The woods were too quiet. Jake half expected to hear that strange hollow melody as he headed deeper into the trees, but nothing so much as a birdcall came to him. It was almost as if someone else moving through the woods ahead of him had scared all the wildlife away.
He wasn’t anticipating trouble, but if he’d learned anything during his time as a federal agent, it was always best to prepare for the worst. His weapon was holstered, and he had his phone and a flashlight with him in case he decided to walk all the way to the cave. He had no intention of descending alone, but he could at least search the terrain around the entrance and shine his light inside the pit. If he saw anything suspicious, he’d call for backup. For now, he wasn’t about to pull his team away from their current assignments to assist on a hunch that could end up a wild-goose chase.
He kept to the path, walking slowly but steadily as he searched tree branches and all through the underbrush, still uncertain of his objective. He hadn’t seen or heard anything out of the ordinary. He’d had no bursts of insight, no strong compulsion to enter the woods like he’d experienced the day before. Just a persistent needle at the back of his neck that told him to keep walking. Keep looking. Children don’t disappear into thin air.
Pausing on the path, he glanced over his shoulder. Sunlight glimmering down through the canopy created a strange surreal effect on the trail. For a moment, he could have sworn someone stood in the shadows, just beyond reach of the dappled light. His imagination, of course. His dazzled vision had conjured an image of Kylie’s faceless abductor as he’d traveled through the woods that night, carrying the child in his arms. He’d probably subdued her back at the house with bindings and duct tape or even drugs. She was a light burden. He would have walked at an easy pace, unafraid of detection. The woods would have been dark enough to give him plenty of cover.
The vision was so vivid that Jake felt compelled to step off the path and allow the imagined kidnapper to pass. Then he moved quickly along the trail until the landscape began to shift from deep forest into a craggy hillock. He’d walked a good two miles from Reggie’s house and now found himself in the middle of nowhere. No sign of life except for a distant tumbledown farmhouse that had been eaten by kudzu.
He followed a ten-foot metal fence until he came to a padlocked gate. Posted signs discouraged exploration of the cave without an experienced guide and waivers from the property owner. However, as Lyle Crowder had mentioned the day before, there was nothing preventing anyone from climbing over the fence and descending at their own risk.
Jake tested the metal links for an electrical current before he climbed over. Landing softly on the other side, he took a moment to scout his surroundings before scrambling up the rugged terrain to the cave entrance—a narrow hole between two boulders that dropped straight down into the earth. Crouching at the edge, he angled his flashlight beam inside the natural cylinder. About fifteen to twenty feet down, the passageway appeared to open up into a larger cavern.
He lowered himself to the ground and hung over the opening, shining the flashlight beam along the limestone walls as far down as he could see. Time and erosion had carved plenty of hand-and footholds in the soft rock. Descent would be easy. No need for a rope and harness.
Even so, he still had no intention of going down into the cave alone. Hadn’t he cautioned both Thea and Lyle Crowder against that very thing? Besides, it seemed like a waste of time. People far more familiar with the underground structure than he was had already searched the passageways.
So why did he linger? Why did he suddenly hear Thea’s voice reminding him that he’d found the twig figures in the woods after the police and volunteers had conducted a thorough canvass?
No sooner had the image of those strange totems materialized in his head than a sound came to him straight up out of the earth. He could have sworn he heard the odd clacking of the twig bodies as they bumped together in the breeze. He listened intently, trying to determine if the noise might have come from the woods rather than from deep inside the cave. The hollow melody drifted up to him again, followed by a different sound—a faint, unidentifiable mewling.
A chill skated down Jake’s backbone. He let himself imagine for a moment the end of the kidnapper’s journey. He would have come out of the woods near the fence just as Jake had. Scaling the chain links with his precious burden would have been a challenge unless he was exceptionally strong or had cut the fence earlier. Jake hadn’t seen any holes, but the damage could have been hidden by scrub brush. Then what? Had he climbed into the cave with Kylie and hidden her body in a tunnel or simply tossed her over the edge? Left for dead in a pitch-black environment, could the child have crawled deep inside one of the dry passageways to hide? Was that how the search party had missed her?
More than likely the kidnapper hadn’t come this way at all. Maybe the sound Jake heard was nothing more than a draft of air whistling through one of the tunnels.
But what if it wasn’t? What if Kylie was down there somewhere? Still alive and whimpering in pain and fear as she ran out of time and air? What if she crawled into one of the passageways filled with water? Jake knew he would never have a moment’s peace until he made certain.
He called his second-in-command and told him where he was and what he intended to do. The agent responded in alarm. “Sounds like a risky move, boss. Shouldn’t you wait for backup? Be even better if we can find a local guide to go down with us.”
“We may not have that kind of time,” Jake said. “I saw a diagram of the cave in Chief Bowden’s office. I can pull up a similar image on my phone before I go in. As long as I stick to the main passageways, I should be fine. Gear up and get here as soon as you can.”
Jake thought about calling Thea, but she’d come running and he didn’t want to take the chance she’d crawl down into the pit to look for him. He wasn’t the overly protective type when it came to a trained agent, but Thea had admitted earlier that she wasn’t physically or mentally herself since the accident. Under the best of circumstances, a cave environment could be disorienting. It was too easy to wander along a passageway and become lost and confused by the strange topography. He’d let her know his position as soon as his backup arrived.
Tucking away the flashlight, he bent and scooped up some loose pebbles from the dirt to make a little pile beside the entrance. Then he squeezed through the crevice and lowered himself inside.
So this is the Devil’s Pit, he thought as he felt for handholds and footings in the limestone. He enjoyed wall climbing at his gym, so the relatively short descent wasn’t much of a challenge, nor did he expect to have any trouble getting out. The biggest obstacles were the narrowness of the opening and the absence of light once he’d descended a few feet. The close confines made him a little uneasy at first, but then he was through the narrow shaft in a matter of seconds and, after maneuvering over the rocky debris at the bottom, he could stand upright. He took out the flashlight and swept the beam over the cavern.
He’d done some cave diving in his college days, strictly amateur and always with an experienced guide. Dry caves were a whole different ecosystem. He turned off the flashlight and stood in the dark for several minutes, letting his eyes adjust as he tried to tune into the keening he’d heard from above. When nothing came to him, he wondered again if he’d let his imagination get the better of him. What if he hadn’t? What if Kylie was down there somewhere?
“Kylie! Kylie Buchanan! If you can hear my voice, call out to me, okay? Don’t be afraid. I’m here to take you home.”
His voice echoed back to him. Jake waited until the resonance died away before he called to her again. “Kylie, can you hear me?”
Nothing.
After his eyes and equilibrium had adjusted to the blackness, he turned on the flashlight and shone it once again around the large cavern. A narrow opening in the wall opposite the entrance presumably led back into a second cavern. From what he remembered of the diagram, this particular cave system was a string-of-pearls formation—a series of tight tunnels opening into larger caverns one after the other for a couple of miles or so with dozens of belly-crawl passageways that led to nowhere. A headlamp would have made exploring those dead-end spaces easier, but he’d have to make do with his flashlight. At least it was waterproof if he ran into submerged areas in the passageways.
As he had aboveground, he marked the shaft where he’d climbed down with a pile of pebbles before he set out. He judged the temperature to be a mild seventy degrees or so, a welcome respite from the relentless heat on the surface. Crossing the floor, he aimed his light down the first passageway. Someone had left a candle and matches at the entrance, but he didn’t use them. He left another pile of stones beside the candle and entered the first tunnel. Crawling over the loose rocks in the narrow space would have been tricky but not impossible for a four-year-old child. The image drove Jake forward.
He emerged from the passageway into another room. He could hear water dripping nearby, and the air became dank and musty. The speleothems were more pronounced in this cavern. The eerie limestone formations glistened in the beam of his light. Curious, he took out his phone. No signal.
According to the diagram, an underground river ran beneath the cave floor. From here on in, he might well come upon passageways at least partially filled with water. The prospect was unnerving, but he wasn’t about to turn back. He left his stone bread crumbs at the entrance and moved into the next passage. Several feet in, he had to drop to his hands and knees and then to his elbows and belly. The stone was wet and muddy beneath him, but at least he found no standing water.
The third and largest cavern yet was riddled with tunnels. Jake wanted to believe the search party had been through every square inch of those channels, but the territory was rugged with lots of dead ends and, in those first critical hours, even professionals could get careless in the initial frenzy.
He felt the onset of a very bad feeling. There were too many places to hide a small body down here. Too many narrow tunnels and tubes a child might have squeezed into and become lost and disoriented.
“Hello?” His voice echoed back to him, as hollow as the clacking figures. “Kylie, can you hear me?”
He waited for the sound of his voice to die away again before he called out, “Don’t be afraid. I’m a police officer. I’m here to take you to your mommy.”
He could have sworn he heard a shuffling sound from one of the tunnels. Squatting in front of the entrance, he shone the light into the narrow channel. “Kylie?”
Something flew out at him. The sudden movement startled him and he lost his balance, sprawling backward on the floor as he threw up an arm to cover his head. The light had disturbed a colony of bats. Jake waited for the migration to pass and then, gagging at the smell, crawled far enough into the tunnel to see all the way to the dead end. Nothing.
Either he’d imagined the shuffling sound or he’d heard the bats stirring. Being belowground could play tricks on the senses. Not to mention the havoc certain fungi and bacteria could wreak on one’s perception. He paused to clear his head. Was he crazy for coming down here alone? Yes, but he’d had no choice. Nor was backtracking to the entrance and crawling up out of the pit to wait for reinforcements an option. That would take too much time when he was very much afraid every second counted. His team knew where he was and he’d left a trail. Nothing for him to do now but keep going.
Methodically, he made his way around the third cavern, checking the dead-end tunnels that he could fit into and angling his light into the others. When he finished, he stacked stones in front of the next passageway before he entered.
He exited into another chamber where the underground river bubbled up into a large pool surrounded by slick limestone walls. He didn’t immediately see another tunnel although, according to the diagram, the cave went on for at least another mile or so. Maybe the passageway into the next opening was underwater. Given the challenging terrain, he didn’t see how Kylie could have made it this far by herself.
Crouching on a slippery ledge above the pool, he shone the flashlight beam over the water where something bobbled on the surface.
THEA USED THE spare key hidden in the flowerpot to unlock the front door. It had been years since she’d been inside her mother’s house. She stepped across the threshold and paused to take stock of the changes. The couch and paint color were different. The armchair in front of the TV had been slipcovered, but she recognized the bulky shape. Everything else was the same, careworn but clean and tidy, with very little clutter except for a stack of home improvement magazines on the coffee table.
Her mother had only been away for two nights, but the air seemed stale, as if the place had been closed up for a very long time. Thea wrinkled her nose at the fusty odor as a shiver skimmed across her nerve endings. Something was wrong in here. She couldn’t put her finger on it. Told herself it was probably nothing more than her imagination. Yet she could almost feel the air settle around her as if someone had moved out of the room just ahead of her.
Unsnapping her cross-body bag, she slipped her hand inside and gripped her weapon. “Hello? Anybody here?”
It occurred to her that Taryn Buchanan might have come by to pick up something she’d left behind or even to spend time in the room where her little girl had been taken. Thea didn’t draw her weapon. Instead, she left the bag unsnapped and resting against her hip as she moved across the room.
Unease trailed her down the hallway, past Reggie’s bedroom and the hall bathroom to the second door on the right. Thea’s hand hovered over the knob before she pushed the door open and entered. She’d grown up in this bedroom. Had spent her childhood, adolescence and teenage years alone inside these four walls after Maya had been taken. But when she looked back, everything that came after her sister’s disappearance seemed hazy and surreal, as if she’d sleepwalked through her life until she’d been old enough to move out of this room, out of this house. Even then, the past had followed her. She’d just become more adept at eluding the ghosts.
The musty odor was more prevalent inside this room and the temperature was uncomfortably warm. Thea wondered if Reggie had adjusted the thermostat or turned off the AC altogether before she’d left the house. That would be like her. Frugal out of necessity and habit.
One of the twin beds had been removed a long time ago. The other had been pushed up against the wall facing the window. After her sister had first gone missing, Reggie had moved Thea into her bedroom and she’d slept in here on Maya’s bed. But Thea hadn’t been able to stay away. She’d get up in the middle of the night and return to her own bed, where she would lie awake for hours staring into the darkness, waiting for Maya to come home. Finally, Reggie had moved back to her room, but she would leave both doors open to the hallway all night. Sometimes Thea would hear her pacing through the house. Sometimes Reggie would come into the room and check the lock on the window. Thea always pretended to sleep. To this day, she didn’t know why. Or maybe she did. Maybe she just didn’t want to think too hard about her reason.
Shaking off the memories, she walked around the room. A few remnants of her teenage years remained, along with evidence of Kylie Buchanan’s brief stay. A coloring book on the desk and a small suitcase in the closet. Some neatly folded clothes on the dresser. Not much here to entertain a four-year-old child.
Maybe Taryn had already moved the rest of their things into the apartment, or maybe she’d been in such a hurry to leave Russ Buchanan’s house that she’d fled to Reggie’s with only the basic necessities. Thea thought about her conversation with Jake regarding Taryn’s possible role in her daughter’s kidnapping. Had she set up the abduction to get the child away from an abusive father?
Having met Buchanan face-to-face, Thea could well imagine Taryn’s desperation. A man like that would stop at little to keep his family under his thumb. But would he go so far as to kidnap his own daughter as punishment for his wife’s betrayal?
On and on her thoughts raced as she walked over to the window and glanced out. In broad daylight with the sun shining down on all the flowerbeds, the backyard looked lovely and peaceful. By nightfall, however, the atmosphere changed. The woods were very dark even under a full moon. Thea used to see all manner of shadows at the edge of those trees. She would stare into the night certain someone lurked behind the fence, waiting until Reggie’s bedroom light went out before creeping across the yard to Thea’s window.
For years, nightmares had tormented her sleep until she’d eventually outgrown her fear of the woods. They still came back now and then when she was tired or sick or had suffered an emotional trauma. She still occasionally dreamed about those whispering shadows standing over her bed.
Was someone out there now? Thea knew she was letting the past and her imagination prod her uneasiness, but she could have sworn she saw someone at the corner of the latticework potting shed. Maybe Jake was searching the outbuildings before he set out for the woods. She opened the window and leaned out. “Jake?”
No answer. No sound of any kind except for a faint click-click-click as the windmill rotated in the breeze.
Returning to the hallway, she backtracked to Reggie’s door. Her bedroom was smaller than Thea’s. Funny, she’d never noticed that before. The windows looked out on the side yard and street. If anyone pulled up in the driveway in the middle of the night, the headlights would arc across the ceiling and wake Reggie.
The furnishings were spare and simple: bed, nightstand and dresser, a matching set. Nothing fancy or frilly, but serviceable and every piece paid for, no doubt. That had always been important to Reggie, and a good lesson for her daughter. Thea owed nothing to anyone.
She went over to the closet and riffled through her mother’s belongings until she located the box she was looking for pushed back in a corner. She doubted she would find the other half of the torn photograph among Reggie’s keepsakes, but it was worth taking a look.
The task of going through her mother’s old picture box was both painful and tedious. Thea was struck anew at the scarcity of individual photographs of her and Maya. They were always together. Smiling. Holding hands. Two peas in a pod. After the abduction, there were hardly any snapshots of Thea at all. It was as if their whole world had stopped on that night. Sometimes it had seemed to Thea as if Reggie could barely stand to look at her after Maya went missing.
She’d gone through about half of the photographs when her head jerked up and she listened intently to the quiet house. The sound of ruffling paper came to her from the hallway. She’d left the window open to air out the other room. Maybe a breeze had caught the pages of Kylie’s coloring book.
Thea rose and slipped across the room to the hallway door. The ruffling came from her right, toward the front of the house. She followed the sound back down the hallway and into the kitchen. The house had grown so warm that the air conditioner had finally kicked on. A draft from one of the vents had caught the edge of a child’s drawing pinned to the refrigerator. Kylie’s artwork, Thea thought with a pang. But then she saw the painstakingly scrawled names above the crudely drawn figures and her heart thudded. Me. Sissy.
Not Kylie’s artwork. Maya’s.
Two stick figures with red hearts colored onto their torsos and yellow hair sprouting from their circular heads.
The drawing was so reminiscent of the totems Jake had found in the woods that Thea didn’t see how it could be a coincidence. Why had she not seen it before? Someone had deliberately turned Maya’s innocent rendering of her and her beloved Sissy into something dark and grotesque. It was as if Maya’s abductor had come back after all these years to taunt her family, using little Kylie Buchanan as a pawn in some sick, perverted game.
Derrick Sway would have known about that drawing. Reggie had always displayed their artwork on the refrigerator. He would have seen it every time he’d made a trip into the kitchen for a beer. Had he kept that drawing with him in prison, along with the torn photograph of Maya? Had he returned it to Reggie’s refrigerator after he’d taken Kylie Buchanan?
Thea removed the magnet and clutched her sister’s artwork as she sat down heavily at the kitchen table. The drawing hadn’t been there all along. The police would surely have taken note of it during a search of the house. Someone had come into Reggie’s home after the kidnapping and pinned the artwork to the refrigerator, where Thea was certain to find it.
She and Jake had been so wrong about motive. The twig totems were never meant to connect Kylie Buchanan’s abduction to Maya’s. The nearly identical carvings with their hideous grinning faces and hollowed-out eyes had been left in the woods behind Reggie’s house as an offering—or a warning—to Maya’s twin.
THE DOLL BOBBLED gently on the surface of the black water, seemingly caught in two opposing currents that propelled her in a gentle circle around the pool. When she floated into Jake’s light, the glass eyes glinted eerily so that, for a moment, he had the wildest notion she was alive.
It’s a doll, not a child.
Left deep inside a cave.
Hunkering on the rocky ledge above the pool, he grabbed for an outstretched arm, but the currents carried her out of his reach. He trailed his light after her, recognizing the golden hair and pink dress from the description Taryn Buchanan had provided to the police. She’d claimed the only thing missing from Kylie’s room after the abduction was the child’s favorite doll. Jake thought about another doll that had been dug up in a wooden box containing Maya Lamb’s DNA. Two abandoned dolls found in underground places. Two children taken through the same bedroom window twenty-eight years apart. More and more it seemed as if the same predator had taken both girls. Or else someone was working very hard to make him think so.
The doll seemed a good indication that Kylie had been in the cave at some point, but where was she now? Jake shone the light into the pool, dreading what he might see beyond his reflection. Divers would have to go down there. He felt an urgency to search the water himself, but without the right equipment, the effort would be dangerous and futile.
As he watched, the doll began to circle faster in tighter loops toward the center of the pool. An eddy or whirlpool sucked her under, but she surfaced a few moments later, still floating just beyond Jake’s reach. He flattened himself on the wet ledge and cupped his hand through the cold water, trying to pull the doll toward him. Released from the eddy, she floated lazily around the pool, the circles widening until she bumped up against the rock wall.
So intent was Jake on his task that he hadn’t a clue someone had entered the cavern behind him until a shadow wavered briefly on the glinting water. Lying facedown on the slippery ledge—one hand clutching the flashlight, the other submerged in the pool—he found himself caught unaware in a vulnerable position. So much for his uncanny instincts. The irony of his predicament registered a split second before the back of his skull exploded in pain. Dazed, he rolled and reached for his weapon as he put up a hand to deflect the second blow. A hard kick in his side and the next thing he knew, he was underwater.
Something grazed his cheek. The doll or something living? Trying to fight off the shock of pain and icy water, he relaxed his muscles so that his body could float upward. Too late, he realized he was caught in the whirlpool that had sucked the doll under moments earlier. His weight had carried him deeper. Several feet below the surface, the undercurrents were much stronger. Jake had heard of sinkholes at the bottom of rivers that created maelstroms so powerful even expert swimmers could become trapped and pulled to their death.
Confronted with an unknown force dragging him down, possibly into an abyss, he did what most people would do in his place—he panicked and lashed out with his arms and legs. He knew the frenzied effort would quickly expend his energy, eventually forcing him to inhale water and drown. He knew this. Yet for a few precious seconds, he fought frantically against the swirling waters until his brain finally processed the situation in a rational manner. Stay calm and hold your breath.
Eventually the currents would change their flow and direction and he would pop back to the surface the way the doll had done earlier. Just ride it out. But the whirlpool spun him around in ever-tightening circles and he soon grew dizzy and terrifyingly disoriented. It was one thing to tell himself to remain calm, doing so while completely blinded underwater was something else altogether. Time and again, he had to fight the urge to try to break free. Expend energy. Inhale water. Drown.
The circles finally began to widen and slow. Jake’s instinct was to swim sideways out of the weakened current. Far below him, however, his flashlight was still caught in the dying eddy, creating an eerie illumination as the waterproof housing spun in the water. Common sense told him to let it go. He couldn’t take the chance on getting caught in an even stronger whirlpool if he went deeper, one that could either bash him into the rock wall or suck him into an underwater crater where he would be hopelessly lost with or without the flashlight.
He supposed it was human nature to gravitate toward light. Still dizzy and disoriented, he found himself following that swirling illumination until his lungs screamed for relief and he realized he was fighting an unwinnable battle. He couldn’t reach the flashlight. It was sinking too fast and he was quickly running out of air and energy. Abandoning the light, he changed course and swam in the opposite direction.
What if the light wasn’t sinking? What if the buoyancy of the rubber housing carried the light upward and, rather than swimming toward the surface, Jake was going deeper into the vortex?
For a heart-stopping moment, he had no idea which way was up or down. Without light from the surface, he had nothing to guide him, not even the bubbles from his expelled air. He tried once again to relax his body so that he could rise to the surface, but maybe he was descending instead.
This is why you don’t go into a cave alone.
Okay, think. The flashlight was waterproof and designed to float. Logic told him that once free of the undercurrents, the unit would rise to the surface. Follow the light.
Decision made, he reversed course yet again and swam toward the radiance. He couldn’t have been under water for much more than a minute, and yet it seemed he’d been down forever. When his head finally broke the surface, he gulped air on a gasp and swam in total darkness until his body scraped up against the rock wall. He found a slippery handhold and clung for dear life as he waited for the residual dizziness to pass.
He looked around for the flashlight. The bulb must have gone out or maybe the light had floated into an underwater passageway. His phone was gone, too, but at least he still had his weapon. Gripping the slick wall, he tuned into the silence. His assailant could be anywhere in the pitch-blackness.
After a few moments, he could feel the undercurrents tugging him away from the wall. The force came in concentric waves, each stronger than the last. He searched for more handholds in the rock. Using the last of his energy, he hoisted himself out of the water and onto the ledge, uncertain that he was even in the same cavern. Maybe the currents had carried him beneath the wall into another chamber. Without a flashlight or phone, he would be hard-pressed to find his way out.
Don’t panic.
That was quickly becoming his mantra, he realized. Help was on the way. His team knew he was down here. They’d search every nook and cranny until they found him. But what if they couldn’t find him?
Don’t panic.
He felt along the ledge to determine the width. Enough room to navigate if he was careful. He rose slowly, hands above his head to make sure he could stand upright. Then he shuffled away from the edge of the pool until his shoulder grazed the limestone wall. Earlier, he’d piled pebbles in front of the passageway from which he’d emerged into the cavern. All he had to do was make his way around the wall until he found the stones. If they were still there and if he was in the same cavern. He wouldn’t let himself dwell on either possibility.
He crept forward on the ledge until he felt a draft on his wet skin. If he hadn’t been soaked to the bone, he might never have noticed that whisper of fresh air. Now he turned slowly until the breeze skimmed his wet face. He walked toward the waft, guided by little more than instinct, determination and a faint melodic clacking that chilled him more deeply than the bottomless pool.