by Jan Fields
Ian spun and rushed back to her. “Are you OK?”
“Yeah, sorry,” she said, her face burning with embarrassment. “I had some kind of cockroach in my shirt. I guess I overreacted a little.”
Ian smiled at her and picked a leaf out of her hair. “I don’t know, they have big cockroaches down here. I might have screamed a little myself.”
“Hey, listen,” Nora said. “Sounds like Annie woke them up again.”
Everyone fell quiet, and then they heard it—barking. The sound was muffled but clearly seemed to come from up ahead. They picked up the pace, trotting up the trail as quickly as they dared. Finally, they spotted signs of a building through the brush before breaking into the clearing where a low cinder-block building squatted.
The building looked much more recently built than anything Ian and Annie had seen on their previous visit. It was fairly small—as Nora had said—but the closer they got, the more clearly they could hear the dogs. Still, the sound of barking was weirdly muffled. It was as if it came from inside the building, but still far away. Annie wondered if the lack of windows in the building could be what muffled the sound so much.
They reached the strong metal door and found it firmly locked. “Looks like this is as far as we go,” Ian said.
“Such little faith,” Nora said. She pulled a small zippered pouch from the rucksack she carried. Annie leaned closer to see as Nora unzipped the pouch. The contents looked almost like dental tools to Annie.
“Lock picks?” Ian said incredulously. “You can pick locks?”
“I hung out with some wild boys during my misspent youth,” Nora said. Then she added. “Plus, I sorta wanted to be a detective. Picking locks seemed like a useful detective skill.”
She bent and concentrated on the lock, poking and twisting tools in it. Annie wondered idly if Nora could teach her to do that. With all the trouble she got into regularly with her mysteries, being able to unlock a door might be useful.
Nora hooted softly with triumph as she pulled the door open. The inside of the building was dark as pitch. Everyone stepped back in case the dogs they heard cared to rush out, but nothing inside moved. They could still hear the dogs, but the sound continued to be muffled.
“That’s just weird,” Nora said.
They slipped inside in a tight single-file line, with Ian stepping into the lead. It seemed as if the cinder blocks trapped all the heat and moisture of the island. Annie felt as if she were instantly drenched in sweat, and she wiped her face with her hand.
“Oh, wait,” Nora said once they were totally engulfed by the darkness. “I’m such an idiot! I’ve got a flashlight.” They heard the sound of her rummaging through her rucksack. “Here it is.”
As she snapped on the light, someone spoke from behind them. “Don’t move.” They all moved. They spun to face the source of the sound, and the man groaned, “You people don’t follow directions worth anything!”
“Who are you?” Ian demanded.
The man they faced didn’t look at all familiar. He was broad-shouldered with thick muscles straining against the fabric of his T-shirt. His head was shaved down to stubble, and he sported a large adhesive bandage on his forehead. In his right hand, he held a very scary gun.
“I’ve got the gun,” the man said. “I make the demands, so put your hands up!”
Annie and her friends raised their hands.
“Do you know this guy?” Ian asked, looking at Nora.
She shook her head. “He’s not local.”
“Did I ask you people to chat?” The man gestured with his gun. “We’re heading downstairs. Turn around. The stairs are just ahead of you. Find them and get moving.”
“Downstairs?” Annie turned and looked around, but most of the room was too dark to see. Nora’s flashlight beam swung around, finally hitting a low wall in the middle of the room. They walked toward it and soon saw it ran alongside the stairs the man mentioned.
Nora led the way down the stairs, and the others followed. Ian dropped back to the rear so he was closest to the man with the gun. Annie didn’t like that at all and hoped Ian didn’t feel like he had to risk himself to save them.
At the bottom of the stairs, they met another heavy metal door. “Bang on it with your flashlight,” the gunman said.
Nora rapped on it with the flashlight, and the door swung open. Bright light flooded them, making them all blink, suddenly light-blinded.
They stumbled into a huge room. The temperature was a radical drop from the sweltering air above. Annie blinked, looking around through slitted eyes. The walls of the underground room looked damp, reminding Annie that a basement on an island couldn’t possibly be a good idea.
From behind the door, a skinny man with a bulging Adam’s apple and shaggy comb-over watched them nervously. “Did you have to bring them down here, Oscar?” he asked.
“Seemed smarter than shooting them upstairs and leaving pools of blood,” the muscled gunman said.
Nora turned to look at the skinny man and groaned, “Leroy, really? You’re mixed up in this?”
“Shut up,” the gunman said, giving Nora a shove.
Annie glanced around the room, and then she gasped. “Alice!” she said. “Jim!”
Jim and Alice stood in a huge metal cage near the far back wall. They were dirty but seemed unharmed as they pressed against the bars. “Oh, Annie,” Alice said. “I’m so sorry.”
“You’ll have plenty of time for your reunion,” the gunman said. “I’ll just let y’all reconnect.” He gestured with his gun for the group to walk toward the big cage.
They were basically walking down a long aisle. On either side, big dog cages stacked two high filled most of the rest of the room. In each cage, at least one dog stared avidly at them. In a couple cages, puppies pressed against the bars of the cage with a larger dog looming over them.
The dogs were big, muscular, and almost universally black. They had short hair, to the point of looking almost hairless, and big heads with massive jaws. Small ears hugged their heads, and they had no tails at all.
When they reached the huge cage that held Jim and Alice, the gunman waved them back away from the door. “All the way to the wall, old man,” the gunman said. “You don’t want to get frisky again. Someone could get shot. Open the door, Leroy.”
“Not me,” the nervous man said. “I’m not getting near any of them. Let the girl do it.”
“Hey, little princess!” the gunman yelled. “Get out here!”
That’s when Annie got the biggest shock of all. Ellie came up from behind them and walked past quickly before shoving a key into the cage door. She turned it and pulled the door open. She didn’t make eye contact with anyone as she obeyed the gunman.
“OK, Scooby Doo gang—into the cage,” the man said. “You first, mister. I don’t want you hanging back and looking for trouble.”
Ian glared at the man but walked into the cage. Annie, Mary Beth, and Nora followed. Ellie locked the door behind them. “Ellie,” Annie called, and the girl jumped, her eyes darting to Annie. “Are you OK?”
“No fraternizing with the prisoners,” the gunman said. He grabbed Ellie by the arm and hauled her across the room. Leroy followed them, tugging nervously at his shirt collar. From the cage, Annie could see that the area closer to the stairs had been set up to store dog food and supplies. The gunman slung an arm around Ellie, and they walked through another door in the wall near the stairs.
Once the door closed, Annie turned and engulfed Alice in a hug. “I’m so glad to see you,” Annie said as she blinked back tears. “The longer we were here, the more I wondered if I’d ever see you again.”
“Me too,” Alice said.
“I know the thought crossed my mind once or twice,” Jim said from where he leaned against the far wall.
“What is going on here?” Ian said.
Jim gestured in an expansive sweep at the rows of cages. “Dogs,” he said. “They’re breeding some kind of super fighting dog.”
“Dogfights are big money,” Nora said, shaking her head sadly. “Dogs ripping each other apart while monsters bet on them.”
“That’s horrible,” Annie said.
“But why here?” Ian asked.
Jim shrugged. “The legendary curse, I imagine. If trespassers happen to hear dogs on the island, they’re blown off as over-imaginative. This place is private, off the beaten path. A pretty good lair really.”
Alice turned toward Nora. “Hi, I’m Alice MacFarlane. This is my friend Jim Parker. And you are?”
“Nora Harlow,” Nora said. “Ace reporter. Or girl most likely to get captured by evil villains. It depends on who you ask.”
“How many people are involved in this?” Ian asked. “Other than Oscar, Leroy, and Ellie.”
“Ellie is a recent addition,” Alice said. “She’s gone along with everything since she got here, but she did pass me a note.”
Alice fished it out of her jeans and held it out. The paper was creased and dirty, but the block printing was exactly like the note they’d gotten at the pizza parlor. It said: “Your friends are coming.”
“We’d hoped for more of a cavalry kind of entrance from you guys,” Jim said dryly, “and less of a fellow prisoner approach.”
Ian sighed. “Me too.”
“Anyway,” Jim said, “Oscar is the one who grabbed us from the mansion after we found one of the dogs. Leroy seems to be more in charge of covering things up.”
“Leroy is the police officer that Chief Harper mentioned?” Annie asked.
Nora nodded. “I knew Leroy was lazy, but I didn’t expect him to be tied up in this.”
“You said you found one of the dogs?” Ian asked, turning back to Jim.
“Yeah, apparently they get away now and then,” Jim said. “Though they can’t get far. They can’t swim—too much muscle.”
“They’re not bad dogs,” Alice said. “The one we found was sweet, just really big and really hungry.”
“Anyway, it seems the dogfighters were just hoping I’d take my photos and go away none the wiser,” Jim said. “Apparently the plan was to just lie low, but that changed when we found the dog and acted like we were going to take it with us to the mainland. Then Oscar came out of nowhere … .”
“And you hit him with your cane,” Ian said, smiling. “We found it. And I’m glad to know the blood wasn’t yours.”
Jim grinned back. “I really don’t like being told what to do.”
“So it’s just the two men and Ellie?” Annie asked.
Alice shook her head. “At first we thought it was just the one man. We nearly got away, until Leroy caught up to us at the cove.”
“Well, we now know why Leroy couldn’t find y’all in his searches,” Nora said.
“Chief Harper said Leroy was out of town on a family emergency,” Ian said.
“He’s been here nearly full-time since they grabbed us,” Jim said. “Oscar left for a while with some of the dogs, but he came back yesterday with Ellie.”
“Do they ever let you out of the cage?” Ian asked.
“There’s a bathroom in there,” Alice said, pointing toward the back wall with the door. “And when one of them is feeling generous, we get to go there. Otherwise … .” She gestured toward a pail in the corner of the room.
“Oh, great!” Mary Beth said.
“I’m not planning to be here long,” Ian said. “Charles Bonneau and Stella are in the boat waiting for us.”
“Bonneau? Who’s he?” Alice asked.
“He’s the brother of the Ayers woman at the inn,” Ian explained.
“She wasn’t one of our biggest fans.”
“We noticed,” Annie said. “We were lied to by a lot of people in Preacher’s Reach about you two. Have you seen anyone else from the town out here?”
Alice shook her head. “But I heard the muscled guy tell Ellie that he thought her uncle would find it much easier to stick with the program with Ellie on the island.”
“So this guy could be controlling people by threats,” Ian said. “But why would a whole town be afraid of one man?”
“Because dogfight rings are never one man,” Nora said. “One may be all we’re seeing, but power and money are wrapped up in this somehow.”
“Do you know what they’re planning to do with us?” Mary Beth asked.
“They don’t seem to have reached an agreement,” Jim said. “Oscar was in favor of killing us. I think he’s holding a grudge for the smack in the head. But Leroy doesn’t like the idea of being involved in murder. Apparently they’re waiting to hear from a more important voice in the food chain.”
“I wouldn’t bet too highly on a vote in our favor,” Nora said.
“I’m still counting on Stella and Charles,” Annie said.
“Certainly, the disappearance of six people will be a little harder to cover up than the disappearance of two,” Ian said. “Too many people know exactly where we are and why we’re here.”
Within the hour, Ellie and the gunman came out of the back room. Ellie carried sacks of food that she passed through the bars of the cage while the man watched, his gun still in his hand.
“Ellie,” Annie said softly. “Are you OK?”
The girl nodded slightly as she shoved a bottle of water into Annie’s hand.
Just as she passed the last bottle, they heard the sound of a distant explosion, followed by another. The second sounded closer and Annie could feel vibration in the floor under her feet.
“What the …?” the gunman turned sharply toward the stairs, and then back to Ellie. “You come with me.” He hauled the girl across the room and up the stairs.
“Could that be our rescue?” Nora asked.
“With explosions?” Alice said. “Isn’t that a little to dramatic to be Stella?”
“I don’t know what it was,” Ian said, turning to Nora, “but this might be a good time to try your lock-picking skills again.”
“The picks are in my rucksack,” Nora said, pointing to a spot just out of reach where the gunman had tossed it.
“That I should be able to help you with,” Jim said. Leaning heavily on the back wall, he hauled his pant leg up and quickly unstrapped one of his prosthetic legs. Holding it up, he grinned. “Instant reach extender. Just don’t lose it. I’m planning to use it to get out of here.”
Ian took the prosthetic and knelt down at the bars closest to the sack. He carefully pushed the prosthetic through the bars, snagging the rucksack strap with the foot of the prosthetic and hauling it back into the cage.
“Good fishing, Ian,” Jim said as Ian handed him back his leg.
“And thank you for the leg up—or should I say out?” Ian quipped.
Nora pulled out the lock-pick kit and went to work on the cage lock while Jim put his leg back on with Alice helping support him.
In the distance, they heard one more explosion just as Nora sprang the lock. They piled out of the cage, and Ian strode quickly toward the stairs. “Hold on,” Alice said. “We need to let the dogs out.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Mary Beth asked, looking at the massive animals in the cages. “We don’t need to fight bad guys and dogs.”
“Let’s do it this way,” Jim said. “Walk to the cage, if the dog growls, leave it. If it seems friendly, let it out. The confusion can only help us. Plus, if the guys try to destroy the evidence once we’re gone, it’ll be a lot harder to manage if the evidence is running and howling all over the island.”
“Good plan.” Ian turned to the cage nearest to him and knelt in front of it. The dog inside wagged its whole rear end when Ian spoke to it.
Annie walked tentatively to the cage closest to her. She loved animals, but the dogs were so big. She knelt in front of the cage and spoke to the dog softly. It looked at her with its big dark eyes but didn’t wag its tail like Ian’s dog. “Should I let you out?” she whispered.
The dog just stared.
Annie thought about the gunman coming back to destroy evidence. This dog could die if she left it. She carefully opened the door, stepping out of the way as she did. The dog walked out slowly before turning toward Annie. Annie tried to back up, but the cage was at her back. The dog delicately licked her hand, and then turned and raced for the stairs.
Annie nearly collapsed from relief. All around her, cages were being opened and dogs were rushing out. Without fail, they headed for the stairs. Clearly Annie and her friends weren’t the only ones who didn’t like captivity.
Finally, almost all of the cages were empty. The only cages they didn’t dare open held females with puppies. The mother dogs snarled as soon as they got close to the cage. Alice didn’t like leaving the animals behind, but they didn’t have much choice. They couldn’t fight bad guys and dogs at the same time.
With the dogs gone, the group moved toward the stairs. Since Jim still didn’t have his cane, he leaned on Alice for support. Ian moved slowly up the stairs, well aware that the man with the gun could be waiting at the top. The upper room was dim but not as pitch dark as before. The gunman had left the outside door open in his haste to track down the explosions. The light from that door and the light from the downstairs room made the upper room passable.
“It’s clear,” Ian said behind him as he quickly cleared the stairs.
When everyone stood on the upper level, he moved to the door as cautiously as he’d climbed the stairs. He took a quick look out, but no gunshot rang out, so he stepped out into the clearing, motioning for the others to follow him.
“OK, Nora,” Ian said. “From here it’s up to you. Can you find us the shortest way to the boat?”
Nora nodded and they followed her across the clearing and onto a new path they hadn’t walked before. They moved as quickly and quietly as they could until they heard rustling in the brush ahead. Everyone froze.
Time ticked by, Annie barely dared breathe, expecting the man with the gun to appear at any moment. Instead, Nora’s friend Andrew charged through the brush ahead of them, halting with a yelp when he saw the group.