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Chapter Twenty-Eight

R amon cinched up the straps of her bulletproof vest—the one Jax had her wear when they went into the house that blew. “You’ll be no good to anyone if you get yourself killed.”

She stared up at him. “Are you really going to let that happen?”

“Then I guess we’ll both be fine.” His eager-to-go expression turned a bit wistful.

Bruce came around the hood of his car. “You two are watching each other’s backs. I guess that means I’m on my own.”

“Sure,” Kenna said. “That’s how this works.”

She grabbed the rifle from the back seat and put the strap over her head so she didn’t have to hold it. An old tactic to save the strength of her arms. She didn’t exactly need it right now, but old habits and all that.

“Let’s go.” She slammed the rear door and led the way through the trees toward the spot that One had told them about.

The FBI was going to storm the front door, most likely because she might have inferred but not explicitly stated that Jax was being held in the silo.

They’d drawn their own conclusions and needed to be part of this entire case and the takedown.

After all, they had the hard drive of evidence and the letter written to resolve the cold case.

Kenna was simply going to enter—hopefully, by the rear door—do what she needed to do and stay out of the FBI’s way.

Her phone vibrated with a call from Maizie. She answered it with, “Ready?”

“The program is finished. It’ll calculate how you move in space and time and overlay that on a three-dimensional rendering of the schematic.”

“You’re a genius, Maze.”

“It’s downloading to your phone now. And by the way, this place is huge. It could take you hours to search.”

Kenna stopped where she’d be able to see…whatever was here. She crouched behind a dry bush of mostly branches but with some green to it, getting poked because she needed to see far enough. Stars stretched overhead. Something skittered in the dirt, moving past her.

“That better not be a snake.”

Maizie laughed. “What?”

“Arizona is great, by the way. I love the desert.”

Beside her, Ramon said, “ Mentirosa .”

“Liar.” Maizie laughed some more.

“You guys are just trying to distract me.”

Bruce squatted over on the other side of the bush. “Seems like you distract yourself just fine.”

Kenna needed to get this night over with, but she also couldn’t rush into any of it. Doing that would only mean she missed something that could be important, and perhaps that would put someone’s life in danger.

“Ramon, go see if it’s a door.” She nudged him.

He said, “Ask Maizie what’s on that satellite view map. Does it show a door?”

“Maizie?”

“I heard, and there’s nothing.”

Kenna said, “Let’s go. One wouldn’t have given us this location if there’s nothing here.”

She rose out of her crouch and started into the clearing. No structure. Not even a small shed.

When she got near enough, she spotted something on the ground. “Looks like a manhole cover.”

“Or some kind of hatch.” Ramon grabbed the edges and pulled, but it didn’t move.

“What did they even teach you in that cartel?” Bruce pushed him out of the way, grabbed the manhole cover like it was a steering wheel, and rotated it a quarter turn. Inside, the mechanism clanked. “Here we go.” He lifted it open and eased down inside first.

A whole lot different from the men at that house, offering for her to go first. Even if it had been a joke, her colleagues treated her nothing like that. They were all willing to take the risk for each other.

Bruce flicked on a flashlight down below them, at the bottom of a short ladder. He looked up from an alcove or at the end of a hallway. “It’s clear.”

Ramon patted her shoulder. She climbed down the ladder and, at the bottom, shifted the rifle in front of her. Ready to defend themselves just in case the worst happened.

She held aim down the long corridor. Lights were spaced out every twenty feet or so, leaving shadows between.

“Let’s go.” Bruce went in front of her.

She followed him down the long hall, which had to span the distance between the hatch and the silo that Fleming had designed. “Are we going down?” she whispered. The hall seemed to be descending, though it wasn’t steep.

“I bet it’s a ventilation shaft.” Bruce lifted his watch and looked at the screen. “Maizie wants access to the internal computers as soon as we find a terminal.”

“Copy that,” Kenna said. “You guys worry about that. I’ll worry about getting the people out.”

Her phone buzzed.

“Hold.”

They all sidestepped, stopping with one shoulder to the wall. They crouched together, and she slid out her phone. “The FBI wants to know where I am. Special Agent Herron wants us to go with her to the front gate. They’re about to approach.”

Ramon nudged her from behind. “Tell her we got lost.”

She replied to the agent what Ramon had said. It could be construed as the truth, but only as a stretch. The FBI didn’t need to worry about Kenna. They only needed to worry about doing what was necessary to rescue the people here and save Jax.

Bruce flipped off his flashlight and whispered, “Someone is coming.”

She turned the brightness all the way down and huddled behind Bruce’s back, praying whoever was in the hallway with them didn’t come this far down.

She looked at the program Maizie had created from the architectural designs and saw they were still several hundred yards from the structure. Maybe even half a mile.

One level had rooms that Fleming had labeled “residences.” That was likely where she would find people, if they weren’t spread out through the facility.

“Okay,” Bruce whispered, rising slowly to stand.

She followed him, and Ramon came up behind her.

The three of them headed down the hall until they reached another alcove and a hatch that looked like it belonged on a submarine.

Whoever had been in the hall with them must have come through it, or it was only some small kind of animal they hadn’t noticed underfoot, like a rat. Better not to know.

Ramon did the honors with the door, similar to the hatch they had descended into but this one faced them like a giant safe door. They stepped into the decommissioned silo.

She looked at her phone. “Left, and we need to find stairs to go down four floors.”

“Room-by-room search?” Bruce asked.

“No, we’re going straight to the residences. Those rooms are big enough for groups of people.”

Neither of them argued. Ramon found the stairs, and they hurried down the floors, emerging with him leading the way into a brightly lit hallway four floors below where they’d entered. The light made her head pound, so glaring she had to blink against it.

“Go.” Bruce patted her shoulder, and they hurried down the hall in a line.

Overhead, a speaker system resounded with a loud alarm, a series of steady beeps. The lights flashed red, pulsating for a few seconds, before they turned back to the glaring white. Then, the alarm shut off.

“Incoming.”

Ramon had barely said that when someone stepped out of a room ahead of them and yelled. The man ran toward them, visibly unarmed. Young and wearing plain white clothes. Scrub pants and a Henley-type cream shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Hair in need of cutting and skin with a sheen of sweat.

Ramon shifted, so his weapon was out of the way when the man slammed into him. They went down just as several more people came out into the hall.

One of them yelled, “They’re down here already.”

They thought she and her friends were FBI. “We’re here to help you!”

The one who’d yelled had red hair and a lot of freckles on his face and arms. He was dressed similarly, with shoes that made barely any sound.

Ramon punched the guy on him in the head and shoved him off, standing up in time to cut off the one who ran at her. He slammed the guy against a wall so that his head bounced off. Ramon bent to go through the guy’s pockets.

Kenna turned back and saw Bruce grappling with two people, and she got in the middle of it. All the worry about what damage she might do to someone else—innocent or not—rolled through her head, and she pulled her punch.

The guy dropped to the floor anyway.

“I see computers.” Ramon ducked into a side room while sticking something in his pocket.

She and Bruce followed.

Bruce said, “I’ll barricade the door and get all this connected to Maizie. You guys do what you need to do.”

“Sure?”

He nodded. “I’ll be here until the feds come. Unless that doctor shows up.”

“And when I can’t find you later because you disappeared?”

“I’ll try not to get shot again.”

Not exactly what Kenna meant. Ramon grabbed her arm, though. “Come on.” They went to the door.

Kenna said, “Barricade the door.”

Bruce nodded.

“I’m counting on you to stay alive.”

He had his phone out already, held to his ear. “Yeah, Trouble. It’s me.”

She and Ramon stepped out into the hall, and he said, “Where now?”

Kenna checked her phone. “Turn left at the end, and the rooms are on the right.” They’d have to fight their way through if they encountered any more resistance from people who lived here. “Hopefully, after that alarm, they’re all drawn to the front door up on the surface.”

“Then who is guarding the people that are held down here?”

Sure, they were making assumptions about what went on down here. Maybe everyone was here of their own free will, captured to make it look like they were victims, but in the end, they believed in what Buzard was doing.

But then, those two children…

Kenna couldn’t let go of the fact she had told them they were safe. That nothing would happen to them. That they’d done the right thing and could trust the police.

She had to help them.

“This is it.” Ramon stared down the hall, then shook his head. “Looks like a cellblock.”

“No, it doesn’t.” She knew what this was. “It looks like patient rooms at a facility.” She went to the first door and peered into the tiny window with wire crisscrossed in the glass. An older man lay on a bed inside the room. His clothing was the same color as the sheets and walls.

“This guy has a thing about white.” Ramon checked a window. “No one here.”

She looked in another few rooms but didn’t see the kids. Each one had a single patient, and all of them seemed to be asleep. At the end of the hall, she spotted a familiar face. “Nicola.”

Kenna tried the handle.

“Here.” Ramon handed over a keycard.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Off the guy I downed. Figured it might be handy.”

“I guess we’ll find out.” She swiped the card into a card reader beside the door. It clicked, and the light turned green. “Hold the door.”

If they both went in and the door shut, they’d be trapped inside.

Talk about the stuff of nightmares.

“Got it.” Ramon stayed on lookout, standing where he could hold the door open.

Kenna shifted the rifle across her body to behind her back and went to Nicola. She shook the doctor’s shoulder. “Nicola, can you hear me?” She shook her shoulder harder. “Doctor Santorini!”

The doctor blinked but said nothing. She stared at the wall beyond Kenna’s shoulder with a vacant expression. Drool slid from the corner of her mouth.

Kenna gasped. “Nicola, what did they do to you?”

“Someone is coming.” Ramon stepped into the room and let the door click shut.

Kenna rushed to the other side of the door and put her back to the wall to stay out of sight.

Out in the hall, someone walked by the room. “I saw them come this way.”