Five minutes later, the driver exited the anthill, returned to the van, turned around, and disappeared down the drive. Another vehicle, a green Jeep Cherokee, followed a few minutes later.
“That’s Rivers,” I said, starting our car. “He’s on the move.”
“What about the drone?”
“I’ll put it to sleep. It’s not going anywhere.”
We never saw the van leave the estate, but Rivers popped out in his Jeep a few minutes later. We followed him eight miles to a building-supply store in Madison, Virginia. Sampson went in and watched him buy a bow saw, a box of trash-compactor bags, a roll of plastic sheeting, rubber gloves, and bleach.
“Bleach?” I said when Sampson told me.
“And a bow saw,” he said. “And everything else a creep might need if he was intending to kill someone and get rid of the body.”
We followed Rivers home, trailing him at a distance. The rain was easing up when he disappeared down his driveway. We returned to the cut field, reconnected to the drone camera, and saw him in front of the hatch door getting his purchases out of the car.
Rivers went inside his bunker and did not come out. It got darker, and darker.
“I’ve got to get that drone out of there,” I said, using the remote to turn it on.
For a few tense moments, I thought I’d blown it because when I tried to get the drone to lift off, it would move and the camera tilted as if a leg was snagged on a stick in the wall of the nest.
But then I brought the drone backward a bit and it broke free. In the fading daylight, I flew it back and landed it by the car.
“Ned’s right. This is an amazing piece of machinery,” I said, picking it up and bringing it to Sampson, who’d opened the trunk.
“So is a bow saw in its way,” Sampson said. “Maybe enough for cause.”
I set the drone in the trunk and closed it. “Doesn’t feel enough,” I said.
I heard my cell make that infernal Wickr ding noise. Ali was probably trying to find out when I’d be home for dinner.
I walked to the driver-side door as I tugged out my phone. “John,” I said, “we’re going to need something more compelling than—”
I looked at the screen and froze.
Hello, Cross,
At this very moment, I’m murdering a not-so-innocent.
But where am I, Dr. C.? Wherever could I be?
By a River?
Or somewhere deep underground?
M
Chapter 42
“He’s in there!” I yelled as I jumped into the driver’s seat and fired up the car.
Sampson climbed in. “Who is?”
I tossed my phone at him. “M! Read it! He’s killing someone right now.”
Before Sampson could reply, I mashed the gas pedal down.
We slid, bounced, and threw mud before the rear tires caught the gravel road and got some traction. I spun the wheel, straightened, and slammed the car into drive.
“Where are you going?”
“The anthill,” I said, stomping harder on the gas. “He’s in there.”
“M’s in the anthill?”
“Read the text, John! He’s played his hand.”
“There’s nothing on the screen!”
I pounded the steering wheel. “Because the messages self-destruct!”
“What?”
“Wickr!” I shouted as I raced toward Rivers’s driveway. “It’s an app that Ali put on the phone. Messages vanish forever after a few seconds, but I’m telling you, M said he was murdering someone and he taunted me. He texted, ‘Where am I, Dr. C.? By a River’ — with a capital R — ‘or somewhere deep underground?’ ”
“It said that?”
“Signed M.”
“Wait, Alex! You think he knows we’re here?”
“No. No way,” I said, hitting the brakes and skidding into Rivers’s driveway.
“But what if M’s somewhere completely different?”
I shouted, “What would you rather risk, John, an innocent woman’s life or breaking a law with the best of intentions?”
He said nothing, but I glanced over and saw he wasn’t happy at all. “How are you going to explain going in there if you’ve got no proof of that message?” he asked.
“As best I can,” I said, driving past the house and parking by the excavation machinery. “Let’s go,” I said.
Sampson hesitated.
“Are you telling me you don’t believe I saw that message?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Then let’s do this, oldest friend and partner.”
“Shit,” he said, opening his door. “You don’t play fair.”
“Not when someone’s life is at stake.”
I got out, my pistol drawn and my flashlight cupped beneath the barrel.
“How many ways in and out?” Sampson said as we hurried around the bunker.
“Only one that I know of,” I said, slowing as we reached Rivers’s green Jeep.
I shone my light through the side windows, saw files on the seat and keys in the cup holder.
There was no padlock on the hatch. Sampson covered me while I turned the wheel and pulled the door open. Hearing that hum belowground again, I led the way to the staircase.
I paused, listening, but heard nothing except that hum. I’d just decided to take a step down when I thought I heard a faint wail from far below us.
“You hear that?” I whispered.
Sampson shook his head. “What?”
“Could have been a scream or a cry,” I said, and I started down with more conviction and more speed, Sampson behind me.
We stopped at the first landing but found two padlocked doors.
On the next landing down, one door was not locked, and it opened. We looked into a container car set up as a kitchen and pantry with two tables and chairs. It smelled of cat urine from a litter box by the door.
There was a second door at the far end of the galley, but we didn’t check it. I was sure that shrill sound had come from somewhere deeper in Rivers’s anthill.
The single door off the third landing opened as well. Instantly the humming sound was louder. I spotted a light switch and hit it. We were in the bunker’s power plant of battery packs and electrical motors fed by the solar arrays in the field above.
There were two other doors off the power plant, but I decided to wait to explore them, reasoning that I could not have heard the scream or whatever it was over the sound of the motors.
“I’m not liking this, Alex,” Sampson said.
“We’ll go down to the bottom, one more level, then work our way back up.”
He seemed to struggle with the idea and then shrugged. “We’ve come this far.”
“That’s my man.”
“What the hell do we do if we encounter Rivers?”
“Depends on what he’s doing and who he’s with.”
“I’m saying I don’t want to have to shoot in here. The walls are all steel.”
“Then we won’t shoot,” I said and started down again.
There were two doors off the bottom of the staircase. The one on the left opened into a container car that held an elaborate water-filtration system and pump.
As we moved to the door on the right, we heard a loud clang on the other side.
“Someone’s home,” I muttered, raising my pistol and lifting the latch.
Chapter 43
The door opened inward and revealed a lit workshop with neat racks of supplies on one side and workbenches and lockers and cabinets on the other. There was no one in the long rectangular space, and the steel door at the far end was ajar.
“Let’s move,” I whispered. “He slammed that door on his way out, but it didn’t catch.”
Single-minded, I started through the workshop, intent on getting to the opposite end and through that door as fast as possible.