53. Claire
Chapter fifty-three
Claire
I’ve heard of one stop-light towns, but as we approach this one, I’m not sure whether they have any stoplights at all. This town is tiny, consisting of just a few buildings against the dark backdrop of mountains. It’s honestly unfathomable, and even weirder is to imagine that anything sinister is taking place here.
But as Kent navigates us to the town, I realize maybe it’s because what’s sinister isn’t actually in town at all. He leads us along the dirt path, past the little wooden sign welcoming us to town, and through.
The weirdest thing about walking through it is the quiet. It’s unsettling, but Remy’s arm brushing against mine grounds me. I’m not afraid of the people—I don’t blame anyone who would want to live in a place like this, removed from the shit that is the rest of the world.
But something about walking through a practical ghost town feels… wrong.
At some point, I realize where we’re going, even though Kent didn’t tell us exactly what he suspected. But he filled us in thoroughly on the town history—an old mining town where gold was once discovered. The mine’s closed now, but I suppose that doesn’t mean it’s entirely abandoned.
Really, though, could anybody live inside a mine? I have severe doubts about that, although I guess I don’t really know what mines look like. I have a feeling I’m about to find out .
There are a few lights on inside windows—including a neon ‘open’ sign inside the ‘trading post’ window and a beer sign lit up inside the inn.
“Shit’s creepy.” Michael grumbles, drawing closer. On my other side, Rook has his gun at the ready, his eyes taking in everything that there is to see, which isn’t a ton.
I don’t know whether the residents here are asleep or if they just stay indoors at night. Or maybe they just have the sense to stay away from us, because I certainly wouldn’t open the door to inquire about a group of strangers toting guns through town.
The ground slopes as Kent leads us downward, and I consciously keep my finger away from the trigger as I try to maintain my balance, suddenly grateful for the boots. Maybe Remy knew when it came down to it, he couldn’t leave me, even if it was the better option, which it isn’t.
The combined glow of all their lights illuminates the rock side, but I wouldn’t have noticed the former point of entry if Kent hadn’t drawn up to it. It’s barely bigger than him, an opening in the middle of the stone that is trimmed with wood beams and sealed with a thick plank of more wood.
I watch him examine the surface, running a hand over it looking for something. Whatever it is, he finds it, and then a moment later, pops the barrier open. It swings on hidden hinges, creaking open to expose a dark tunnel that makes my stomach clench.
A small part of me regrets this decision to come as I face the idea that this is where they’re headed. If I balk now, Remy will stay behind with me, and I’ll disappoint them all… not the least of which is Kent’s wife, who was stolen from him and erased without a single trace of her left. If she can face whatever horrors awaited her in this place alone, I can face it with these men at my back. And that’s exactly what we do.
The only hesitation comes from Michael, who sounds like he may throw up when he says, “We’re going in there? ”
“Afraid of it collapsing?” Rook teases, brushing past him to shine his light ahead, illuminating a path for Kent.
“Or is it the small space you don’t like?” Rich joins in, smirking.
“No.” Michael swallows thickly, reaffirming my fear that he may toss his cookies out here. “It’s the mine spiders.”
“ Mine spiders ?” I hate how terrified my voice sounds when I repeat his words, and part of me wants to suggest that Michael and I can stand guard out here just so no one comes and seals us in there.
“He’s joking.” Remy assures me. He sounds confident in that, but when I catch Michael’s pale face, he shakes his head no.
Fucking mine spiders? I don’t know what that is, but anything with the word spider attached sounds awful in its own right. I suck in a steady breath through my nose, and then Remy ushers me ahead of him. “Remember what I said about shoot first, ask questions later?”
I nod, focusing on the back of Kent’s head rather than on the walls of rock closing us in. “Yeah, forget that. Safety on, and don’t shoot unless it’s necessary. We don’t want this thing collapsing on us.”
I nod again, because it’s all I can do with my mouth as dry as it is. All the possibilities of being in an abandoned mine hadn’t even occurred to me, but on top of the spiders and snakes and the humans that may be here, I have to worry about it collapsing ?
Fuck. If it does, Rhea will lose us both.
“Here,” Remy says, his breath tickling the back of my neck and sending chills down my arms. I reach up without turning, worried if I take my eyes off Kent, we’ll lose him. Although, there don’t appear to be any other places for him to go. The mine is a straight path forward, lit only by our lights. The tracks are wide enough that so long as we stay in the center of them, they’re not a tripping hazard.
Remy places something heavy and cold in my hand, and when I look at it, I laugh. I don’t know why I do, because there’s not really anything funny about our situation. But the glossy cheetah print on the stainless pocketknife is so absurdly out of place, I can’t not giggle at it.
“Did Elaine tell you one was missing?”
“I found the cheetah print one in my guest house covered in blood and put two and two together. Personally, I like the zebra one, but…”
I stifle another laugh, testing the release for the blade and seeing that that too has a print on it… and a wicked edge. I switch it closed and store it in my pocket, grateful for a more familiar source of protection. I also switch the safety off of the revolver, idly wishing I had a holster for the thing. I’m not opposed to carrying a gun, but literally carrying it is kind of annoying.
His surprise gift served as a nice distraction from the fact that we’re walking constantly deeper into the dark, the cold getting more prominent. I’m not sure if that’s what has me shivering, or if it’s just the nature of where we are and what we’re doing.
Other than Michael’s stream of complaints—he’s cold, his feet hurt, it smells and when we get out of here, we should stop at the inn for a beer—we’re quiet as we follow the tunnel… until Kent comes to a stop at a fork in the mine.
Michael bumps into Rook, who knocks into Remy, and I absurdly want to giggle as I think of the little dwarves from the cartoon I used to watch. There were seven of those, though, and only six of us. I stifle the sound, but not the grin, which seems to concern Remy, who watches me with suspicion for a moment.
I don’t know if the air is thin down here or if I’m just slap happy on the adrenaline, but it beats being scared, so I reign it in and focus my attention on Kent as he looks among us.
“We split up. Rich, Remy, and Claire to the left. Michael and Rook can come with me to the right.”
“Bad idea.” Remy shakes his head. “We stick together, and then we can backtrack. ”
“This is my mission, Boudreaux.” Kent argues. “We may have already given away our presence. If we don’t split up and we choose the wrong path, then by the time we backtrack, we could lose our only advantage.”
“He’s right.” Rich says from somewhere over my shoulder. “We left the jet a good distance away, but if anyone saw the lights in the sky, I’m sure they’re already suspicious enough.”
I don’t bother to point out how nobody could have seen the lights if they were in the mine, considering we’re underground .
“And if we find something?” Remy challenges.
Rich holds out a radio with an antenna attached. I didn’t stop to think about what was in the bag he had strapped to his back, but I guess I know now.
“How old school.” Remy says drily. “Couldn’t find two tin cans and some string?”
“Cute.” Rich rolls his eyes, passing the other radio off to Rook.
There’s a moment while we all contemplate what we’re about to do… or maybe it’s just me. Kent nods toward the path he’s going to follow, and Rook obediently follows. Michael, on the other hand, hesitates just long enough to smirk at Remy. “Good luck Papa Bear.”
He winks, too, and then turns on his heel to run after the others, leaving Rich’s laugh to echo around us. “Guess that makes you Goldie Locks,” Rich grins at me. “Stay behind me and in front of Papa.”
“Fuck you.” Remy snaps as Rich turns around, chuckling to himself.
“Papa Bear?” I ask, needing to know more. I suddenly remember his confession—the one I never even acknowledged about his wife, his son. He had a baby .
Somehow, though they like to give each other a hard time, I can’t imagine the nickname has anything to do with that. And it doesn’t, because Remy sighs. “He’s a fucking idiot. Started calling me that on our first mission because I’m the one who gathered them all. ”
“That’s cute.” I argue, unable to deny the smile on my face. “You created your own little family.”
“These assholes aren’t my family.”
Rich laughs this time, apparently disagreeing with that statement just as much as I do. “Sometimes you have to make your own family.”
“And sometimes you find your real family.” Remy fires back. There’s no heat in the statement, but I know exactly what point he’s getting at. I’ve been hiding from the truth about my family because I’m not ready to deal with it… not only a father, but a sister, too? Especially a sister who’s clearly been through her own shit. A sister who, for some weird ass reason, has aligned herself with Wes .
Rhea’s the only sister I need, and the only one I can focus on. We may have made up, but I need to call her when we get out of here and make sure everything really is good between us. Maybe it’s in my head, maybe she’s been busy with her exams, and I haven’t gotten a new phone since leaving my last on the airplane, and maybe I’ve just traded my dependency on her out with a dependency upon her brother.
Quiet falls between us as we push forward in our direction, and I’m not sure how long we’ve walked when we reach a dead end.
“Shit.” Rich mutters, running the beam of his light over the wall, like he may just find a crack for us to shimmy through. That might be my hard limit tonight, but thankfully, he doesn’t find anything. As he swings the beam down to rake his hands through his hair in frustration, I notice the glint of metal.
“Shine that back here.” I say, gesturing toward the rough surface to our left. He does, and Remy follows suit, illuminating the space I would swear I just saw something. I squint, tilt my head, take a step back…
But none of those things lead me to find the glint of silver again, until Rich shifts his light away.
“There!” I put my hand out to feel the surface… cold, solid. “There’s something here. ”
“Let me at it.” Rich says, so I do. He takes my place, running his hand over the space, and then he finds a trigger point. There’s a sudden release of pressure that for half a second, I think means the mine is coming down around us, and then the wall swings open.
“Christ.” He mutters. “What the fuck kind of psychopaths are we dealing with? This shit is next level.”
“People with a lot of money.” Remy guesses, shining his light into the darkness they just unlocked. It does nothing to illuminate anything, so Rich steps forward, shining his own light in.
I follow tentatively, Remy close behind. The temperature is different… the smell, too.
“We found something.” Remy radios at my back. When he presses the button, there’s a moment of static feedback, and then silence.
Rich moves slowly forward, his light doing little to make a difference, while Remy tries again to radio back to the rest of our crew. I’m just starting to get anxious about them not responding when Rich lets out what I can only describe as a yelp. It’s short and high-pitched and sets the most furious things loose in my imagination, but when Remy shines the light at him, he isn’t being eaten by a zombie or anything… although the bottom half of him seems to have disappeared.
“What the fuck?” Remy rushes to offer him a hand, but Rich shakes his head.
“I missed the drop. There are stairs…” He points below him, and we peer forward to see him.
“Stairs?” It sounds like a bad idea. Stairs leading deeper underground? Why would anyone walk willingly into hell’s gates?
But then I realize, that’s exactly what we’re doing… exactly what they’ve been doing these last six months that Remy and I have been apart. He’s been walking into the fire to attempt to save people from their sentences, and it’s the most noble thing I can imagine, but I fucking hate it.
“Yup.” Rich nods. “A lot of them. ”
‘A lot of them’ ended up being sixteen—I count them on the way down. The staircase is wide despite the space above being cramped, so I stick to one side of it without running my hands along it lest I encounter one of those damn spiders Michael mentioned.
When we reach the bottom, there’s a little click, and it takes approximately two seconds before a light blooms on over our heads. I look up to see the fluorescent bars, which look woefully out of place.
But for the first time since we left the jet, we can see our surroundings in their entirety. We’re in an expansive space, which is decidedly not the mine—the walls here are smooth steel, grey and depressing and creepy as hell.
“Where the fuck are we?” Rich asks, turning around to take it all in.
“A bunker.” Remy answers, without hesitation, his eyes sweeping the space for something.
“A bunker ?” I’ve heard the term somewhere, but I can’t place what exactly it is… or what it means for us.
“Like a fallout shelter.”
The new voice makes me jump, and as I turn to look for the source, I sigh a heavy breath of relief.
“Fuck. Kent?”
Behind him, I see Michael and Rook, both looking around as they try to assess the place.
“Both routes led here?” Rich asks, skeptical.
“Apparently. I could tell we were headed underground, but we just followed a single path the whole way here.”
“If it’s a shelter, why is it empty?” Michael asks.
“Because the real shelter is on the other side.” Remy says, nodding at the expanse of steel opposite the stairs.
“How do you know this?” Rook asks, dubious.
That gets a laugh out of Remy, who shakes his head. “There are three things wealthy men are obsessed with. ”
“Hot women?” Michael guesses.
“Power.” Rich nods.
“And the preservation of themselves above all else.” Kent surmises, earning a solemn nod from Remy.
“Humans are obsessed with survival… particularly of the elite.” He looks like he’s tasted something rotten, but he continues. “Nuclear fallout shelters seemed like the only answer during war times, but if you’re rich enough, you’re always at war.”
“We breed our soldiers.” It’s supposed to be a thought, but it comes off my tongue instead, and Remy looks at me, startled. But he nods all the same.
I want to give him a hug, because the look on his face is so sad, so broken that I regret letting it slip. But Michael asks, “So how do we get in?” and that’s enough to snap him out of whatever nasty memory he’s lingering in.
“You don’t.” Kent guesses, glancing at Remy for confirmation. “That’s the whole point of fallout shelter. To keep you safe in the event of nuclear fallout.”
“So, you’re telling me you can’t get in or out?” Michael asks. “That makes no sense.”
“You can get out.” Remy says, working hard to avoid Kent’s gaze. His eyes find mine, instead. “But you can’t get in.”
“Someone has to let us in?” Rich cocks his head, looking for any sort of door to knock upon.
“So… we’re done?” Rook shakes his head, trying to grasp what this means for us. “This is the end of the line?”
“We’re sitting ducks right now.” Remy swivels his head and finds whatever he’s looking for. He tips his head, very subtly, behind him. My eyes and Kent’s follow the path to the camera blinking in the corner.
I have to swallow to abate the swell of nausea inside of me as the sudden realization of the red light takes me back to Evan Ludlow’s basement .
“If someone was on the other side, they’d have shot us by now.” Rich reasons, though he doesn’t sound entirely confident about that.
“Not necessarily. They’d have to open the door to do it. It’s not worth the risk when they can wait us out.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I steal a glance at Kent, who’s hung his head and pressed his hand firmly over his mouth. I don’t know if he’s holding back vomit or a scream or maybe tears, but it’s one of the most devastating things I’ve ever seen. The desperation hits me as surely as if it were my own, a wicked, cold feeling.
“We didn’t come this far to turn away.” I shake my head.
“We can’t do anything.” Remy counters softly. His eyes are still on Kent, afraid to say what he really means.
We can’t get to her. If she’s in there, she’s out of reach.
I scan the space for anything to throw, unwilling to give up my boot, since I’ll definitely need that later. I stride toward Rich, taking the radio that’s hanging limp in his hand, and before anybody can object, I throw it.
My aim is a lot better when I’m not tied up, it seems, and the heavy radio makes impact right away, knocking the camera angle just a bit. I’m already running to pick it up when Remy catches me around the arm, stopping me in my tracks.
“What are you doing?” His voice is a hiss, startled, and by the way he’s looking at me, I think he’s fearing for my sanity.
“If we can’t get in, we have to make someone come out.” I try to tug out of his arm, thinking he’ll understand where I was going with this, but he holds tight, his brow furrowing.
“And you think breaking the camera is going to make them come out to investigate?”
I can hear the doubt in his voice, and I can see the doubt on Rich’s face, but I just nod. “That’s how I got out of Ludlow’s basement. I tripped the fire alarm, trying to get the camera. He came back to check on me. ”
“Jesus.” He closes his eyes, processing the information I haven’t given him. We haven’t discussed any of what happened down there, and I’m grateful that he hasn’t felt the need to demand every detail. I’m grateful that whatever may have happened hasn’t made a difference in how he feels about me.
Movement over his shoulder catches my eye, and I see Kent standing with the radio in hand, appraising it thoughtfully.
“She’s right.” He says, glancing toward me. “But we have something you didn’t have in the basement.”
“Which is what?” Michael asks, looking between all of us like he hasn’t yet figured out what’s going on.
“Guns.”
The word has barely even left Kent’s mouth when he points his toward the camera. Rich and Rook rush at him, but they aren’t fast enough. He pulls the trigger, and a second later, as Remy whips me out of the way, shards of thick black glass rain down around him.