Pulling on her jacket, she winced at the pain that shot through her arm. She should have fashioned a makeshift sling, but she needed both hands to wrestle the tree stump. With her good arm, she opened the back door. The sudden bright light seared her eyes and she staggered outside. Straight into a solid, breathing body.
Jay Lucas’ grizzled face swam into view. “Sadie?”
“Jay! Wha—how did you get here so fast?”
The detective lifted his eyes skyward. “Helicopter.”
“But you’re afraid to fly!”
“I had no choice. This man insisted.”
Sadie saw Fergus standing behind Jay. She opened her mouth to thank him, but her knees gave in. “Oh, crap.”
Jay’s eyes wrinkled in concern. “Are you hurt?”
“It’s just a scratch.” She gave Fergus a wry look. “Your fishing knife paid me back for stealing it.”
“Let me see,” Jay demanded, moving closer.
“No, we don’t have time. We have to find the bunker. Sarge has it rigged to explode in less than an hour.”
Jay tugged a radio from his pocket. He muttered something into it. Then he looked at her. “Can you show us the entrance?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“Where’s Sarge?” Fergus asked, eyeing the woods nervously.
She nudged her head toward the cabin. “In there. He’s dead.”
“Dead?” both men said in unison.
“He drugged me and tied me up,” she murmured, looking away. “When he untied me, I shot him.”
Jay disappeared inside. A moment later, he returned, a grim look on his face. “Where’d the gun come from?”
Sadie opened her mouth to answer, but Fergus beat her to it.
“I suspect ’tis Sarge’s. He had a collection. Some legal, some not.” He gave her a hard stare, as if to say, ‘don’t argue with me, lass!’
“Someone should stay here,” Jay said to Fergus. “With the body. Are you up for that?”
The Scot nodded. “Aye, you can count on me, Detective Lucas.”
“And the children are counting on me,” Sadie said.
Jay’s eyes drifted to the trees. “I can’t believe they’re alive.”
Fergus sighed. “And I canna believe Sarge took ’en. Don’t know what he was thinking, that man.”
“He wasn’t,” Jay replied gruffly. He turned to Sadie. “So they’re all in the bunker?”
“Except Sam and Cortnie. They ran away.” Her eyes watered. “We have to find them. It’s too cold, especially at night.”
“Do you have any idea where they would have gone?”
“No, but maybe the other children do.”
35
Two police helicopters waited in the middle of the field, their blades whirring. A dozen uniformed police officers wearing Kevlar vests combed the area surrounding what was left of Sarge’s house. Some had search dogs, but the dogs seemed more interested in sniffing the cinders of the house than finding a trail through the woods. On Jay’s command, two female officers had moved to the exterior of the house, guns drawn.
No one knew what to expect, but as Jay told Sadie, it was better to be prepared for anything.
Yesterday’s storm was over, the river already receding. The raging wind had died to a calm, intermittent draft, leaving everything in its wake fresh again.
“Anything yet,” Jay barked into his radio.
Sadie heard a muffled “no” and her heart sank.
They’d been searching for half an hour and they were running out of time. Already, a team had investigated the shed, confirming the existence of a generator, hot water tank, water filter and air purifier, but all the pipes and cables were buried far underground. It would take hours, maybe days, to excavate them and follow them to the hidden bunker.
They didn’t have hours.
She stood with Jay, mere yards from the house.
“This is impossible,” she moaned. “We’ve been all over these woods and nothing seems familiar. How do we find one tree stump in a forest filled with them?”
“Hey, it was dark and raining out. No one blames you.”
“I do.”
She blamed herself for not paying attention. She had followed the children through the woods and helped Marina dislodge the stump. Yet every stump Jay had tried only uprooted dirt and mud.
Frustrated, she pounded a fist against her thigh. “I know I’m forgetting something. Something important.”
It gnawed at her, this thought that she knew how to find them. Was it something the children had said? Something Sarge had said?
“Shit!” she muttered. “It was something about the doors.”
“Doors? As in plural?”
“That’s it!” She slapped her forehead, feeling stupid. “Jesus! There were two entrances. The stump and another door.”
“Where did it lead?”
Her heart sank. “I don’t know. I never opened it. Sarge came in that way. We heard him thumping down the stairs.” She grabbed Jay’s arm. “Wait! When I was by that door, I smelled smoke. And Sarge said Ashley and Adam went back into the house from the bunker the night of the fire. Via the basement.”
“They’re in the basement!” Jay shouted into the radio.
From the woods, a swarm of men emerged. Like bees converging on a hive, they raced toward the house.
A detective wearing a yellow vest waved to Jay. “We’re ready,” he yelled. “But we gotta be careful. We don’t know how it’s been rigged.”
“Stay here, Sadie,” Jay ordered, pressing his radio into her hand. “Don’t forget to take your finger off the button when you’re done speaking.” He disappeared into the wreckage.
Sadie leaned against a tree and watched the house.
The radio crackled. “Sadie? Can you hear me?”
She pressed the button. “Did you find anything?”
“There’s a hole leading to a basement. We’re going down—”
A sharp crack of static interrupted him.
“Jay?”
Silence.
Then the radio sputtered. “Sa… at the… you know…”
“What?” she yelled. “I missed what you said. Repeat, please.”
“We’re in the bunker… no kids in the main room or Sarge’s bedroom. There’s one other door we haven’t opened yet.”
“That’s the children’s room!”
“Sadie… we need a code for that door.”
The code. Shit! She had forgotten about it.
“Oh God. I tried to get Sarge to tell me.”
There was more hissing static.
Then Jay’s voice came across, clear and gentle. “Sadie, we get one chance at this. Do you understand? He’s got it wired so the whole place will go up if we punch in the wrong code.”
She clawed at her throat, unable to breathe.
“Sadie!”
She began to weep. “I don’t know it, Jay. Oh, Jesus… I don’t know the code. We can’t save them.”
There was another crackle.
“Don’t give up. The keypad is alphabetical. The code is six letters.”
She wracked her brain for a code.
Sarge would make it something easy to remember, yet important, like a name. Adam… Ashley—no, he wouldn’t pick one child over the other. Carissa…
“Carrie!” She was so excited she forgot to turn on the radio. She jabbed it again. “I think it’s Carrie—his wife’s name.”
“Carrie. Are you sure?”
“Not really, but it’s six letters.”
“Okay, good job. Codes usually mean something to a perp.”
“It has to be Carrie.”
Even as she said it, she began to doubt whether Sarge would have used the name of the one person who wanted to take everything away from him, including his children. In the end, he hated her. Enough to set her on fire, kill her.