Chapter 18 #2
“Okay.” In silent agreement, we gather into a small huddle. Even though I hate to wait even an extra second, I know this needs to be done right. Not with me racing into the woods on my own without any backup. Not when we don’t know what we’re coming up against.
After a brief conference, we set off again, with Leo at the front and me right behind him. Cole has my back, and Zane’s at the rear. All of us have our guns at low ready, prepared to fire if necessary.
We follow the path of footsteps, the only sounds the faint crunch of snow and the faraway call of birds. My breath billows out in silvery clouds, but I can’t feel the sub-freezing temperature. Not when my adrenaline is running this hot.
Just as Leo claimed, after about five hundred yards, we come upon a small structure—concrete, stained brown with water and dead moss—with a door sitting slightly ajar at the center of it.
And leading up to the door, the footsteps.
Amid the suffocating fear, an inferno of rage erupts.
He took Jess here .
Fuck. How terrified must she have been?
Leo edges through the door cautiously, his Sig raised and ready to fire. Then he turns back and says, “The room is clear. Just ahead we have stairs heading down. They’re metal, so it’ll be hard to get down them silently.”
“Just be careful,” I reply tightly.
Cole claps my shoulder. “We will.”
Then, one after another, we creep down the stairs.
Down one flight. Then another. And another.
The further we go, the damper the air. The more rotten it smells. The colder it gets .
I remember reading about how most of the missile silos were intentionally flooded, and I can’t help wondering if this one’s the same. If Jess is?—
Fuck. No. Don’t think it.
“One more flight,” Leo murmurs. “Get ready.”
My fingers tighten on my gun. My jaw sets. All the anger, the fear, the panic coalesce into single-minded determination.
Get to Jess. Kill this fucking asshole and get Jess out of here. Do whatever it takes to fix what he did. Long hospital stays. Counseling. Retreats. Anything.
When we hit the bottom of the stairs, we pause for a quick assessment. There’s a circular walkway with a rickety metal railing surrounding a large pit in the middle. Water from below moves in an odd, creepy, echoing rhythm, but there’s no sign of voices. No sign of anyone up here at all.
Then I spot it. Rope. At the edge of the walkway. Just a short length of it, but it doesn’t look old. It looks like it was recently left here.
From below, I hear the water moving again.
Could she?
Did he dump her in there?
I race to the edge, flinging myself flat on the metal walkway and peering down into the gaping dark. Throat squeezing from fear, I call out, “Jess? Sweetheart. Are you down there?”
At first, there’s nothing.
My world starts to close in around me.
All my dreams for a future with Jess; gone.
Despair slams into me, making my eyes burn with tears .
We were too late. I was too late.
And then.
“Kane?”
It’s weak. Shaky. Scared.
“Jess!” I scrabble in my belt for my flashlight, grasping it with a trembling hand. Then I flick it on and shine the beam down below, watching the light reflect faintly off the black water.
At first I can’t see her. “Help me,” I call to the guys. “I need more light!”
Cole flattens himself to the floor beside me, adding his light to mine.
I hold my breath again.
Then I see her.
Soaked. Paddling with uncoordinated strokes. Her mouth bobbing close to the surface of the water. But alive.
Alive .
“Fuck, Jess!” I spring to my feet and bark, “I need a rope. I need to get down there. Now!”
“On it,” Zane replies.
“Where is he?” Cole calls down to Jess. “The man who took you. Did he leave?”
From below, Jess replies, “He… he’s dead.”
“Here.” Zane rushes over to me. “Tie this around your waist. We’ve got you from up here.”
As I secure the rope around me, I force my voice to stay calm as I say, “I’m coming down, baby. Just hang on. I’ll be right there.”
But I feel anything but calm. I don’t know how badly she’s hurt. How much longer she can stay afloat. If I make it down and she sinks below the surface …
“I’m trying,” Jess says. Her voice cracks. “But I’m so cold. And I’m so tired.”
My heart breaks. “I know, sweetheart. I promise, I’ll be down there in a minute. That’s all you need to do. Wait one more minute.”
Rope tied tightly, I turn to Cole. “Let’s go. Quickly.”
The next minute feels like an eternity, as the three B and A guys lower me down into the pit.
I ignore the stench of the water and the claustrophobic darkness of the pit as I inch closer and closer to the woman I love.
And my strong, incredible Jess actually swims towards me, doing her part to make the rescue easier.
Once I get close enough, I can see the barely banked panic in her eyes, and the instant it shifts to relief.
“I knew you’d come,” she whispers through chattering teeth.
“I just didn’t know… the silo… I didn’t know if the tracker… ”
“It’s okay, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”
And a moment later, I do.
I pull Jess into my arms, trapping her soaked and shuddering body against mine. She’s nearly frozen, on the verge of hypothermia or already there. But she’s here. Alive. I wasn’t too late.
Though I want nothing more than to kiss her all over, now’s not the time for that. Instead, I tighten my grip around her and shout, “I’ve got her. Pull me up.”
And thanks to three former Green Berets turned security experts, they haul both of us up in a matter of seconds. The next thing I know, we’re both back on the walkway, away from what was obviously intended to be a watery grave.
Jess lifts her head from my shoulder to meet my gaze. “You came.” Then she bursts into tears .
Cole crouches beside us. Zane sets the black duffel by his feet. “We need to get you out of these wet clothes,” Cole says. “We’ve got an emergency blanket. As soon as we get you bundled up, we’ll get you out of here.”
Jess looks at me with a stricken expression. “My clothes ?”
My heart wrenches painfully. Pressing my lips to her cold forehead, I croon, “It’s okay, baby. No one is looking at you like that. I’ll help you. Okay?”
She hesitates before nodding. “Okay, Kane.”
As I hurry to peel her sodden clothes off, I curse myself a million times at the sight of her blue-tinged skin and the raw and bleeding gouges around her wrists. And again when I see the bruise on her face, the one that fucking asshole must have given her.
While I wrap her in the crinkly blanket, she says quietly, “I killed him. Adam. He was going to throw me in and watch me drown.”
“What?” My voice rises. “He was?—”
“My neighbor,” she adds. “Adam. He… he said I’m not the first. He killed… Eliza. For interfering. And at least two other women. So… I had to… I pulled him in with me. And he hit his head. I wasn’t sure… but then he sank. I watched him. He’s dead.”
Then she starts sobbing again.
A hurricane of emotions crashes into me at once. Rage. Guilt. Relief.
Lifting Jess into my arms, I hug her close to my chest. She buries her face in my neck; her cold skin a shock against mine. “It’s okay,” I croon. “We’ll get you to the hospital and then back home. It’s all going to be okay.”
Although. Will it? She was kidnapped. Tossed into a pit of water and left to die. And she thinks herself responsible for killing someone. And that’s not even taking into consideration any other injuries I can’t see.
Cole, Leo, and Zane close in around us. “There’s a hospital in Plattsburgh,” Cole says. “Zane, you take Kane and Jess there. Leo and I will call the police and stay here until they arrive. We’ll catch a ride to the hospital with them.”
Then to Jess, he adds in a much softer tone, “What you did, Jess? Surviving down there? Dragging that piece of garbage in with you? I don’t know many people who could do something like that.”
Jess peels her face from my neck to look at Cole. “Even if I died, I couldn’t let him kill another woman.”
Tears spring to my eyes again. “Jess.” My voice is thick. “I’m so damn proud of you.”
And as we carefully work our way back up the stairs, I bend my head to speak quietly into her ear. “Thank you, sweetheart. Thank you for hanging on for me.”
“I love you,” she slurs, and I can tell the exhaustion is catching up to her. “I was going to wait as long as I could.”
Oh.
“Oh, Jess, baby.” I kiss her cold cheek, tasting salt on my lips. “I love you so much.”