Lost Hills (Eve Ronin Book 1)

by Lee Goldberg

  Caitlin was here.

  Eve knew she didn’t have much time. The flames were closing in and the house was a tinderbox. She pulled up beside the car, grabbed her crowbar, and got out, leaving the motor running. She ran up to the front door and tried the knob. It was locked. She wedged the crowbar between the door and the jamb, put her full body weight into the bar, and split open the door.

  The house was empty and unfurnished, the hardwood floors covered with a fine layer of dust. Cobwebs filled the spaces between the wooden beams on the pitched ceilings. The smell of burning wood was everywhere.

  “Caitlin!” Eve yelled as she dashed through the house, checking every cabinet or closet that a child might fit in and finding only dust and rat droppings. “Caitlin!”

  She ended up in the family room, where she stopped cold.

  The room was furnished with a couch, a coffee table, a rug, and an old TV set with a DVD player on top. There were cases of bottled water stacked against one wall.

  A sleeping bag, the one Eve had seen on the hill overlooking Tanya’s house, was on the couch. An empty bag of Doritos, Ding Dong wrappers, and discarded Coke cans were on the coffee table . . . and so was an open Planet of the Apes DVD case, the disc missing. There was no doubt now that Coyle had brought Caitlin here.

  But where was she?

  “Caitlin!” Eve yelled out again. She went back through the house, checking each room again, but finding no sign of the child.

  She peered outside one of the bedroom windows and saw a wave of fire coming toward the house, driven by wind and fueled by the dry brush on the abandoned property. Breaks in the smoke allowed her to see a large field between the back of the house and a rocky hillside a hundred yards away.

  Eve went back to the family room and sat down on the couch. The flames licked the windows on one side of the house and the crackle of fire sounded like a monster gnashing its teeth.

  She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and let her breath out slowly, forcing herself to be calm, to clear her head so she could think.

  Caitlin is here. Where is she hidden?

  Eve opened her eyes and scanned the room for any tells. There was no fresh paint or patching on the walls. The floors were covered with dust except for a path, made by herself and probably Coyle, from the front door to the rug.

  Why did he bring a rug?

  She bolted from the couch, grabbed the corner of the rug, and yanked it away, revealing a fresh sheet of plywood nailed to the floor. Eve jammed the crowbar under the plywood and forced it loose, the nails squealing like live animals as they were yanked from the joists, and lifted the sheet away.

  Caitlin, in soiled clothes, her limbs bound tightly with duct tape, was wedged faceup between two joists. Another piece of duct tape, with a hole cut through for an IV tube, covered her mouth. The tube ran from her mouth to an empty bottle of water wedged between her head and the next joist. Her eyes were closed but she was breathing.

  Eve’s instinct was to immediately lift Caitlin from her cramped space. But the cop in her remembered that this was a crime scene, one that might soon be destroyed. She took out her phone, snapped a couple quick pictures of Caitlin, then gently peeled the tape from the child’s mouth and removed the straw.

  Eve leaned in close and carefully slipped her hands under Caitlin, who reeked of urine and sweat.

  “I’m Eve. I’m a police officer. You’re safe now.”

  Caitlin’s eyelids fluttered open and she stared at Eve.

  “Where is the monster?” she asked in a weak, raspy voice.

  “Where he can’t hurt you anymore.”

  Eve glanced out the window. The flames were everywhere. “I don’t have time to untie you. I’m sorry. We have to go as fast as we can.”

  She picked the girl up, held her close, and ran for the front door into a wailing firestorm of embers, smoke, and ash. Tall, scorching flames were blowing against one side of the house and splashing like waves against the Mercedes, which formed a wall that protected the Explorer from the fire.

  Eve opened the back door of the SUV, laid Caitlin down on the seat, belted her in, then got into the driver’s seat and grabbed the radio.

  “This is 22-David-4 requesting emergency rescue and fire department support. I’m at 74 Castlemere Road with a ten-year-old girl who is in need of immediate medical attention.”

  The dispatcher responded almost immediately. “Copy 22-David-4. Stand by.”

  Eve assessed her grim situation. The brush around the house was ablaze. She glanced in the rearview mirror. The road behind her was a wall of flame, burning trees falling across the roadway, kicking up blasts of embers. It was impassable. She remembered the field behind the house and, behind it, the rocky hillside, but it was all hidden by a curtain of smoke. Was it already on fire?

  “22-David-4,” the dispatcher said. “Ground rescue isn’t possible. Air support is en route. Can you get to an open field or to higher ground?”

  “I’ll find a way,” Eve said.

  She secured her seat belt, turned on the headlights, backed up, then put the car into drive, pressed the gas pedal to the floor, and charged into the curtain of smoke, bursting through the brown haze into the tall, thick, brittle brush. The field wasn’t on fire yet, but it soon would be. The tall vegetation and smoke made it virtually impossible to see what she was driving into but she had no choice but to venture on as fast as she could. The Explorer bounced violently on hardscrabble dirt, through the bushes and weeds, jostling her hard from side to side.

  “I apologize about the rough ride,” Eve said to Caitlin. “It will be over soon.”

  She wrestled to control the car and peered intently into the dense smoke, hoping for a break that would show her the way. Instead, a tree broke through the haze like a runaway freight train. She yanked the wheel hard to the right, sideswiping the tree and shearing off her mirror.

  Within seconds of avoiding the tree, the Explorer slammed into a boulder hidden by the brush and came to a brutal stop. The airbag exploded in Eve’s face, stunning her.

  It took a long second for Eve to regain her senses. Blood ran down her forehead. The front end of the Explorer was crumpled. The car wasn’t going anywhere. She looked over her shoulder into the back seat.

  Somehow Caitlin had ended up on the floor. She was crying, but otherwise unhurt.

  “We’re going to be okay,” Eve said, and looked out the back window. The house was consumed by fire, igniting the brush behind them, the voracious flames moving at incredible speed in their direction. She reached out for the radio and felt a pain so sharp, intense, and unexpected that she choked back a scream.

  Her right wrist was broken and she knew how it had happened. She’d been gripping the steering wheel hard when the collision happened and the airbag blasted open against her rigid arm. It was a common injury, but that knowledge didn’t make it any less painful or inconvenient now. There was no time to make a brace. She’d have to power through it.

  She picked up the radio with her left hand. “22-David-4. We’re going on foot, heading south of the house.”

  There was no response. Eve could only hope that someone heard what she’d said. She got out of the car, opened the back door, and reached down to pick up Caitlin, bracing herself for the agony.

  It felt like an iron spike was driven into her arm. She gritted her teeth against the pain, lifted up the child, and tried to shift most of Caitlin’s dead weight onto her left arm.

  “I’ve got you,” Eve said. “I’m not going to let you go.”

  She didn’t know if she was trying to reassure Caitlin or herself but they could both use it.

  Eve trudged forward through the brush, moving as fast as she could without tripping, hearing the crackling and feeling the heat on her back of the firestorm closing in. Blood from her scalp rolled into her eyes, stinging and blinding her, but she kept on. Her right wrist felt like it might snap off and that the only thing holding it together against the child’s weight and the sheer a
gony was Eve’s unbending will.

  There’s no fucking way I’m dropping this child.

  There’s no fucking way I’m letting that fire catch us.

  She stumbled on a gopher hole, staggered to maintain her balance, and couldn’t help crying out with pain when Caitlin’s full weight momentarily shifted to her broken wrist. Eve wasn’t sure whether it was tears or streams of blood that were running down her cheeks. It may have been both.

  But then she heard the whap-whap-whap of a helicopter approaching. She stopped to look over her shoulder. A water-dropping helicopter came up behind them and doused the leading edge of the flames, buying Eve and Caitlin some time.

  The helicopter banked away and a moment later a larger Los Angeles County Fire Department rescue chopper appeared overhead, its rotors whipping up the air all around them as it descended into the field a few yards ahead of her.

  Two firefighters immediately leaped out of the open side door and rushed up to Eve. One firefighter took Caitlin from her and the other clutched Eve by her left forearm and led her quickly to the chopper. They climbed on board, where two emergency medical technicians waiting inside laid Caitlin on a gurney.

  A firefighter buckled Eve into her seat. She braced her limp right arm with her left hand, hoping to ease the pain caused by each movement of her body or the aircraft.

  The chopper rose up and banked over the abandoned house, which was fully engulfed in flames, then high over Malibu Creek State Park, much of it a sea of fire, then headed north toward West Hills Hospital, the nearest emergency medical facility.

  Eve looked over at the EMTs, one of whom leaned over Caitlin, cutting away the duct tape that bound her while the other prepared an IV.

  A firefighter gently wiped the blood and dirt from around her eyes with moist pieces of cotton and yelled, so Eve would hear him over the rotors: “You’re crazy, you know that?”

  She glanced down at Caitlin and decided that maybe being crazy was necessary now and then.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  “You’re insane,” Lisa said, applying the final layer of moist blue fiberglass tape to Eve’s short-arm cast. It was perhaps the fifth or sixth time her sister had shared that observation, in one form or another, since Eve came into the West Hills Hospital ER. Eve had lost count of how many other people had expressed the same sentiment over the last two hours.

  Eve sat on the edge of the gurney and looked across the chaotic ER full of firefighters and civilians injured in the blaze to the set of closed doors where doctors, an LASD detective experienced in crimes against children, and a Los Angeles County caseworker from Child Protective Services were taking care of Caitlin.

  The child hadn’t said a word since they’d fled the house and Eve hadn’t asked her any questions. But Eve had stayed by Caitlin’s side, refusing treatment for herself, until she was certain that the child was in good hands.

  Caitlin was safe now, but Eve couldn’t get the image of the little girl wedged between those floor joists out of her mind. She’d rescued Caitlin, but Eve was frustrated that there was nothing she could do to spare the child from reliving the horrors that she’d seen and experienced. At least Caitlin would know that Lionel Coyle would never be able to hurt her or anyone else again.

  “The cut on your head isn’t new,” Lisa said. “The airbag blowing up in your face opened up the old wound. You’re lucky your injuries aren’t a lot worse.”

  “I was just doing my job.”

  “The hell you were. Suicide isn’t part of your job description. It’s a miracle you’re both alive. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful for what you did, probably everybody in the country is going to be when they hear about it. But I could have lost you today because you acted without thinking.”

  Eve saw tears in her sister’s eyes. “I was thinking of Caitlin.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d think of yourself now and then.”

  “In a way, I was. I couldn’t live with myself if I was right about her being alive and she’d burned to death in that house.”

  Lisa was finished with the cast and peeled off her rubber gloves. “I’d get you a sling for your arm, but I know you won’t use it or the Vicodin the doctor prescribed for pain. So my prescription is that you go home, eat a half gallon of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey, and binge on the Terminator movies.”

  “I can do that.”

  Eve’s phone vibrated beside her on the gurney. She picked it up with her left hand and saw a text from Duncan informing her that he was outside and on his way in.

  “I’ve got to go,” Eve said. She slid off the gurney and hugged her sister. “Thanks for patching me up.”

  “I’ll come by later tonight with extra meds,” Lisa said.

  “Oreo cookies?”

  “With double stuff.”

  “Isn’t that extreme?” Eve said. “I have a broken wrist, I’m not dying of cancer.”

  Eve gave her sister a kiss on the cheek and headed out to the lobby, where two deputies were stationed. She emerged just as Duncan came in from the parking lot with Cleve Kenworth, who rushed up to Eve so fast, she was afraid he might tackle her.

  “Is it true?” Cleve asked. “Is Caitlin really alive?”

  “She’s severely dehydrated and confused, but the doctors say she’ll be fine. She’s in exam room five. One of the deputies will take you back.”

  “I can’t believe it.” Cleve started to tear up. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “Take her home, keep her safe, and give her that Brady Bunch family you told me about.”

  Cleve gave her a firm hug, took a deep breath, and went back into the ER with a deputy, leaving her with Duncan.

  “It’s an amazing thing you did today,” he said.

  “Not insane?”

  “Oh, it was that, too. But I figure you’ve heard that enough already.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “The captain is furious, ranting about insubordination and the Explorer you destroyed, but I think he’ll overlook it given the circumstances.”

  “And if I don’t tell anybody that he and the sheriff didn’t believe me that Caitlin was alive and being held captive.”

  “All that matters is that Caitlin’s safe.”

  Duncan tipped his head toward the doors to the ER and lowered his voice to a near whisper. “Did Coyle sexually abuse her?”

  Eve shrugged. She didn’t know and she didn’t want to think about it, not now anyway. “The house is ashes but I got pictures of the crime scene before we fled.”

  Duncan looked at her in disbelief. “You did?”

  “Of course. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Hell no,” Duncan said. “But I wouldn’t have been there in the first place. I value my life. Running into a raging wildfire on a hunch is suicidal.”

  “It was more than a hunch. You heard me present the evidence to Moffett and Lansing. It was a certainty.”

  “Only to you,” Duncan said. “I’m not ashamed that I was unconvinced. You were right this time, but next time you might not be.”

  “Then next time you’ll just have to come along to keep me out of trouble.”

  “Not me. I’ll be working on my long putt in Palm Springs.”

  “You’ve still got one hundred and sixty-one days to go before that happens.”

  “One hundred sixty,” he said.

  “A lot could happen between now and then. Has the word gone out yet that Caitlin is alive?”

  Duncan shook his head. “Lansing is still trying to figure out how to spin it.”

  “That’s great.” Eve took him by the arm and started hustling him toward the door. “You need to take me downtown to see Coyle.”

  “Now?”

  “Lights and siren and pedal to the floor,” she said. “I want Coyle to hear the news from me.”

  Lionel Coyle was waiting for Eve in the visitor’s room in the Men’s Central Jail. She left Duncan in the hallway and went in alone. Coyle broke into a big smile when he sa
w her.

  “Ouch,” he said. “What happened to you?”

  She sat down across the table from him. “I had a car accident. I came here straight from the hospital.”

  “Of course you did. The clock is ticking and the moment of truth is tomorrow morning. You didn’t want to waste a second.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “I knew you’d be back today. You want to know why?” He leaned forward, arms on the table, and looked her in the eye. “Because my lawyer dismembered you. Are you ready for our selfie?”

  “I’ll take it later, when you’re strapped to a table, getting your lethal injection.”

  He laughed. “Is that the best you’ve got?”

  She leaned forward now, not breaking eye contact. “I’ve got Caitlin.”

  Coyle tried to sustain his smile but it wavered at the edges. “You must have banged your head real hard in that accident. You’re not making sense.”

  “She’s alive. I found her under the floor of that empty house near Malibu Creek State Park. I wanted you to hear it from me first.”

  Coyle’s smile vanished and his face went pale so fast that Eve thought he might be about to throw up. She sat back, just in case.

  “I’ll make a deal with you,” he said.

  “You don’t have anything I want.”

  “I’ll tell you where the bodies are.”

  “I know where they are, Lionel. They’re in the ruins of the old Planet of the Apes set.”

  “But you don’t know exactly where, do you? It’s a big park. I can take you straight to them. On one condition.” He leaned forward again and whispered, “After I show you where the bodies are, maybe on the way back to the car, you let me escape, and then shoot me dead before I get away.”

  It was an outrageous request and it surprised her. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Think of all the publicity,” he said.