46
Ten minutes earlier
“I’ll trade Emma for Crystal,” Drew shouted to the police outside. “Send her in here!”
Inside the CCC building, Emma was elated and shocked that law enforcement had found her.
When she’d first heard the voice on the megaphone, she’d nearly cried in relief.
Drew had sprung into action, moving things around and peering through the slits in the walls.
Then suddenly he cut the ties off her ankles and loosened the rope between her wrists but left in the cloth gag.
Is he letting me go?
Does he really think my mother will come?
After he’d told her that he’d seen Crystal at a park last week, Drew complained that her mother hadn’t gotten in her car as he expected.
He’d been hidden in the back seat, planning to bring Crystal back here to the forest where she belonged.
But when he sat up and put a gun to the driver’s head, someone else was staring at him in the rearview mirror. Sydney.
“She recognized me immediately,” Drew had told Emma.
“I’d been her UPS driver for years, and that was how I discovered Crystal was in town.
It was pure chance that I saw her through the window in Sydney’s home as I made a delivery.
But even with her darker hair, I knew. I never forget a face.
Especially hers.” Then he’d studied Emma’s face, and she’d felt as if he were seeing her mother instead of her.
“I had no choice with Sydney,” he’d continued with a one-shoulder shrug.
“What was I to do? Say I made a mistake aiming a gun at her head and get out? That wouldn’t have been the end of it.
I had to act, so I made her drive. In a matter of seconds, she’d gone from recognition to confusion to horror when she saw my gun.
I was angry at having to leave Crystal behind, but I knew where she lived.
I’d seen her at Sydney’s house three different times.
She was clearly staying there. But she never came back to the house.
I’d seen you at the Coffee Café and knew she’d come for her daughter. ”
It appeared he’d been correct. According to what Emma was picking up from the negotiator, Crystal was with them. After Emma had waited a decade to find out if her mother was dead or alive, she was now standing outside.
She came back for me?
But where has she been all this time?
Now Drew was yelling for the hostage negotiators to send in Crystal to trade for Emma.
“Get up,” he hissed, and Emma got to her feet. She had about two feet of rope between her wrists, and the rope at her waist was still there with what she thought of as “the leash” tied at the back. She pushed at the gag with her tongue, hoping he’d remove it soon.
What if Crystal won’t come inside? Will he still set me free?
Drew strode over to the fireplace and knelt. He slipped his fingers into a crack in the floor and lifted two of the boards on a hinge.
A trapdoor.
He pointed. “Get in,” he whispered to her. Then he shouted out one of the slits to answer the woman with the megaphone, “That’s between me and her!”
Emma peeked in the open hole; it was dark, and its cold air seeped into the room. She couldn’t see the bottom. Panic crept up her throat.
Drew turned on a flashlight, which showed a dirt floor about four feet down. “Go, dammit!” he told her. She awkwardly got to her stomach and lowered herself in, now understanding why he’d freed her ankles.
It wasn’t to let me go.
He’s hiding me.
She crouched on the dirt floor and looked up, waiting for him to close the hatch, her hands icy with fear.
I can do this.
Drew continued to yell at the people outside. “She needs to get in here, and then I’ll release Emma!” He handed Emma the flashlight and told her, “Start crawling. I’ll be right behind you.” He stood and went to look out a slit.
Emma clumsily turned in the dark hole and saw a small tunnel about three feet high. She pointed the flashlight and the beam was swallowed up by the dark. There was no end.
I can’t go in there!
Above her, he hollered to the police, “She needs to come in or this place—and Emma—is going up in smoke!”
Smoke?
Suddenly Emma smelled gasoline. She stood and saw Drew was soaking the ancient pallets on the bunk beds with a can of gasoline. Then he poured it over the kindling and everything else in the room.
Oh my God.
“No options! Send her in!” yelled Drew.
Emma looked down the tunnel again as her legs shook, threatening to give way.
I can’t do this! I can’t go in there!
Drew shrieked at the police, “No! I will rain down hellfire on you if Crystal’s not here in one minute! She belongs to me!”
He’s stalling.
The stink of the gas swamped her, and then she smelled smoke. Alarm shot through her nerves. She dropped to her knees and started to crawl, the flashlight in one hand.
I don’t want to burn!
Drew dropped in behind her, and the trapdoor slammed shut. “Go! Go! Go!” he whispered. “There’s an exit about fifty yards out.”
Fifty yards?
Emma’s lungs struggled to find air, so she stopped and yanked out her gag, gasping deeply. The cold tunnel smelled of moist dirt, and she felt sandy bits crunch between her teeth.
“Get moving!” he said.
“I can’t do this! I can’t breathe!” Tears burned as her arms quivered under her weight.
He shoved her ass, making her fall on her face. “Go forward or go back to the fire! Make your choice. But the sooner you get moving, the sooner we’re out. Don’t think, just move!”
Emma pushed back up to crawl and scrambled forward.
Rocks poked her knees, and several times she scraped her head along the ceiling, making dirt fall on the back of her neck.
Each time it happened she shot forward, terrified the tunnel’s roof would collapse.
Support boards appeared here and there, which offered no comfort.
No board could stop the thousands of pounds of dirt above her head if it started to give way.
Teary snot dripped from her nose, and she wiped it with the gag that now hung around her neck.
The last forty-eight hours had wrecked her.
First she’d believed her mother had been murdered and buried near her old home.
Then the car accident with Ollie, only for her to be dragged away by a mountain of a horrible man who claimed her mother was alive.
Is Ollie okay?
They found me; surely they found him.
Behind her Drew panted hard, and she wondered how claustrophobic he felt. The man was nearly three times her size, and she felt as if the walls were closing on her.
“Crystal! Crawl faster!” he hissed.
The rope between her wrists tangled, and she fell forward on her face.
He must have misspoken.
“Get up, you lazy bitch!” He thwacked her ass again. “You’re not getting away this time.”
What is he talking about?
A cold fear settled in Emma’s stomach. Too many times she’d caught him staring at her, a wistful expression on his face that then would morph into one of anger.
Her suspicion that he’d started to believe she was her mother grew stronger.
He’d already proved his brain wasn’t normal by admitting he’d committed murder.
So it wasn’t a far jump for him to believe he was seeing Crystal instead of her.
Emma didn’t know if that made her situation worse or better.
This tunnel will never end.
“How much further?” she choked out.
“Not far. I’ve been working on this tunnel for more than a decade, and I know every inch. I knew it’d come in handy one day,” he said smugly.
The ground suddenly sloped down, making it feel as if she were crawling into the belly of the planet.
“Almost there.”
She set her hand on something slimy and nearly screamed, refusing to look down. The flashlight dug into her other palm, but she pushed on. Then the beam picked up a wall. She halted, convinced she’d reached a cave-in. “We have to go back,” she whispered.
“Shine the light up,” he told her.
Above was a network of branches. She scrambled into a crouch and shoved the branches, making sunlight appear.
Desperate to get out, Emma stuck her hands out the hole, frantically searching for something to grab to pull herself up while keeping her eyes on that blessed light. Her hands found nothing.
“I can’t get out!” Tears burned again.
Then two hands grabbed her waist and roughly tossed her up.
She shimmied forward on her stomach and grabbed a sagebrush bush, not caring that its rough branches scratched and jabbed her hands.
Drew pushed on her butt and she was out.
Emma rolled onto her back and drank in the sight of the blue sky between the towering pines. It was quiet. No megaphone. No people.
Drew crawled out and laid the woven branches back over the hole. Perfect camouflage. Suddenly he slapped at his ribs, shock on his face. “Where’d my nine-millimeter go?” He spun in a circle, checking the ground. “Shit! It must be in the tunnel.”
I won’t go back in there!
He yanked up his pant leg and took a tiny pistol out of an ankle holster. He glared at it. “Better than no gun, I guess.” He grabbed one of her wrists and hauled her to her feet. “Let’s go.”
Her jeans, tennis shoes, and hands were filthy. She wiped her face with the damp gag, and it came away covered in brown smears. The top of Drew’s head was brown with dirt where it’d scraped the tunnel’s ceiling. She raised her hands and touched gritty grime in her hair.
They’d exited in a ravine, which explained why the tunnel had suddenly sloped down. Drew shoved her ahead of him. “We follow this for a ways, then climb out.”
Her nightmare wasn’t over.
“Crystal, move!” he snapped.
Emma moved.
The ravine was slightly muddy, a result of the sun never quite reaching the bottom. They maneuvered through the damp mud, and eventually their path was full of large river rocks. They stepped from rock to rock, which made her feet ache after only a few minutes.
“I’d wondered what happened to you,” he said conversationally. “I looked for a long time, you know.”
He thinks I’m my mother again.
Emma said nothing.
“Out of all my wives, you were the one. Your eyes are unforgettable. I couldn’t get them out of my mind for the last ten years.”
Did my mother actually marry him?
He continued to ramble. “It’ll take several hours for that fire to cool down enough for them to get in the building and see we’re not there. We’ll be long gone by then.”
“Okay,” she answered dully. His matter-of-fact tone was disturbing. As if something had cracked in his brain since he’d wanted Crystal back so badly, and his mind simply told him it’d happened.
“I have another place for us to live. It’s much more remote.”
Emma tried to hide her shudder.
When will this nightmare end?