Bones was not in the truck. Step uttered a string of profanities and then moved to the corner of the house.
The daughter sucked the mucus out of her sinuses and then spit on the ground. “Wha’cha doing? I thought you wanted to see the inventory.”
“She run off,” Step said.
“Who run off?”
“My friend. The girl that was with us.”
“The whore Momma was going on about?”
Step didn’t respond. He peered through the darkness in all directions.
“You wanna see the inventory or you wanna look for your whore? ’Cause I ain’t doing both.”
Step growled to himself. He wanted to find Bones so he could break her neck for running off. He reluctantly backed away from the side of the house and turned to the daughter. “Lead the way.”
Gunner shook his head. “Told you we shouldn’t have brung her. Girl’s an ocean full of trouble.”
The two men followed the daughter as she plodded through the high grass toward the barn. Step’s head was on a swivel looking for Bones the entire time. He barely noticed they were entering the barn until the overwhelming smell of gasoline got his full attention. Turning to his right, he saw a rusting five-hundred-gallon fuel storage tank.
The daughter continued to the center of the large open area, bent down, and lifted open a trapdoor. She pointed behind Gunner. “Grab me a flashlight.” He did as asked at the slowest possible pace. When he finally slapped it in the palm of her hand, Step was ready to break his jaw for being such a total shit.
The flashlight on, the daughter descended a steep set of stairs. Step waited for Gunner to follow. When he didn’t, the skinny closeout king shoved him in the back. “Go on, get.”
Gunner shoved him back. “What the fuck you touching me for?”
“We gotta see the inventory, ain’t we?”
“We ain’t gotta, you gotta. You go.”
“We both need to go.”
“It’s creepy as all hell down there. I ain’t got no interest in going. This was your idea. Go or don’t go, I don’t give a shit.” He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket.
Step rolled his eyes. “Well, if you ain’t gonna go, at least tell me you’re smart enough not to smoke in here.”
Gunner cocked an eyebrow. “Wha’cha talking about?”
Step pointed to the fuel tank. “There’s gas fumes all up in this place. You’re liable to blow everything all to shit with one flick of your lighter.”
Gunner examined the tank. Shrugging he said, “Hell no, I wasn’t gonna smoke in here. I was gonna go outside. Is that okay with you, shithead?”
Step put his foot on the top rung of the stairs. “Suit yourself. I’ll give you a full report.”
“And I’ll try to give a fuck,” Gunner said as he exited the barn. “Or I won’t, whichever.”
The daughter was ten feet ahead of Step by the time he descended the stairs. He saw her bulky frame in the darkness, outlined by the glow from her flashlight. “How far off are we?”
“Closer than we was. Getting closer every second.”
“That ain’t an answer.”
“It is. It just ain’t the one you was looking for.” The daughter turned a corner.
Step took the corner too sharply and bumped his shoulder against the solid concrete foundation. “What the fuck is this place?”
“It ain’t no big mystery. It’s a tunnel.”
“No shit. I mean, why is it here?”
“Because it got built. Things that get built tend be in the place they was built. This is the place where this tunnel got built, so it’s here.”
Step wanted to ram her head against the concrete wall and be done with the stupid cow, but he had no idea if the Campbell girl was at the end of the tunnel or if there was more to their journey, so he shook his head in silence and continued to follow the highly objectionable woman.
They continued another ten feet and turned another corner. Step nearly ran into the daughter before he noticed she’d stopped to unlock a large metal door. The sound of the dead bolt retracting was followed by the creek of the door as the daughter pushed it open. Reaching in with her left hand, she flicked on a hanging light in the center of the small room. Before stepping inside, she stuffed the flashlight in her coat pocket.
Step followed her into the room and blinked against the brightness of the naked lightbulb. He squinted and turned away from the light. That was when he saw her. Sarah Campbell. He felt the tension in his tangled mind drip away. He didn’t expect to be so relieved to see her. Why did he care so much? He’d never laid eyes on the girl before; she was nothing to him. Yet there he stood under the glare of a naked lightbulb, fighting the urge to blubber uncontrollably at the sight of the small girl.
She was laid out on a small cot, fast asleep with an IV connected to her arm.
“Satisfied?” the daughter asked.
Step didn’t answer right away. He couldn’t stop staring at the girl. Eventually he asked, “What’s wrong with her?”
“Wrong with her? Nothing. She’s healthy as can be.”
“But the thing…in her arm…and she ain’t waking up.”
The daughter waved him off. “Put her under. Do it with all the girls. Otherwise they work themselves up into a lather about the dark and the cold and they want their mommies, wah, wah, wah. Better for the lot of them just to knock ’em out with a little Propofol.”
“Ain’t that dangerous?”
She shrugged. “I’ve been trained how to do it up right. What do you think I get paid for?”
Step knelt next to the girl and marveled at how peaceful she looked. The daughter watched him suspiciously. “I’ve been doing this a long time, near seventeen years.”
“What’s your point?”
“I’m just saying I know how to spot things, is all.”
Step stood and turned to her. “Spot things?”
“Yeah, like a look.”
Step glared at her.
“I know when a man is wrestling with the right and wrong of a situation, and, mister, it is all over your face.”
“Is that right?”
She nodded. “A thing like that can make a man do stupid things. Things that’ll get him killed.”
Step smiled. “I don’t plan on getting myself killed today, lady.”
The daughter pulled a pistol from her coat and pointed it at Step.
His smile grew wider. “And for the record, the right or wrong of things don’t weigh on me like you think.”
“No?”
“I mostly concern myself with the best way to go about this and that.”
“You’ve seen the girl. Get on.”
“I aim to, but I’m still measuring my best ways.”
“To do what?”
“Oh,” Step said, turning to the girl and then back, catching a glimpse of the light switch in the turning, “to kill you.”
Before the daughter knew what was happening, Step bolted to the door and turned the light off.
“Hey!” she said.
Covered by pitch-black darkness, Step didn’t move.
The daughter fumbled to pull the flashlight out of her pocket. She didn’t hear Step’s slow and deliberate approach. When the flashlight was finally in her hand, she clicked it on and screamed at the sight of the skinny closeout king just inches away from her.
Step quickly overpowered her, ripping the gun from her grasp and then shoved her against the concrete wall with his hand around her throat. It was the most satisfying closeout he’d ever done.