There was something there. It was quick. A hint of acknowledgment. His tongue worked a loose tooth in this lower jaw. “Sorry, can’t help you.”
Her shoulders dropped. “Are you sure?”
“Ain’t safe for you here.”
Someone tapped her shoulder. She turned.
An older white male was inches from her face. His gray hair hung in clumped, oily sections through the holes of his purple-and-once-white ski cap. The camel coat was several sizes too large and almost fell from his shoulders. He greeted her with a blackened smile of several missing teeth and his inflamed gums oozed white pus.
The people converged on her. Her mind tossed red warning flags at the invasion of her personal space and she started hyperventilating, feeling the telltale tingle in her extremeties. The muscles in Keelyn’s thighs tightened in preparation for escape. She eased back a step.
“Let me see.” His voice like stones scraped over glass. The odor of his breath a mixture of alcohol and cigarettes.
Keelyn raised her arms again. The papers rustled from the uncontrolled quivering in her hands. Her voice thin as she asked, “Do you know them?”
Unexpectedly, the man thrust his hand into the center of her chest and pushed her back into a brick wall. The sheets fell from her fingers and drifted in the breeze as her back slammed into brick. Her lungs seized, her breath gone. The loss of oxygen at the blow caused her vision to dim. Shouts of protest echoed throughout the group, but no one stepped forward to lend a hand.
“Why are you looking for them?”
She gulped. Tears streamed from her eyes. “She’s my sister.”
He leaned in. “They don’t want to be found.”
“Please,” Keelyn pleaded, both for her sister and her own life.
A glint caught her eye. She turned her head. The bad side of a blade hovered by her neck. “What will you pay?”
She pressed herself further into the wall. “I have money . . .”
Then he was away from her. She blinked several times, clearing the haze. He was on the ground, another man on top of him, the hand with the knife held against the cement. He was yelling.
“Hector! I see you treat a woman like that again and I will come and kill you myself.” He pulled the knife away, lifted himself off, and backed up. “Get outta here!”
The crowd drifted off. The man turned and all Keelyn could see was a kaleidoscope of tattooed skin. She recoiled, but he grabbed her by the arm and hustled her from the alley. They rounded the corner, and he propelled her into a local coffee shop. Finding a nearby table, he pulled at a chair and tossed her into it.
“What are you doing?” he yelled.
At first she withered, but then anger overtook her terror. She stood up. “Who are you?”
“Why are you down here without Lee? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
She paused open-mouthed and clamped her teeth, accidentally biting the tip of her tongue. A salty, metallic taste filled her mouth. She swallowed to clear it. “What are you talking about?”
The tattoo man yanked her bag from the crook of her elbow and pulled out a small sheaf of papers. He snapped the sheets at her face so close that Lucent’s image fuzzed in her vision. “These, Keelyn! Doesn’t Lee think I can find his brother on my own?”
Brother?
A tremor overtook her stress-weakened legs, and she slumped back in the chair.
Lucent was Conner?
Lee knew Lucent was Conner?
Lee knew Lucent was Conner.
This is what he’s been keeping from me.
The man looked at her quizzically, his breath quick in his chest. He set the papers on the table and sat down. He placed his hands over Keelyn’s to still her trembling. “Perhaps I should introduce myself. I’m Drew Stipman.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m not sure what I should share since it seems Lee didn’t tell you what he asked me to do.”
“Please, tell me.”
He shook his head. “This is really something you need to talk with Lee about. I’ve probably said too much as it is.”
“Are you a private investigator?”
Drew inhaled and pulled his hands off hers. “Of sorts. Until my new life as a paramedic starts in a few months. Sometimes I help the police. Do you know Detective Nathan Long and his wife, Lilly?”
Keelyn pulled the sheets toward her in a daze. “Yes, I know who they are.”
“I helped Nathan with Lilly’s case. Since then, I assist the police in finding people who don’t want to be found.”
“You blend in well.”
That brought a chuckle. “My gift, I guess.” He leaned toward her. “Do you need a ride home?”
She tapped the picture. “Have you found him?”
“Keelyn, please. It’s not right for me to say anything. I have a reputation to uphold.”
She crumpled the papers back into her tote and stood, shoving the chair into the table. “Thank you for saving my life.”
He stood as well. “Keelyn—let me walk you to your car.”
“I’m fine. It’s just around the corner.”
“Then I’ll follow a safe distance behind. Lee would kill me if anything happened to you.”
Those words were meaningless.
If Lee wanted her safe, why didn’t he tell her his brother was the one who’d threatened it?
She gathered up her things, buttoned her coat, and tightened her scarf around her neck. It was hard to differentiate if it was the fabric or the plan brewing in her mind that lent to the constricted feeling.
“Fine.”
She pushed through the door and stomped into the snow. Door chimes slammed against the glass as she exited. A few seconds later the jingled bells sounded again as Drew pushed through the door. Images of Christmas flashed through her mind. What would Christmas look like this year?
Concrete buildings, the boiled brew of sewer sludge venting from manhole covers, and the shredded souls that lined the sidewalk brought her back to reality. After she turned the corner and found her car, she unlocked the door and plopped into the driver’s seat. After she threw her belongings onto the passenger’s seat she slammed the door before another car ran into it.
In the side-view mirror, she could see Drew standing at the corner. Her hand stayed on the edge of the door’s handle with her car keys in her palm. A curious standoff developed between them.
Drew settled his shoulder into the wall and picked at his teeth.
Moving the keys into her right hand, she inserted the car’s key into the ignition. She pressed her foot into the gas pedal and turned the car over. Shifting from Park, she waited to let a car pass, then eased from the curb. In the mirror, Drew was gone.
Keelyn slammed the car back into Park, pulled her keys out, and exited the vehicle. As she neared the corner, she shuffled along the building and peered around the edge to check for Drew’s location.
He was one block ahead, turning the corner to the right into the alley.
She ran to narrow the distance and eased up at the building’s edge. Looking around the corner, she saw him disappear into a doorway three buildings down. As she stepped into the alley, the sky above her darkened and shadows spilled into the tight space as if the angel of death had come to hunt for victims. Street noise disappeared as the sound of her boots against the broken pavement echoed in her ears, her heart an anxious accompaniment to the pace. At the door, she laid her hand on the knob and opened it.
There was no one at the entry. The smell was a mixture of charred wood and human secretions. Keelyn covered her nose with her arm. Broken glass pipes with blackened bulbs littered the floor. She scooted an exposed needle to the edge of the floorboards. A staircase stood immediately to her left.
Soft, classical music played above her. The eerie sense of a haunted funeral parlor caused the hair on her arms to tug at her skin. She ascended the staircase, her hand gripping the sticky wood as she went, and she was thankful for the glove
s that provided a barrier against the vermin living in the gooey substance.
A scream, so loud and sorrowful, washed over her in a concussive wave. She involuntarily backed down one step.
Again, a scream like nothing she’d ever heard.
Someone was killing Drew.
She looked around her. A broken lattice from the staircase was three steps ahead. Racing up the rotted boards, she grabbed the wooden stick as she passed by.
The screaming came from the end of the long hall. As she neared the door, the stick raised above her head, Drew crashed into the hall, his arms bear hugged another man’s chest.
Keelyn dropped the stick as her mind matched the face with her computer image.
Lucent.
No, Lee’s brother, Conner.
Drew struggled to stay on his feet as the man continued to scream. At first, Keelyn thought he was clawing at Drew, but as she neared the two-some, she realized it was his own arms he scratched.
It was then Drew caught a glimpse of her. He swung Conner against the wall. The man momentarily slumped like a marionette with severed strings. In the end, the force of the hit did little to slow him down, and he writhed and screamed in the corner.
“Call 911!”
Keelyn reached to her side then realized the only thing she had was her keys clenched in one hand. “I don’t have my cell.”
Drew placed his boot on the man’s back to pin him where he was as he opened his coat for his own phone.
“What’s wrong with him?”
Drew pressed three numbers into his keypad. “I thought I told you to leave.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
He raised his phone to the window. “You didn’t do what I asked you to do!” He threw the phone against the wall. “I can’t get a signal in this forsaken slum hole.”
Keelyn covered her ears as another set of screams peeled from the man’s lips. He swatted at his legs like they were on fire. Drew kneeled next to the man and turned him on his back.
“You’re going to have to help me.”
“What?”
“Come on, Keelyn! You wanted to play with the big boys. Now’s your chance.”
Words of objection sat at the tip of her tongue. She shoved her teeth into them to keep them at bay.
“Grab his legs! We have to get him out of here.”
“And take him where?”
“Don’t you think the hospital would be a good idea?”
Chapter 28
LEE SAT IN HIS TRUCK ACROSS the road from John Samuals’s old property. It looked uninhabited. Considering the violence that happened here and the economy, it looked like the bank wasn’t making efforts to resell it. Most of the government protest signs sat askew off the fence, the metal wire that hung them in place rusted and broken after seven years of wind, rain, and snow. All except one.
Always love your country. Never trust your government.
He pulled his truck through the gate, his tracks a mixture of melted snow and dirt, and rounded to the back end of the barn. He consulted the list of individuals who’d been there that day. About twenty law enforcement officers from two counties had been involved. In the past six months, four were dead.
Clay Timmons, Sherriff Benson. Then there were two other individuals gone as well. One from a suspected drug overdose. The other had quit the police department but had been reported missing by her family about four months ago. Colorado Springs police had been kind enough to let him review the details of what they had so far regarding the missing officer, Melissa LaGrange.
Her parents had reported she’d expressed that law enforcement didn’t feel like the right career path for her. After doing an Explorers program during high school, she’d been attracted to the adrenaline rush associated with putting the guilty and evil away. Once the reality of the job hit her, like abused women continually going back to those who’d inflicted violence on them, she’d lost her idealistic view of what she’d hoped to accomplish and started thinking of other careers. Nursing was her next choice, and she started taking classes at Colorado Christian University. She’d been doing well in school and had just applied to the school of nursing and developed some new friendships among her female classmates.
The predominantly male police department hadn’t provided those opportunities, so her parents were glad for her to have the female camaraderie.
Except for one friend.
One they’d only met one time.
Who fit the description of Raven Samuals.
A death rate of twenty percent in such a short time span seemed unusually high. Suspicious to say the least.
He checked his phone. A message from Keelyn. Another from the lab.
He called the lab back.
“There’s DNA matching the toothbrush and the blood found in the needle of the syringe.”
“Any other DNA?”
“There are fingerprints on the syringe itself. Do you want me to submit them? No DNA after swabbing.”
A memory pulled at his conscious reasoning. The medical team as they worked on Lucy Freeman.
“Hold those prints for now. Did you check the cap?”
“The cap to the needle?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, no fingerprints on the cap.”
“Did you swab it?”
“No. Why?”
“Have you ever watched medical people when they work? Some will pull the cap off with their teeth. Might be saliva on there. Check it for me?”
“All right, fine. Just because you’re a good friend.”
“And I’m paying you a lot of money.”
“Okay, that too.”
Lee disconnected. He ran his fingers over the keypad. He ached to talk with Keelyn. There was a distance widening between them. His worry over her safety was pushing her away. His concern showed as anger. His secret like rat poison on her trust. He knew in his heart she’d picked up his deception.
I want to fix it but I don’t know how.
He put the phone back in its case at his side.
Samuals’s decrepit house sat on two hundred acres of wild, untamed land. There were areas of prairie grass where dried winter shoots poked through the sheath of newly fallen snow. Some acres were heavily forested with pine and aspen trees. Lee withdrew the bound property maps from his back pocket to orient himself to the marked section that sat to the north of the almost fallen structure.
He was blessed that an old coworker of his was good friends with the county clerk. Under his close observation, Lee had been allowed to open up property files that detailed other structures present on the land.
The county clerk was an early Colorado history buff and was replete with stories about this property. He said there was rumored to be a house that was just an above-ground facade for an underground distillery and tunnel system. Since the land had been in long-term private ownership of gun-loving survivalists, few had ventured onto the property to determine if the legend was real. Several buildings existed on the property, and the clerk gave Lee a hint as to which two would be likely options for subversive activities.
John Samuals had not been the first antigovernment survivalist to call this land home. Teller County had a fairly decorative past. The Gold Rush hit in 1890 and the population ballooned to fifty thousand residents. In the early 1920s, prohibition drove distillation of alcohol underground. Teller County blossomed into bootlegger territory, and even now some residents struggled to return to normal, law-abiding ways.
Lee began to walk the land. Crystals of snow fell into the top of his boots. At times, he’d hit the base of a snow drift and sink his leg up to the knee. Finally, he came upon one structure hidden from plain view. The roof sagged in the middle of the simple, log cabin structure. The doorway and two side windows were open-mouthed, and the stone chimney lilted to one side. From a distance, it might resemble a simple jack-o’-lantern with its gaping holes and shifted stem.
Dirt floors remained, and Lee saw no wooden doors indicat
ing a cellar below. Outside the small structure, the snow would cover any evidence of a tunnel system, so he surmised it might be best to look for the other structure.
Walking east, he hit the largest forested section of the property. This included the back fifty acres. Lodge pole pine trees stood as silent sentries, killed by a plague of tiny black beetles. The snow was not as heavy in this area, and soon Lee could make out a river rock stone-lined path. It wove through the property, building into a higher wall. Then, the trees seemed to line up on either side of the path until he came to a small clearing where the lane gave way to a generous-sized home.
It was two stories. Dark gray wood with thick strips of lighter gray mortar gave it a prison-striped appearance. Lee walked up the steps. The glass was intact in the door. He brushed away the dirt and took in sheet-covered furniture and an old stone mantel, the same stone that lined the path. The knob broke in his hand when he tested it. He pushed the other side of the knob onto the interior floor and eased the door open; the squeaky hinges set his teeth on edge.
He stepped inside.
In the kitchen, he rolled up the rug. Plumes of dust filled the calm air in the slant of light from the window. He found what he was looking for. A door cut into the floor. Just the tufted edges of a knotted rope teased through the hole at one end, and he was unable to grab enough of the line to hoist the door open. In one of the old cabinets, he found a rusted knife sturdy enough to pry up one corner. He eased his fingers underneath and heaved up with both hands. Wood cracking against wood rang out like a gun shot.
A few moments after the dust settled, he grabbed his flashlight and waved it into the darkness. His phone vibrated. He grabbed it.
Another text.
Keelyn again.
What’s going on? She wouldn’t say why she wanted to get in touch.
He texted back. What’s up?
He placed the phone in the breast pocket of his canvas shirt and took the crude wooden steps down. As he descended into the darkness, he brushed cobwebs off to the side. The sticky fibers clung to his clothes. One shiny black spider fell on his cuff and raced up his arm. He flicked it off with the snap of his fingers. A familiar anxiety began to creep over him. Pulses of dread clawed at his calm.
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