Nellie Cavendish opened her eyes with a jolt, a wordless cry escaping her, and realized she was sitting up in her bed, that her arms were held out as though reaching for something. She heard a whine, and automatically relaxed enough to stroke the broad head of her anxious dog where he lay near her feet.
“It’s okay, Leo,” she murmured, half closing her eyes again to focus, to reach mentally, psychically, exercising what was still a largely unused muscle. “It’s . . . I think it’s . . .”
Leo whined again, but when she pushed back the covers, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and reached for the lamp and the landline on her nightstand, he was instantly on the floor, watching her with bright eyes.
Nellie quickly punched in a room number, unsurprised when he answered before it could ring twice.
“Bishop.”
“I think I know where Simon is,” she told him as steadily as she could manage. “We need everybody. And shovels. I’ll meet you downstairs in ten minutes.”
She didn’t wait for a response, immediately cradling the receiver and rushing to get dressed. She realized it was still dark outside because she’d needed the lamp but was vaguely surprised when a glance at the clock across the room from her bed—as far away as possible so she couldn’t short the damned thing out—told her it was just after two in the morning.
She’d been in bed barely three hours.
Nellie?
Finn. I think I know where Simon is.
On my way.
She didn’t even think about the easy, assured touch of his mind or her equally easy response, just kept moving.
She automatically dressed in a couple of warm layers and chose thick socks and her virtually new hiking boots, grabbing her quilted jacket on the way out of her room, with Leo close at her heels.
She did not remember to put on her gloves.
It didn’t occur to her until she was hurrying down the quiet lamplit hall toward the stairs that she hadn’t even bothered to brush her hair or so much as glance into a mirror, but the thought was fleeting. Nothing mattered but getting to Simon as fast as possible.
She was downstairs in the lobby area in minutes, and before she could do more than pace a few steps one way and then another, the others were coming down the stairs toward her. She wasn’t surprised to see that Bishop’s entire team was there, all dressed warmly, seemingly wide-awake—though Hollis yawned and rubbed her eyes with one hand.
In the other hand she held a big flashlight, as did everyone else.
Hollis was, predictably, the first to speak to Nellie.
“That’s some transmitter,” she said.
Nellie was startled. “Did I—?”
“Loud and clear. From you and Bishop.” She eyed her unit chief. “Didn’t know you could do that.”
“Saves time.” He didn’t add anything else to that, instead saying, “We have a couple of collapsible shovels in the SUV.”
“We need more,” DeMarco said.
They had all arrived so quickly that it was only then that the B and B’s night man appeared behind the registration desk from his office in back, his eyes wide and startled. “What—”
“We need shovels,” Bishop told him. “And a crowbar or two.”
“It’s Simon, Jim,” Nellie said quickly. “I think I know where he is.”
Jim didn’t hesitate. “The outside utility room’s around the side. I’ve got the key. Come on.”
There were several shovels, a pick, two big claw hammers, and a crowbar. The tools were quickly distributed among them, along with two large battery lanterns, and they followed Nellie as she led them toward the parking area of the B and B.
“I can—” Jim began.
“Call EMS,” Bishop instructed him calmly. “Get an ambulance, but tell them no lights or siren, and have them wait right here.”
As most did when Bishop gave an order, Jim obeyed without argument, turning to hurry back to the building.
Quentin said, “Think the unsub might be watching?”
“He has to sleep sometime, but best not assume anything where he’s concerned,” Bishop replied. “If we can keep him in the dark about anything we do, it could give us an edge.”
Diana’s voice was tight. “If Simon’s been buried underground all this time—”
“It’s getting harder for him to breathe,” Nellie said, her voice equally strained. “But he’s alive.”
“Can you—” Hollis began.
Nellie cut her off with a shake of her head. “I can sense him, I know he’s struggling, but I can’t talk to him.”
“Figures,” Hollis said, resigned.
Diana started to say something, then exchanged a grim glance with Quentin and merely shook her head.
Nobody questioned Nellie as she led them away from the building in the direction of the mountain slopes to the east, or when she stopped abruptly and turned toward the parking area’s entrance, where a Salem police Jeep was turning in.
Finn parked the Jeep and turned off the engine, then got out along with two of his deputies. All three looked wide-awake, and all three were armed and carried flashlights. The two deputies pulled two large backpacks from the Jeep and shrugged into them as they followed Finn to join the others.
“This way,” Nellie said, and immediately hurried through the parking area and then picked a vague path that meandered up the gradually steepening slope.
“Is he close?” Bishop asked.
“Pretty close, I think. But not easy to get to. We can take this path for a while, but then it’s straight up the mountain.” Nellie would have said more but decided to save her breath for climbing. The flashlights the others held made it easier than she’d expected to find her way, especially when Leo moved from his automatic heel position to go ahead of her, his nose to the ground almost constantly as he ranged back and forth but kept heading in the direction Nellie knew was the right one.
With snow in the forecast, however vaguely, it was cold, and the heavy cloud cover made it even darker than it usually was at night on any of the mountains surrounding the valley, especially once they were well into the heavy forest. There was no wind at all, and the utter silence was broken only by the faint noises they made in climbing.
Nobody was wasting breath on questions or comments.
Nellie had been far too busy since coming to Salem to have had time to do much hiking, and was wishing she’d done far more when her legs very quickly began to burn from the unaccustomed climbing. But she gritted her teeth and pushed on, all her concentration fixed on keeping hold of the frighteningly faint thread she could almost see glowing in her mind.
Simon.
She turned off the path at almost the same moment as Leo did, dimly aware that he was being guided by her more than by any scent he’d found. She didn’t have to wonder to know that the killer had not taken this route to wherever he had buried Simon. Probably he’d found an easier way, especially if he’d been carrying his victim. They were really climbing now, and she heard Hollis’s breathless voice behind her as she spoke, apparently to her partner.
“Add the occasional . . . mountain hike . . . to our . . . workout schedule . . . okay?”
“Good idea,” he answered, with less effort.
Hollis made a smothered sound that might have been humor or something else, then continued to climb in silence broken only by an occasional curse muttered under her breath.
The climb was far steeper now, and with no path to follow they were picking their way quickly among winter-bare saplings, through underbrush, and around granite boulders, some of them very large. Hardwood trees reared above them, bare limbs occasionally catching the light of one of the flashlights to glitter with frost, and the evergreen pine trees were heavy and still.
They had probably been climbing for half an hour or more when Nellie and her dog abruptly turned to the right, following rather than trying to get past a lateral ridge of boulders and heavy brambles. She followed it, moving faster because they were no longer climbing, until the ridge abruptly ended and there was a small clearing with what appeared to be a tangle of holly bushes at its center.
“Under that,” Nellie said breathlessly, pointing.
Willing hands very quickly pulled at the bushes, to find they were not rooted but had been cut away at some different location and used here as camouflage.
Beneath was a rectangular patch of recently turned earth.
Between the flashlights and the battery lanterns there was plenty of light, but little room for more than four of the strongest among them to begin digging. The others stood back, holding lights and trying to catch their breath from the hurried, difficult journey up the mountain.
Barely twelve inches down, the first shovel hit something hard, and immediately they knelt on the hard ground, still digging quickly but more carefully. As soon as one end of the box had been uncovered, Bishop and Finn tossed aside shovels to begin prying up the very solid lid.
Hollis was close enough to hear Nellie whispering, “Still breathing, still breathing,” but she was still both relieved and surprised when the lid was yanked up with a jerk to reveal Simon’s white face, eyes blinking and tearing in the brightness of the lights turned on him and his prison.
Or maybe it wasn’t the lights.
He opened his parched lips, but Finn said quickly, “Don’t try to talk, Simon. We’ll get you out.”
He lay on his side in the box, which was just barely large enough to hold him in his bent position. There were plastic zip ties binding his wrists behind his back and binding his ankles, and more than one of his rescuers winced in sympathy when the ties were cut and he groaned as circulation began to return to his cramped limbs.
Finn’s deputies removed from their backpacks a collapsible stretcher and an emergency rescue blanket, both positioned close so that Simon could be lifted carefully out, his shivering body wrapped warmly in the blanket and belted securely onto the stretcher.
Finn gave him as much water as he wanted and then, no doubt more warming, something from a flask he produced, and it was only then that Simon cleared his throat and looked steadily up at his rescuers.
“Thank you.”
THE TWO DEPUTIES, DeMarco, and Quentin carried the stretcher down the mountain to the waiting ambulance, with the deputies set to return and keep watch over the site until it could be exhaustively searched and studied in daylight. Simon tried to protest that he could walk, but Nellie told him calmly to shut up and enjoy the ride, and he grinned rather weakly in response.
As soon as they were on their way, Nellie turned to the others, noting in the surprisingly bright light that Bishop was gazing thoughtfully down at the open box and that Finn was frowning.
“What?” she demanded.
Miranda said, “He was taken Tuesday evening. It’s almost dawn on Thursday.”
Diana added, “He can’t have been buried in this box so long and still had air to breathe. Look at the box. It’s pretty much airtight, barely large enough to hold him in that cramped position, and it was buried with a foot of dirt over it.”
Hollis was nodding. “Maybe five hours of ambient air. Less.”
Nellie frowned, watching as Bishop knelt once more and searched the inside of the box with his flashlight. He stopped when he reached a spot in one corner of the end where Simon’s feet had been, and they all shifted position slightly until they could see a very small, round hole.
Bishop reached down and held his fingers near the hole for a moment or two. “Air,” he said. “Under pressure.”
Finn helped him clear away more dirt around the outside of that corner of the box, both of them digging carefully until a large silver oxygen tank was revealed. It had a short, narrow rubber tube running from the tank to the small hole in the box that had imprisoned Simon. For the first time, all of them became aware of the very, very faint hissing sound of oxygen escaping.
At the end of the tank with the valve and tube, there was also a plain metal box surrounding the valve.
Finn hesitated. “Prints?”
“I doubt it,” Bishop replied. “Still . . .” He removed a pair of exam gloves from a jacket pocket and put them on before carefully prying the small box open. There was a tangle of electronics inside—and a cell phone whose lighted surface showed plus four hours and forty-seven minutes and counting upward.
“Is that how long he was buried?” Nellie asked.
Miranda said slowly, “Plus. If that’s a timer set to begin releasing oxygen just before the ambient air in the box would have run out, the clock would have started at zero. So we can add approximately five hours to that time. Which means he was probably here close to ten hours.”
Hollis said, “Since around dark last night. So where was he for the twenty-four hours or so after he was taken? No sign of a gag, and we can assume he would have yelled for help if he could have. Unless he was unconscious or otherwise unable to make a sound. Either the blitz attack left him out for quite a while or he was drugged.”
“Which,” Miranda said, “could tell us more about the unsub. Drugs could mean possible medical training. We really need to talk to Simon. Find out what he remembers.”
Bishop very carefully stopped the timer on the cell phone, and immediately they heard the soft hissing stop. He produced an evidence bag from a pocket and put the gadget into it. He looked at Finn. “As soon as your deputies come back to watch this area until we can conduct a thorough search after daylight, let’s get down off this mountain and talk to Simon.”
Nobody argued.
“I DON’T REMEMBER anything,” Simon told them ruefully. He was in bed and in a very spacious room at the hospital, torn between being glad of the warmth and comfort, for which he had a new appreciation, and the awareness that he really was all right and should have been up and about now that he was. “Walking home, feeling my head explode—and then waking up in that damned box.”
Bishop and Finn had stopped to talk to the doctor, and exchanged glances now before Bishop said, “You were also injected with a sedative strong enough to keep you out for nearly twenty-four hours before you were placed in the box.”
Simon blinked. “I was?”
“Given when you were taken, and everything that was happening before and after you were taken, our guess is that you were probably kept in the trunk of a car or some other relatively safe place until he could transport you up the mountain. Either he took some of that time to prepare the box or else already had it ready. For you or someone else.”
Simon drew a breath and let it out slowly, looking from one grave face to the next. “So . . . why am I alive? From what I’ve heard, Cole Ainsworth wasn’t given any chance at all.”
None of them commented on how fast word of the tentative identification had spread.
Miranda said, “There’s always a reason, even if it doesn’t make sense to us until we understand motivation.”
“Scaring the shit out of me?” Simon offered with forced lightness.
“I doubt it was personal,” Finn said. “Unless it was, of course. Is there anyone with a grudge against you, Simon?”
“What? No. I mean—no. I don’t make enemies, Finn. Hell, I don’t even deal with customers at the bank.”
Miranda smiled at him. “What about your personal life?”
“Don’t have much of one. Friends, sure. An occasional party or date.”
“Any bad breakups recently?”
“No. Wait, you’re not saying a woman could have done this to me?”
“It’s unlikely,” Bishop told him. “Not impossible. What was done to the other victim required a great deal of strength. And women very seldom dismember victims; when they do, it’s virtually always to make it easier to dispose of the body. That didn’t happen in this case; the remains were left out in the open. Almost on display. Extremely unlikely that a woman did that.”
Simon lost a little of the color he had so recently regained, and no telepathy or empathy was required to know he was thinking of the near escape he’d had. And picturing that dismembered victim. “Okay. Well . . . no, no bad breakups. I haven’t had time for anything but casual dates since I left college. Honestly, I can’t think of a soul who’d want to—to do that to me.” He drew a breath and let it out slowly. “Or who would want to bury me alive.”