Keep to the right. She prayed Howard’s info was good as she crept forward. Like Franco, she waited until all light evaporated before she turned on her flashlight. She held it away from her body, gun gripped in her right hand.
Nicky ran the beam around the walls of the cave, heart pounding with each step, and remembered what Franco had said about measuring the dimensions, how it calmed him. The walls and ceiling this close to the opening were hand-worked and smooth, a perfect arch. The floor was packed dirt, like an ancient lava tube that had been filled halfway.
She peered into the darkness, straining to see Franco’s light ahead of her. Nothing. Swiveling around, she looked for Ryan’s, but the cave snail-curved and dropped, hiding both men.
At fifty paces, she snapped and dropped a glow-stick. At one hundred paces, the tunnel divided. She stayed right and found one of Franco’s sticks. Pressing her wrist against her mouth, she smiled and just stood for a moment. So far, so good.
The passage snaked left and the ceiling dropped. The wind—what had Ryan called it?—k’uuti tsa’atsi sped up and whistled faintly and her ponytail tickled the skin of her neck. Craggy walls with dark niches folded around her, perfect hiding places. Someone could be close enough to touch her and she wouldn’t even know. She popped and dropped another stick. The tiny glow made her feel better. Nicky trained her light on the ground. It sloped dramatically as she continued her descent.
Another split, another of Franco’s glow-sticks, this time tucked into the wall at knee-level. The floor flattened out, but the path narrowed. Her hand was clammy with sweat and she holstered her weapon to wipe her palm down her thigh. How much farther? She’d lost count of her steps. Gun in hand once again, she pushed forward. The blowing air around her hummed louder with each step. The hair on her head and arms stood on end.
Something was off.
She tensed and swept her flashlight frantically. Strong hands grabbed and pulled her into a shallow alcove. Franco’s scent surrounded her and she slumped into his chest, heart pounding in her ears. He pressed her light against his side to hide it. With trembling fingers, she fumbled with the switch.
“Generators. We’re close.” His lips tickled her ear. A warm hand slid over her chin to tilt it higher. His other arm rotated her body until his scratchy cheek pressed against her temple. “Up there. Cable and closed-circuit cameras.”
Her eyes adjusted and the tunnel rocks grayed. Lights on somewhere, their glow erasing a percentage of the darkness. She could just make out a thick bundle of cables tacked to the ceiling.
“We’ve probably been made, but I want Ryan to be a surprise. Stay here.”
And he left her to stride back up the tunnel like he was strolling in the park on Sunday. Nicky laid her gun across her chest, straining to hear anything beyond the generator’s underlying thump. She tipped her head. A low, undulating sound emerged behind it. Voices?
A rock clicked down the floor of the cave, like it had been kicked or thrown. She crouched, gripped her weapon, and stared into the darkness. Franco, his large body and face a gray blur, ambled toward her, nodding as he passed. His vague silhouette grabbed the cables, gave a powerful yank, and pulled down the wiring above him. The camera swung into the stone with a crunch.
A faint, “Dammit!” echoed from the end of the tunnel. Meloni? PJ?
Ryan silently tucked in beside her. Nicky frowned. “I could have shot you,” she whispered.
“Nah. You’re too good for that.” His teeth flashed with a smile. “Franco says there are two openings, farther down, along either side of this wall. They lead to the interconnected rooms. He’s our diversion. You right, me left. Be careful.” He tugged her ponytail and slunk away.
Blood rushed hard through her veins. Go time.
Franco still crashed around somewhere ahead of her as she glided down the tunnel, stepping over the downed cables. An opening blacker than the walls lay about ten yards forward. She slid in, held her breath, and listened.
There was nothing. She switched on her flashlight, narrowed its beam, and ran the light around the chamber. Her flesh crawled as she cataloged the contents. Small white coolers painted with a thick red stripe lined the lowest rung of shelves stacked against the wall. A sticker on the side read: HUMAN ORGAN FOR TRANSPLANT. Boxed packages of saline drips and needles rested neatly above the coolers. Tubing, masks, and disinfectant in square brown bottles were lined up next to plastic-wrapped surgical drapes and cases of scalpels. Meloni and PJ were well stocked. It was obvious they’d been doing this for a while. She traversed the room and found a gap in the wall barred with a metal door. It wasn’t locked. Did they keep their victims here until they were ready to harvest? She pushed the door and winced as the metal hinges groaned. Her light held away from her, she ran the beam around the second room. Empty but for a cot.
Inside, the scent of cigarettes, stale urine, and sweat was suffocating, and the walls closed in tightly. She could almost hear their sobs, feel their panic. Nicky squeezed her eyes shut and sagged against the cold stone. So many people—so many spirits—sacrificed by a pair of monsters masquerading as human beings. They had to be stopped.
Anger built and thrust away the despair that threatened to swamp her. She straightened. First Savannah. Then …
A second unlocked grate led to another connected room, brighter gray and brown walls inside. Light spilled in from somewhere. As Nicky stole toward the next room, the generator noises became louder. She peeked around the edge of the last opening and her eyes widened. The connecting cavern was huge. Tucked along the wall, lights illuminated a high, curved ceiling with mineralized water stains and fields of tiny stalactites. The floor was stone, with worn paths between bulging pillars of rock, and the air smelled of dust and bleach.
She detected no movement and stepped out from the door. A draped and curtained tent against the far wall drew her immediate gaze. Light from the interior cast shadows from what looked like a tall bed and metal instrument tables. Amassed beside it were a dozen chest-high canisters plastered with angry red COMPRESSED HYDROGEN GAS, HIGHLY FLAMMABLE, NO SMOKING stickers. They stood next to half a dozen smaller oxygen tanks.
PJ and Meloni harvested their hearts here.
At least three openings squared with stacked stone cut through the walls of the cavern. Nicky identified one that might lead back to the corridor out of this place. Another doorway, a dozen yards behind the surgical room, glowed with light and throbbed with generators. Electrical cords ran from it to the draped tent. Her gaze trailed back to a rounded hole, circled with crumbling rocks, that dropped through the middle of the floor. She sidled closer. Air blew out of it, hot and wet. Howard’s bottomless pit.
The last opening was a dark, jagged gap to the right. She walked toward it, skirting the embedded rocks, some taller than her. The click of her flashlight was loud as she turned it on. Its beam glimmered against a black metal grate. It would be the perfect place to keep a victim.
Gun ready, she inched closer, her gaze darting all around her. She didn’t know where Ryan or Franco were. Hadn’t heard anything over the throbbing sound of the generator. How long had she been alone? Ten minutes? Fifteen?
“Savannah? Are you in there?” Another step. She leaned forward, searching the blackness. “Savannah?”
Movement flashed and Nicky jerked in pain. She brought her gun around, only to have her wrist whacked with a numbing strike. Her weapon went flying. It clattered off the rocks and fell into the bottomless hole. Swiveling, she leveled the flashlight’s beam directly into her attacker’s eyes and he scuttled back. With numb fingers, she yanked out a syringe stuck in her shoulder.
Suddenly her mind seemed to catch on a breath and whirl away. She wobbled and stopped herself from falling by grabbing a pillar of stone. It cut into her hand and the pain briefly cleared her head.
“Goddammit! You almost blinded me!”
A voice ricocheted weirdly off the ceiling and ballooned behind her eyes. Human-shaped shadows stuttered in front
of her, doubled and tripled, brilliant colors pulsating around them. She shook her head to make them go away, but it only became worse. A hand reached toward her—or maybe away—and spun wildly, like a kaleidoscope, and a giggle sounded. She belatedly realized it came from her.
“Ketamine acts so bizarrely. It’s all dependent on the individual.” Someone spoke but the sound came from all directions.
The shadows slid sideways. Nicky dragged a foot to follow, but her head lolled. She shook it again and her brain washed back and forth in her skull.
“Oh, by the way, your love interest is dead in the tunnel over there. PJ bashed his head in with a rock.”
Franco. Nicky started to cry, but laughed instead. “No,” she sang and stumbled to another large rock. Her knee slammed against it and her mind cleared again—for an instant. “Where is he? Where’s PJ?” No. Not PJ. Franco. Meloni wavered in front of her. She swiped at him, staggered. Lights around his multiple heads popped and jumped.
“Around here somewhere. But I’m over here. Come and get me. You know, he’s been a good partner, a good friend. He led me to Fire-Sky Indians as organ donors, although at first we didn’t know what we had. We actually met in Mexico. I was a surgeon in a very professional, completely illegal black market organ transplant ring. He, shall we say, procured the donors. That’s where he told me about the Enemy’s Heart Ceremony and his desire for revenge against the Fire-Sky people. It seemed a match made in heaven. I got the organs I needed and, according to his culture and traditions, he destroyed their very souls as they’d destroyed his.”
Nicky stopped her forward motion. The shadows had consolidated, but now the lights bounced like rubber balls.
“Come on. Almost there,” Meloni coaxed, like he was calling a dog. He stepped closer to the operating tent. “PJ targeted that Downs woman. Lured her with a white rabbit, isolated her away from her family and all she knew. I thought it was kind of cruel, myself.” He shrugged and his whole body rippled. “But he said she was the core of all his problems. Really a sick young man. I was disappointed, though. We couldn’t use her heart because of her trisomy,” he continued as Nicky scuffed forward. “But he told me to have patience. Said her parents would never give up on her, no matter how much her DNA was … wrong. And he was right. The scout they hired was surprised to see PJ, but trusted him. I don’t remember his name.” Nicky tried to tell him—Vernon—but couldn’t work her lips. “I used his heart for a transplant and it was amazing. There was no rejection, no complications.” He backed away and Nicky followed. “A little to the left, Nicky. May I call you Nicky?” He loomed larger. She swung a fist through air, noting her hand was long and black. Her flashlight. “Now, now. Behave. The job at OMI was brilliant. Made it much easier to select donors. We don’t know how Sandra Deering found out about our—for lack of a better word—project. What wasn’t so easy was to delete all of her electronic records. But we did.”
Nicky stopped. Opened her mouth. “Howard was her friend. He knew.”
“Howard Kie? Easy to divert. All PJ had to do was drop the hint the war chiefs were behind this, and that guy was off and running. But it made him hard to catch. He would have made a great donor. Keep walking, Sergeant.” He continued his rambling conversation. It drew her, compelled her to follow. “And who would’ve thought Saunders would tattle about Sandra’s missing heart? Did you know I used it to test my perfusate? Nothing like the real thing, baby. It’ll be hell to publish, though.” He grinned, and Nicky squinted. Both of his faces crinkled up. “PJ thought if we took Saunders, we’d have more time. When David finally figured out what we were doing, he tried to bargain for his life with the DNA database. Explained the HLA markers, everything. But we really didn’t need him. Julie Knuteson had found his files, so it was easier to go through her.”
“Why are you talking so much?” Nicky asked and leaned into a standing rock. She was so sleepy and he wouldn’t shut up.
“Didn’t Julie tell you I had quirks?” He snickered. “She kept me abreast of your progress, you know. And I used her phone to send you a dandy little virus when I called the night of the blessing. The night of the rattlesnake. That was PJ’s idea. He hoped you’d get bitten while we chatted. And since I had to keep you on the line, I chatted away about Saunders’s database, never thinking you were intelligent enough to understand the implications. But you realized why we took Savannah. It was the cheetahs, wasn’t it?” Meloni sighed. “I’ve always been an over-sharer. Are you sleepy, Sergeant? Come lie down over here and you can close your eyes.” He backed up again and she pursued. It felt like she was floating. “Mariano Salas—the cartel boss—his daughter needs a new heart. Savannah was perfect. We had her prepped, ready, and now she’s gone. Who took her?”
Nicky’s relief was so profound, she almost dropped to her knees. Savannah was gone. Rescued. “Ryan…” Ryan must have, because Franco was—She sobbed.
“Ryan Bernal,” Meloni muttered. “Figures. So, here’s the problem. I need a heart, or I’m a dead man. Since yours is the only one available…”
She reared back, relief and sadness replaced with bone-chilling cold. Then she giggled and the cavern spun around her.
“I know. Hilarious. Into the operating room. Come on.” He pulled back one of the curtains.
His voice coerced her shaking muscles into motion. Nicky zigzagged toward him. He patted the empty cot and turned away from her for a split second. She swung the flashlight like a club at the most solid set of fingers on the bed. His scream was high-pitched and agonized. She cracked the flashlight against his chin and his teeth snapped. Meloni toppled to the ground in slow motion, taking the instrument tables and draped sides of the tent with him.
Nicky lurched into the black interior of the tunnel and ran. She tripped over a large soft object a dozen feet in, coming down hard on her shoulder. Panting, she crabbed-walked back. PJ Santibanez, his neck twisted unnaturally, his gut a black glistening mass, lay on the blood-soaked dirt. Lungs frozen, she stared as his head rotated toward her. He blinked and grinned, exposing blood-stained fangs and a fluttering forked tongue. She catapulted to her feet, slammed blindly into the wall, and fell to her backside. A shock of pain jarred through her and her flashlight rolled away.
Hallucinations. Ryan said ketamine brings hallucinations.
Scrambling to her feet, Nicky sidestepped along the wall, looking back to see if PJ followed her.
“You broke my hand, oh, God, my hand,” Meloni whimpered. “I will eviscerate you! Carve you into pieces!” His voice rose to a feverish wail.
But she didn’t care. Savannah was safe. A wave of lassitude washed over her as she dragged her body into darkness. The tunnel opening telescoped madly, the light at the end pulsing like a heartbeat. Her eyes and nose stung with tears and a sob croaked from her throat. He would get her. No one would find her. She’d be lost. Like Sandra, Maryellen, Vernon … Franco—
“Nicky.” A voice rasped out of the darkness.
She swayed. “Franco? He said you were dead.”
Franco’s body glided toward her, arms outstretched. “Not dead. PJ just knocked me silly. Keep talking. I need you to keep talking.”
“I’m here. Come to me, Franco.” She reached out a hand and they connected. Franco wilted against her and she hugged him tightly. “PJ’s dead. Someone used a knife. Gutted like a fish.” That was funny. Nicky snorted. “Savannah?”
“Ryan took her out. Had to carry her. They drugged her.”
“Me, too. Ketamine. Like Sandra.” There was something else … Meloni. “Do you still have your gun?” Her words slurred and Nicky squeezed her eyes tight. When she opened them, the lights at the end of the cave wavered and hopped around, like rabbits.
White rabbits.
Her mind blurred, then cleared. She still had to find the missing. Had to save their hearts, their souls, but her limbs were groggy, heavy.
“Meloni’s down there. In the lights. You have to shoot him. Then we can go, we can escape. Do you have y
our gun?”
“Yes. In my ankle holster.”
A fuzzy shadow at the end of the cave moved and the light winked. The shape tentatively walked into the open area.
“Oh, God.” She wheezed in a hard breath. “He’s there.” Silhouetted against the lights—one black body that shivered into two. Meloni leaned over the lump on the ground. He gave a low moan that got louder and louder. She pressed her palms over her ears.
“PJ’s dead, Sergeant Matthews.” His arms swept around. “Poor PJ. He was my friend. You know what? I think I’ll take your heart in his honor.” He paused. “How are you feeling? Dizzy? Sleepy? You didn’t get a full dose. Too bad, so sad.” He said the last in a high voice, made all the more chilling by the echo. “That means it’s going to hurt when I cut into you.”
Franco slipped behind her and looped his arm tightly around her waist. He pressed completely against her, his strong body supporting her weakening limbs.
“Nicky, I—I can’t see.” He kept his wavering voice low. “PJ splashed something into my eyes before he hit me.”
“Franco. No.” She lost control of her voice. It bellowed out from her throat.
“Is Agent Martinez there, too? Well, hello, Franco. Were you the one who killed poor PJ? Tsk, tsk. Such violence.” He stepped closer. Was he searching for them? Could he see where they were?
Nicky’s eyesight cleared and, for a moment, the cave behind Meloni sharpened into focus.
“Tanks.” Her voice rasped. “He has oxygen and hydrogen tanks, Franco. Hydrogen is famibel … flame-ibly…” Two sets of tanks wobbled drunkenly as her vision doubled again. “If we can’t get Meloni, we have to shoot the tanks. Cause an explosion. Trap him, kill him. It’s the only way. Your gun. Get your gun.”
Hearts of the Missing Page 28