Page 18 of Secrets Beneath the Waves (Beach Read Thrillers #2)
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
Ramon took the first turn off the highway fifty-two miles outside of Spokane, deep in the woods of Washington state. There were no signposts or even a road name to guide him. Only the GPS he had programmed into the SUV dash screen for the location pin he had been given.
The straight road rose in elevation. Flanked by thick pine trees, he couldn’t see anything on either side. The morning breeze swayed the trees back and forth at the top.
His phone had rung a couple of times, but Ramon ignored it.
He was inclined to turn the thing off except for the fact it was in the back seat and that would mean stopping and getting out to reach it back there.
There was nothing he needed to say to anyone on the team, nothing he needed to hear right now.
Emergency services and whatever passed for rescue in this area would find Miguel’s body and go looking for Zeyla over the edge of that cliff.
In time, there would be arrangements to be made, and any conversations could happen then. Right now, he knew what he needed to do.
The gun he had been carrying, and Zeyla’s, were still in the pouch on the seat beside him where Miguel had left them. He reached over and unzipped it with one hand, drawing the weapon out.
Ramon held it against his leg, ready for anything.
Up ahead, an old metal sign had been pockmarked by bullet holes. Someone had used it for target practice. Probably several someones over a period of many years, making it so that the sign now leaned backward, and the lettering was barely visible.
Camp Dominion.
An old military research facility, according to the sign.
The desolate road descended down into a valley, where he could see multiple buildings in various states of decline. The fence lay flat on the ground in some places, and in others, a hole had been cut so that anyone could enter through the gap.
Who knew how many people had wandered through this place since the military had cleared out? It seemed like a great spot to explore, if you were an adventurous teenager with an incorrigible group of friends.
Ramon didn’t see any other vehicles or signs of life. If there was anyone here, they were keeping out of sight.
It wouldn’t surprise him if the trigger was pulled before he even got out of the car.
After all, that was what Miguel had been planning to do to Zeyla.
Thankfully, Ramon had stopped him before the worst could happen.
Which almost made him want to believe that there was someone looking out for Kenna and her friends, working on their behalf in the background.
Kenna believed that was God, but Ramon still hadn’t reconciled whether or not he wanted to revive the faith he’d had as a child.
With Zeyla lying dead at the bottom of that hill, he couldn’t believe anything about this was a good thing.
Someone might have intervened to save her then, but it hadn’t happened again today. And now it was too late for her.
Ramon swallowed against a lump in his throat and pulled the car between the open gates.
The guard shack was nothing but broken windows and an open door that had let far too many leaves in that were scattered on the floor.
There would be nothing left to find here in this desolate place, no matter how hard he searched.
He pulled the car to a stop in the center of the main drag, buildings on both sides and a wide courtyard at the far end. If updated instructions had been sent to the phone, he would have no way of knowing. Except if Maizie had forwarded the information to his phone.
Unfortunately, the Plexiglas plate between him and the back seat meant that he couldn’t reach back there for his phone.
Ramon climbed out of the car and scanned all around him, unwilling to turn his back on any danger that might come. He kept the gun close to his side, tucked slightly behind his leg. When he didn’t see anyone, he turned and opened the back door for his phone.
They’d know he was armed now—if they were watching.
He grabbed the phone and shut the door, turning his back to it.
A man stood in front of the door to the first building, wearing jeans and a white button-down shirt tucked into his brown belt.
Brown shoes, his hair slicked back and styled.
The squat structure was two stories in height, and with nearly every window smashed, it looked like someone had spent hours throwing rocks at all the glass.
The phone buzzed in his hand, but he didn’t look at it. Ramon didn’t take his attention from the man. “Dr. Swanson?”
This was a surprise to him, considering everything they had gone through with the private medical examiner.
Ramon would never have guessed that the doctor who examined the severed hand was the person who had orchestrated the entire thing, kidnapping women and murdering them.
“Not the man I was expecting, but then that’s hardly a surprise, is it?” Swanson stepped off the concrete slab onto the asphalt road and came over but stopped several feet away. Out of arm’s reach so that he had time to react if Ramon decided to attack him.
Thankfully, a bullet traveled faster than that.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Ramon said.
If Ramon could fight past the exhaustion and the heavy weight of grief resting on his shoulders, he might just survive this. And if he did, he could learn if Swanson really was the one behind it all or whether someone else held the position at the top of the food chain.
“When I have the upper hand? I can’t say I’m disappointed.” Swanson stuck his hands in his jeans pockets, apparently not worried at all that he would need to defend himself.
Soon, Ramon would spot the laser sight on his chest. That, or it was already firmly fixed on his forehead. “Because she’s dead, and you think you’re going to get away with all of it?”
“In a word? Yes.” Swanson didn’t seem at all like the man they had met in the lab. A guy who had stood up to things he didn’t agree with in the justice system and walked away from that career to work privately. Albeit, for more money.
Ramon just couldn’t get a good read on this guy.
“Care to see what all the fuss is about? I’ll give you the tour, and then we’ll get to the reason why you’re here.”
“You could just pay me whatever you owed Miguel, and then I’d be on my way.”
Swanson seemed to find that funny but didn’t laugh. “Don’t tell me you’re not in the least bit curious what I do with them.”
“You’re prepared to turn your back on me? I could shoot you, and you would never see it coming.”
“That’s why you’re going to hand over your weapons to these men.” Swanson flicked his fingers to the side.
Heavy hands landed on Ramon’s shoulders before he even realized someone was that close.
The gun was removed from his hand, even though he fought it, but the M4 rifle pointed at his chest made him think twice before he fought back too hard.
At least five men. Two of them spun him, and Ramon planted his hands on the side of the SUV.
They patted him down, removing everything from his pockets.
Not that there was much to show for it, considering he’d put his shoes back on but hadn’t found all the items Miguel removed from him while he was unconscious.
When they spun him back around, his stomach flipped over. He pushed out a breath.
“If you’ll follow me?” Swanson headed along the asphalt street.
Someone shoved Ramon’s shoulder, and he stumbled after Swanson, trying not to throw up again.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead and didn’t get a good feeling from the man beside him.
Just that glancing assessment told him that he wasn’t going to be able to take the man down without getting killed.
And apparently, Swanson wanted to show him something first.
The doctor wandered into the smallest building at the center of the line of structures on the north side of the street.
Probably an old barracks. There were still metal cots lining the walls.
At the end, they stepped into the bathroom.
Rows of showers on one wall and sinks on the other side.
Whatever they were planning to do here, it probably involved his blood running down the drain for easy cleanup.
But Swanson ducked into what appeared to be a storage room on one side.
Beyond the door, his footsteps echoed down a set of stairs that twisted in a spiral.
As they descended, the air grew considerably cooler.
Until the skin on his arms prickled and raised.
Finally, he stepped off the bottom onto a lower floor.
Concrete surrounded him, the darkness sounding like an expanse of space.
Swanson touched a panel on the wall, and it scanned his handprint.
A set of doors opened wide, like blast doors that had once held the world at bay while military personnel huddled inside waiting out the destruction. Or at least, that would have been the plan when this was built.
Now, inside the shelter, a long hallway stretched away from them. Each fixture lit one by one, clicking on and humming to life all the way to the far end of the room.
Ramon let out a curse at what he saw before him because there was no other reasonable reaction to what was in front of him. No words on earth were enough to process what had happened here.
“Welcome to the Hall of Curiosities. I do love those old Victorian museums, collections of interesting things procured from all over the world.” He paused.
“It’s all about the classics.” Swanson stepped back, waving an arm to encompass each of the six glass cases, tall enough that a person could be placed inside.
And that was precisely what he had done with the women he had kidnapped.
Each one had been preserved, likely in a sealed container so that they didn’t suffer normal decomposition. Ramon didn’t want to think about what else had been done to them, standing there in some macabre display, propped up by metal stands so that they posed like a museum piece.
As he wandered between the two rows of three cases, up on pedestals, he could see every part of them on display.
Including the places where they had been carved up and stitched back together.
One woman was missing a hand. Another had a leg removed all the way up to the hip.
Ramon looked instead at their faces. Women whose lives have been taken from them far too early, all the humanity stripped away to be put on display like this.
And for what?
He turned back to Swanson. “So you got yourself a private collection? Congratulations, you’re a sociopath.”
“I’d love to explain to you how much people pay to come for viewing or what I charge for entry to one of my parties. But I wouldn’t want you to lose control of yourself.”
“So, it’s all about the money?”
Swanson’s lips curled up. “That is decidedly a perk. But it’s not the reason why I did this. It’s art. I would have thought that would be obvious, but we don’t exactly run in the same circles. People come and go. DNA is discovered, and we move on. So sad, but loose ends always need to be tied off.”
Ramon’s hands curled into fists by his sides.
“That firefighter would probably thank you for saving him from me. ” Swanson smirked. “Gentlemen, take Mr. Santiago for a walk.”
The men passed Swanson, and he turned away, walking out of the room. Ramon backed up, but they grabbed him. One squeezed the back of his neck. “Don’t even think about it.”
“If you’re going to kill me, just do it here.”
The guy laughed. “Nice try, but we wouldn’t want to make a mess on the floor.”
He shoved Ramon forward.
“Get moving.”