She moved forward, keeping low and staying in one place only long enough to check for any signs of activity from within the cabin.
Ignoring the front door, she went around to the back. There were no vehicles parked at the place, but that could also mean nothing.
She reached the back door, and after listening for a bit she took out two slender instruments and efficiently picked the lock.
The door didn’t squeak as she opened it, for which Reel was immensely grateful. She stepped inside and quietly closed the door behind her.
Reel looked around the room and nothing jumped out at her, figuratively or literally.
She searched the rooms on the first floor. There was a half floor above reached by a set of stairs. The place was pretty rustic, and Reel couldn’t see rich boy Randall spending much time here. And she doubted that his wife knew anything about it, or if she did, she would never choose to set one foot inside a place that was about as far away from the Hamptons as one could get.
But according to Page, Randall came here often, and he must have a reason for doing so. The fact that he chose this place over his luxury doomsday bunker was puzzling. Reel assumed there must also be a good reason for that. And also a compelling purpose for needing the serious dudes along for the ride.
In an upstairs closet Reel finally discovered some things, although she couldn’t make sense of any of the items.
A pair of work boots covered in dirt and grime and smelling of chemicals.
An old map of an area she didn’t recognize, though it could have been somewhere in eastern Colorado.
A box of ammo. Forty-five-caliber ACPs.
But with one important difference.
Reel slid one of the cartridges out and looked at it. Her mouth dropped open in surprise.
They’re blanks.
CHAPTER
55
Robie slowed the truck about two hundred yards from the bunker’s outer perimeter fence.
He pulled off the road and parked behind a copse of trees, cut the engine, grabbed a pair of night optics from the duffel in the rear, and climbed out. He squatted on his haunches and surveyed the flat ground in front of him.
The dying guy had said the silo.
Were the prisoners in there somewhere?
But how could that be? Why would Roark Lambert have led them on a tour of a place that held people against their will?
Yet as Reel had pointed out, surely they had not seen every inch of the bunker. And for all Robie knew there were secret compartments in there that none of the other owners might know about. In fact, they were almost never here. And the prisoners could easily be gotten out of the way when owners showed up. So prisoners could be kept in there and no one would know about it.
Robie, however, had no way to get in. The bunker was closely guarded, and even if he managed to somehow evade all the security, he had no way to defeat the blast door.
But he would watch the place tonight and see if anyone went in or out, including a white van with prisoners in the back.
An hour passed and he had a thought after mulling over another question of his.
He took out his phone and texted a message to the number that Dwight Sanders had left them.
Ten minutes passed and then the answer dropped into his in-box.
Others have left Dolph. I don’t think he cares. There will always be others.
That answer was puzzling.
The sole reason that Dolph had given for his going after Luke and Holly was that Luke was planning to leave the skinheads and Dolph blamed Holly’s influence on that. But according to Sanders, other followers had left Dolph and the man had done nothing.
There could be only one answer to that, Robie knew.
Dolph had gone after and killed Luke and Holly because he knew that Holly was aware of the prisoners in the van. And Dolph had to assume that Holly had told Luke about it.
So they had to be killed.
Robie stiffened and sank deeper into the shadows as a car passed by on the road heading to the bunker.
As it passed by he saw that it was not a white van.
It was Roark Lambert in a Range Rover.
Through his optics Robie watched the vehicle pull up to the gate. His window came down, and Robie assumed he was speaking into the voice box as he had done on their previous trip to the bunker. The gate opened and he pulled through. After a bit, Robie lost sight of the Rover.
He looked at his watch. A bit late to be heading to the bunker. But then again, he was staying overnight, so it made sense that he would sleep at the bunker.
More time passed and no other car came down the road. At first, Robie had thought that Lambert might be meeting someone here, but that apparently wasn’t the case.
Robie waited a bit more, then climbed into his truck and headed back to town.
His phone buzzed along the way.
It was Malloy.
“Well, you left a shit storm behind,” she said.
“Sorry, but they brought it on themselves.”
“They are with Dolph’s group. Even without the uniforms, I recognized two of them.”
“Right.”
“Where are you now?”
“Heading back to town.”
“Heading back from where?”
“Someplace.”
He heard her sigh.
She said, “You have no problem coming to my home tonight and having sex with me, but you still can’t give me straight answers? How messed up is that?”
“One is completely different from the other. I wall them off.”
“Well, thanks for walling me off right now. But I need you to meet me at the police station and give a statement. If you don’t,” she added quickly, “I’ll have no choice but to get an arrest warrant issued. You did leave the scene of a crime. And I only have your word for it that these guys attacked you.”
“I’ve got rounds from their guns embedded in my truck.”
“Great, I look forward to seeing it.”
“Where’s Bender?”
“Processing the scene. I didn’t mention your involvement to him.”
“Why not?”
“I wanted to talk to you first.”
“Okay.”
“Robie, just so we’re clear, I need you to meet me at the station in one hour.”
“I can make that.”
He heard her let out another sigh, this time perhaps one of relief at his acquiescence to her request. “Great. Do you have any idea why they came after you?”
“Because they wanted to do me harm.”
“Yeah, that one I already figured out on my own. I mean why tonight in particular?”
“I don’t know, Valerie. I really don’t. Unless it was for revenge because of what we did to Dolph.”
“I guess that would be a good motive. I’ll see you at the station in one hour.”
He clicked off and kept driving.
Nearly fifty minutes later he arrived at the police station. Malloy’s car was parked out front.
He went inside, preparing in his head what his “statement” might consist of.
The overturned chair got his attention first.
Then the smashed glass on the floor.
And some blood on the floor by her desk.
He pulled his gun and quickly searched the space.
He reached the rear of the building and saw the door standing open.
Outside, he saw tire tracks.
Malloy was gone.
And it clearly wasn’t voluntary.
CHAPTER
56
Reel pulled the stretch limo back in front of the bar and, despite the late hour, noted that things were still going strong inside the place.