—
Will drove to the scene of the car accident in Faith Mitchell’s Mini, his shoulders slumped, the top of his head pressed tightly against the roof of the car. He hadn’t wanted to waste any time trying to get the seat adjusted—not when he had taken Faith to the hospital and especially not now that he was driving to the scene of one of the most horrific crimes he’d ever seen. The car was holding its own on the back roads as he traveled down Route 316 at well over the posted speed limit. The Mini’s wide wheelbase hugged every curve, but Will backed off the gas as he got farther away from the city. The trees thickened, the road narrowed, and he was suddenly in an area where it was not uncommon for a deer or possum to wander onto the road.
He was thinking about the woman—the torn skin, the blood, the wounds on her body. From the moment he’d seen the medics wheeling her down the hospital corridor, Will had known that the injuries had been wrought by someone with a very sick mind. The woman had been tortured. Someone had spent time with her—someone well practiced in the art of pain.
The woman hadn’t just appeared on the road out of thin air. The bottoms of her feet were freshly cut, still bleeding from a walk through the woods. A pine needle was embedded in the meaty flesh of her arch, dirt darkening her soles. She had been kept somewhere, then somehow managed to walk to her escape. She must have been held in a location close to the road, and Will was going to find the location if it took him the rest of his life.
Will realized that he had been using “she,” when the victim had a name. Anna, close to Angie, the name of Will’s wife. Like Angie, the woman had dark hair, dark eyes. Her skin tone was olive and she had a mole on the back of her calf just down from her knee, the same as Angie. Will wondered if this was something olive-skinned women tended to have, a mole on the back of their leg. Maybe this was some kind of marker that came in the genetic kit along with dark hair and eyes. He bet that doctor would know.
He remembered Sara Linton’s words as she examined the torn skin, the fingernail scratches around the gaping hole in the victim’s side. “She must have been awake when the rib was removed.”
Will shuddered at the thought. He had seen the work of many sadists over his law enforcement career, but nothing as sick as this.
His cell phone rang, and Will struggled to get his hand into his pocket without knocking the steering wheel and sending the Mini into the ditch by the road. Carefully, he opened the phone. The plastic clamshell had been cracked apart months ago, but he’d managed to put the pieces back together with superglue, duct tape and five strips of twine that acted as a hinge. Still, he had to be careful or the whole thing would fall apart in his hand.
“Will Trent.”
“It’s Lola, baby.”
He felt his brow furrow. Her voice had the phlegmy rasp of a two-pack-a-day smoker. “Who?”
“You’re Angie’s brother, right?”
“Husband,” he corrected. “Who is this?”
“This is Lola. I’m one’a her girls.”
Angie was freelancing for several private detective firms now, but she had been a vice cop for over a decade. Will occasionally got calls from some of the women she had walked the streets with. They all wanted help, and they all ended up right back in jail, where they used the pay phone to call him. “What do you want?”
“You don’t gotta be all abrupt on me, baby.”
“Listen, I haven’t talked to Angie in eight months.” Coincidentally, their relationship had become unhinged around the same time as the phone. “I can’t help you.”
“I’m innocent.” Lola laughed at the joke, then coughed, then coughed some more. “I got picked up with an unknown white substance I was just holding for a friend.”
These girls knew the law better than most cops, and they were especially careful on the pay phone in the jail.
“Get a lawyer,” Will advised, speeding up to pass a car in front of him. Lightning cracked the sky, illuminating the road. “I can’t help you.”
“I got information to exchange.”
“Then tell that to your lawyer.” His phone beeped, and he recognized his boss’s number. “I have to go.” He clicked over before the woman could say anything else. “Will Trent.”
Amanda Wagner inhaled, and Will braced himself for a barrage of words. “What the hell are you doing leaving your partner at the hospital and going on some fool’s errand for a case that we have no jurisdiction over and haven’t been invited to attend—in a county, I might add, where we don’t exactly have a good relationship?”
“We’ll get asked to help,” he assured her.
“Your woman’s intuition is not impressing me tonight, Will.”
“The longer we let the locals play this out, the colder the trail is going to get. This isn’t our abductor’s first time, Amanda. This wasn’t an exhibition game.”
“Rockdale has this covered,” she said, referring to the county that had police jurisdiction over the area where the car accident had occurred. “They know what they’re doing.”
“Are they stopping cars and looking for stolen vehicles?”
“They’re not completely stupid.”
“Yes, they are,” he insisted. “This wasn’t a dump job. She was held in the area and she managed to escape.”
Amanda was silent for a moment, probably clearing the smoke coming out of her ears. Overhead, a flash of lightning slashed the sky, and the ensuing thunder made it hard for Will to hear what Amanda finally said.
“What?” he asked.
She curtly repeated, “What’s the status of the victim?”
Will didn’t think about Anna. Instead, he recalled the look in Sara Linton’s eyes when they rolled the patient up to surgery. “It doesn’t look good for her.”
Amanda gave another, heavier sigh. “Run it down for me.”
Will gave her the highlights, the way the woman had looked, the torture. “She must have walked out of the woods. There’s got to be a house somewhere, a shack or something. She didn’t look like she’d been out in the elements. Somebody kept her for a while, starved her, raped her, abused her.”
“You think some hillbilly snatched her?”
“I think she was kidnapped,” he replied. “She had a good haircut, her teeth were bleached white. No track marks. No signs of neglect. There were two small plastic surgery scars on her back, probably from lipo.”
“So, not a homeless woman and not a prostitute.”
“Her wrists and ankles were bleeding from being bound. Some of the wounds on her body were healing, others were fresh. She was thin—too thin. This took place over more than a few days—maybe a week, two weeks, tops.”
Amanda cursed under her breath. The red tape was getting pretty thick. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation was to the state what the Federal Bureau of Investigation was to the country. The GBI coordinated with local law enforcement when crimes crossed over county lines, keeping the focus on the case rather than territorial disputes. The state had eight crime labs as well as hundreds of crime-scene techs and special agents on duty, all ready to serve whoever asked for help. The catch was that the request for help had to be formally made. There were ways to make sure it came, but favors had to be played, and for reasons not discussed in polite company, Amanda had lost her heat in Rockdale County a few months ago during a case involving an unstable father who had abducted and murdered his own children.
Will tried again. “Amanda—”
“Let me make some calls.”
“Can the first one be to Barry Fielding?” he asked, referring to the canine expert for the GBI. “I’m not even sure the locals know what they’re dealing with. They haven’t seen the victim or talked to the witnesses. Their detective wasn’t even at the hospital when I left.” She didn’t respond, so he prodded some more. “Barry lives in Rockdale County.”
A heavier sigh than the first two came down the line. Finally, she said, “All right. Just try not to piss off anyone more than usual. Report back to me when you’ve got something to move on.” Amanda ended the call.
Will closed the cell phone and tucked it into his jacket pocket just as the rumble of thunder filled the air. Lightning lit up the sky again, and he slowed the Mini, his knees pressing into the plastic dashboard. His plan had been to drive straight up Route 316 until he found the accident site, then beg his way onto the scene. Stupidly, he had not anticipated a roadblock. Two Rockdale County police cruisers were parked nose to nose, closing both lanes, and two beefy uniformed officers stood in front of each. About fifty feet ahead, giant xenon work lights illuminated a Buick with a crumpled front end. Crime-scene techs were all over, doing the painstaking work of collecting every piece of dirt, rock and glass so they could take it back to the lab for analysis.
One of the cops came up to the Mini. Will looked around for the button to roll down the window, forgetting that it was on the center console. By the time he got the window down, the other cop had joined his partner. Both of them were smiling. Will realized he must look comical in the tiny car, but there was nothing to be done about it now. When Faith had passed out in the parking lot of the courthouse, Will’s only thought was that her car was closer than his and it would be faster using the Mini to take her to the hospital.
The second cop said, “Circus is thataway.” He pointed his thumb back toward Atlanta.
Will knew better than to attempt to pull out his wallet from his back pocket while he was still in the car. He pushed open the door and clumsily exited the vehicle. They all looked heavenward as a clap of thunder shook the air.
“Special Agent Will Trent,” he told the cops, showing them his identification.
Both men looked wary. One of them walked away, talking into the radio mike on his shoulder, probably checking with his boss. Sometimes local cops were glad to see the GBI on their turf. Sometimes they wanted to shoot them.
The man in front of him asked, “What’s with the monkey suit, city boy? You just come from a funeral?”
Will ignored the jab. “I was at the hospital when the victim was brought in.”
“We’ve got several victims,” he answered, obviously determined to make this hard.
“The woman,” Will clarified. “The one who was walking on the road and was hit by the Buick that was being driven by an elderly couple. We think her name is Anna.”
The second cop was back. “I’m going to have to ask you to get back in your car, sir. According to my boss, you don’t have jurisdiction here.”
“Can I talk to your boss?”
“He figured you’d say that.” The man had a nasty smile on his face. “Said to give him a call in the morning, say around ten, ten-thirty.”
Will looked past their cruisers to the crime scene. “Can I get his name?”
The cop took his time, making a show of taking out his pad, finding his pen, putting pen to paper, printing the letters. With extreme care, he tore off the page and handed it to Will.
Will stared at the scrawl over the numbers. “Is this English?”
“Fierro, numbnuts. It’s Italian.” The man glanced at the paper, offering a defensive “I wrote it clear.”
Will folded the note and put it in his vest pocket. “Thank you.”
He wasn’t stupid enough to think the cops would politely return to their posts while he got back into the Mini. Will was in no hurry now. He leaned down and found the pump handle to lower the driver’s seat, then pushed it back as far as it would go. He angled himself into the car and gave the cops a salute as he did a three-point turn and drove away.
Route 316 hadn’t always been a back road. Before I-20 came along, 316 had been a main artery connecting Rockdale County and Atlanta. Today, most travelers preferred the interstate, but there were still people who used it for shortcuts and other nefarious pursuits. Back in the late nineties, Will had been involved in a sting operation to stop prostitutes from bringing johns out here. Even then, the road was not well traveled. That two cars managed to be here tonight at the same time as the woman was wildly coincidental. That she had at that point managed to walk onto the road into the path of one of them was even more fantastical.
Unless Anna had been waiting for them. Maybe she had stepped out in front of the Buick on purpose. Will had learned a long time ago that escape was sometimes easier than survival.
He kept the Mini at a slow crawl as he looked for a side road to turn down. He had gone about a quarter of a mile before he found it. The pavement was choppy, the low-riding car feeling each and every bump. An occasional streak of lightning lit the woods for him. There were no houses that Will could see from the road, no run-down shacks or old barns. No lean-tos sheltering old stills. He kept going, using the bright lights at the crime scene as his guide so that when he stopped, he found himself parallel to the action. Will pulled up the emergency brake and allowed himself a smile. The accident site was about two hundred yards away, the lights and activity making it look like a football field in the middle of the forest.
Will took the small emergency flashlight out of the glove box and got out of the car. The air was changing fast, the temperature dropping. On the news this morning, the weatherman had predicted partly cloudy, but Will was thinking they were in for a deluge.
He made his way on foot through the thick forest, carefully scanning the ground as he walked, searching for anything that was out of place. Anna could have come through here, or she could have been on the other side of the road. The point was that the crime scene should not just be confined to the street. They should be out in the forest, searching within at least a mile radius. The job would not be easy. The forest was dense, low-lying limbs and bushes blocking forward progress, fallen trees and sinkholes making the nighttime terrain even more dangerous. Will tried to get his bearings, wondering which direction would lead him to I-20, where the more residential areas were, but gave up after the compass in his head started spinning toward nowhere.
The grade shifted, sloping downward, and though it was still far away, Will could hear the usual sounds of a crime scene—the electric hum of the generator, the buzz from the stadium lights, the pop of camera flashes, the grumblings of cops and crime-scene techs occasionally punctuated by surprised laughter.
Overhead, the clouds parted, sending down a sliver of moonlight that cast the ground in shadow. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a patch of leaves that looked disturbed. He crouched down, the weak beam of the light not helping him much. The leaves were darker here, but he couldn’t tell if that was from blood or precipitation. Will could definitely tell that something had lain in the spot. The question was, had that something been an animal or had it been a woman?
He tried to get his bearings again. He was about halfway between Faith’s car and the crumpled Buick on the road. The clouds moved again, and he was back in darkness. The flashlight in his hand chose this moment to give up the ghost, the bulb going yellowish brown, then black. Will slapped the plastic case against his palm, trying to get some more juice out of the batteries.
Suddenly, the bright beam of a Maglite illuminated everything within a five-foot radius.
“You must be Agent Trent,” a man said. Will put up his hand to keep his retinas from burning. The man took his time lowering the flashlight to Will’s chest. In the distant glow of the crime-scene lights, he appeared to be the living embodiment of a Macy’s Day parade balloon—bulbous at the top, tapering to almost a point at the bottom. The man’s tiny little pinhead floated above his shoulders, the flesh of his thick neck spilling up over his shirt collar.
Considering his girth, the man was light on his feet. Will hadn’t heard him making his way through the forest. “Detective Fierro?” Will guessed.
He flashed the light into his own face so Will could see him. “Call me Asshole, because that’s what you’re gonna be thinking about me the whole lonely way back to Atlanta.”
Will was still crouched down. He glanced toward the crime scene. “Why not let me have a peek first?”
The light was back in Will’s eyes. Fierro said, “Persistent little fucker, aren’t you?”
“You think she was dropped here, but she wasn’t.”
“You’re a mind reader?”
“You’ve got an APB for all suspicious cars in the area and you’ve got your crime-scene guys going over that Buick with a sieve.”
“The APB is a code 10-38, which you’d know if you were a real cop, and the closest house to here is an old geezer in a wheelchair about two miles up.” Fierro said this with a disdain that was more than familiar to Will. “I’m not gonna have this conversation with you, pal. Leave my scene.”
“I saw what was done to her,” Will pressed. “She wasn’t put in a car and dropped. She was bleeding from everywhere. Whoever did this is smart. He wouldn’t put her in a car. He wouldn’t risk the trace evidence. He sure as hell wouldn’t leave her alive.”
“Two options.” Fierro held up his pudgy fingers and counted them off for Will. “Leave on your own two feet or leave on your back.”
Will stood up, straightening his shoulders so that he was standing at his full six-three. Pointedly, he looked down at Fierro. “Let’s try to work this out. I’m here to help.”
“I don’t need your help, Gomez. Now I suggest you turn around, get back in your little girl car and go gentle into that good night. You wanna know what happens here? Read a newspaper.”
“I think you mean Lurch,” Will corrected. “Gomez was the father.”
Fierro’s brow wrinkled.
“Look, the victim—Anna—probably lay down here.” Will pointed to the depression in the leaves. “She heard the cars coming, and she walked onto the road to get help.” Fierro didn’t stop him, so he continued, “I’ve got a canine unit on the way. The trail is still fresh now, but it’ll be gone with the rain.” As if on cue, lightning flashed, followed closely by a clap of thunder.
Fierro stepped closer. “You’re not hearing me, Gomez.” He thrust the butt of his flashlight into Will’s chest, physically pushing him away from the crime scene. He kept doing this as he spoke, punctuating each word with a sharp jab. “Get your fucking GBI, three-piece fucking undertaker ass back in your little red toy car and get the fuck off my—”
Will’s heel struck something solid. Both men heard it, and both men stopped.
Fierro opened his mouth, but Will indicated he should keep quiet, slowly kneeling down to the ground. Will used his hands to brush away some leaves and found the outline of a large square of plywood. Two big rocks framed the corner, marking the spot.
There was a faint sound in the air, almost a crackling. Will knelt down farther and the noise turned into a few muffled words. Fierro heard it, too. He drew his gun, keeping the flashlight alongside the muzzle so he could see what he was going to shoot. Suddenly, the detective no longer appeared to mind Will’s presence; instead, he seemed to be encouraging Will to be the one pulling back the sheet of plywood and putting his face in the line of fire.
When Will looked up at him, Fierro shrugged, as if to say, “You wanted on the case.”
Will had been in court all day. His gun was at home in the drawer by his bed. Fierro either had a large goiter on his ankle or he was carrying a backup piece. The man didn’t offer the gun and Will didn’t ask for it. He would need both hands if he was going to pull back the plywood and get out of the way in a timely manner. Will sucked in his breath as he moved the rocks, then dug his fingers carefully into the soft ground, getting a good grip on the edge of the board. It was standard size, roughly four-by-eight, and half an inch thick. The wood felt wet under his fingers, which meant that it would be even heavier.
Will glanced back at Fierro to make sure he was ready, then, in one swift motion, pried back the sheet of plywood. Dirt and debris scattered as Will quickly backed away.
“What is it?” Fierro’s voice was a hoarse whisper. “Do you see anything?”
Will craned his neck to see what he had uncovered. The hole was deep and crudely dug, a thirty-by-thirty-inch square opening going straight down into the earth. Will kept at a low crouch as he made his way toward the hole. Aware that he was again offering his head as a target, he quickly glanced inside, trying to see what they were dealing with. He couldn’t see to the bottom. What he did discover was a ladder resting a few feet down from the top, a homemade deal with the rungs nailed crookedly to a pair of rotting two-by-fours.
Lightning cracked in the sky, showing the tableau in full glory. It was like a cartoon: the ladder to hell.
“Give me the light,” he whispered to Fierro. The detective was more than accommodating now, slapping the Maglite into Will’s reaching hand. Will looked back at the man. Fierro had taken a wide stance, his gun still pointed at the opening in the ground, fear widening his eyes.
Will shone down the light. The cavern seemed to be L-shaped, going straight about five feet, then turning into what seemed to be the main area of the cave. Pieces of wood jutted out where the roof was shored up. There were supplies at the base of the ladder. Cans of food. Rope. Chains. Hooks. Will’s heart jumped as he heard movement down there, rustling, and he had to force himself not to jerk back.
Fierro asked, “Is it—”
Will put his finger to his lips, though he was pretty sure that the element of surprise was not on their side. Whoever was down there had seen the beam of the flashlight moving around. As if to reinforce this, Will heard a guttural sound from below, almost a moan. Was there another victim down there? He thought of the woman in the hospital. Anna. Will knew what electrical burns looked like. They stained the skin in a dark powder that never washed away. They stayed with you for a lifetime—that is, if you had a lifetime left in you.
Will took off his suit jacket and tossed it behind him. He reached toward Fierro’s ankle and grabbed the revolver out of the holster. Before he could stop himself, Will swung his legs down into the hole.
“Jesus Christ,” Fierro hissed. He looked over his shoulder at the dozens of cops who were a hundred feet away, no doubt realizing there was a better way to do this.
Will heard the sound from below again. Maybe an animal, maybe a human being. He turned off the flashlight and jammed it into the back of his pants. There was something he should have said, like “Tell my wife I love her,” but he didn’t want to give Angie the burden—or the satisfaction.
“Hold on,” Fierro whispered. He wanted to get backup.
Will ignored him, shoving the revolver into his front pocket. Carefully, he tested his weight on the wobbly ladder, the heels of his shoes on the rungs so he could face the inside of the cavern as he descended. The space was narrow, his shoulders too broad. He had to keep one arm straight above his head so that he could fit down the hole. Dirt kept falling in clumps around him and roots scratched his face and neck. The wall of the shaft was just a few inches from his nose, bringing out a claustrophobia Will never knew he had. Every time he inhaled, he tasted mud in the back of his throat. He couldn’t look down, because there was nothing to see, and he was afraid that if he looked up, he might reverse direction.
With each step, the smell got worse—feces, urine, sweat, fear. Maybe the fear was coming from Will. Anna had escaped from here. Maybe she had wounded her attacker in the process. Maybe the man was down there waiting with a gun or a razor or a knife.
Will’s heart was beating so hard that he could feel it choking his throat. Sweat was pouring off him, and his knees were shaky as he took step after interminable step down. Finally, his foot hit soft earth. He felt around with the toe of his shoe, finding the rope at the base of the ladder, hearing the chain rattle. He would have to crouch down to get inside, leaving himself completely exposed to whoever was waiting.
Will could hear panting, more mumbling. Fierro’s revolver was in his hand. He wasn’t sure how it had gotten there. The space was too tight for him to reach the flashlight, and it was falling down the back of his pants anyway. Will tried to make his knees bend, but his body would not comply. The panting was getting louder, and he realized it was coming from his own mouth. He looked up, seeing nothing but darkness. Sweat blurred his eyes. He held his breath, then dropped down in a squat.
No gun went off. His throat was not slit. Hooks were not jammed into his eyes. He felt a breeze from the shaft, or was that something in front of his face? Was someone standing in front of him? Had someone just brushed their hand in front of his face? He heard movement again, chattering.
“Don’t move,” Will managed. He held the gun in front of him, sweeping it back and forth like a pendulum in case someone was standing in front of him. With a shaking hand, he reached behind him for the flashlight. The panting was back, an embarrassing noise that echoed in the cave.
“Never …” a man murmured.
Will’s hand was slick with sweat, but it held steady to the grooved metal grip of the flashlight. He jammed his thumb into the button, turning on the light.
Rats scattered—three big, black rats with plump bellies and sharp claws. Two of them went straight for Will. Instinctively, he backed up, slamming into the ladder, his feet tangling in the rope. He covered his face with his arms, and felt sharp claws dig into his skin as the rats bolted up the ladder. Will panicked, realizing he’d dropped the flashlight, and he snatched it up quickly, scanning the cave, looking for other occupants.
Empty.
“Crap …” Will exhaled, slumping to the ground. Sweat poured into his eyes. His arms throbbed where the rats had ripped the skin. He had to fight the overwhelming urge to escape up after them.
He used the flashlight to take in his surroundings, sending roaches and other insects scrambling. There was no telling where the other rat had gone, and Will wasn’t going to go looking for him. The main part of the cavern was sunken, about three feet down from where Will was sitting. Whoever had designed the structure knew what they were doing. The depressed area would give a home-field advantage.
Will slowly lowered himself down, keeping the light trained in front of him so there wouldn’t be any more surprises. The space was bigger than he had expected. It must have taken weeks to excavate the area, lifting out bucket after bucket of dirt, bringing down pieces of wood to keep the whole thing from caving in.
He guessed the main area was at least ten feet deep and six feet wide. The ceiling was about six feet overhead—tall enough for him to stand up if he kept stooped over, but he didn’t trust his knees to lift him. The flashlight could not illuminate everything at once, so the space felt even more cramped than it was. Add to that the eeriness, the ungodly smells of Georgia clay mixed with blood and excrement, and everything started to feel smaller and darker.
Against one wall was a low bed that had been thrown together with what looked like recycled wood. A shelf overhead held supplies: water jugs, soup cans, implements of torture Will had only seen in books. The mattress was thin, bloodstained foam sticking out of the torn black cover. There were chunks of flesh on the surface, some of it already rotting. Maggots swirled like churning waters. Strands of rope were bunched up on the floor by the bed, enough to wrap around someone head to toe, almost like a mummy. Deep scratch marks clawed into the wood on the sides of the bed. There were sewing needles, fishing hooks, matches. Blood pooled onto the dirt floor, running underneath the bed frame like a slow leak in a faucet.
“Told …” a voice began, only to be drowned by static. There was a small television/radio sitting on a white plastic chair at the back of the cavern. Will kept down in a crouch as he moved toward the chair. He looked at the buttons, pressing a few before he managed to turn off the radio, remembering too late that he should have had his gloves on.
He followed the cord of the television with his eyes, finding a large marine battery. The plug had been cut off the cord, the bare red and black wires attached to the terminals. There were other wires, their ends stripped down to the copper. They were blackened, and Will caught the familiar scent of an electrical burn.
“Hey, Gomez?” Fierro called. His voice was all raw nerves.
“It’s empty,” Will told him.
Fierro made a hesitating noise.
“I’m serious,” Will told him. He went back to the opening, craning up to see the man. “It’s empty.”
“Christ.” Fierro’s head disappeared from view, but not before Will saw his hand shoot up in the sign of the cross.
Will was ready to do some praying himself if he didn’t get out of here. He shone the light on the ladder, seeing where his own shoe prints had smeared into the bloody footprints on the rungs. Will looked down at his scuffed shoes, the dirt floor, finding more bloody footprints that he had smeared. He crammed his shoulders back into the shaft and put his foot on the rung, trying not to mess up anything else. Forensics wasn’t going to be happy with him, but there was nothing he could do about it now except apologize.
Will froze. Anna’s feet had been cut, but the cuts were more like the nasty scrapes you get from stepping on sharp objects—pine needles, burrs, thorny vines. That was why he had assumed she had walked in the woods. She wasn’t bleeding enough to leave bloody footprints that were so pronounced he could see the ridges of the sole in the dirt. Will stood there with his hand above him, one foot on the ladder, debating.
He gave a bone-weary sigh, then crouched back down, skipping the light along every corner of the cave. The rope was bothering him, the way it had been wrapped around the bed. His mind flashed on the image of Anna tied down, the rope wrapped in a continuous loop over and under the bed, securing her body to the frame. He pulled one of the lengths out from under the bed. The end was cut clean through, as were the others. He glanced around. Where was the knife now?
Probably with that last stupid rat.
Will pulled back the mattress, gagging from the smell, trying not to think about what his bare hands were touching. He kept the back of his wrist pressed under his nose as he pulled away slats of wood that supported the mattress, hoping to God the rat didn’t spring up and claw out his eyes. He made as much noise as he could, dropping the slats in a pile on the floor. He heard a squeaking sound behind him, and turned to find the rat crouched down in the corner, its beady eyes reflecting the light. Will had a piece of wood in his hand, and he thought about hurling it at the beast, but he was worried his aim wouldn’t be good enough in the narrow space. He was also worried it would piss off the rat.
He laid the plank onto the pile, keeping a wary eye on the creature. Something else got his attention. There were scratch marks on the bottom of the bed slats—deep bloody gouges that didn’t look like they were made by an animal. Will shone the light into the opening under the bed. The dirt was excavated about six inches below the floor, running the length and width of the bed. Will reached down and picked up a small length of rope. Like the other pieces, this had been cut, too. Unlike the other pieces, there was a knot intact.
Will pulled back the rest of the slats. There were four metal bolts underneath the bed, one at each corner. A piece of rope was tied through one bolt. Pink blood stained the cord. He felt the rope with his fingers. It was wet. Something sharp scraped his thumb. Will leaned in closer, straining to see what had scratched him. He picked at the cord with his fingernails, prying out the object so he could examine it more closely in the flashlight beam. Bile hit the back of his throat when he saw what he was holding.
“Hey!” Fierro bellowed. “Gomez? You coming up or what?”
“Get a search team out here!” Will rasped.
“What’re you talkin—”
Will looked at the piece of broken tooth in his hand. “There’s another victim!”