A soldier sat on the steps waiting for us—Private Abbott, I recalled from the briefing earlier. He was a redhead in camouflage with a buzzcut and an overbite who barely looked old enough to vote.

  “We’re set up inside,” Abbott said.

  He gestured for our crew to go on ahead, which we did. I followed Blaze up five wooden steps, then through the double doors.

  The rest of the compound might seem like the set for some bizarre Appalachian reality show, but Barnel had pulled out all the stops for Redemption Hall. Bleachers all the way around passed for stadium seating, with a red-carpeted aisle leading to a round pulpit in the center with a podium, speakers, and a baptismal tank.

  The pièce de résistance was an archaic-looking dentist’s chair outfitted with straps to restrain Barnel’s unlucky subjects. Behind that was a large wooden box that I didn’t want anything to do with; the mesh windows and a padlock were the only thing that kept more of Barnel’s fanged “babies” from escaping and having their way with the lot of us. I’d never been a fan of snakes, but Diggs’ encounter the other night had really sealed that for me.

  Juarez, Diggs, and Buddy Holloway were gathered around the podium with half a dozen soldiers and a couple of agents when we arrived. We joined them and got the rundown on what they’d found: an occupied cabin about a mile into the woods that had been spotted by helicopters. Soldiers had already been there and back, and so far hadn’t come across any surveillance, security, or traps designed to keep people away.

  “You didn’t find anything at all?” Diggs asked skeptically.

  “Maybe Barnel was counting on being well hidden enough not to worry about that kind of thing,” Juarez said. He didn’t sound convinced.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” Abbott said. “I can’t give you the why—only what we’ve found. Or haven’t, as the case may be. And these woods are clean.”

  “And the cabin?” Blaze asked.

  “That’s more of a problem,” Abbott said. “It’s a mile into the brush, due east. Infrared shows four armed subjects on the ground floor—we’ve had eyes on two. Both female.” He looked uncomfortable.

  “That’s a problem?” Juarez asked.

  “One’s just a kid—not more than fifteen, maybe sixteen years old. The othe
r one is maybe seventy.”

  “Barnel has a big extended family,” Diggs said. “I wouldn’t put it past him to use them out here. Could be his wife in there with the girl.”

  Blaze frowned, but made no comment. “Is there any sign of Barnel?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Are there others in the building?”

  “That’s where the problem comes in,” Abbott said. “There’s a fortified cellar with ten that we’ve seen so far—kids mostly, and an elderly couple guarding them with rifles. Deputy Holloway helped us find a back way in, so we’ve actually been able to get inside to see what we’re dealing with.”

  “Inside how?” I asked.

  “Tunnels,” Buddy said. “I took a gamble, figured the reverend would be paranoid enough to want a second way out.”

  “But no one was guarding that exit? You don’t think that’s a little weird?” Diggs asked.

  “I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but it does seem like if he went to the trouble of building this place, he would have put a little energy in protecting himself. We’ll proceed with caution. Happy?” she asked Diggs.

  “Yes. Thank you,” Diggs agreed.

  “Good. So, what did you find?” she asked Abbott.

  The soldier took out a camera and started scrolling through the pictures, starting with the people on the ground floor they’d be squaring off against. The first was of a little old woman with her hair back in a bun, a hard stare in her dark eyes. It took me a minute before I recognized her as the one who’d started singing just about the time Barnel was shot in Miller’s Field two nights ago.

  Blaze flipped to the next picture, showing a teenage girl in the by-now-familiar ankle-length dress, her long blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. She held a rifle in one hand. She looked vaguely familiar—I assumed also from the tent meeting. Diggs studied her for a minute.

  “I think that’s Jessie Barnel—one of the grandkids. He’s got a whole posse of them. Smart girl; she made National Honor Society this year. She’s the last one I would have expected to be involved.”

  I didn’t ask how, exactly, Diggs knew that. If I stopped to question half the seemingly irrelevant facts Diggs has floating around in his noggin, we’d never get anything done. From there we moved onto the cellar, and the real problem we were up against.

  The basement itself wasn’t noteworthy, just a large room with a dirt floor, stone walls, and a low ceiling. A bare bulb hung from a wooden beam. There was a wooden table at the center with a plastic pitcher, a half-eaten plate of sandwiches, and a deck of UNO cards. Just as Abbott had said, an old couple stood guard, keeping track of the kids—eight of them.

  “That’s Ray Barnel and his wife, Etta,” Diggs said. “Ray is the reverend’s brother.”

  “So he really is keeping this in the family,” Blaze said.

  The next photo showed a couple of the kids seated at the table. Another photo showed four or five crowded in together on a double mattress. I stopped at sight of a little blonde girl with her thumb in her mouth, and a boy of seven or eight watching over her like it was his mission in life.

  My stomach dropped. “That’s Casey Clinton’s brother and sister,” I said. “What the hell are they doing in there?”

  Blaze raised her hand to hold me off, suddenly tense. “That’s not my biggest concern right now.” She looked at Abbott. “What the hell is that?”

  I had to squint to see what she was pointing to: a small bundle of cylindrical tubes, barely visible beside the wooden stairs leading out. Abbott frowned and flipped to the next picture—a close-up of the same bundle.

  “Dynamite,” he said. “The whole place is rigged with it. That’s why we didn’t just move in and take the kids out. I’m guessing they have the detonator up top, but we weren’t able to find it or determine whether we’re looking at a timer or a remote trigger. There’s no sign of a blasting cap.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Blaze said, flipping back through the pictures. “Those are homemade. That’s why they didn’t bother with security: when you have that many explosives, you don’t need somebody watching the place. We make a single wrong move and that entire house comes down on those kids.”

  “If we take our time, we can get everyone out,” Juarez said. “We just can’t lose our heads. I know we’re on a deadline, but if we rush this, no one’s coming out alive.”

  “There’s a problem with that,” Abbott said.

  “What?” Blaze snapped.

  “That,” he said. He indicated the pitcher I’d noticed beside the sandwiches in one of the photos. Next to it was a vial, so small that it was barely visible.

  “What are we looking at?” I asked.

  “Cyanide,” Blaze said softly. The word alone sent a chill through me. “They’re gonna poison them. Before they ever set off any explosives, they’ll just tell the kids to drink up. Everyone goes to sleep…”

  “And no one wakes up,” Juarez finished grimly.

  ◊◊◊◊◊

  Once we knew what we were facing, Blaze got everyone motivated and we headed into the forest together. The second the woods closed in this time, I felt the same sense of panic that had all but buried me just after Black Falls. I’d been avoiding the woods for a while, but obviously there wasn’t much choice now.

  Blaze and Juarez and the rest of the team were up ahead, absorbed in the mission. I took a breath, but the air went down wrong and my heart sped up while my chest got tighter. I kept my head down and put one foot in front of the other. Sometimes, that’s the best you can hope for.

  The soldiers hadn’t been kidding when they’d said Barnel’s cabin was well hidden. If I’d been on my own, I think I would have tripped over the damned thing before I saw it: a small wooden cabin with a front porch and boarded windows, almost completely buried in the undergrowth. By the time we got there, I was lightheaded from all the fresh air not getting to my lungs. The others circled up while I stood on the sidelines, waiting for some direction. I didn’t even know what the hell I was doing out there; Diggs knew the area and he knew Barnel, so he could clearly add something to the mix.

  Other than mind-numbing terror, I wasn’t sure what I brought to the table.

  They set Diggs and me and a couple of agents up out of the way with a video feed of the cellar, and Blaze ordered us to keep still. I sat on a fallen tree and didn’t speak. On the little screen in front of us, I could see half a dozen of the kids now gathered around the table playing UNO. Casey’s brother and sister had joined in. The pitcher stood between them, the vial still full beside it.

  The air smelled damp and clean, the byproduct of a rainy spring. It occurred to me that the paths were wet enough that you wouldn’t hear someone coming from behind. I thought of Will Rainier’s hand twisted in my hair, a knife blade across my cheek and his mouth at my ear. Every time I catch you, I get a little more. That’s the game. So far, breathing wasn’t getting any easier.

  “So… David Bowie? Cake? Prince, for sure,” Diggs said quietly as he sat down beside me. I jumped, my heart hammering. He leaned in a little, voice low and light, his hand falling to the small of my back. “Keep breathing, Sol. It’s just another jungle, kid.”

  My heart slowed. I gave myself a minute before I responded. “Prince what?” I asked. To my relief, I didn’t sound nearly as shaky as I felt.

  “Your top twenty-four,” he said.

  Of course. “I told you—I’m not playing that game with you.”

  “Why not? I won’t judge.”

  I scoffed. I felt my breathing slowly shift. “Sure you won’t.”

  “Don’t you want to know my top twenty-four?” he whispered, close to my ear.

  “I already know them.” He gave me a look that suggested I was full of shit, which I chose to ignore. “What? You don’t think I’ve been paying attention all these years? Twenty bucks says I can name every one of them,” I said. “In order.”

  “If you do me, does that mean I get to do you?” he asked.

>   I rolled my eyes. Before I could respond, Blaze took her place in a little clearing in front of the house. I held up my hand to Diggs. “Hang on. I think the games are about to begin.”

  From our vantage, safely out of the line of fire, I could just see Blaze take another step forward with megaphone in hand. The second she was in the open, someone got a shot off from inside the house, kicking up the dirt a couple of yards from Blaze’s feet. She backed up, holding up a hand to keep anyone from firing back.

  “My name is Special Agent Allie Blaze,” she said once she was safely under cover again. “I’m with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’d like to end this before anyone gets hurt—is there someone in there I could speak with?”

  On our subterranean camera, a couple of the kids looked up anxiously at the sound of the gunshot. Willa Clinton, Casey’s little sister, started to cry. The old couple gathered everyone together around the table. I eyed the vial beside the pitcher.

  After an eternity and a half, the muzzle of a shotgun appeared in the front doorway of the cabin. The teenage girl we’d seen in the photo emerged, the gun raised to her chest, sights trained on Blaze.

  “We don’t have any quarrel with you,” she said. Her voice was strained, her arms shaking under the weight of the gun she held. “So please just get on out of here.”

  I’d expected some backwoods Daisy Mae spouting scripture, but this girl was anything but. She had braces and a patch of acne on her forehead, and the fear in her eyes was palpable.

  “I’m sorry,” Blaze said, “but I can’t go yet—not until everyone in there gets out safely and I’m able to locate Reverend Barnel. That’s my only job here. Can you tell me your name?”

  The girl hesitated. It looked like she’d been crying. “Jessie,” she said after a second, confirming what Diggs had said. “Jessie Barnel. Nobody’s getting out of here, though—you may as well just forget it. My granddaddy saw to that… He’s goin’ back to the beginning, he said. Back to where it all went wrong. Granddaddy got word from on high. He’s to start there. We’ll be goin’ home with the Lord by sundown, Miss.”