by Cindi Myers
“He’s lying,” Graham said. “The interview was scheduled for ten, and was supposed to last an hour. Emma called me at...” He picked up his phone and scrolled through the call log. “At eleven oh three.”
“So you think whatever happened, happened as she was leaving Prentice’s ranch,” Randall said.
“Maybe she had a car accident,” Carmen said. “Talking on the phone, a deer jumps out...” The scenario was more common than Graham wanted to admit. The combination of distracted driving and unpredictable and abundant wildlife was a recipe for numerous collisions.
“I’m going to drive out there.” He started for the door once more. Emma might be lying in a ditch, unnoticed by a passerby.
“There’s a quicker way to locate her,” Marco said.
Graham stopped and turned to the taciturn agent. “How?”
“She was driving a rental car, right?” Marco asked.
“Yes. Her car burned up in the fire.”
“What agency?” Marco pulled out his task force issued phone. “Most rentals are fitted out with LoJack, or some other locator service, in the case of an accident or theft.”
“I don’t know the agency, but there can’t be many in a town the size of Montrose.”
“When my sister’s car was in the shop, her insurance company used Corporate Rentals,” Carmen said.
“I’ll try there first,” Marco said.
He dialed the number, and put the phone on speaker, so they could all hear the conversation. Marco explained who he was and what he wanted to the young woman on the other end of the line, gave Emma’s name and was transferred to a man who must have been the boss. “Come to our office at the Montrose Airport and I’ll have that information for you,” the man said. “I’ll need to see some credentials, of course.”
Graham didn’t wait for more. He headed for the door, the others hurrying after him.
Marco slid into the passenger seat of Graham’s Cruiser and Randall and Carmen, with Lotte in the backseat, followed in Randall’s vehicle. Graham resisted the urge to head to the airport with lights and sirens, knowing this was the quickest way to pick up a trail of followers, including the press. He forced himself to keep within reasonable range of the speed limit as he raced toward town.
The manager of Corporate Rentals was waiting at the front desk with a computer printout. His already pasty face grew a shade whiter at the sight of four officers practically storming the office, but after glancing at Graham’s badge, he slid the single sheet of paper across the counter. “Those are the GPS coordinates where the car has been parked for the last thirty minutes,” he said.
Marco pulled out a handheld GPS unit and punched in the numbers. He angled the screen toward Graham. “That’s on public land. In the Curecanti Recreation Area.” The recreation area occupied forty-three thousand acres on the west side of Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.
“It’s about a mile from Prentice’s property line,” Marco confirmed.
“There aren’t any roads in that area,” Carmen said.
The manager frowned. “The rental contract prohibits taking the vehicle off-roading,” he said.
“She didn’t go off-roading,” Graham said. “Not voluntarily.”
* * *
NO ONE SAID anything as Graham steered the Cruiser cross-country, detouring around gullies and mountains, following barely discernible trails in the rough terrain. They’d left the rental agency forty minutes before and had encountered no one since leaving the pavement. “We should be close,” Marco said, consulting the handheld GPS unit.
Graham leaned forward, scanning the landscape for anything out of place. He didn’t spot the car until they were almost on it. Dust coated the once shiny red sedan, and a spiderweb of cracks spread out across the front windshield. Two tires were flat, and one front fender bowed inward.
“Looks like a rough ride,” Randall said, as he and Carmen joined Graham and Marco at the front of the car.
Graham wrenched open the driver’s door. The keys dangled from the ignition, and Emma’s purse spilled its contents onto the passenger side floorboard. “Her phone’s gone,” he said, checking the contents. “So’s her recorder and notebook. Her wallet’s still here.”
Randall let Lotte sniff the wallet. “Sich,” he ordered.
The dog sniffed around the car, then began following a trail, but stopped after a few dozen yards. She sat and looked back over her shoulder at Randall, whining softly.
“She got into another car and they drove away,” Randall said, pointing to the faint tire tracks visible among the rocks and cacti.
“She didn’t walk.” Marco pointed to twin lines in the sand. “Those are drag marks. The kind that would be made by a woman’s high heels.”
Graham remembered the sexy red heels Emma had insisted on buying when she’d gone shopping for an outfit to wear to her interview with Prentice. “We need to get Lotte onto Prentice’s ranch to look for Emma,” he said. “If he took her, he’s probably hiding her there.”
“He’ll never let us on his property,” Randall said. “Not without a court order.”
“He’s got enough judges in his pocket that getting such an order won’t be easy,” Carmen said.
“We don’t have time for that,” Graham said.
“We could go in the back way,” Marco said. “Cross-country.”
“The place is crawling with guards,” Carmen said. “He’s practically got his own paramilitary force.”
“We go in at night.” Marco offered a rare grin. “With Lotte, we’ll know they’re there before they spot us.” He nodded at the tire tracks in the dirt. “We can follow these tracks all the way to her.”
Graham checked his watch. It was just after noon. “Another seven hours before dark,” he said.
“That’ll give us time to prepare,” Marco said.
Graham only prayed they had the time, and that Emma wasn’t already dead, her beautiful spirit silenced, the way Bobby Pace had been silenced. Forever.
* * *
EMMA WOKE TO a darkness so intense she thought at first she still slept, her eyes not yet open. But her other senses told her she was awake to an aching in her arms and shoulders, and a heavy throbbing in her head. The smell of earth and rocks surrounded her, with an undercurrent of a more acrid, ammonia odor. The darkness pressed in on her, frightening in its intensity. This wasn’t merely nighttime, but the absence of light.
Don’t panic. She repeated the words over and over, a mantra to keep the loss of control at bay. Think. What had happened? She’d been driving, talking on the phone with Graham... No, she’d been calling Graham, but she hadn’t talked to him yet. Then...nothing. She had no memory beyond picking up her phone.
She was lying on a hard surface—rock hard. Her hands and feet were bound, her arms stretched painfully behind her. Carefully, she bent her knees and arched her back, trying to get a sense of the space she was in. Her feet brushed something solid—a wall, the surface uneven and hard. The source of the ammonia odor came to her—the smell of bat guano. She was in a cave, or maybe a mine. Old shafts and exploration tunnels riddled this part of the state, a remnant of the nineteenth century gold and silver rushes.
She struggled into a sitting position, the effort making her head spin. I must have been drugged, she thought, as she fought a wave of nausea. She pressed her head back against a sharp protrusion of rock, welcoming the distraction of the pain.
As her head cleared, she struggled to hear any sound beyond the rasp of her own breathing. Nothing—not a drip of water or traffic noise or anything at all.
“Help!” Her shout echoed back to her, fading away into the limitless blackness. This was bad. Was someone coming back for her, or had she been left here to die?
She shuddered at the thought and struggled to stand, braci
ng her back against the rock and slowly, agonizingly, inching to her feet. The rock tore at her clothing and scraped her skin, but this gave her an idea. She dragged her bound wrists along the rock until the zip tie holding her caught on a jagged edge. Ignoring the pain in her shoulders, she dragged the tough nylon tie back and forth across the rock until it gave with a satisfying snap!
“Yes!” The shout rang off the rocks. She rubbed feeling back into her painful wrists and lowered herself to a sitting position once more. The ache in her swollen fingers brought tears to her eyes, but she blinked them away. She didn’t have time for crying; she had to get out of here.
When she could move her fingers without crying out, she went to work undoing the bindings around her ankles. Her captors had used duct tape here, and she spent many long minutes unpicking it layer by layer.
Free at last, she stood. Being surrounded by darkness fostered a sense of vertigo, and she put out a hand to steady herself. By following the wall around, she was able to trace the outline of the chamber where she was trapped. The square room was maybe eight feet on a side. Not a cave, then, but a shaft of some kind. The walls, though rough, were slippery. Even if she took off her heels, she didn’t think she could climb them, especially if she couldn’t see where she was going.
She sat down again and tried not to think about how hungry and thirsty she was. Focus on the positive. She wasn’t tied up anymore, and a steady current of fresh air reassured her she wasn’t going to suffocate. Graham would look for her when she didn’t come home. He knew she’d been going to Prentice’s ranch this morning.
Had Prentice arranged for her to disappear? Had he sent one of his men after her, with instructions to shut her up? But why? She’d learned nothing in her interview that connected him to Lauren Starling’s disappearance or to Bobby Pace’s death. She reviewed what she could remember of their conversation, but nothing stood out. He hadn’t appeared upset or concerned about any of the questions she’d asked.
Maybe someone else had attacked her after she left Prentice’s home. Someone who’d followed her to the ranch and been waiting. If only she could think, but the pounding headache and painfully dry mouth interfered with her concentration.
After a while she lay on her side on the dirt floor of her prison, curled into a fetal position. She tried to sleep. Someone would come for her. She wouldn’t give up hope.
Chapter Twelve
Shortly after 9:00 p.m. when the sun had fully set, Graham, Dance, Marco, Randall and Lotte set out to track Emma across the rugged terrain of the Curecanti Recreation Area. The most heavily trafficked areas of the preserve attracted hikers, campers, ATV and snowmobile riders, and fishermen. The interior land remained largely unvisited, making it the perfect place to hide illegal activity.
The Rangers wore night-vision goggles, which gave everything the eerie green glow of a video game. But this was no game. Marco led the way, keeping a shielded light fixed on the ground, following the faint impressions made by tires on the crumbly, dry surface of the prairie. Though Marco didn’t have Lotte’s keen sense of smell, he was the best visual tracker Graham had ever seen. He somehow picked out the subtle differences in broken grass stems and barely disturbed ground. Even now, Graham couldn’t see the tracks until Marco stopped and pointed them out to them.
Randall held the GPS. “We just crossed onto Prentice’s land,” he said softly.
They stopped, alert for sounds of dogs or guards. A chill breeze stirred the needles of the stunted piñons and sagebrush that dotted the ground, bringing with it the odors of dry earth and pine. An owl hooted and Graham turned in time to see the night-hunting predator lift off from the branch of a piñon on silent wings.
Marco started walking again and the others followed. Clouds obscured a quarter moon much of the time. Graham prayed he wouldn’t step on a snake, then wished he hadn’t thought of that.
Lotte froze, ears forward, one paw up in a pointer pose. “She’s found something,” Randall said. “Go on, girl. Find her.” He unclipped her leash and she started off, nose to the ground. The three men followed closely, Randall taking the lead this time, just behind his dog.
Piles of rock and pieces of broken metal littered the ground around them. “Mine waste,” Marco said, shining his light on a pile of bent metal strapping stained orange-red by rust.
Just ahead of them, Lotte stopped, then sat. Her excited whines sounded loud in the still darkness. “Good girl,” Randall said. “What have you found?”
He stumbled on the rough ground and almost fell into what turned out to be a large hole. “Whoa!” He knelt beside the hole and looked down into it. “She’s telling me there’s something here, but I can’t see it.” He shone his light into the hole, but the darkness swallowed up the tiny beam before it penetrated the depths. “I think it’s a mine tunnel.”
“Not a tunnel, a ventilation shaft.” Marco beamed his light onto the remains of a metal frame around the opening, then onto a massive metal grate just behind the frame. “That frame isn’t as old as the rest of the metal around here. It was added later, probably as a safety precaution.”
“So who moved it?” Randall shoved to his feet. “And why?”
“It would be a good place to dump a body,” Graham said, fighting the cold dread growing in his stomach.
“Lotte’s signaling a live find,” Randall said.
Graham glanced at the dog, her gaze riveted to the shaft, tongue lolling, eyes bright. He’d heard some search and rescue dogs became depressed after finding dead bodies. Lotte didn’t look depressed.
He knelt beside the shaft and cupped his hands on either side of his mouth. “Emma!” he shouted.
The cry echoed against the rock walls of the shaft. “Emma!” he called again.
“Graham? Is that you?” Emma’s voice floated up to him. “Please tell me I’m not dreaming.”
“You’re not dreaming.” He shone his light down, frustrated by his inability to see more than a few yards down. “Are you okay?”
“I’m all right. You’re going to get me out of here, aren’t you?”
“I’ll get you out.” The big question was how? They had no rope to toss down to her, no vehicle to help pull her up, no ladder to climb down.
“This shaft provides ventilation for the mine tunnels,” Marco said. “The mine entrance is around here somewhere. Maybe we can reach her that way.”
“You and Randall look for the entrance,” Graham said. “I’ll stay here with Emma.” He called down to her. “Hang on. We’ll get you out as soon as we can.”
“Do you have any water?” she asked. “I’m really thirsty.”
He pulled a bottle of water from his pack. “How far down are you? The light won’t reach.”
“A long way,” she said. “I can’t see you, either.”
“I’m going to toss down a bottle, but I don’t want to hit you.”
“There’s an opening to one side where I can stand. I think it might be the entrance to a tunnel.”
“Okay. Here comes the water.”
He dropped the bottle and listened for it to hit bottom, counting one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi... Before he’d counted two seconds he heard the bottle strike the rock below. “I got it!” Emma called up. “Thank you!”
“It didn’t break?” he asked.
“It’s a little dented, but okay.”
“I think you’re down about sixty feet,” he said, after he worked out the math. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“A little sore, but no broken bones or bleeding. I think I was pretty out of it when whoever it was tossed me in here.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. I think I was drugged.”
Hurried footsteps scuffed through the rock, coming toward him. “Randall and Marco are coming back,” he said. “They must have
found something.”
He stood and turned to face the Rangers, but the new arrivals weren’t Marco and Randall, but two strangers dressed in black. One punched Graham in the stomach and when he doubled over, the other pounded a fist on the back of his head, driving him to his knees. One good shove and he was falling, scrabbling for a hold on the sides of the shaft, the rock floor of the shaft rising up to slam into him.
* * *
GRAHAM LANDED HEAVILY at the bottom of the shaft, a single, low grunt the only sound escaping him. Emma screamed and ran to him. In the faint glow of moonlight she could just make out his form, lying awkwardly on one side, so still and silent she was afraid he was dead. “Graham.” She shook him. “Graham, please.”
“Emma.” He opened his eyes. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Better now that you’re here. Are you all right?”
He grimaced, and shoved into a sitting position. “I banged up my shoulder on the way down. Maybe cracked some ribs.”
“Who attacked you?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” He looked up and she followed his gaze to the opening of the shaft. Dark shapes appeared, blocking out what little light filtered down from the moon.
“You were warned to stay out of this!” one of the shadowy figures shouted. “You should have listened.”
A narrow beam of light from a flashlight swept down into the shaft, but couldn’t penetrate more than a few feet of the darkness. Graham put a finger to his lips and motioned that they should move against the wall. Emma nodded, and crawled toward the opening where a passage split off from the main shaft. She didn’t want to be in the line of fire if whoever was up there started dropping rocks on them—or firing bullets.
Footsteps scuffled on the rocks far overhead, then an automobile engine roared to life. Metal clanged, and the ground shook. A horrible, screeching sound, like something heavy being dragged across rock, made her cover her ears. Then the world went black once more.