One Child Alive: An absolutely gripping crime thriller packed with nail-biting suspense (Rockwell and Decker Book 3)

by Kane, Ellery A.

  When Will saw the fresh drag marks in the earth, the fingerprints on the side of the unit, he knew exactly where to look. Crouching down, he saw it. A tunnel in the rock wall, just large enough for a man to crawl through.

  Will tucked his gun back in his waistband and dropped to his knees. As he stared into the narrow passageway, he questioned his own sanity, remembering the K-9 officer’s warning. One wrong move, and the whole thing comes crashing down.

  Still, Will crawled forward, his back brushing up against the dirt ceiling of the tunnel as he moved. In one hand, he held the flashlight, the beam constantly shifting as he advanced. He imagined Drake waiting for him on the other side, ready to put a bullet between his eyes.

  Halfway in, his breathing grew shallow, the tunnel’s walls closing tighter around him with every desperate inhale. Frantic, he started to back out. But his clumsy effort sent bits of the ceiling crumbling to dust, which only made it harder to breathe and worsened his panic.

  Then, he heard the faintest of sounds. Though it seemed to come from miles away, it cut through the static in his brain and pierced straight to his heart like the sharpest blade.

  “Olivia!”

  Sixty-Five

  Olivia’s blindfold discarded, she could see everything now. Everything she wished she couldn’t, bathed in the sinister glow of a camping lantern. She shivered in the cold, her skin like gooseflesh. Her injured arm had swelled to twice its size, a dark purple bruise circling her wrist beneath the cuff that bound her. She tried to raise her hands to touch the sore spot on her forehead, but they’d been shackled to her waist and tethered to the mine cart track. Despite her best efforts, she could only lift them waist-high.

  Olivia sorted through flashes of memory. Thomas’s bright blue eyes wide with terror. The sickening splash when his body broke the surface. His frantic cries for help. The gun barrel pressed to her flesh, as she’d been dragged down the trail and across a low point of the river. The squelch of the mud beneath her shoe when she’d stumbled and nearly fallen. The sound of Deck’s voice—a port in a storm—before she’d been silenced.

  “Again.” Drake Devere lorded over where she knelt. His hair, long and wild and black as his heart. He pressed the barrel of his gun against the top of her head and ripped the thick tape from her mouth. “He better hear you this time.”

  She screamed as loudly as she could, hoping Deck wouldn’t blame her for drawing him here. For not believing him. She knew now Drake had been there all along, stalking them. Sighting them from above like a hawk circling its prey. She felt certain he’d been the one to pilfer Emily’s note from the kitchen. He’d been the source of the pricked hairs on the back of her neck.

  When she’d realized Drake’s cat and mouse game, she’d first tried to hold back. But that had gotten her nowhere. Earned her a swift slap to the face that had left her dizzy. Then, a hand closing over her throat until she saw stars. This time, Drake seemed pleased when Deck called her name, the sound of his voice growing louder. Closer.

  “It won’t be long now.” Keeping the gun to her head, Drake pulled the tape back across her raw mouth, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of wincing. She closed her eyes for a moment, imagining herself anywhere but here. As she stilled her breathing, she heard quick footsteps approach through the water, sloshing their way toward her.

  Deck stepped out of the shadows and into the lantern’s gleam, his gun raised. As Drake sneered, Deck’s face contorted in horror. His flashlight fell to the ground, snuffed out.

  “Well, well, well. I must say I’m disappointed in you, Detective. With your hero complex, I expected you hours ago. You must be getting fat and lazy here in Fog Harbor without me.” Drake’s eyes volleyed between the two of them. “Love will do that to you. Is that it? I do hope so. It’ll make our time together a lot more fun.”

  Olivia waited for more footsteps. But as time stretched, long as a rubber band, she realized Deck had come alone. Surely, he had a plan?

  “You said this is between you and me, Devere. So why is she still here? Why is she injured?” Deck’s pained gaze moved across her body, avoiding her eyes. She wondered how bad it looked.

  “What can I say? A mind like mine needs constant stimulation. I told you I’d get bored.” Drake cocked his head at Olivia, petting her with his free hand. Better that than around her neck again.

  “I’m here now. Do whatever you want with me. Just let her go.” Deck lowered his gun, placed it on the ground, and kicked it toward Drake. “Please.”

  A scornful laugh scraped from Drake’s throat as he fisted Olivia’s hair and pulled. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from making a sound. “No can do. Without her, you can’t pay your penance. You owe me, remember? For Isabella. For my freedom. You owe me ten times over.”

  “You’ve already taken from me. You humiliated me, escaping like you did. The media thinks you outsmarted me. Hell, so does my own chief. And I know you did something to Cyclops. He’s been missing since yesterday.”

  “Poor kitty.” Drake jutted out his lower lip. “He put up quite a fight, but you deserved a special message. It was a nice touch, wasn’t it? Written in the blood of something you love.”

  “The blood you stole from the vet’s office, you mean?”

  Ignoring the question, Drake turned his attention back to Olivia. From the sheath on his pants, he produced a knife. The blade winked in the light as he turned it over.

  Olivia’s skin crawled as he squatted behind her. He kept the gun at her temple, while he pressed the blade against her thigh. Its cold touch sent a shiver through her blood.

  “Olivia hasn’t done anything to you. She doesn’t deserve this.” Though Deck’s voice rolled out smooth as parchment paper, Olivia sensed the turmoil beneath. Beads of sweat were visible on his forehead. His hands, shaky at his sides. And he still hadn’t looked at her. Instead, he kept his eyes laser-focused on Drake. “And neither did the Fox family.”

  Drake’s cackling laughter echoed down the mine shaft. “You really are a pathetic excuse for a detective. I didn’t kill the Foxes.”

  Olivia watched the truth settle onto Deck’s face. She tried to speak through the tape across her mouth, to tell him what she knew, what she’d realized too late. But only strangled murmurs came out.

  “All you shrinks like to do is talk.” Drake traced the blade along her jaw, down her neck, across her breasts. The tip of it so sharp, it made a small hole in her thin T-shirt. He leaned down to her ear, and she gagged at the sour stench of his breath. “Talk, talk, talk.”

  Deck cried out as he lunged forward, grabbing for Drake. But Drake anticipated his rage, jabbing the barrel of the gun against her as he pulled her out of reach, the knife in his other hand pressing against her shoulder. “Careful with that temper of yours. One wrong move, and my finger might slip. Unless you want your girlfriend’s brains spattered all over you?”

  Until that moment, Olivia had been certain Deck had concocted a plan to get them both the hell out of here. But now, her heart in her throat, she began to wonder if he had any plan at all.

  Sixty-Six

  Will had no plan. No gun either. Just his damn hero complex, as Drake had called it, that had sent him running here like a total amateur, so intent to find Olivia he hadn’t thought past it. He couldn’t even bring himself to meet her eyes. He’d let her down. Though the realization hit hard, so did his resolve. No way he was letting that psychopath get the best of him again.

  “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this moment, Detective. I wanted it to be perfect. When I saw you two canoodling on the beach, I had the lightbulb moment I’d been dreaming about since the day you put me in handcuffs. It’s beautiful in its simplicity. I think you’ll agree.”

  Will couldn’t see what lay beyond the shadows, where the steel tracks disappeared into the pitch-black. But here, in the small circle of light, hope was sparse. Only Drake, his gun pressed to Olivia’s head in one hand. The glinting knife in the other.

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nbsp; “Get over here.” Drake dropped the blade at Olivia’s knees, and she flinched.

  Slogging forward, Will finally let himself look at her. The bruises laced around her neck, the angry bump on her forehead. Her swollen wrist. The fire in her eyes, still flickering despite it all.

  “Pick up the knife,” Drake directed. “Or she eats a bullet.”

  Will swallowed hard, reaching for the blade’s handle. He felt his world closing in. He could hardly breathe. The knife felt strange in his hand, alive and hungry.

  “Here comes the fun part,” Drake said, raising the hairs on Will’s neck. “You have a choice. Stab Olivia, or I’ll shoot her in the head. Any way you play it, you’ll live the rest of your life knowing it was all your fault. However short that may be.”

  The brutality of Drake’s words rooted him to the spot like an animal trapped in quicksand.

  “We don’t have all day, Detective.”

  Will took a tentative step toward Olivia. No way in hell he could do it. But—the gun to her temple, a madman with his finger on the trigger—how could he not?

  Just then, he spotted it. Behind Drake, a light pierced the dark mine shaft, glowing with the strength of a lighthouse beacon. Will didn’t dare call out, but his heart leapt at the sight.

  As the man came into view, Will found himself praying again. A prayer of thanks for sending him an armed rescuer. For sending him Wade Coffman.

  Wade stopped a few feet short of Drake, holding his gun at his side, with wild eyes and his Steadfast Security uniform unusually disheveled. “What’s taking so long? I thought you said you could make quick work of them.”

  Like birds on a wire, Will’s scattered thoughts assembled themselves.

  Coffman had been on duty the night of July Fourth.

  He’d been at the Hickory Pit when Thomas panicked and ran.

  Coffman wasn’t a police officer. But he sure as hell looked like one. A four-year-old wouldn’t know the difference.

  “What’re you doing, Wade?” Will asked, eyeing his own gun with desperation. It still lay on the mine’s floor a few feet out of his reach. “What have you done?”

  Drake grinned at Will, his teeth sharp in the lantern’s light. “Go ahead, Wade. Tell the detective exactly what you’ve been up to.”

  Wade hesitated, frowning at Drake as he stepped closer. His jaw tensed when he spotted the damage to Olivia’s face, her neck. “What the hell did you do to her? This wasn’t part of the plan. We were supposed to be long gone by now.”

  “Did I offend your delicate sensibilities?” Drake scoffed. “You shot two children in the head at point-blank range. I hardly think you have the right to judge.”

  Wade drew his head back like he’d been slapped. But he didn’t deny it.

  “You’re Dwayne Holt. The bad man.” Will needed to say it out loud, to finally put a name to the monster he’d been chasing. The monster who lurked in Thomas’s nightmares. “You killed the Foxes.”

  “Ding, ding, ding,” Drake taunted. “Finally, the detective gets a clue.”

  Will ignored him, while Wade paced the tracks of the mine shaft, his head hanging and his free fist clenched. His gun in the other, poised like a snake. Unpredictable and ready to strike.

  “I used to be Dwayne Holt,” he said. “But he doesn’t exist anymore. He’s been dead going on ten years now, ever since Tim Overton put his entire family in the ground and walked away a free man. Dwayne died that day, even if his body didn’t. I’m just the bitter shell he left behind. That’s why I had to kill Thomas, too. I couldn’t doom him to a life like mine. Death is better than that.”

  “Enough talking.” Drake ripped the tape from Olivia’s mouth, reclaiming Deck’s attention. A sob escaped from her throat. “I want to hear her scream when you do it. Now, Detective. Now or never.”

  Sixty-Seven

  Will raised the knife. Searched Olivia’s pained eyes. Found her spirit beneath the tears, darting like quicksilver. It gave him courage. Courage to try. He’d say anything, lie if he had to.

  “Thomas isn’t dead, Wade. I pulled him out of the water. He’s alive. And he’s going to be just fine.”

  Wade’s face reddened, tears springing to his eyes the faster he shook his head. “No, no, no. That’s a lie. He drowned. I threw him in the river. I watched him go under.”

  “Thomas drew a picture of this place. He identified Drake in a lineup. And soon enough, he’ll ID you too. You tried to kill a little boy.”

  “It was for his own good,” Wade yowled, wiping the snot from his face.

  “No, Wade. It was for your own good. Just like all the rest of it. You murdered a police officer tonight.”

  Wade’s mouth dropped open. He turned to Drake. “You killed him? I thought we agreed you’d only knock him out.”

  Drake lifted one shoulder, one corner of his mouth. “I got carried away. It happens sometimes.”

  “You’re going to prison, Wade,” Will continued, feeling the tension build between them. “For a long, long time. And I won’t let them put you to death. That’s what you want, isn’t it? No, you’ll have to live out the rest of your days without your family, knowing you did the same to Thomas that Tim Overton did to you.”

  “But Drake will be long gone by then,” Olivia added, her voice steely, despite the fear written on her face. “He doesn’t do well with partners. They always end up in prison, shouldering the blame. Or dead.”

  “Shut up!” Drake reared back, striking Olivia’s temple with the butt of the gun. It was all Will could do to hold himself back, to wait. Just as suddenly, Drake’s predatory gaze shifted to Wade. “You imbecile. You had two jobs, and you mucked up both of them.”

  His gun trembling in his hand, Wade remained indignant. “I told you, the cat got away. It climbed up a damn tree. What was I supposed to do? I did everything else you asked. I helped get these two here, didn’t I? It’s not my fault you’re not man enough to finish the job.”

  The deafening crack of gunfire—one shot, then another—sent Will to the ground. He raised his eyes, dreading what he’d find. Then, scrambled forward blindly, charging at Drake with the knife. He didn’t allow himself to look again but some things can’t be unseen. Like Wade writhing on the ground in the glow of his toppled lantern, clutching his stomach, the blue of his uniform darkening beneath his hand. The hole in Olivia’s flesh, blood spiraling in crimson ribbons down her thigh.

  The gun skittered from Drake’s hand as he fell back. Will grabbed for it in a frenzy, knocking it further from them both. With Drake crawling on his belly toward it, Will plunged the knife wherever it would land but only succeeded in breaking the blade against the rocky ground. Discarding the now-useless handle, he seized hold of Drake’s leg, reeling him in like a fish.

  Will landed the first punch. The snap of Drake’s head satisfied him in a way he would never admit out loud. Finally, after all these months, he had the bastard in his grasp. If it came to it, he would kill Drake Devere with his bare hands.

  Sixty-Eight

  Olivia’s thigh burned white-hot. She rolled onto her side, watching her own blood waterfall onto the tracks. Tried to push herself up but the chain snapped her back down. Next to her, Wade moaned as he staggered to his feet. He stumbled forward, clutching his gun in his hand and aiming blindly. An errant step sent Drake’s lantern skittering into the rock wall. Its bulb shattered. The only remaining light, a thin glow that emanated from Wade’s overturned one.

  Olivia’s head felt floaty, like a kite lost on the wind. Even the desperate scrabble of bodies next to her, even Wade teetering nearby, couldn’t tether her to the ground. Deck’s service weapon glinted in the shadows, but with blood pooling under her leg, she felt too weak to reach for it. Too weak to fight, too. She curled into a ball and covered her head with her hands as if her own flesh and bone could protect her.

  One blast, then another, shook the mine. Wade took another step forward and collapsed like a felled tree, his weapon beneath him.

 
; Olivia waited, wondering where she’d been hit. A warm wetness spread around her shoulder, but she felt no pain.

  She closed her eyes and surrendered to the dark.

  Sixty-Nine

  A bullet to the back didn’t slow Will down. Neither did Drake’s blood, weeping from the wound on his shoulder, nor the darkness that spilled around them the moment the lantern cracked.

  Drake kept coming too, grappling with Will as he struggled to get out from under Will’s grasp. In his periphery, Olivia lay unmoving and far too quiet. When Drake’s foot knocked against her, she groaned softly.

  Landing an elbow to Will’s gut, Drake finally pushed him off. They both lay there, breathing hard and waiting for a second wind. The metallic smell of Drake’s blood gave him hope; his hands were sticky with it. Drake couldn’t outlast him.

  Will found his feet first and put them to work, scrambling to get to the gun before Drake. Just three, two, one more step. But as he extended his hand toward it, he hit the ground hard, Drake clawing at his waist and dragging him backward. The gun, painfully out of his reach again.

  Will stared up into those eyes that had haunted the worst of his nightmares. He watched Drake’s fist descend like a hammer, nailing his head against the track. Stars pinpricked his vision, tiny explosions of light. It reminded him of his first night in Fog Harbor. How many stars. How impossibly bright.

  Seventy

  A sharp grunt roused Olivia. Her eyes barely opened. With excruciating effort, she turned her head to the side.

  She wished she hadn’t.

  In her mind, she screamed—Deck!—but it came out as a whimper.

  Drake knelt atop him, both of their faces bloodied. He reared back, readying another blow.