by Logan Fox
“There!” I slam a hand against Rube’s chest as he turns to run in a different direction. I point.
His eyes go wide when he sees the van. But all he gets is a glimpse.
We run toward it, but we’re too late.
The van pulls away with a screech of tires, and by the time we reach the road, it crests a small rise before vanishing behind it.
Unmarked.
No plates.
One in a million.
I already know we’ll never find it.
Which means we’ll never find Trinity again.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Trinity
I flinch every time I hear a sound. Just for that second, I stop shivering. But then the cold leaks back, and I start trembling again.
Most of the sounds come from above.
Faint voices. Muffled footsteps. The scrape of furniture.
Hoody brought me down here, shoved me to my knees, and then abandoned me. I’m still wearing the gag he pushed between my lips the second the back door of the van closed behind us.
Right before he stroked my hair and told me what a pretty little girl I was.
I couldn’t answer him, obviously. But I didn’t want to. Because I think the woman left him in the back of the van with me on purpose. To remind me what would happen if I tried anything.
Now that I’m alone, now that my terror is starting to go stale, I can’t keep kneeling here indefinitely.
I’m on a mattress placed on the floor. Its fabric is damp, and the air has a clingy chill to it.
There’s a smell down here. One I don’t like one bit. It’s so foul that I start breathing around my gag instead of pulling air through my nose.
The sounds coming from upstairs aren’t the only ones I hear. There are things in here with me. Small things. Scurrying things. Rats or mice. Their sharp little claws catch against the concrete floor.
It’s hard to tell how long I’ve been down here. It feels like an hour or more, but I think I would have been a lot colder if that were the case.
Hoody tied my hands behind my back. When I fold down onto my heels, that puts my hands in reach of the knots around my ankles. I’ve already tried to undo the ropes around my wrists—they’re much too tight. But if I got the ropes off my feet, I could at least walk around. Maybe find something sharp for the ropes around my wrists.
It feels like another quarter-hour goes by as I work at the knots. Blind, all I have to go on is a vague idea in my head. Eventually I start tugging as hard as I can on anything that feels like it might give way.
Sometimes I forget to breathe through my mouth, and then I have to fight down nausea when that smell hits my nose.
But finally—finally—something gives.
The knot loosens.
With a hard tug, I slip free. The soles of my feet prickle as blood rushes back into them. I have to fight back a sudden influx of thoughts about what would have happened if I’d sat here and waited until my feet turned blue, and then black.
I push up, swaying on the mattress, and then hurriedly step onto the floor. I test the knots around my wrists again, but they’re still tight, and my hands are aching from untying my ankles.
I give one last violent tug, growling with frustration behind my gag, and somehow lose my balance.
If it hadn’t been for the mattress, I’d have cracked my elbow against the concrete floor. But thankfully I land on something soft instead. I lie there for a second, wondering how the hell I ended up here, and then start to push up to my feet again.
But then I realize my hands are by my hips. Still bound, but…maybe, just maybe…
I roll onto my back, lift my knees to my chest, and loop my bound hands under my butt. It takes time—wriggling and swearing and sweating—but eventually I get my hands out in front of me.
I’ve chafed my wrists so much I smell blood in the air, but now that my hands are in front of me, I can take off my gag and my blindfold.
Shouldn’t have wasted those precious seconds, though. It’s so dark in here that it doesn’t matter if I have a blindfold on or not. I can’t even tell the difference between opening and closing my eyes.
But with the gag out, I have access to my teeth. And they can grip the nylon ropes a hell of a lot better than my fingers.
I’m shaking with cold by the time I get my hands free, but I’m so giddy with relief I barely notice.
I slowly turn around, blinking hard as I take in my surroundings. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I think I’m starting to see faint shapes in the dark. Maybe there is a little bit of light down here after all.
I go slow at first as I start to explore. I don’t want to bump my bare toes into anything, or knock over something that could make a noise.
But the more I explore, the more frantic my movements become.
Especially once I hit the first wall of the small basement I’m in.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Rube
“I need to get gas,” Cass says.
I point. “Go down there.”
“Oh my God, Rube, seriously. Do you want to push this thing? Because I—”
“Go down the fucking road.”
An edgy silence fills the SUV’s cabin. We’re all staring out the windows, trying to spot a white van, a head of dark curls, the slightest thing out of place.
We’ve been driving around for almost an hour.
I don’t want to call it—refuse to—but we all know she’s gone.
Cass goes down the road I pointed out, but as soon as he reaches the next intersection he doubles back and heads for the gas station we passed about a mile back. He does it without a word, but making sure he doesn’t catch my eye in the rear-view mirror either.
Guess I wouldn’t be surprised if this got physical.
If the tension eating away at my insides is anything compared with my brothers, then there’ll be nothing left of us come dusk.
We have to find her before then.
If the sun goes down before then, she’ll be lost forever. That’s all I can think. We have to find her before dark. Have to find her before dark.
I should be figuring out how to find her, not what will happen if we don’t.
The moment Cass stops the car at a pump, I’m out of the door. I go inside the convenience store, buy a packet of cigarettes, a soda. Zach comes in behind me. He grabs some chips, a six-pack of ginger beer, and another packet of cigarettes. We don’t look at each, don’t speak. The clerk ringing us up keeps sending us a wary look through her lashes as if she’s considering triggering the alarm behind the counter.
Cass is still pumping gas when we get back. Zach tosses his bag into the back seat and climbs up without missing a beat.
I head for a picnic table a few yards away, lighting a cigarette en route.
Grit crunches under shoes behind me, but I don’t turn around. “It’s Gabriel, isn’t it?” Apollo says.
I grunt non-committally, and then turn to face him as I pass him my cigarette.
He shrugs before taking it. “I’m thinking he paid someone to put up that article online. Paid that lawyer chick to handle everything as if he was dead.”
“No,” I murmur, taking back the smoke. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“He wanted her back. Couldn’t find her. Knew this would get her attention. Seems pretty straightforward to me.”
“Then he’d have taken her somewhere we couldn’t find them in the first place.”
Back then, when Zach was lying in that hospital bed with tubes sticking out of him, I was sure I’d lose it. So instead of fixating on how likely he was to die, I tried to put together the pieces of this fucked up jigsaw puzzle.
But too much of it didn’t make sense.
Gabriel had evaded us for close to a decade. Then all of a sudden he pops up on our radar. All right, not him, per se, but a bread crumb. The first of many. An article anyone but us would have missed.
A missing child turned up five years after he’d b
een kidnapped walking home from school one day. Told reporters he’d been abducted by a priest. Turns out the guy was a bank manager, and little Stuart only thought he was a priest because he wore a crucifix and spoke about God a lot.
The kid’s abductor made a run for it, and was never found, but that article sure as hell got our attention.
We visited the abandoned house where the kid had been kept. Then we broke in one night and took a look inside. Tried to figure out where Stuart had been held.
No surprise: it was the basement.
There were too many similarities in how it had been set up for it to have been a coincidence.
Mattresses, covered in dirty sheets, lying on the floor. Hooks dangling from the ceiling. Metal dog bowls for water and food. Metal sheets riveted in place over whatever windows there were.
And then there was the cold.
And the damp.
And rats.
That article, that house, eventually led to Father Gabriel. But before we could track him down, he came to us.
ORPHANAGE UNDER NEW ADMINISTRATION
A short piece. Barely news-worthy. But it made it into the paper, and it had his name in it, and that’s how we located him.
We’d found the Guardian.
A man who moved around the country and set up basements like the one we were kept in. Like the one little Stuart had been found in.
A man who kept his record clean. A man no one would suspect.
A priest.
And because we knew so many of our Ghosts were men of the cloth, there was no doubt in our minds that we’d found the orchestrator of the biggest child sex-trafficking ring of this century.
But how could a man who was so cunning, so fucking intelligent and well connected, be so stupid?
He could have taken Trinity anywhere, and we’d have lost them.
But he brought her here.
To her old house.
A house that was in his name.
That same day, Apollo told us everything Gabriel had said to him in the storm drain. But it had taken weeks of cajoling before Trinity told us her side of the story.
She believed Gabriel was lying. He’d become unstable, not sure if he wanted her as a daughter or a lover or a friend. And she decided she couldn’t trust anything that came out of his mouth.
But what if Trinity was right? Maybe Gabriel had become unhinged. He’d realized he’d made a mistake taking her home. So he decided to try again. And this time, he would make her vanish without a trace.
“…think? Hey, Rube? Are you listening?”
I come back to the present with a big inhale, and then shake my head. “What?”
Apollo’s eyes dim a little. “I said we should find an Internet cafe or something. I can download some of my code off the cloud and do some digging around. I mean, we’ve got the van.”
I take a last pull of the cigarette before crushing it out under my foot. Then I head back to the SUV without answering him.
Cass and Zach are already inside. Zach is in the driver’s seat now, and Cass is working his way through a ginger beer after deciding he’d rather sit in my seat than Zach’s. I move around to the other side of the car and climb in, kicking shit over to his footwell to make room for my feet.
One of those things catches my eye.
Trinity’s purse.
Cass and I both see it at the same time, but he gets to it first. Grabs it. Flicks it open.
His hand is shaking when he takes out the envelope, and I’m about to snatch it from him and tear it open how he’s struggling to get the paper.
“It’s a letter from Gabriel,” he says.
His pupils shift left to right as he scans the page.
“Fuck.” He looks up and locks eyes with me. “Guys…fuck.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Trinity
I’m about halfway through my search of the basement when my foot hits something in the dark. With a metallic gong I’m sure could be heard a mile away, a dog bowl flies away with a clang, clang, clang before finally coming to rest.
My foot’s wet.
I think there was water or something in there.
Now the smell’s stronger. I gag and shake my leg, trying to get the water off.
Hell, I hope it’s water. I’m not so sure anymore.
I hold my breath for a moment, wondering if anyone upstairs heard the ruckus. Then I start moving forward again, trying to remember which direction I was headed.
The smell is so much stronger now.
Stagnant water, is all.
My foot touches another mattress. Unless my imagined dimensions of this place are wrong, I’m close to another wall. I’m guessing this mattress is pushed up against it.
I lean forward, but I don’t feel a wall where I should. So step onto the mattress and stretch—
Something bumps my foot.
If I hadn’t clapped my hands over my mouth, I would have screamed. In fact, I do still scream, but the sound is muffled.
I jump back, my heart clanging in my chest almost as loud as that dog bowl.
What the hell was that?
I wait for something to happen. A sound that indicates movement, perhaps. More rat claws maybe.
But there’s nothing.
So I crouch down and grope in the dark until I touch the edge of the mattress.
My fingers brush the surface as I move them reluctantly forward.
I’m almost sure I can make out the incredibly vague, pale outline of the mattress. But if so, then there must be a big stain in the center, because that area is dark.
God, I wish there was more light down here.
I swipe my fingers left to right over the mattress, with no idea where I’d felt the thing on my foot.
But there’s nothing there.
Probably because I chased it away.
And I have no idea if I’m relieved or grossed out by the thought that I touched a live rat with my foot.
I’m just about to stand when my fingers snag something.
I freeze.
It takes me a few seconds to figure out what I’m touching.
Hair.
I leap back.
My scream echoes back to me, but I couldn’t give a fuck if everyone above me heard. I scramble away, tripping on the edge of another mattress and falling hard on my ass. Then I’m on hands and knees, crawling. I hit another dog bowl but this one’s dry and doesn’t splash me.
I’m half-sobbing, half-choking by the time I get close to the other side of the basement—arms outstretched as I search out the wall I know is getting closer.
But instead of hitting the wall, something slams into my stomach. I fold in half, gasping in pain, sobbing with shock, and grab for something to hold onto.
I ran into a bar of steel.
A railing.
Stairs.
I’m up them a second later. Now my sobs are tearing me apart. Bile vaults up my throat, but I choke it down with a ragged gasp.
My hands bang against something.
A door.
I slam my fists onto it.
“Let me out! Please, please!” My throat burns as I shriek out a string of desperate pleas. “Let me out!”
As if someone on the other side of the door hears my prayers, it swings open.
I fall forward, stumble, catch myself, and go hurtling into the light. I can’t see a thing—it’s just white, and there’s shouting and movement.
I run into someone.
They grab me.
Is it Hoody? The man with the polo shirt under his sweater? Or the woman with the gun?
I don’t care.
I don’t care.
I swipe my hands over my face, push hair out of my eyes.
The man in front of me, the one I ran into, he spreads his arms.
Smiles.
I recognize that smile.
But I don’t know how.
Because the man staring at me is a stranger.
Chapter Thirty-Six
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Apollo
“Trinity’s dad faked his own death?” I murmur.
I’m still staring at the letter Cass passed me. He read it out, but I’m reading it again. I was hoping I could get something—anything—by the font or type of paper he used.
But it’s a standard font in Word printed on ordinary, cheap, letter-sized paper.
Even the signature just reads ‘Gabriel’ with an indecipherable flourish that could be anything.
Cass blows a plume of cigarette smoke out of the car window. “It would appear so.”
We moved the car to the far side of the parking lot a few minutes ago. We should have started driving already, but we don’t know where to go. Which means we could be heading in the wrong direction, moving further away from Trinity.
“What if he’s lying?” Zach asks, twisting in his seat to scan our faces.
“Gabriel? Why would he?” Rube sits forward a little in his seat. “He’s dead.”
According to Gabriel’s letter, Trinity’s father—Keith Malone—is still alive. And although he states it as a fact, he doesn’t back it up with evidence.
“Then what about her mom? Is she alive too?”
“It doesn’t say,” Cass reminds me.
“Yeah…but…”
“Look, this isn’t getting us any closer to finding them,” Cass says. He flicks the butt of the cigarette out of the window.
“What will?” Rube asks.
Quiet settles down. I’ve been trying to figure that out the past ten minutes, and I’m sure everyone else has too. But we don’t have any leads.
“We’re assuming Gabriel took her, but what if it wasn’t him?” Zach says quietly. And then puts his hand over Cass’s so he’ll stop tapping his nail. “He could have had someone else do it.”
“But how would he know—” Rube begins, sighing as he speaks.
“The lawyer.” Cass snatches his hand out from under Zach’s and clicks his fingers. “She obviously called him when Trinity picked up the key.”
“So? We weren’t followed here,” Rube says. “How would he know exactly when—”