Chapter 30
Jacob
The reinforced basement panel finally gives way with a screech of tortured metal. I’m through before it fully drops, gun drawn, flashlight cutting through the darkness.
“BIRDIE!”
A narrow passage opens up before me, leading toward what seems to be an unused utility room.
The team breaks it open and swarms in with me.
There’s a narrow set of wooden steps. We descend, yelling her name, but no one answers.
My light sweeps across the space. Butterfly cases line the walls, dozens of them, their glass surfaces catching my beam and throwing it back in fractured pieces.
In the center: a surgical table. Straps hanging loose.
Wet spots on the surface. Blood on the floor.
I touch the table. Warm. “She was just here. Right here.” My stare tears through the place. There are no doors or windows, only another flight of stairs on the other side. I run up, and there’s a metal door with a huge padlock and a deadbolt. “Up here! Break it down!”
The battering ram smashes the lock, and the metal gives. I dart, gun ready, into another passage. Adrenaline through the roof, I inspect every corner until I find myself running back toward the utility room. “Fuck. That’s not an exit. It’s a dead end. The fucker is messing with us.”
I rush back to that table and dig deeper. My stomach turns at the details. An IV stand. Medical equipment. Pins—long silver pins—arranged in a case on a bench. The mirror mounted on the ceiling above the table.
What did he do to her here?
“Detective Torrance!” One of the officers gestures to the far wall. “There are surveillance monitors over there. Still warm.”
I cross to the station. Twelve screens, all dark now. A laptop open, cursor blinking on a blank command prompt. He was watching us. Watching us breach and search the whole time.
My hand slams down on the desk. “FUCK! Search every inch of this room. There has to be another way out. He didn’t just vanish with her.”
They spread out, tapping walls, moving butterfly cases, checking for hollow spaces behind the displays. I stand in the center and force myself to think like him. Like a man who has planned for every contingency, who has been building this place for years.
Underground hidden room. Soundproof. High-tech surveillance. Dead-end passages designed to waste our time. This isn’t just a hiding spot; it’s a fortress with a maze. And every maze has…
“Every fortress has an escape route. Every maze has a way out we’re not seeing just yet,” I breathe. “Get me ground-penetrating radar,” I tell the nearest officer. “Now.”
“We have the handheld unit upstairs—”
“Bring it down.”
The officer returns with the GPR unit. I take it, run the scan along the wall. The readout shows exactly what I suspected: a void.
“Tear this fucking wall down. That’s the exit.”
The table is positioned facing south. The equipment station is east. The entrance we came through is west. Which means behind those goddamn butterflies is north.
The wall cracks along the lower seam. Not enough. Not nearly enough. And then something changes in the air. I feel it before I understand it, a pressure differential, a shift in the way the cold is moving.
Water. Moving water carries sound differently than still air. My father taught me that on a fishing trip when I was nine years old. I’ve never once had reason to use that information until now.
“The beach.” My skin breaks out in gooseflesh. “He’s already out there. How far is the ground unit from the beach?”
“They’re staged west of the cabin. No sign of a boat or anyone making for the beach. They’ll move on your call.”
“Tell them to fucking move, NOW!” I take the steps three at a time, burst through this miserable place, out the front door. My feet hit the path that winds down toward the beach.
Behind me, officers are shouting, trying to follow.
Too slow. They don’t have the woman they love kidnapped by a sick fuck about to vanish without a trace if they don’t catch him right now.
My breath catches as I run. The path is steep, treacherous in the foggy sunset. My boots slip on loose gravel. I catch myself on a tree, push off, keep going.
The ground drops away, and my feet grind to a halt at the edge of a cliff. “What the fuck?”
Below: a small dock. Hidden in the rocks behind a private inlet among the dunes. Invisible unless you know exactly where to look. And there—already fifty yards out—a boat, sailing fast into the fucking sunset.
Dark figure at the helm. Butterfly mask catching the dying light. On the deck, a shape wrapped in blankets. Not moving.
I point my gun at the engine. “POLICE! STOP THE BOAT!”
He doesn’t even slow down.
The distance is too far. The boat is rocking. She’s right there near him, and I could hit her, I could—
My hands shake. I can’t take the shot. My heart squeezes as I scream, “BIRDIE!”
He turns and fucking waves at me. That piece of shit is taunting me.
My eyes catch something in his hand. Small. Black. A single red light blinking on top.
Blood rushes out of my body. No.
“GET BACK!” I’m already running back toward the hideout entrance. “EVERYBODY OUT! IT’S WIRED! HE’S GONNA BLOW THIS PLACE UP! GET OUT NOW!”
The officers look at me like I’m insane.
"MOVE!" I grab the nearest one, physically shove him away. “RUN!”
There are still men down there. Still officers in that room with the butterflies and the table and—
BOOM!
The world turns white. I’m airborne and weightless. Then my back hits rocks. I tumble, the ground disintegrating beneath me.
Heat. Impossible heat. A roar that devours everything.
I’m rolling, falling, burning up, until my head cracks against unyielding hardness. The world fractures into pieces. I see sky. Gold. Beautiful. I see smoke. Black. Rising.
And then I see nothing at all.