Page 43 of Secrets Beneath the Waves

“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 airgrew 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 legremoved 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?