Chapter 41
The rain was coming sideways when Callie turned onto Mountain Lane.
The wipers couldn't keep up and the headlights cut through the downpour in narrow cones that lit up the trees and the mud and nothing else.
The police cruiser bounced through ruts that had become streams, the gravel long gone under water, the road more river than road.
She saw the Bronco first. Parked in front of the farmhouse, rain hammering its roof, the windows dark. She pulled in behind it and killed the engine. Drew her weapon. Stepped out into the rain.
It hit her like a wall. Cold and heavy, soaking through her jacket in seconds, running down her face and into her collar.
She moved to the Bronco and looked through the driver's side window.
Noah's phone sat in the cup holder, plugged into the charging cable.
The screen was lit with missed calls. Seven of them. All from her.
Callie turned toward the farmhouse. The porch light was on and the front door was closed. She moved up the steps with her weapon raised and her back against the wall beside the door. She listened. The radio was playing inside, faint, barely audible over the rain.
She tried the handle. It was unlocked. She pushed the door open and stepped inside.
"Noah?"
The hallway was warm and dry and smelled like coffee. Coats on hooks. Boots in a row. The framed photo of Lydia and Earl on the wall. She moved through to the kitchen, weapon up, checking corners, the training taking over while the rest of her fought to stay calm.
The kitchen was empty. The French press sat on the counter, half full. Two mugs on the table. One tipped over. Coffee was dripping off the table. Her eyes scanned. That’s when she saw Noah's duty belt on the floor. His holstered weapon still in it.
Callie's chest tightened.
She picked up the duty belt and slung it over her shoulder. Then she moved through the rest of the ground floor. The living room. Empty. Bathroom. Empty. She reached a door at the end of the hallway. Closed. She turned the handle and pushed it open with her weapon leading.
It was a bedroom. Small. A single bed pushed against the wall. And on the bed, lying on her side with her wrists bound with zip ties and a strip of medical tape across her mouth, was Seraphine Maddox.
Her eyes were closed. Her breathing was shallow but steady. Drugged.
Callie holstered her weapon and crouched beside the bed. She pulled the tape from Seraphine's mouth as carefully as she could. Seraphine's lips parted but no sound came out. Her eyelids fluttered but didn't open.
"Seraphine. Can you hear me?"
Nothing. A breath. Another breath. Alive but far away.
Callie cut the zip ties with the knife from her belt and lifted Seraphine off the bed.
She was light. Too light. Callie carried her through the hallway and out the front door.
The rain hit them both; Seraphine didn't flinch.
She got her to the cruiser and laid her across the back seat.
Then she reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the Narcan kit.
Two doses. She administered one to Seraphine, the nasal spray, and watched for a response.
Seraphine's breathing steadied but she didn't wake.
Callie pulled the radio and called dispatch.
"This is Deputy Thorne, Adirondack County.
I need units and EMS to the Holt property, south end of Mountain Lane.
" She reeled off the exact address. "I have a drugged victim, possible second victim on the property.
Suspect is Lydia Holt. Consider her armed and dangerous. "
She hung up and looked at the farmhouse. The rain poured off the porch roof in sheets.
She went back inside. Through the kitchen. To the back door. She opened it and stepped out onto the rear porch.
"Noah? Noah!"
Her voice was swallowed by the rain. The yard stretched out in front of her, the overgrown grass flattened by the downpour, the barn to the left, the field beyond.
And in the mud between the porch and the field, two sets of footprints.
One heavier, deeper, dragging slightly. One lighter, steadier, close behind.
Both heading in the same direction. Across the yard.
Past the barn. Toward a grain silo barely visible through the curtain of rain.
The silo door was open.
Callie holding her weapon stepped off the porch.
The rain was in her eyes and the mud pulled at her boots and the footprints filled with water almost as fast as she could follow them.
She crossed the yard and passed the barn and moved through the field with her weapon up and her heart hammering against her ribs.
She reached the silo. The metal door hung open on its rusted hinges. Inside, the concrete cylinder rose above her, dark and hollow. A hatch in the floor was open. A faint light came from below.
She descended the stairs with her back against the wall and her weapon leading. The bare bulbs lit the concrete steps in harsh white light. At the bottom, the bunker opened up. A cot with stained sheets. Zip ties on the floor. A chain bolted to the wall.
And Noah. On the floor. On his side. His wrists cuffed in front of him and his face pressed against the concrete. He wasn't moving.
"Noah." She crossed the room and crouched beside him. His skin was gray. His lips had a blue tinge. His breathing was there but barely, shallow and slow. He was losing the fight between air and whatever was in his blood. She pressed two fingers to his neck. His pulse was faint.
"Noah, can you hear me?"
His eyelids moved. A twitch. Nothing more.
Then a voice came from behind her. From the base of the stairs.
"You won't be able to help him. At least not here."
Callie's hand went to her weapon but she was crouched over Noah with her back to the staircase and the voice was already continuing.
"Careful now," Lydia said.
Callie turned her head slowly. Lydia Holt stood at the bottom of the stairs with a .38 revolver pointed at Callie's back. She was dry. She'd come down after Callie. Followed her in. Let her find Noah first.
“Lower the gun."
Callie looked at the weapon in her hand. Then at Noah on the floor. Then at Lydia.
“Lower it," Lydia said again. “And slide it over."
Callie set her service weapon on the concrete floor and slid it toward the cot.
It scraped across the floor and stopped against the metal frame.
She was still crouched beside Noah. The ankle holster was against her right calf, hidden by her pant leg.
The backup piece. A Glock 26. It was there. She could feel the weight of it.
"Now keep your hands where I can see them."
"What did you give him?" Callie asked.
"Morphine. A high dose. Drowsiness is first, slowed breathing comes next, then apnea, followed by coma, and finally cardiac arrest. In that order.
" Lydia's voice was steady. Clinical. The voice of a nurse reading symptoms from a chart.
"Unless he gets Naloxone. But even then, with what I gave him, you'd need more than a field dose. You'd need a hospital."
"Let me help him."
"You can't help him."
"Lydia. I’ve already called for backup. Please.”
"No."
Callie stayed very still. Lydia was eight feet away with the gun level. Callie felt her ankle holster pressed against her calf.
"Where is your son?” Callie said.
Her nostrils flared. The clinical mask cracked. Just for a second. Underneath it was not anger or fear. It was grief. The old, worn-in grief of a mother who had known for a long time how this would end.
"Paul is at my sister's."
"He'll go to prison, Lydia."
“No. He never touched those girls." Her voice hardened. "Not once. He never laid a hand on any of them. He's a good boy. He doesn't understand what happened here. He doesn't understand what my husband and I did for him."
The bunker was quiet except for Noah's breathing. It was slower than before.
"Show me your hands," Lydia said, and gestured with the gun for Callie to stand.
Callie rose from her crouch. She moved slowly. Her right hand came up from her ankle in one fluid motion. Her fingers found the holster, the snap, the grip.
She pulled the Glock and spun.
Lydia fired. The round hit Callie in the chest and the impact drove her backward.
The vest caught it but the force of it was a hammer blow to her sternum that emptied her lungs and sent white light across her vision.
A second shot caught the top of her head above the right ear, not a direct hit but a graze that opened the skin and sent blood sheeting down her face.
Callie fired twice back. Both rounds hit Lydia in the torso. Lydia staggered backward and collapsed into the chair that sat against the wall near the stairs. The revolver dropped from her hand and clattered on the concrete.
Callie stood with the Glock raised and blood running into her right eye. Her chest was on fire. Every breath felt like swallowing broken glass. But she was alive.
Lydia sat slumped in the chair with her hands in her lap and her chin dropping toward her chest. The flannel shirt was dark and wet and spreading. She looked up at Callie with an expression that was not surprise and not anger and not fear. It was relief.
"Make sure my sister looks after my boy," she said. Her voice was thinner now.
Her hand moved toward the revolver on the floor beside the chair.
“Don’t do it.”
Lydia’s fingers found the grip.
Callie fired once more. Point blank.
Lydia's hand went still. Her head dropped forward. The bunker was quiet.
Callie stood there for two seconds. Maybe three. The blood ran down her face and dripped off her chin onto the concrete. Then she turned to Noah.
He was gray. His lips were blue. His breathing had slowed to almost nothing, long pauses between each shallow intake. Breathing that was measured in minutes, not hours.
"Stay with me, Noah."