Chapter 30
By the time Matt and Kara crossed the field, Kara had stopped talking altogether. She leaned into him, her weight dragging
on his shoulder with every limping step. She could still walk, but was in obvious pain. The T-shirt he’d tied around her calf
was red with her blood.
Matt ached all over from the fall. His body felt like a single, pulsing bruise. His ankle throbbed, but held. The sun beat
down on his bare back, searing his skin. He was probably burned, even with his darker complexion. Kara, pale and blistering
red, fared worse. They’d eaten a few berries, enough to dull the edge of hunger, but not their thirst.
At the edge of the field, he stopped. The house loomed ahead—weathered, listing, half boarded up. A hurricane, probably the
same one that had flooded the factory, had left its mark. But there, above the sagging porch, a single light glowed.
Electricity. Maybe someone was inside.
This was the rural South. Sometimes you met the kind of people who’d offer you a drink and a hot meal. Other times, they’d run you off their land with a shotgun. Matt didn’t like the odds, but he didn’t have a choice.
He considered that the house belonged to whoever had taken them, though that seemed unlikely. Once the cameras had gone dark
in the factory and he disabled the generator, whoever was watching them would have come to investigate if they were this close.
Still, unlikely didn’t mean impossible.
He couldn’t risk Kara.
He eased her down beneath the shade of an oak tree, her back against the rough trunk. “I’m going to check it out. Stay here.
Don’t move unless you have to.”
“Roger that,” she whispered, her eyes already closing.
She didn’t protest. Didn’t insist on going with him. That said more than anything else: she was worse off than she’d let on.
If this house turned out to be the wrong kind of refuge, Matt didn’t know if either of them could run.
Matt kept his hands in the open and to his side to show that he wasn’t a threat as he approached the property. While he was
still fifty feet away from the base of the broken steps, he called out, “Hello? Is anyone home? I need some help. Hello?”
He walked slowly forward, listening.
“My name is Matt Costa,” he called out. “I’m an FBI special agent and I’ve had some trouble. Is anyone home?”
He was only a couple feet from the bottom stair when he heard footsteps running inside, then the front door burst open. “Stay
back! Don’t come any closer!” a woman shouted.
“Okay,” he said, keeping his hands up. “I don’t mean to bother you.”
“Back up!” she demanded.
Matt took two steps back. This woman wasn’t their kidnapper, he was nearly certain of it.
She was in her late thirties with long dark hair braided down her back.
She looked terrified, even as her voice commanded that he stay away.
She wore dirty surgical scrubs and scuffed white shoes that reminded Matt of every nurse he’d met.
“Are you a nurse?” he asked.
Her eyes widened in fear. “How do you know that?”
He motioned to how she was dressed. “My partner is injured. We were trapped in the abandoned factory across the field—”
She interrupted him. “You have to go right now. Right now!”
“My partner has a deep cut and has lost a lot of blood. She needs medical attention. I understand that you might not want
to let strangers inside, and I don’t have any identification on me, but I can give you a number to call to verify I am who
I say I am. They’ll send help.”
“You don’t understand,” she said, her voice quivering. “Just please go.”
“I can’t,” he said softly. She had no weapon. He didn’t want to scare her, but he couldn’t walk away. He didn’t think Kara
would make it much farther. “My partner and I were held hostage in the factory across the field for the last two days. No
food or water.” He took a step forward. “I won’t come in, if you insist, but if you can bring us something to drink,” he took
another step forward, “and call my boss—”
“No! Stop!” Tears started streaming down her face as she clutched a small gold cross on a chain around her neck. “If you take
one more step my son is dead. Please, just stop.”
Matt did as she asked.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“You have to leave.”
“I’m Matt Costa. My partner is Kara. I can get help if you have a phone.”
The woman wiped her face. Her hand was trembling.
“We don’t need to come inside. If you could call for me, that would be great.”
She continued crying.
“What’s your name,” he asked again.
“L-Lily.”
“Hi, Lily. I’ll help you any way I can, I promise.”
“My son is trapped in a cage in the basement. If I do anything to try to get him out, he’ll die. There’s a gas canister down
there, poison. She will set it off—she told me she would. I’m not going to risk my son’s life for you or anyone. Do you understand
that?”
Matt attributed his fatigue and pain for being slow on the uptake, but he finally put two and two together. They were less
than two miles from the factory; a field separated them. She was the same she who had taken Matt and Kara from the resort.
“I understand,” Matt said. “If you let me help you and your son, I can get you out of this.”
“I’m not risking my son’s life because you think you can help. What if you fail?”
“Someone is keeping you here against your will,” Matt said. “Just like my partner and me—someone put us in that factory. It’s
the same person. We nearly died getting out, but we got out. What kind of gas is down there?”
“I don’t know! There’s no label on it, but it’s in a canister with a phone attached. She says if she calls that number, the
phone will set off the canister. My son is locked in a cell. Who has a cell in their basement?” She shook her head.
“What else did this person tell you?”
Lily clearly didn’t want to say anything, but maybe because she was terrified and he was her only lifeline for help, she relented.
“My husband is being forced to do something he doesn’t want to do. We were taken here to make sure he complies.”
“Who is your husband?” A cop maybe, someone involved in the investigation.
“Franklin Graves.”
Matt didn’t recognize the name. “Is he in law enforcement?”
“He’s a lawyer.”
“A prosecutor?” Maybe he worked with Anson.
She shook her head. “He was a criminal defense attorney in Miami, but he doesn’t do that anymore. He works civil cases now,
helps people. I don’t know what they want from him, I only know that she told me if Franklin does what they want, they’ll
let Nathan and me go.”
“They? You said she, now you say they?”
She bit her lip. “Because she said ‘we,’ but I don’t know. I want to believe she’s crazy, but sometimes people are just cruel.
Leave. The cameras all point to the house, but if you take another step—oh, dear Lord, she’ll see me standing here talking
to someone!” She buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
“I’ll get your son out. I’ll disable the gas or break the lock or . . .”
She shook her head. “Then they’ll kill my husband.”
“Do you have a phone? Anything to communicate?”
“Anything I do on my phone, she’ll see it. She cloned it.”
Matt knew the woman was scared, but he had to find a solution.
“I am an FBI agent,” he said. “I can get your husband protection within minutes.”
“What if we don’t have minutes? What if she sees you and kills my son?”
Matt understood her fear. He understood that Lily’s only concern right now was protecting her child first, her husband second.
He would feel the same. But there had to be an answer.
“Okay. Go inside, look at the gas container, study it. Tell me exactly what you see. Wires, plugs, dials, everything. Come
back and describe it to me. I’ll figure it out.”
She stared at him, unmoving.
“Lily, please. The woman I love, my partner, is dying under that tree.” He gestured to the large oak tree where he’d left Kara.
“I will do anything to save her, and right now she needs you—she needs a nurse to clean her wound and give her water and food, at least until we can get her to a hospital. And in exchange for your help, I will save your son. I need to know what the device looks like, how it is secured, if there are any wires or cords. I can help.” Matt didn’t know what else to say to convince her.
She gave him a short nod, turned, and went back into the house.
Matt hoped Lily could do this. He needed her to do this.
He walked back to Kara. She leaned against the tree, eyes closed. But her chest was rising up and down, up and down. He sat
next to her, where he could still see the porch. He hoped that the woman made a decision quickly.
“Kara,” he said quietly.
“Hmm.”
“There’s a mother in the house with her son. A woman brought her here, threatened to kill her and her son, and is using them
as leverage with her husband, who’s a lawyer. I don’t know what they think he can do, but my guess it’s Garrett and his partner
who did all this.”
“Yeah. The voice we heard. Also a woman. Same person?”
“Likely. I don’t see how unrelated criminals with a penchant for kidnapping would leave their victims this close to each other.”
Kara grunted a laugh at his poor attempt at humor.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“Okay.”
She wasn’t okay. She didn’t even ask about the woman or what his plan was.
“The mom is named Lily. She’s scared and believes that if she allows us in, gas will be released in the house and kill her
son, who is locked in a cage.”
“That really sucks,” Kara said. “What crazy person locks a child in a cage?”
Her voice was stronger now. Angry.
“I’m going to help her disable it, if she lets me.”
Kara reached out and grabbed his wrist. Her grip was weak, but her voice was clear. “Be careful.”
He kissed her forehead. “I’ll wait here until Lily comes back. I don’t know how long it’s going to take.”
“Okay,” she said and put her head on his shoulder.
Lily Graves went down to the basement where Nathan was leaning against the bars. “I heard you talking to someone,” he said.
“Can they help? Why are you crying? Are you okay?”
Nathan didn’t sound scared, he sounded hopeful. Protective. He sounded far older than his years. He shouldn’t be forced to
grow up so fast. He’d be twelve next month. But he sounded almost like a grown man. She blinked back tears.
“A man who says he’s with the FBI, but I don’t know. He has no shirt and is wearing sweatpants.”
“He said he was with the FBI? You think he’s lying? Why would he do that?”
“Why does anyone do what they do?” she said, exasperated. “I don’t know, pumpkin. I don’t think he’s with that woman, but
I don’t know that he is a good person.”
“Mom, we need to trust someone. I heard him say his partner is hurt. Is that true?”
“I didn’t see a partner. What if he’s trying to lure me out? What if he is part of that woman’s twisted game, trying to trick
me into leaving the house?”
“Do you really believe that?”
She didn’t. But four days being trapped in this house, barely sleeping, worrying that the gas would go off and kill her son,
the best thing in her life, the child she vowed to love and protect from the minute she felt him move in her stomach . . .
She felt gutted.
“Mom, if someone’s hurt, you have to help them. You just have to.”
“If that woman looks at the cameras and sees that I brought someone in here, we could all die.”
“Mom.”
He reached through the bars and took her hand. When had he grown up? Her baby was becoming a man.
“Are you sure?” she asked, her voice catching.
He looked her straight in the eye and, without hesitation, said, “Yes.”