| |
They watched the other patrons leave, paying particular attention to the man who’d bought the map. No license plate to run through the system, but nothing about his character rang as legitimate, so that was no surprise to her.
“We could follow him,” she suggested, reluctant to let an obvious criminal accomplice slip through her fingers.
For a moment, Llewyn stood with his arms on the roof of the car, looking out at the dark places in the neighborhood. His tux glimmered as the street light shined on his back.
“Too risky.” He ruffled his fingers through his hair. “We don’t know what kind of numbers the Sons have, and if he makes us, the jig is up.”
Her phone vibrated. It was Rossiter.
“We planted the tracker,” she told him, ecstatic to deliver good news for the first time in this investigation.
“That’s great, but we have a new problem,” said the director. “Have you heard from the group guarding the prisoner?”
Willow frowned. “No. Should we have?”
In the event that a detainee was suspected of participation in terroristic activity, procedure was to house them under close supervision. Policy dictated that they be held for up to a month in an unmarked building known only to select intelligence agencies. It was customary to limit communication in these facilities to short-wave radios rather than easily traceable cell phones.
Rossiter’s tone divulged his deeply held concern. “The team was supposed to report in every half hour. It’s been forty-five minutes. Normally, I wouldn’t make much of it, but given the circumstances....”
She understood all too well what it was like to lose contact with her people in a do-or-die situation. “You want us to check on them?”
“Yes. I’ll monitor the artifact’s movements, but you two need to get down there on the double.”
She clicked the phone off, saw Llewyn’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, and knew he was thinking the same thing.
“Still got that bad feeling?” she asked him after a quick peck on the lips.
“More or less,” he answered. “Let’s go.”
As Willow drove out of the parking lot of the auction house, shadows drifted behind the vehicle. Their ethereal shapes haunted her every turn, a mingling of light and dark that satisfied no spectrum.
She’d rather not risk a sketchy ambush against armored and well-trained mercenaries. It reminded her too much of that bunch of bootleggers back in Lone Oak. Without Llewyn’s help, and backup from her officers, she wouldn’t have survived that.
Then again, when the adrenaline kicked in, she’d found herself almost enjoying the battle. Few things were as simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating as a shootout. Willow had to admit that coming out of a firefight unscathed proved satisfying.
All the same, gambling her life over the pursuit of a mythical tree on some remote island was pretty far removed from her idea of entertainment. She was Agent Willow Finch, not some tomb robber or treasure hunter.
A voice that sounded like her old self told her to turn back. The phantom called her to move aside, to drive home or to BOPAC headquarters, anywhere but their current destination.
An appealing thought.
She knew better than to listen. Willow had never been a quitter. Ever since her sheriff father named her as his successor, she’d fought for every scrap of dignity. She wasn’t about to stop because of bad juju.
She rounded the corner, the lights shifted, and the clandestine facility materialized before her eyes. It didn’t tower over her the way most buildings in this city did. Much of its construction was below ground.
The guard detail waited for them at the front gate and greeted the pair with a collective sigh of relief.
Willow let herself breathe and smiled back.
Llewyn continued to be apprehensive, lost in thought and silent prayer.
“Finally,” said Agent Hardy, holding out his radio. “We tried to reach Rossiter, but something was wrong with all our gear. Must have been some kind of electrical interference.”
“Any other disturbances?”
“None that we know of, but we were getting worried,” said Agent Nielson. “We were about to head back in to check on the prisoner. Glad you showed up when you did.”
They went inside. There was no evidence of federal involvement, no insignia on the gray walls of the lobby, and only the thinnest layer of dust. Nothing here but a calculated façade.
“Looks okay to me,” said Willow. “Where are you keeping the prisoner?”
“There’s a containment room underneath us. The merc isn’t going anywhere.”
“Who did you leave with him?”
“Lamb.”
Llewyn didn’t appear to like that. “The rookie? That’s not protocol.”
“He insisted,” said Hardy. “Told me he wanted to break the rules for a change. I thought it’d be a good experience for him. It’s only been about five minutes. He’ll be fine.”
“Take us downstairs.”
They called the elevator. She noticed there were only two floors: ground and basement. That wasn’t much wiggle room for an escape plan.
The lift descended with all the energy of a teenage stoner.
“The merc can’t have gotten free,” said Nielson. “He’s handcuffed, the room is locked tight, and there aren’t any exits besides this elevator. He’d have to be Houdini.”
The basement level mirrored the lobby: drab, unassuming, and nothing to write home about apart from the cell recessed into the far wall.
She looked inside. The back wall of the cell was blown out.
“Where’s Lamb?” asked Hardy.
“Looks like he was in on the vanishing act,” said Llewyn. He bent low and examined the floor of the cell.
“Impossible. The rookie’s no traitor.”
“I didn’t say he was. See the scuff marks? The blood splattered on the tiles? He put up a hell of a fight. Someone took him by force.”
“But how did they break through the wall?” asked Nielson. “That concrete is thick. I don’t think they used a saw, and we would have heard an explosion.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” said Llewyn. “Not this far underground. They timed their attack perfectly. The Sons knew where and when to strike.”
“But why not use the ventilation shaft? It looks wide enough, and it’d be quieter.”
“Maybe, but the ducts only lead up to the roof,” said Hardy. “We would have spotted an air drop. It’s a lot easier to mosey in through the back door.”
“Go check the security feed. There’s bound to be something on the tapes,” said Willow. “We’ll see if we can retrace their steps.”
Hardy and Nielson departed, leaving them only one avenue to explore.
She nodded toward it. “Shall we?”
She and Llewyn traversed the hole, stepping over debris into a lovely sewer tunnel. The sturdy walls were discolored and flecked with fecal matter and who knows what else.
“Glad we didn’t have these in Lone Oak,” she said as they turned another corner in the maze. “It’s a spider’s web down here, and it stinks to high heaven. It would have taken our K-9 unit forever to sniff out a suspect.” She stopped when they came to their third T-junction. “Or a body.”
“I don’t recall any dogs at the station when I was there,” said Llewyn.
She shook her head. “I told you we had budget problems, remember? I had to cut the team loose.”
He nodded. “I remember. I thought that was odd at the time, but I never made too much of it during the investigation. There was a lot going on in that little town.”
She faced a conspicuous metal grate in the center of the wall. “Tell me about it.”
“They could have gone either way,” said Llewyn as he looked both directions. “It’ll take too long to search every corridor. Maybe we can cut through somehow.”
“This grate looks loose.” Willow turned to her partner. “Give me a hand?”
Llewyn nodded, cupped his hands together, and boosted her up to the vent.
It wasn’t screwed shut. She gripped the heavy steel frame with both hands, yanked the grate free, and proceeded to climb inside.
She looked down and said, “I’ll be fine.”
He smiled. “I know, but that doesn’t mean I won’t worry. Holler if you find anything.”
Ignoring every instinct to turn around—not that she could in these tight spaces—Willow crawled through the ducts until she saw light. Squeezing through the hole, she braced herself for a rough descent.
She managed to halt her momentum enough to land on her hands and knees, soaking them in filthy water. After she wiped her hands clean on her dress, she covered her mouth. Didn’t help.
“Bad idea, girl.” She breathed through her nose and followed the tunnel until she hit a fork in the path.
Now what?
The right channel seemed to go on and on, but there was a ladder to the surface on the left, and beyond that a set of stairs that went up to an overlook.
She saw a rope tied to the railing. Willow traced the line as it extended to the ceiling, knotted around a pair of tightly bound electrical wires, and plunged downward.
A limp body swung from the noose, his bare feet exposed to the obscene air. Lacerations cut across his discolored chest, bloodying his pants. Even though his face had been severely bruised and beaten, she recognized Agent Lamb, hanged by the neck, with a card pinned to his forehead.
When she looked closely at the body, she noted the chest lacerations formed an unmistakable and unwanted shape, the ghost of a false religion.
Willow could almost hear the whisper, the lullaby of the dead and the damned. The flesh between her shoulder blades prickled. She shivered in her skin.
