Chapter 8
Iyanked Kat back from the truck’s rusty doors.
“What’s wrong? What’s in the barrels?” Her eyes nearly popped out of her head.
“Toxic waste.” Gripping her arm, I dragged her back farther.
“Jesus. How do you know?” Her eyes darted from me to the truck.
“Trust me. I know.”
“Shit. What do we do?” She drove her fingers through her hair.
“We get the fuck out of here.”
“But we have to tell someone.”
“And we will after we get out of here.”
She pulled her arm from my grip. “Let me take some photos.”
I groaned, but knowing she wouldn’t relent, I nodded. “Okay, but hurry up.”
As Kat snapped photos, I returned to the skeletons. Squatting down, I fished into the pockets of the body next to the truck tire, but they were empty.
Strange. No wallet, keys, cigarettes, lighter, cash.
“Hey, Colton.”
Kat pulled me out of my thoughts.
“What if Dad was here?” She peered around from the back of the truck, and the expectancy in her expression had dread crawling through me.
“What if he found this truck,” she said. “And these drums. And that’s?—”
“Kat! There’s no way to know if he was here. So, hurry up with those photos. We have to get out of here.”
“Why?” She stepped closer, glaring at me.
“We need to get back to the others . . . that storm, remember?”
Her blue eyes locked onto mine, blazing with determination. “You think there”s more going on here, don”t you?”
I groaned. “I don’t know what to think. We just found this truck.”
“And those dead guys. Someone abandoned them. They could have been murdered.” She gasped. “Were they shot?”
I raised my hand. “Stop. You’re blowing this out of proportion.”
“No, I’m not. We just found a damn good reason for people to get murdered or to vanish forever.”
“Then don’t you think that’s a good reason to get out of here?”
“Nobody knows we’re here, Colton.” She stormed away.
“Kat. Kat! Where are you going?” My voice boomed around the cave.
“I’m just having a look around. Okay?”
“Jesus Christ, woman. You have two minutes, then we’re outta here.” Clenching my fists, I marched to the second body and fished into his pockets. Empty.
What the hell?
Did someone remove all clues to their identity? If so, that confirmed that someone knew exactly where the truck full of toxic waste was.
I pulled on the door to the truck cabin. Years of rust and grime had sealed it shut. The door screeched as it opened, and the sound echoed through the cave. Musty smells of damp fabric and decay wafted out as I climbed into the cabin.
The glove box was empty. The keys were gone. And there wasn’t a single thing to identify the dead bodies or who owned the truck. I climbed out and strode to the front, and as I expected, the registration plate was missing. I would bet my brand-new F150 truck that the VIN would have been eradicated, too.
Some fucker abandoned this truck and its toxic contents on purpose and these poor men.
I searched for Kat. She was a few yards away, squatting down next to a tire that must have blown off the truck when it landed. Her focus was so intense that fear gripped me. Had she found something to do with her father?
My heart was in my throat as I walked toward her. “Hey, Kat, we need to go.”
She jolted upright, stepped back, and tripped over, landing on her ass.
“Shit, are you okay?” I offered her my hand to help her stand, and that was when I saw what she’d fallen over.
A trip wire.
“Oh fuck. Kat. This place is rigged. Get up.” I grabbed her arm, hauling her to her feet.
“What do you mean rigged?”
“That wire you tripped over, it could send a signal to someone, telling them we’re here.”
“Really? Why? This truck’s been here for years.”
“And they want to keep it hidden here.”
“Who does?”
“I don’t know. But we need to move.”
She yanked her arm free. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on.”
“For fuck’s sake.” I heaved a forceful breath. “I don’t know.”
“You know something.” She glared at me. “Or you wouldn’t be so worried.”
“Look. Those bodies didn’t have anything in their pockets.”
Frowning, she turned her gaze to the skeletons. “And . . .?”
“That means somebody came down here and removed anything that could identify them or the truck. Even the truck’s registration is gone.”
A deep intensity crossed her gaze. “This must have something to do with my father’s disappearance.”
“Bloody hell.” Gripping her arm, I dragged her toward our scuba gear. “We don’t know that Kat. But we need to go.”
I managed to draw her alongside the truck before she tugged out of my grip. “It’s too much of a coincidence, Colton.”
“What is?”
“That Dad disappeared in this cave, and we find a truck full of toxic waste.”
“Okay, I agree.” As long as she kept walking, I would hear her out.
“Dad was an investigative journalist, and he was passionate about the environment.”
Picking up my pace, I led her through the field of stalagmites.
“If Dad got wind of toxic waste dumping, he would have gone into that investigation with all guns blazing.”
“He sounds like my kind of guy.”
She released a sound of utter sorrow. “You would have liked him. Dad was fiercely determined.”
“Sounds like someone I know.” I glanced at her over my shoulder.
She chuckled. “Yeah, Mom says I’m a lot like my dad was.”
“It must have been hard not knowing what happened to him.”
“It was . . . is. It crushed Mom, me, and my sisters. Our lives changed forever when Dad vanished.”
“I assume the police investigated his disappearance?”
“Yes. Our local sheriff. The FBI. The newspaper Dad worked for helped. The American Consulate in Mexico. The media. Mom even hired a private investigator, but he didn’t find anything new.”
“So, your dad’s phone and bank accounts haven’t been used?” I asked.
“No. He hasn’t used anything since sending Mom that photo.”
I wanted to tell her that the likelihood of finding details about her father’s disappearance was extremely slim, but when I turned to help her over a rock, the words wouldn’t release from my throat.
As she gripped my hand, the sadness in her eyes seemed to consume her.
“I’m sorry this happened to you and your family, Kat.”
She nodded. “Thanks.”
I kept walking, determined to get her back in the water before she tried to search for more clues.
“So why have you come to Mexico now?” I asked.
The only sound was our rubber boots on the rough gravel.
Then, Kat released a small moan. “Because Mom’s dying of cancer.”
“Ah, jeez. I’m so sorry.”
“I wanted to give her some closure before she . . . before?—”
I strode to her and pulled her to my chest.
She didn’t cry as I expected. Maybe she was done crying.
She released a deep sigh and said, “Mom has stage four breast cancer, so she doesn’t have long to live.” Sucking in a shaky breath, she pulled back from me. “I was hoping to give her some answers to Dad’s disappearance before she . . . goes.”
I rested my hand on her shoulder. “I promise you I’ll do everything I can to help.”
She huffed. “Thanks, but everyone has promised to help, and we still don’t know what happened.”
“Well,” I said, “you haven’t had my help. Or the help of my team.”
She frowned. “Your team? You mean Pedro?”
I burst out laughing. “No. Pedro’s just my assistant when I’m scuba diving here in Mexico. My other job is at Team Eagle, a private airline I work for in Yellowstone with my ex-Navy SEAL buddies.”
Her eyes lit up. “Really?”
“Don’t look so surprised.”
A tinkling sound echoed about the cave, and frowning, I turned back toward the truck. Rain streamed in from the hole in the cave roof and pinged off the rusty truck. “Shit. The storm is on its way. Move.”
Kat sprinted ahead of me, dodging around obstacles like an Olympic gymnast.
She jumped into the water at our scuba gear, impressing me with her urgency.
I handed her integrated vest and tank to her. “You got it?”
“Yep.” She guided her arms into the vest.
I nudged my equipment closer to the edge, slid into the water, and buckled up.
“I’ll take the lead, and like last time, you stay right on my ass.”
“Got it.” She put her regulator in her mouth, and as the tinkling rain on the truck roof increased to hollow drumming, we sank beneath the surface.
I turned on my flashlight, highlighting a dark circle to my left. Frowning, I realized it was another tunnel. It made sense because the water had to flow somewhere, otherwise that truck would have corroded much more, and the toxic contents would have been a major disaster if that cave flooded.
Aiming my light in the opposite direction, I forced my brain to focus on getting Kat and me through the cave system and out to safety as quickly as possible.
The tunnel that we’d squeezed through earlier seemed even more narrow, and my damn tank scraped on the rocks above several times before I got my shit together.
Kat was messing with my mind. I’d never met a woman like her. She had everything I wanted in a partner: determination, a sense of adventure, and confidence. She was mighty fine to look at, too. I hated that she had so much trauma to deal with. And by the sounds of her mother’s health, she was heading for a lot more.
I knew what it was like to suffer medical trauma. But compared to some of my Navy SEAL buddies, my injuries were barely scratches. It took me way too long to figure out that life was possible after losing a few fingers. Not just possible; life was there to be lived.
Kat needed to have that, too. Her family had been living in limbo since her father vanished.
That was some messed up shit.
And although I didn’t want to say it, I had a rotten feeling that truck and its contents had everything to do with his disappearance.
I emerged from the tight squeeze and hovered in the open space for Kat. True to her word, she was right on my tail. She gave me the okay signal as she swam past, and I kicked my fins to catch up to her.
She stopped at the entrance to the next tunnel, and I gave her the thumbs-up as I entered the channel ahead of her. Kat’s expertise in the water was impressive, and if we weren’t in such a rush, it would have been wonderful to watch her explore this cave.
We finally entered the last tunnel, and with the glow of daylight penetrating the passage, I turned off my flashlight.
I swam out the exit, but when I looked up at the glistening surface, a cry burst from my throat.
Above me, Ethan floated face down with blood clouding the water around him from two wounds in his stomach and one in his leg. Bullet wounds.
Son of a bitch!
I spun back to the tunnel, desperate to save Kat from that visual.
But I was too late.
A massive bubble left her breather, and her muffled scream reached me.
Kicking like fury, I swam to her, and the fear in her eyes tore my heart out.
Gripping her shoulders, I forced her back into the tunnel.
Questions slammed into me like buckshot as I chased after her.
What the hell happened?
Why was he shot?
Are the others okay?
Whatever the answers, Kat and I were in a fuck-load of trouble.