Chapter Twenty-one #2
Leaning against the tunnel wall, she
breathed in slowly, trying to hear past her heartbeat thundering in
her ears. She pressed a hand to where she’d hit her head and her
fingers felt sticky.
She drew in another breath, told
herself she could do this, and started moving again. She’d taken no
more than a dozen steps when footfall sounded around a bend in the
tunnel in front of her. A brilliant flash of light blinded her. She
reeled back against the tunnel wall as the figure holding the light
rushed toward her.
“Laney.”
Relief flooded through her so profound
she felt dizzy, and her breath shuddered from her lungs in a shaky
sob. Walker’s strong hands grasped her shoulders and she was pulled
against his solid chest.
“Oh god,
Walker.”
“Shh, baby. I got
you.”
Nothing had ever felt safer than
Walker wrapping her in his arms.
She wanted to burrow into him, to
surround herself in his strength and warmth, to never let go. But
the danger wasn’t over. Lifting her face, she gripped his arms.
“It’s Jerod Fetterly. He’s coming. We’ve got to get out of
here.”
As if to confirm her statement, a
steady scraping noise came from deeper in the mine. Walker set her
away from him. He ran the beam of the flashlight over her, uttering
a quiet oath. He handed her his flashlight, the beam casting his
face in shadows, and pointed her in the direction from which he’d
come.
His voice was low and fast as he said,
“Keep going. Forty feet and the tunnel bends to the right. You’ll
go through a cave to the entrance. Keep moving as fast as you can.”
He released her to thrust his cellphone in her other hand. “Once
outside, keep to the trail. As soon as you get a signal, call
Sawyer. My passcode is your birth year.”
“I’m not leaving
you.”
“Laney.” His voice never
sounded more urgent. “Promise me you’ll keep moving. If he somehow
gets past me, I don’t want you anywhere he can find
you.”
“I’m not leaving
you.”
“Listen to me.” He gave
her a shake, intensity lacing his tone. “You’re getting out of
here. No argument. Is he armed?”
“He has a gun. Probably
other weapons, too. I hit him with a pickax, but I don’t think it
slowed him down much.”
“That’s my girl. Now go.
I’ll do better if I’m not worried about you.”
“No. Two against one. We
take him together.”
“No, I’m armed. Get—” He
broke off when uneven, shuffling footsteps approached, accompanied
by the scraping sound. “Turn off the light,” he hissed.
She snapped it off, plunging them into
darkness, except for the glow growing steadily brighter from deeper
in the mine. She heard Walker draw his gun from its
holster.
The tunnel flooded with
light. Jerod Fetterly, his shadow looming monstrously large on the
wall, held the lantern in one hand, dragging the pickax with the
other. Walker pushed her behind him. “I’m taking him down. When I
shoot, run.”
Fetterly held up the lantern. “Fucking
Walker McGrath.” Gone was the taunting, sing-song quality to his
voice. It sounded rough and ended on a gurgling cough. “Gonna kill
you. I’ll use the pickax on her. But you—” he coughed,
“first.”
He raised the lantern higher. The
front of his shirt was soaked, blood dripping from his beard. He
dropped the pickax and reached for his hip where his gun was
holstered. Walker flung himself across the tunnel and Delaney
realized he was trying to draw Fetterly’s attention away from
her.
Following his movement, Fetterly swung
around, tottered, and lost his grip on the lantern. Glass shattered
and the mine plunged into darkness.
Rapid gunfire, blast after deafening
blast, reverberated through the tunnel and Delaney hit the ground,
lying flat until the shooting stopped. The muzzle flash told her
some of the shots had come from Fetterly.
She needed to distract him, draw his
fire so Walker could take him out. She took three quick steps to
set the flashlight on the ground in the middle of the tunnel,
pressed the button to shine the beam toward Fetterly, then darted
back.
Her plan worked.
More shots echoed, bullets thudding
into the dirt floor near the flashlight. She felt like she was
punched near her hip, but she couldn’t take the time to
check.
Fetterly seemed to realize the beam
directed at him put him at a disadvantage and moved away from the
light.
Too late. Shots from Walker’s gun
sounded like cannon fire. Another gun blast, then a loud grunt was
followed by sounds of a scuffle and flesh hitting flesh outside the
circle of light.
Then silence.
Not daring to move, scared Walker was
wounded, she held her breath, heart racing, through the longest
minute of her life.
“Laney, shine the light
over here.” Her breath released in a whoosh. Walker’s voice sounded
strained, but he was alive
She picked up the flashlight, the beam
revealing Fetterly face down in dirt darkening as it absorbed his
blood. He was squirming, but with Walker’s knee in his back, he had
no place to go. Walker reached into a pocket and pulled out
handcuffs, cinched them around Fetterly’s wrists, then scooped up
his gun. Walker dropped the magazine out of the grip of Fetterly’s
pistol and pulled back the slide, ejecting another round. The
bullets went in one pocket, the gun in another. He patted down
Fetterly, taking a folded knife from a cargo pocket.
Only then did Walker rise slowly to
his feet. “You were supposed to run.”
“I wasn’t leaving without
you.”
She couldn’t read the expression
crossing Walker’s face as the cave seemed to get darker.
“Laney.”
His voice was the last thing she heard
before everything went black.
***
Walker surged forward and caught Laney
at the same time the tunnel filled with light. A dozen people were
suddenly swarming around them. Search and Rescue, sheriff’s
deputies, Sawyer included, EMTs. The cavalry had come. Clutching
Laney close to his chest, Walker felt warmth spreading over his
hand. Panic surged when he realized the warmth was blood. “She’s
bleeding, she must have caught a bullet or ricochet.”
Several members of the group converged
around them.
“We got her.”
“Walker, you can let her
go now. They’ll take care of her.” Sawyer was at his elbow, and
only then did he realize he wasn’t letting the EMTs take Laney from
him. Loosening his hold felt like the hardest thing he’d ever
done.
They laid her on a stretcher and
Sawyer gripped his arm, pulling him back. “Stand back, man, let
them do their job.”
“She’s been shot.” He felt
punchy, like his brain was functioning in slow motion.
“That’s why you need to
give them room to work.”
One of the EMTs pulled up Delaney’s
shirt to reveal a wound to her right side above her hip. So much
blood. How could anyone lose that much blood and still be
alive?
Sawyer pushed him farther back. “You
need medical attention too.”
An EMT who introduced herself as
Joleen and her partner as Kurt moved him away from the team working
on Delaney and began poking at him.
“Hey, I’m O negative,
universal donor. They should hook me up to Delaney.”
Jolene glanced up at him. “We’ll keep
that in mind, big guy. But you’re losing some blood yourself.” She
took scissors and snipped off his shirt. He’d felt the impact and
known he’d taken a bullet to his shoulder, but as it hadn’t
hampered his mobility, he’d ignored it.
He kept an eye on the crew surrounding
Delaney, trying to get a glimpse of her. More people crowded the
narrow space. His last view was of emergency personnel strapping
her to the stretcher, and Sawyer taking one of the grips to carry
her out of the mine.
Another trio of emergency personnel
worked on Jerod Fetterly. Someone commented, “The bastard’s still
alive.”
Being alive was good. Being alive and
suffering would be better.
Walker wanted the fucker put on trial
and held accountable for what he’d done, not only to Delaney but to
the other women he’d raped and tortured as well.
When his shoulder was bandaged, a
couple deputies approached with another stretcher he realized was
intended for him. Walker shook his head. “I’m walking out of
here.”
Stepping out of the cave, he squinted,
blinded by the brilliant sunlight of mid-morning.
A loud thumping reverberated over the
mountain slope.
Once his vision adjusted to the
brightness, he saw the stretcher being hoisted into a hovering blue
and white helicopter. Within minutes, with a swirl of dirt and
debris, it was flying west until it disappeared into the
distance.
He felt like his heart had gone with
it.
“Here’s your
ride.”
He turned to Jolene.
“What?”
She pointed to another helicopter
cresting a ridge.
Thirty minutes later, Walker was on a
gurney being wheeled from the helipad into the emergency room of a
Sacramento area hospital.
He asked every medical professional he
encountered about Laney until he was finally told she was at the
same hospital and undergoing treatment. Treatment could mean
anything, but due to privacy rules, they refused to tell him
more.
It took some doing, but he convinced
the medical team the bullet in his shoulder could be removed using
a local anesthetic rather than putting him under. The procedure
took some time, and he was frustrated beyond belief when doctors
insisted he stay overnight for observation.
Late in the evening, he was finally
wheeled into a hospital room. His left arm was immobilized with a
sling to keep him from moving his shoulder, plus he was wearing a
stupid hospital gown.
Nothing made a man feel more exposed
than a gown that bared his ass. He still had no news on Delaney. He
needed to find out if she was okay. To talk to her.
Hell, just being in the same room
while she recovered would be good enough.
The frustration gnawing at him
ratcheted higher. His phone had gone with Delaney and he had no way
of contacting anyone. He couldn’t even call Sawyer.
He raised the head of the bed, and
using the room phone, dialed the hospital switchboard and asked to
be put through to Delaney Bryant’s room.
He felt marginally better when he got
confirmation she’d been admitted to the hospital and was given a
room number, but no one picked up the ringing phone.
Dialing his own number got him his
voicemail. He was considering hurling the phone across the room
when the door opened and Sawyer came in carrying a duffel bag and a
pair of white paper bags emblazoned with the In-N-Out red lettering
and yellow arrow logo.
He hadn’t realized how hungry he was
until the smell of the best burgers in the state hit
him.
Dark circles of exhaustion surrounded
Sawyer’s eyes. “You look like shit.”
“Back at you, brother.
Neither one of us has slept for a couple days.” He held up the
duffel bag before dumping it in a corner. “Clothes.”
“Tell me how Laney’s
doing.”
Sawyer put a bag on a tray and wheeled
it in front of Walker. “I haven’t seen her, but I ran into Keeley
and Clara in the elevator. Laney’s on her way from recovery to her
room. Report is she came through surgery in good shape. She took a
ricochet, and it tore up some muscle tissue in her abdomen, but
that’s as far as it got.
“Fetterly knocked her out
with a blow to the back of her head that left her with a mild
concussion, plus she was dehydrated. She’ll need to take it easy
for several days.”
Walker leaned back against his pillow,
pressing his hands to his eyes and taking a shuddering breath as
the news sank in. She was okay. She was going to make
it.
He felt Sawyer’s hand on his good
shoulder. “We’re going to get through this, Walker.”
“Yeah, we are.”
And he’d need fuel to do that. He took
a Double Double with cheese and a tray of fries from the bag while
Sawyer pulled water bottles from a cargo pocket and set them on the
tray. Around a mouthful of burger, Walker said, “Tell me Fetterly’s
suffering.”
Sawyer bit into his own burger, chewed
and swallowed before responding. “The guy’s a fucking mess. You go
after him with that pickax?”
“That was Laney.” Walker
dunked fries in ketchup. “She’s a rock star. Said she was aiming
for his head, but got him in the throat, then ran. Fucker was
coming after her when I found her. He caught up with us in the
tunnel and started shooting.”
“You got him twice,
neither shot likely to kill him.” Sawyer paused. “Glad you’re not
dead, brother.”
“Yeah. Me too.” He washed
down the fries with a swig of water. “You got the evidence to
charge him for the other attacks?”
“Detectives are working on
it, but they’re convinced he’s our guy. That said, they don’t like
that your knife was found at a crime scene. Once Fetterly’s
medically stable they’ll talk to him. Same with Laney.” Sawyer
gestured with his burger. “Get this, Neil Grafton was arrested this
morning. BOLO went out for him and an alert Highway Patrol officer
pulled him over a couple miles west of the Nevada border. He had
several loaded weapons in his vehicle as well as camping equipment.
Could’ve gone sideways, but he went peaceably.” Sawyer finished his
burger, tossing the trash in a waste bin. “Detectives are keeping
me updated.” He paused. “Neil’s talking, Walker.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. His lawyer’s going
nuts, but he’s apparently got a lot to get off his chest. He
admitted to changing the label on the DNA evidence from Melanie
Brennan’s rape kit, putting your name on it. Thing is, he’s not
saying how the DNA was identified, so we don’t know if it was
Fetterly’s.”
“Shit. Who else would it
belong to?”
“That’s the question.
Regardless, we’ve got enough that both Grafton and Fetterly will
end up in prison for the rest of their lives.”
Walker waited for the sense of relief
or the anger to wash over him. He didn’t feel either.
What he’d wanted had been done. His
name was clear and justice had caught up with the
perpetrators.
But the person who’d once again become
the center of his life was in a hospital room having been
kidnapped, battered, and shot.
Nothing else mattered but that she
healed.