CHAPTER 93 Cross
Cross
ALEX CROSS PICKS HIS way carefully around the perimeter of the fence on Colton Brophy’s property. He now knows to look for trip wires and step around them. Even in the dark.
When he reaches the main gate, Alex settles in beside a post and watches the house through a pair of mini-binoculars. The lights are on, and he can see movement inside. Every few minutes, Brophy’s bulky shape is framed behind one of the barred windows.
Suddenly, the front door opens. Brophy emerges wearing a pair of denim overalls, like a farmer’s.
In his hands, he’s carrying a steaming metal pot.
He walks across the scrubby yard of the compound toward the barn.
He stops at the wooden gate to the pigsty and lifts a latch.
A few of the pigs move toward him, expecting a meal. Brophy kicks them away.
Halfway across the pen, he puts the pot on the ground and reaches down. He grabs a metal bar and pries under the straw. Alex hears the scrape of metal on metal. Brophy lifts one edge of a thick panel, grabs it in both hands, and pulls it up until it locks into position at a forty-five-degree angle.
Some kind of hatch!
Brophy picks up the pot, then turns around and lowers himself down into the opening. When only his head is showing, he shuts the hatch. The pigs shuffle across the closed cover, spreading straw and shit as they go—almost like they’re part of the Houdini act.
Is this the bomb shelter Brophy got approval for years back? Alex wonders. And what’s he doing down there with a cooking pot?
One thing’s for sure: Brophy didn’t come to feed the hogs.
Alex presses himself closer to the ground and waits for the hatch to open again. Two minutes. Three. He looks up at the thick chain holding the gate shut and at the high-voltage line running through the barbed wire.
I need a way in. But how?
Maybe it’s time to call for reinforcements. He pulls his phone out of his pocket.
A twig snaps. Alex flinches. He turns his head.
A boot kicks his phone away, and his cheek touches the cold end of a shotgun barrel.