He whispered into his walkie-talkie. "Craig? You got her?"
"No. But there's an old barn down to my right, where there might have been a light when I first got here. But it's gone now."
"Where are you?"
"Pretty far up, still. I didn't want her to hear our chatter. I'm by the road that runs around the back of the hill, where the caves are."
Juhle said to make sure whether he was above or below the barn, and Craig said he was still above.
Hunt turned in his seat. "Where's this barn?" he asked Juhle. "You know it?"
"Yeah. If you go up in front of the new caves, it's in a little hollow on the right. Lots of junk laying on the ground all around it."
Back into his walkie-talkie. "Craig. Where's Tam?"
"Up above with the binoculars. How about you?"
"Me and Dev are just at the gate."
"You guys ought to split up."
"That's the call. I'm going to send Dev around up the trail you're on." Hunt had seen this clearly enough from the base camp. The unpaved road wound around behind the base of the promontory and continued up until it disappeared behind the château. "You start coming down slow. He'll be coming up. Meet up in back of the barn and wait there. If she comes out, don't let her see you, and don't stop her. Let her do whatever she's doing."
"What about you?"
"I'm going past the caves in the front."
"So she's in the barn?"
"I guess that's the working theory. Now we've got to shut down the chatter."
"Okay," Craig whispered. "I'm out."
Hunt clicked off his walkie-talkie and dropped it on the floor beneath his feet. Shading the light with his hand, he flicked on and off his small, industrial-strength flashlight, and put it in his jacket pocket. Both men in the car reached for their door handles, but Hunt grabbed Juhle by the sleeve, stopping him. "Dead quiet, Dev. Easy open, no close. Let it happen. And if this goes south, take off immediately. You were never here."
Hunt crossed around his car and, crouching, followed Juhle for the first fifty feet or so, until he came to the trail on his left that led up to the new caves from the tasting room below. As soon as he left the pavement of the road, he became aware of the gravel crunching under his feet, each footfall magnified in the stillness of the night.
He had to slow to a near crawl, each step now an eternity. Clearing the first rise, he came out into the relative openness of the entrance to the cave area. The staff had closed the huge doors of the caves for the night, but Hunt double-checked each one and found them all to be solid and immovable. When he cleared the entrance to the fourth cave, he recrossed the path to get a better angle on the hollow that enclosed the barn.
Juhle was right. The foreground was littered with tools and equipment. Without the night-vision goggles, Hunt stood no chance at all of getting to the barn, much less inside it, without making a racket. Even with them, though, he would be picking over the ground by inches.
In the eerie green glow, he took a step and then another, trying to keep one eye on the obstacles ahead and the other on the barn, for any sign of light from within. Between each step, he would stop and wait, listening. He heard no sound.
It was a large, two-story, three-sided structure, built into the westernmost wall of the promontory. He'd made it through the no-man's-land out front, and now directly in front of him, the door to the barn hung halfway open. If she were behind it, waiting for him…
He could not let himself think about that.
He listened. He listened.
He drew his gun.
Stepping through the opening into the barn, he ducked and whirled around. Something moved in the periphery of his vision, and he jerked back to see a large green-glowing rat scurrying into a pile of straw and out of sight. Taking a shaken breath, he turned again, all the way around now. Six stalls lined the side wall, a partially open tack room stood in the corner off the back door.
And then he saw it.
In the promontory wall, another door to apparently another cave. Of course, he thought. How had it never occurred to him before? If there were new caves, then it stood to reason there must have been old caves.
Or at least one old cave, now abandoned, unvisited, locked up.
He crossed to the door, which was in fact not locked up like the others, but stood a few inches ajar. A faint cold breeze emanated from within, and Hunt pulled the massive door-it was at least four inches thick-a few more inches toward him.
He stepped inside.
Even with the night-vision goggles, it was difficult to see-the glasses didn't shed any light of their own, only magnified the ambient light that was present, and here in the cave there wasn't much to magnify. He put his hand to the wall and took another tentative, silent step, and another. After about thirty steps, the cave bent to the left slightly, then sharply back to the right. He had to negotiate several old wine barrels that lay on their sides against the walls of the cave. Hunt continued pushing himself forward until he could go no farther.
The night goggles were useless this far in. There was no light left to magnify. Hunt lifted the goggles and turned on his flashlight, surprised to encounter another door completely blocking his way, seemingly built into the stone walls of the cave. Behind him, in the vast echoing darkness, an unmistakable creak resounded in the confines of the cave. He barely had time to begin to turn when the creak was followed by a muted and terrifying percussion.
It could have been nothing other than what it was-the door to the cave slamming shut.
Though it wasn't loud, it was the first sound Andrea Parisi had heard since the solid door had closed behind her however many days ago. She was lying on her back on the stone just inside the door-in fact her side was pressed up against the door. She was nearly paralyzed by hunger and thirst, and at first, she imagined that she'd dreamed the sound in her present altered state. Most of what was left of her mind had come to believe that she was not really there anymore. None of this was real, and even if it was, it could not go on for much longer. Perhaps she was already dead.
But there had been a definite sound. Close enough for her to hear it.
She tried to turn herself to the side, to face the door and call out, but her muscles wouldn't obey her to let her move at all, and her throat was so dry, it couldn't be coaxed into sound.
But if there had been a sound, that meant that someone might be out there. She might still be saved, still have a life before her.
She had to try again.
She tried to concentrate, fought to draw air into her dry and empty chest.
This time the sound, when it came from her, had no form. No words. An inchoate moan that dissipated almost as it sounded in her chill grave and left her exhausted, her throat burning.
And yet she gathered the last bit of reserve she could muster and threw it out again into the darkness that had become her world and her hell.
And there it was again! Without question, another sound through the door, and someone knocking on it. And her name!
Andrea.
From the bottom of a deep well, someone was calling her name.
Hunt had no time to give in to the terror that threatened to consume him. After all, he told himself, Craig, Juhle, and Tamara were close by, just outside on the property. But they all were waiting for his instructions and would be unlikely to move in after he had specifically instructed them to let Carol alone and let her lead them to Andrea.
Which she had done.
Even Juhle, he realized, would be reluctant to move at this point. Juhle did not know that Andrea was locked behind the second door in this cave-only Hunt knew that-and without knowing about Andrea, Juhle had no more cause to arrest Carol Manion than he'd had earlier in the day. To say nothing of the fact that Juhle had moved himself completely out of bounds by coming onto her property. He was, in fact, trespassing. If anyone connected him to any of the more unorthodox if not to say illegal elements of Hunt's plan, it would cost him not just this case, but his precious job.