A LONE CHEVY PICKUP sat in the Cantabon parking lot. The night air was cool, the moon nearly full.
I stared at the truck’s plate. We’d already checked what Cobb drove, and this was his. Remy peered in the windows of the cab, her flashlight moving across the front and back seats.
I popped the trunk on my father-in-law’s Charger. In a box of auto supplies, I found a switchblade and flipped it open.
I walked over and jammed the knife into the front tires of the truck. Then the back.
Remy’s eyes followed me. “Jesus,” she said.
“There’s a hundred ways out of these caves. I don’t want Cobb and Meadows popping out one hole while we go in another.”
Remy’s flashlight stopped on the front dash of the truck, and I stared over her shoulder. A diagram was drawn in thick black ink on white paper.
In the picture, a figure of a woman was on her knees, her arms tied behind her. Someone had used a red pen to draw blood all over her—a chaotic angry scratching that had torn a hole in the paper.
I put the switchblade in my back pocket and motioned Remy over to a trailhead. Time was running out.
“What are you thinking in terms of backup?” Remy asked.
She was talking about Abe again. And anyone else dirty who might answer the call. “We might have a legit reason to call in someone who’s not from Mason Falls,” Remy said, pointing at the state park sign. “It’s their jurisdiction.”
“True,” I said.
“But the state will take a half hour to get here,” Remy said.
“Call ’em.” I motioned, and Remy took out her phone.
I started down the trail while Remy called the state police. About a hundred feet down, the scrub brush ended, and I turned on my flashlight, finding the mouth of a cave.
“Is that the entrance?” Remy asked, coming up behind me.
“There’s a bunch of places to enter.” I shrugged. “If she ran from the parking lot, this is the closest.”
I crouched, flicking on her flashlight. The hole was a crooked circle, about ten feet all around. Without a flashlight, the inside was pitch-black.
A cable was strung across the hole.
“This is the thing the state police puts over the hole?” Remy asked. “To keep kids out?”
I looked at a link of chain on the ground nearby. “No.” I pointed. “That is.”
I went back to my father-in-law’s car and grabbed a tool. Cut the cable strung across the hole.
As we moved into the cave, the rocky land below us angled downward. The air inside smelled musty. After a minute, we came to a hole in the ground.
“Watch out.” I motioned, pointing at the cave floor that dropped out in front of us.
I lowered myself down, into another tunnel.
As Remy and I made our way through the cave, I thought of Delilah. If she was hiding from Cobb and Meadows, she’d also be hiding from us. If we yelled out her name, we could compromise her safety.
We kept moving, but decided to use one flashlight only. The area ahead of us looked like a mining tunnel, taller than it was wide. As we walked down it, the ceiling dripped with water.
I heard a strange echo and turned, pointing the flashlight to my left.
There was a large boulder in the cave. It sat awkwardly, half wedged into the floor.
I moved closer, thinking of the nights I’d worked out here a decade ago when I was on patrol. The caves had charmed me, and I’d come back on the weekends five or six times. Made my way through during the day.
“I’ve never seen this,” I whispered to Remy.
My partner put some weight against the boulder, and it rocked back and forth, revealing a hole in the ground below it.
“You think this stone normally blocks that hole?” she asked.
“Yeah, but not up on its side like this or I’d remember.”
I thought of Meadows. He’d have the strength to move the rock. Maybe he got lazy and left it like this.
I pushed against it, and the boulder rolled onto its face, clearing the opening.
I lowered myself down the hole and let go, a three- or four-foot drop until I hit bottom inside another tunnel.
The look of the cave had changed.
A long tunnel, maybe six feet all around, lay out in front of me. But the passageways weren’t formed by water. This new tunnel had been carved into the limestone, and overhead there were faded red bricks shaped into curving support arches every ten or fifteen feet.
“C’mon down,” I said.
Remy dropped behind me, and our eyes met. This place was man-made, and ten feet below the other cave. The dark areas were pitch-black, and you could hear water dripping all around you.
We walked slowly, and the character of the cave changed even more.
The tunnels were crowded with tangled underbrush—dead wood mostly—gnarled branches that had been placed in the cave by hand.
The pieces of trees were curved like animal antlers and had been placed in the cave. They forced us to slowly move left and then right to get down the tunnel, pointing our flashlights waist-high so we wouldn’t catch our clothes on the branches.
We moved into a circular room and found the skulls of animals placed on sticks coming out of the ground. The smell of burning kerosene and rotten meat was in the air, and the darkness around the narrow beams of our lights was suffocating.
Remy pointed her flashlight around. Someone had spray-painted the words Poison the Water in fluorescent green on the walls. I thought of the kids with the bloody noses. Of the conspiracy blogger who wrote that the children at Paragon Baptist had not accidentally gotten typhoid.
I recognized the skull of a cow, but there were smaller animals too. A cat maybe. A rabbit. A lamb.
“What the fuck is this?” Remy asked.
We heard muffled voices in the distance, and I put a finger to my lips, moving through the circular room. Coming out of it were five or six tunnels, each turning in different directions. In a few of them old furniture was piled. Warped two-by-fours were stacked atop wooden dressers. A child’s mattress and a handful of old dolls.
“Should we split up?” Remy whispered.
I shook my head no and motioned her down the first tunnel.
As we got closer, I heard a voice and we flicked off our lights, moving faster in the dark with Remy behind me, holding on to my belt.
“Prepare the body,” a man said. The voice was husky and nasal, and I moved toward it.
“Prepare the body,” another voice repeated.
A ripple of light moved across the standing water and through my legs, heading to the voices. It disappeared as soon as I saw it.
“Fuck,” Remy whispered. “You see that?”
Then the tone of the first man’s voice changed, less ritual and more concern. “I think she passed out,” he said.
“Well, wake her ass up. If she’s dead, he ain’t gonna be happy.”
Up ahead the tunnel opened onto a large space filled with calf-high muddy water. I saw Donnie Meadows in blue mechanic’s overalls, but he couldn’t see me. I craned my neck farther and saw Elias Cobb, the Bearded Man.
My mind flashed to the night I’d seen them last.
“Merry Christmas, asshole,” Cobb had said to me, just before pushing me into a dark area on I-32 to die.
Meadows was crouched close to the ground, and Cobb used a Maglite to illuminate the area.
Delilah lay on the ground on her stomach in front of Meadows. The big’un pulled her right hand behind her back and held it there. Then pulled at her left. He had white nylon rope looped around his forearm.
I inched my way forward, my hand moving down to my .22.
The big’un’s head looked like it had been shaved recently and was starting to grow back. Black peach fuzz covered his dome. He had blood on his face, but he didn’t appear to be cut. It looked more ritualistic. A reddish-black smear on each cheek.
I steadied my weapon atop a rock that faced the two men. I was too far away and my hand was shaking, so I inched closer. Quietly.
Meadows pulled hard on Delilah’s left hand, and the girl either woke up or stopped playing dead.
She flipped onto her back and came around with her right. Slapped him across the face.
“Bitch,” Meadows said, dropping both knees onto her stomach as she tried to wriggle free.
The girl gasped at his weight, and Meadows flipped her body back onto her belly in one quick move. He grabbed her two arms and dropped them into a knot he’d prepped.
“Let’s see how this feels,” he said, ready to yank them backward and shatter her elbows.
I flicked on the flashlight. “Police! Hands in the air!”
Cobb took off down a tunnel at the far end of the cave, and Meadows dropped the rope, running after his buddy.
Remy and I splashed into the big room where the men were a minute earlier, heading toward Delilah.
A shot rang out, and a flash lit up the cave. I dove into the wet muck for cover, and time seemed to slow down. A second shot came and then a third.
“I’m hit,” Remy grunted, the noise of the gunfire still echoing off the limestone.
I ran my hand across Remy’s arm in the darkness. She winced as I touched her biceps, and I felt blood moving out of her. A small stream, but steady.
Remy’s breath was shallow.
I crawled over to Delilah. Untied the rope from around her hands. “You okay?” I whispered.
The girl nodded, but said nothing, and I flicked on my flashlight, looking around.
My .22 was gone, down into the mud. I searched through the silt, but found nothing.
The splashing of boots subsided, and I lifted myself up, taking off my MFPD jacket. I bit a hole into the arm of the windbreaker and tore a strip of it off. Moved over to Remy and wrapped the strip of fabric tight around her arm, right where the bullet had cut into her.
“Jesus.” Remy winced, but I ignored her, tightening it hard. Then ripped a second strip and did it again.
I stared at the darkness where Cobb and Meadows had gone.
We could wait for the state police to come and see this place. The tunnels were probably full of evidence of human and animal sacrifice.
But that wasn’t gonna happen.
Cobb and Meadows had wheeled me out onto the highway to kill me. Now they’d shot my partner. Almost killed Delilah. There was no way I was letting them get away.
I handed my car keys to Remy. “I’m going after them,” I said. “Get Delilah out. If you don’t see me up top, leave and get to a hospital.”
Before she could argue, I took off, hustling down the tunnel where Cobb and Meadows had gone.
As I ran, the water on the ground disappeared, and the earth angled upward. I could tell I was moving northeast, curving back toward where Remy and I had come in.
My heartbeat and breath echoed in my head, and I passed charcoal drawings on the walls.
One depicted an avenging angel. A drawing that looked like the one we’d seen beside Delilah’s home. Another was the all-seeing eye, similar to what was carved in the tree where Kendrick had been abducted.
“You crazy bastards,” I muttered, moving faster.
As I reached the end of the tunnel, I saw a bit of moonlight through a hole. Cobb was squeezing out of the cave through an open space. An opening I would have more trouble getting through, with my height.
I rushed over, but Cobb was gone, off into the scrub brush.
“Shit,” I said, suddenly worried that Remy and Delilah would run into him in the parking lot.
I lifted myself up, using the same foothold that Cobb had used.
As I did, a weight hit my side, and I landed in a pool of mud.
I looked up and saw Donnie Meadows on top of me. He planted his knees on my stomach and pushed my head backward under the water.
I struggled, trying to punch Meadows, but I was on my back and barely keeping my head above the surface.
I started taking in water and mud. I reached my hands around to hit him, but Meadows was too big. His body was too far from me, his reach too long.
“Fuckin’ die already,” he said, his voice guttural and thick.
My head went under, and I held my lips closed.
Even as I struggled, a thought came to me. Nothing means anything except strength. Right and wrong, justice—these were all well and good. But if Meadows was stronger, I’d drown, just like Jonas and Lena had.
Meadows was slamming my head backward against the ground, and black smears were shooting across the insides of my eyelids.
I felt something hard against my back and reached around, my hand fumbling along the cave floor.
My father-in-law’s switchblade had fallen out of my back pocket.
I brought it around, striking Meadows in the gut. He let out a noise, and I lowered my aim. Slicing at him again and again, each time aiming for the femoral artery with Marvin’s hunting knife.
Meadows thrashed around, reaching for my hand. But I slashed at anything that moved, and his screams echoed off the cave walls until the place went silent.
His body went slack, and he slumped onto me, the initial hit taking the breath from my chest.
I pushed his weight off me and lay there in the dark, exhausted in the pool of red mud. I was done. “No more,” I said aloud. “No more.”
But a minute later I remembered Cobb had gone out the hole and was headed toward Remy. I lifted my body up and climbed out—into the night air.
When I got to the parking lot, Remy was there with Delilah. The teenager reeked of urine and mud, and her eyes were black holes with no emotion.
“Cobb’s truck was gone when we got here,” Remy said. “They got away.”
I looked to where the Chevy pickup once was.
“Not they.” I gave Remy a look. “Just Elias Cobb.”
Remy glanced back to the cave, following me.
“Cobb must be riding on rails with four flat tires,” I said. “He’s not gonna get far.”
“Go,” Remy said. “We’ll wait for the staties.”
I got in the Charger, not sure where I was headed. About two miles down the road, I saw a giant chunk of tire. Then another in the dirt nearby—heading onto some private land.
A single mailbox was set in the dirt, and a metal cord that looked like it blocked the entrance lay on the ground.
I’d seen this place before. A big plot of empty land with some old buildings on it. The part that backed up to the interstate had electrified fence for miles.
I flicked off my lights and drove slowly, the gravel road widening to a giant open plot of scrub brush.
Far up ahead of me, I saw Cobb’s pickup.