Buried

by Ellison Cooper

  Sayer eyed the objects on her lap. The envelope that Adi found was brittle with age. Across the front Jake had written Sayer in his compact handwriting. Next to the pale letter, Adi’s vibrant birthday gift felt like a colorized object in a black-and-white photo. Across the top, Adi had scrawled Sayer in the looping scrawl of a young woman.

  Which one should she open first? The link to Jake, the past she was trying to move on from? Or the gift from Adi, part of the new life she was trying to build?

  Without overthinking her choice, Sayer tore open the envelope and pulled out a single piece of paper. Seeing the short note in Jake’s handwriting sent a familiar flash of grief through her body.

  In the dim light, she read the note.

  Sayer,

  If you’re reading this then the worst has happened. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what’s been going on but anything I say even now might put you in too much danger.

  Sayer grunted her disapproval.

  I know that will piss you off. I strongly suspect you will realize that my death is not what it seems. I’m asking you not to dig into whatever happened to me. Because I know you are stubborn as an ox and will completely ignore this request, my advice is to trust Holt and no one else.

  She let out a breathy laugh. Jake knew she would never walk away from this.

  I’m so sorry not to be there with you. Be careful and, no matter what you might learn or hear, never doubt that I love you with all my heart.

  Eyes on the horizon, my love.

  Jake

  A tear dripped off Sayer’s chin onto the paper and she wiped it away, not wanting to ruin Jake’s last communication. She dried her cheeks and reread the letter, this time focusing on his warning. No matter what you might learn? That sounded almost paranoid. What was Jake into before he died?

  Something about the letter triggered a spark of excitement. The thrill of the hunt was a far more comfortable emotion than grief.

  Stoking that feeling, Sayer refolded the letter and lifted Adi’s present, tearing away the wrapping paper to reveal a small photo album. On the cover it read This Is Us.

  She flipped it open to a photo of her and Adi. Sayer recognized it from the dog park where they’d been taking Vesper. The two women had their arms casually around each other. Adi had her head thrown back with laughter, while Sayer flashed a wry grin that suggested she was up to no good. The next four pages were photos of Sayer, Adi, Tino, and Vesper, with occasional appearances by Nana and Sayer’s sister and nephew.

  All of them smiling and laughing.

  The back half of the book was empty.

  Sayer unfolded the note stuck between the pages.

  Thank you for taking me in and becoming my family. Can’t wait to fill the rest of this book together. All my love, Adi.

  Sayer gently closed the album and looked at the cover. “This is us,” she whispered, throat tight with emotion.

  Adi was trying to remind her that their pasts didn’t define who they were now. That their strange little family, cobbled together through trauma and violence, could still have a joyous life to come. She thought about all the damaged lives in this case, the Wattses, Hannah and Sam, Alice Beaumont. They were all survivors of horror, but she had to believe that they could do more than just survive.

  “Hey, you awake?” Max’s voice made Sayer jump.

  “What? Yeah.” She quickly tucked the photo album and letter into the blanket.

  “Mind if I join you? I brought an extra bowl of chili just in case.” Max and Kona stepped through the curtain of rain. Max hunched over two bowls. “I brought Ez a bowl too. Turned out he was hungry.”

  Sayer took the offered chili. “Thanks.” She cleared her throat, trying to rid her voice of emotion. “That granola bar sucked.”

  “Figured we could all use a hot meal. I remember from my Pararescue days, this is the point when the team needs some basic self-care just to keep things moving forward.”

  He sat down on the porch floor and leaned against the cabin. Kona slid next to him with a heavy sigh.

  The warm chili thawed the core of Sayer’s body. They ate in silence until their bowls were empty.

  Max put his down with a heavy sigh to match Kona’s.

  “So,” Max finally said, “do you think Kyle Nelson is a killer because of what his mom did?”

  Sayer put her bowl down in Max’s and curled back into the rocking chair. “I think it’s complicated.”

  “No way I’m sleeping right now. Which means I’ve got plenty of time, if you’re willing to share your thoughts.”

  Sayer nodded, her mind still replaying the moment when Kyle walked away with Sam. “Yeah, I may never sleep again if we don’t save that little girl.”

  “Hey, as someone who just spent the last few days wondering if the girl I helped run away was in fact a serial killer, let me tell you how fun it is to beat yourself up over past mistakes.…”

  Sayer gave him a look.

  “Honest question: How could you have known it was Kyle?” Max asked.

  “I should’ve seen it. I should be able to spot these assholes.”

  “You think that’s how it really works? You study psychopaths and develop some magical psycho-sense?”

  Sayer was about to snap at Max but then let out a hard breath. “No, of course that’s not how it works. I mean, I spot psychopathic traits in people all the time, but when someone is trying to hide them, they can be really hard to see.”

  “Exactly. Which brings me back to my question. Is there something wrong with the Nelson genes? Something to do with being a chimera? Or did his mom teach him how to kill?”

  “It’s got nothing to do with him being a chimera. Chimerism can cause health problems, but it doesn’t make people violent or dangerous. With killers like Kyle, no one really knows what goes wrong or when. But they do have different brains. Remember how I told you that their entire paralimbic system is faulty? That means that they just don’t feel a normal range of emotions. I once asked a study subject to name the emotions he saw in photographs. When we got to the photo of a terrified woman, he correctly identified her emotion as fear. When I asked how he knew, he said he recognized the look from the faces of the women he was about to kill.”

  “Jesus, Sayer, that’s some nightmare fuel.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, as far as I can tell, their brains start out slightly faulty from birth, but not everyone with an underdeveloped paralimbic system becomes a serial killer. But if you put a kid with impaired emotional systems in a bad environment, then you’ve got a perfect storm for a killer like Kyle Nelson.”

  “So his brain was probably messed up from the get-go, and then his mom exposed him to some horrific things, triggering the worst-case scenario.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, is it incurable? I mean, if their brains are damaged, is that it?”

  Sayer stretched her legs and shifted to a new position. “Not entirely. There are a few juvenile facilities working with psychopathic kids. They’ve had amazing success. Basically they’re retraining their brains by rewarding desirable behaviors. The kids who go through those programs are way less likely to commit another violent crime.”

  “That’s hopeful.… Is that what your research is about?”

  “Ultimately, yeah.”

  Max smiled wistfully. “But then you’d be out of a job.”

  “A hell of a good reason to be out of work.…” Sayer trailed off, mind shifting to Holt and the fact that she still might be losing her job, though for a much less happy reason. Subject 037 might have saved Sayer’s job for now, but things were far from over.

  “Hannah mentioned some Stanford prison thing. And Nazis. You seemed to know what she meant.”

  “I think so. In the early seventies a Stanford psychology professor ran an experiment on undergrads. He took a bunch of typical Stanford students and split them randomly into two groups—prisoners and guards. The prisoners were kept in a mock prison in the basement of one of the buildings, but t
he guards worked shifts just like in a real prison.”

  “I vaguely remember this from psychology class. The guards went crazy abusing the prisoners, right?” Max asked.

  “Yeah. They quickly became abusive toward the prisoners, even though they knew the prisoners were other students. The whole experiment was supposed to last two weeks, but things got so abusive they had to stop it after only a few days.”

  “I get it—just like the Nazis where average Germans participated in the slaughter of millions.”

  “Exactly. Both examples show how easy it is to turn people into … well, monsters,” Sayer said.

  “Do you really believe that?” Max asked. “I mean, those examples sure make it seem like there might just be a monster buried inside all of us.”

  “I do think that, given the right situation, people can do some terrible things,” Sayer said slowly. “The Holocaust is evidence enough of that. But we know now that the Stanford Prison Experiment wasn’t quite as clear-cut as we once believed. It looks like the guards might have been coached to be abusive. And the idea that we are all monsters deep down completely ignores one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The Righteous Among the Nations.”

  “The what?”

  “The Righteous, they’re people who risked their own lives and the lives of their families to protect others from the Nazis.”

  “Ah,” Max said, “like Schindler?”

  “Exactly, though he’s just the most famous. There were tens of thousands of people who risked everything to save the lives of others. While I think many of us certainly have the capacity for evil, I also think we have the capacity for heroism.”

  Sayer looked over at her fellow FBI agent. He stared out at the rain, eyes clear, expression calm, but his jaw muscle bulged with involuntary tension. Kona curled against him with her head on his lap. Mind still on Jake’s letter, she thought about the nights they had sat out under the stars, talking, making love. She thought about the life she had once imagined building with him.

  But then she thought about Adi’s gift and the new life she was building. Very different from the one she had imagined before, but a happy life nonetheless. It’s what Jake would’ve wanted for her.

  Was all that about to end? What would she do if Sam Valdez didn’t make it? What would happen if she were fired from the FBI?

  “Hey.” Max put a hand on her arm. “You okay?”

  Sayer snapped out of her reverie. “What? Yeah. Just a little lost in my own head. I should try to get some actual sleep.”

  Max slowly got up and stretched. “Yeah, I hear you. Sleep well, Sayer. Tomorrow we’ll catch Kyle and save Sam.” He doffed an imaginary hat. With Kona at his side, he disappeared into the night.

  Back inside, Sayer pawed through her small bag of clothes and found everything musty and damp. The cold invaded her bones, making her injured shoulder ache. Grumbling, she crawled onto the hard cot and closed her eyes, willing away the image of Kyle’s smirk.

  She tried to do the deep breathing her physical therapist had suggested but just couldn’t find any damn inner peace.

  SOUTHERN RANGER STATION, SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK, VA

  Ezra stared at the map in the blue light of his computer screen. There had to be some way to track the location of the pit, but he just couldn’t make his brain work. His entire body quivered with exhaustion, but he wasn’t about to take a break. The second he stopped working he knew he would fall asleep and no telling how long he would be out. He could not let that happen when there was a little girl out there depending on him.

  Maybe if he hadn’t missed that Alice Beaumont was really Cricket Nelson, they could have protected the girl. He owed it to Sam to not screw up again.

  Eyes swimming, he contemplated another mug of coffee but knew that would just make him more jumpy. Instead, he looked down at his legs. He’d taken off the prosthetics while he was reading. Without overthinking what he was about to do, he reached down and pressed against one of the nerves. It felt like a shard of glass sliding into his flesh.

  He let out a sharp cry, but the pain faded as quickly as it came. Adrenaline flooded his system and he nodded, satisfied that he wouldn’t drift off anytime soon.

  “There’s got to be a way to find that pit,” he muttered. “Come on, brain, think.”

  Ezra glanced back over at Sayer’s notes from her interviews with Hannah Valdez and Alice Beaumont in the hospital. “The pit,” he said to himself. “Stuff about Stanford prison and Nazis. An overhang and a chestnut tree…” An idea occurred to him.

  His vision clear with excitement, he let his fingers fly over the keyboard.

  SAYER’S CABIN, SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK, VA

  Sayer’s phone buzzed against her chest and she bolted upright, almost knocking it to the floor.

  She fumbled it to her face and squinted at the screen. Four-thirty A.M. Unknown number.

  “Agent Altair,” she mumbled, still half asleep.

  “Sorry to wake you, Agent Altair, but, uh, this is Officer Teegan with the Charlottesville Police. Uh, Hannah Valdez is gone, ma’am.”

  “What?” Sayer said, struggling to kick her brain in gear.

  “Hannah Valdez, she’s gone missing. We just noticed because, well, we thought she was asleep.…”

  “When did you notice her gone?” Her voice fell low with menace.

  “Uh, not five minutes ago. But she’s been gone awhile, we think.”

  “I thought you had someone on her door.” Sayer was already up reaching for her boots.

  “We did.”

  “So how did he get her?”

  “That’s just it. He didn’t. She left a note for her wife, said the killer called her and that she had to go back to the pit to save Sam. She put some pillows in the bed to make it look like her, then she climbed out the window.”

  Sayer was stunned into silence for a long moment, awed by Hannah’s bravery. She knew perfectly well what horrors awaited her, yet she went anyway to save her daughter.

  And now she knew why Kyle needed Sam.

  “You have officers out scouring the grounds and surrounding area? She can’t have gone far,” Sayer barked.

  “Yes, ma’am. It also looks like she took her wife’s phone. We’re working on a trace now.”

  “Send everything you have to me. Now!”

  Sayer texted her team and then ran up to the ranger station.

  * * *

  Dana, Max, and Kona made it to the conference room less than a minute after Sayer. Ezra was already awake at his computer.

  “Kyle lured Hannah back to the pit with Sam,” Sayer said as soon as they gathered.

  “Oh, no.…” Dana’s hands went to her mouth. “Why didn’t she call us?”

  “It looks like Kyle threatened to kill Sam if she called anyone. The only good news is that she took a cell phone with her. Ezra, I’m forwarding you the info on the phone. Start a trace.”

  “On it!” Ezra leaned into his keyboard with intense focus. “All right, there’s no signal from the phone. But I can track where it went.… Okay, here we go. I can see her leaving the hospital. She went south on Fifth and then stopped for a while at this mall here.” He tapped his screen. “Then she’s on the move again, clearly in a car. Out of Charlottesville and up toward the park. There’s no road on my map, but it looks like she’s moving up the mountain, probably a mining road. Not even fifteen miles straight up from Charlottesville … and … signal gone. She must’ve gotten out of range. There are tons of dead zones up here.” Ezra turned his screen so they could all see.

  “Where were they heading?” Sayer asked.

  “It went dead right before they hit Wildcat Ridge,” Ezra said. “And looks like there’s cell service not too far beyond that area, so I’m guessing they stopped somewhere near the ridge.”

  “Wildcat Ridge,” Max said. “Damn, that’s a huge area. Ten or fifteen square miles at least.”

  “Hang on, I’ve got an idea.” Ezr
a typed quickly, eyes aglow. He pulled up a second map and looked back and forth between the two. “Ta-da!” he pointed to a spot on the second map.

  “What’s that?” Sayer came around to look at the spot.

  “Remember how Beaumont mentioned a chestnut tree just outside the pit?”

  “I do.…”

  “American chestnuts are endangered and there was a project a few years back that documented every large chestnut tree in the park.” A Cheshire-cat grin spread across Ezra’s face.

  “How on earth do you know that?” Max asked.

  Ezra shrugged. “I like trees, and Piper was actually telling me—”

  Sayer waved her hand, not caring how he knew. “So you’re saying you know where all the big chestnut trees are on Wildcat Ridge?”

  Ezra’s grin spread, pulling on his stitched lip, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Not all the trees. The one tree.… I was actually just looking up their maps to see if I could figure out which tree Beaumont saw. I wasn’t able to narrow it down before, but now that we know it’s on Wildcat Ridge…” He clicked a pin on the map. “The entrance to the pit has to be near here.”

  A tingle of anticipation ran along Sayer’s spine as she felt the familiar jolt of certainty that they were closing in.

  “You are a freaking genius!” She gave Ezra a hug and pulled out her phone. “Send me the coordinates. I’m going to scramble the troops to meet us out there ASAP. Max, we leave in two minutes.”

  She hurried back to her cabin to prepare to confront Kyle Nelson and save Hannah and Sam Valdez.

  THE PIT

  Hannah Valdez paced the small room, clawing at the collar around her throat. “Let me see my daughter, you bastard!” she shouted again.

  Nothing.

  Kyle must have left after he locked her in this room.