Her Silent Shadow: A Gripping Psychological Suspense Collection

by Edwin Dasso

  She used her phone, giving QuIEK the command to open the ancient LTE signal on both Denzel’s and Kotler’s phones. She also had it link to Kotler’s iPad, in the 4x4 outside. Just in case. That signal might act as a relay for them to call out and maybe bring help. It was a bit of a long shot, since the Pit’s signal wasn’t connecting to local cell towers. But she’d cross that bridge when the time came.

  “Ok, we’ll be able to chat,” Kayne said. “You can use the phone like a walkie talkie. Just raise to talk.”

  “Neat trick,” Denzel said. “They’re teaching interesting things to the computer forensics team these days.”

  “We like to stay nimble, sir,” Kayne replied.

  Denzel again looked between the two of them and grumbled. “Great. I thought having one of you around was a nuisance.”

  “Stay safe, Roland,” Kotler said. “Just… remember to breathe.”

  Kayne had noted from Denzel’s file that the agent suffered from claustrophobia. It had slipped her mind—he hadn’t shown any signs of it, that she could tell. But on top of being a world-class expert in reading body language, Dr. Kotler knew Agent Denzel better than anyone. If the agent showed even the slightest sign of stress, Kotler would know.

  Denzel waved him off as he turned and moved back to the main corridor, weapon and flashlight raised. “I’m fine. You just make sure you take care of Dr. Carter. I’ll have some questions for her, later.” He left them standing under the conduit as he moved deeper into the Pit.

  Kotler looked at Kayne. “Just you and me now,” he said. “Ready for this?”

  “Ready to risk being slashed to death by a psychotic communist, in a secret, defunct military base, five miles under a mountain, so I can be arrested when it’s all over?” She shrugged. “Sure. It’s basically a Saturday for me.”

  Kotler smiled, chuckled lightly, and the two of them moved toward the distant sound of what they hoped was a safe and protected Dr. Clara Rivers.

  11

  The road to the Pit was paved with bad indentions.

  Potholes the size of moon craters made the terrain all but impassable. Even in the 4x4, the going was slow and jarring. Less than half an hour in, Symon worried their bones might liquify, and a rescue team would fly in to find two puddles in the floorboard.

  Which was why he was relieved when Mayher discovered that there was a hidden side-road, just over the hill.

  They had stopped to get their bearings, to make sure nothing had rattled off of the 4x4, or off of themselves, when Mayher had slipped away, climbing one of the short hills and disappearing behind the brush. Symon didn’t bother questioning why.

  But when she reappeared, she excitedly called for him to join her on the hilltop.

  He did so, clambering up the loose gravel, up over the bigger stones, until he stood by her side at the top of the hill. She pointed.

  “That’s not on the map,” Symon frowned.

  Stretching before them was what appeared to be a level and grated road, running from horizon to horizon, hidden by the hills themselves.

  “Seems to be going in the same general direction,” Mayher said.

  Symon agreed. He turned and estimated the path it would take to get from the known road to this new, seemingly better one.

  “This makes sense,” he said, after a moment.

  “What makes sense?” Mayher asked.

  “From what we’ve uncovered, Jesup has to be making regular trips in and out of here. And Dr. Rivers had to have had a path in that wasn’t so rough—she was in a rental sedan, not a 4x4. There would have to be something other than this Braille strip of a road, or she would never have made it to the Pit in one piece.”

  “So Jesup made his own road?” Mayher asked.

  “Or improvised one. And he kept it a secret. I doubt anyone has used the actual road for decades until Agent Denzel’s team went this way.”

  Mayher nodded. “Ok, then. So, I vote we make our way to this smoother road and go from here.”

  Symon agreed, and the two of them scrambled back to the 4x4, then drove it through a narrow pass that allowed them to gain access to the other side of the hills.

  The going was much faster now, and much less bone jarring. There was still the occasional bump or trench, but it was navigable. Most of the terrain was solid rock, from what Symon could determine, and though there were points where they were driving at a distinct and almost impossible angle, they never encountered impassible terrain.

  In no time, they arrived at the coordinates of the Pit where they found the 4x4 that Agent Denzel’s team had used to get there. They searched and found Dr. Rivers’s rental car as well.

  But no sign of anyone, or of where they’d gone. Worse, there was no sign of a base. Not so much as an outbuilding was visible.

  “Ok…” Mayher said, confused.

  “The facility has to be here somewhere,” Symon said. “Kayne’s data says there are multiple entrances.”

  “So how do we find them?” Mayher asked.

  Symon shrugged. “We look.”

  The next hour was spent combing the hillside, looking for any sign of an opening. There were potential hits, including a small cave that dead-ended less than twenty feet in. But there was nothing that seemed to suggest “defunct secret government facility.”

  They regrouped back at the vehicles.

  “Something tells me the entrance is right under our nose,” Symon huffed, taking a long pull from a bottle of water.

  Mayher was standing with her back to him, slowly scanning the hillside. She turned, shaking her head. “Maybe we’re going about this all wrong,” she said.

  “How so?”

  “Agent Denzel and the others got into this place. We can assume that, right?”

  Symon nodded.

  “So they must have had… I don’t know… a key or something. Dr. Rivers said something in her text message about the Decalogue stone and quantum encryption. So maybe there was some kind of technology involved?”

  Symon considered this. “Denzel brought a computer forensics expert with him. Maybe she found a way to crack the security of this place?”

  “Too bad we didn’t bring an expert of our own,” Mayher said.

  Symon huffed and shook his head. “Maybe we did.”

  He took out his phone and held it up, inspecting the signal he was getting.

  One bar.

  Thin. Anemic. Barely there.

  He tried getting online, but was having trouble. Everything was slow to the point of being useless. He tried sending a text to Kayne, at one of the numbers she’d given him. Seconds later he got an alert that the message had failed to send.

  “Ok then,” he said. “I guess that’s not going to work.”

  He was about to slip the phone back into his pocket when, on a whim, he opened the settings to scan for Wi-Fi. It was habit, when his LTE signal was low. More of an impulse than a serious plan. But when the Wi-Fi settings opened, he got a hit.

  Kotler iPad, the display read.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, showing the phone to Mayher.

  “Must be close, then,” Mayher said.

  Symon nodded, and the two of them resumed their search, this time on the lookout for Dr. Kotler’s smart tablet.

  They reached the 4x4 that Denzel and team had driven into the area, and when Symon tried the rear door it opened without hesitation.

  “Just left it unlocked?” Mayher asked.

  “Bad protocol, but maybe it’ll be a lucky break for us.”

  He leaned into the 4x4 and started sifting through the back seat. He came across a leather case that contained several documents and, thankfully, Kotler’s iPad.

  Lifting it up, Symon touched the screen.

  “Locked,” he said. “But…”

  “What is it?” Mayher asked.

  “Full signal,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s connected to a tower or something.”

  He held it up for Mayher to see and was about to
comment when a voice—a familiar voice—came out of the iPad’s speakers.

  “Eric?”

  Symon blinked, exchanging glances with Mayher.

  “Eric, is that you?”

  Alex Kayne’s voice. He’d recognize it anywhere.

  “Alex? Where… how?”

  “We’re inside!” Kayne said. “Eric, thank God you’re here. There’s a lunatic in here. Armed. Very dangerous. Did you bring backup?”

  “In here?” Symon asked. “Alex… are you saying you’re here, in New Mexico? You’re in the Pit?”

  “Long story short,” a male voice came over the speaker, “She’s with me.”

  “Dr. Kotler?” Symon asked.

  “Hello, Agent Symon,” Kotler said. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Mayher asked.

  Kayne spoke from the iPad. “We’re inside the Pit, and Agent Barr was murdered by the Comrade. Right now, it’s looking like that won’t be his last victim.”

  “How do we help?” Symon asked, suddenly more alert to his surroundings. “We can’t find the way in.”

  “One second…” Kayne replied.

  After only a moment there was a slight rumble in the ground, and suddenly a part of the hillside rose and moved away. Symon and Mayher stood back, watching, then looking at each other, confused.

  “Welcome to the Pit, Agent Symon,” Kotler’s voice said. “Keep your eyes open for a psychopath with a very sharp blade.”

  12

  Clara had been crawling blind for hours when she heard the gunshots.

  She froze, waiting, listening. From where she was, there was no way to know where the sounds had come from. They were muffled and distant, deflected by miles of metal ducts. They could be coming from anywhere. But she recognized them instantly.

  What did they mean?

  She hadn’t seen any guns since coming to the Pit. And the man—the Comrade—had that long, ugly blade. As far as she knew, it was just the two of them down here. So who was firing? And what—or who—were they shooting at?

  Her heart pounded. Her brain buzzed with one word.

  Rescue!

  She had been moving quietly, painfully, through the duct work, trying to keep the sound of her passage to a minimum. It was excruciating and exhausting. But she’d plodded on, feeling her way along, praying with all she had that she would eventually find some way out.

  Now, with the sound of gunfire providing some sort of hope, she increased her speed, and with it the noise of her passage.

  It was like crawling through a baking tin. Every movement flexed the metal, which echoed loudly around her. She couldn’t hear the gunfire anymore, but wasn’t sure if it was because it had stopped or because she was drowning it out.

  She kept moving.

  Eventually she came to a split in the ductwork—something she’d encountered a number of times since crawling in here. She felt the possible paths with her hands, reaching into the dark in both directions, trying to find some clue about where to go next.

  She would have to choose, left or right.

  She took a few deep breaths and turned left.

  For the next several minutes she crawled as she had from the start, until finally she came to a vent.

  Dead end.

  She felt her heart pounding, and put her hands against the vent, pushing.

  She knew from experience that there were two screws holding the vent in place, from the outside. Just one of them had been a legitimate pain to remove, when she’d climbed in from the storage room. Here, from inside the duct, there would be no way to remove the screws.

  She was going to have to force her way out.

  Her only hope was that the screws give with enough pressure from this side.

  She was pushing, feeling that pressure against her palms, and feeling twice that amount growing in her chest, when there was a sudden, sickening, rending sound from somewhere beyond her feet, in the darkness of the shaft.

  She felt the shaft itself tremble and shake, and she strained her eyes and her neck, twisting her body to see if she could spot anything in that endless darkness.

  Smack-squeeeee!

  The sound was hideous, like a thousand metal fingernails on a chalkboard. The racket forced her jaw to clench.

  It was the sound of metal tearing.

  She redoubled her efforts, pushing frantically against the grate in front of her, slamming her palms into it over and over until they ached.

  Squeeeeeee!

  More tearing, and she once again spared a glance down the length of her body.

  This time she could see.

  A light, pouring in from a gash in the conduit a few feet from her toes. Someone had ripped the metal open, and light was pouring in from the outside.

  She watched as a face appeared, swathed in shadow, but she could still make out that hideous tattoo in a passing glint of light.

  The Comrade.

  She screamed, and resumed pounding on the grate in front of her, even as she kicked and thrashed her legs at the face of the man below.

  The grate was starting to give, but not enough. Not fast enough.

  She looked back to see the Comrade reaching into the maw of metal he had created, his hands stretching to reach for her legs. She was too far, just too far, for him to reach her, thank God.

  She saw the hook of the man’s blade rise into the shaft, light reflecting dully from its crimson crescent.

  She again pounded on the grate, pushing, hitting, ignoring the pain.

  She felt something sharp knick at her left calf and screamed again. It hadn’t gotten her. It had merely torn through her pant leg and scraped her skin. But the Comrade would try again. He would hook her flesh and drag her screaming through a womb of jagged metal, to be born into the hell below.

  She screamed in fury now, and rose on her elbows, drawing herself forward and slamming the grate with her head, like a battering ram.

  It hurt, and she saw stars, but as the blackness oozed and swirled around her, she heard a clatter of metal on a concrete floor.

  The grate had broken free, and she was laying with her eyes and nose overhanging the outer ledge.

  She scrambled again, hearing the Comrade shout, hearing the sound of the blade coming down hard on bare metal, scraping in a long screech that echoed through the ductwork and into the room where Clara now found herself.

  She had poured out of the duct and had barely gotten her hands out in front of her before hitting the floor. She rolled, landing on her back, the fallen grating under her, painful and biting.

  She was banged up, scraped up, and bruised to every square inch.

  She was still trapped in this place, miles below the surface.

  But she was alive.

  And she had gotten away from the Comrade and his blade.

  She laughed.

  She cried.

  She got to her feet, limping and exploring, this new place, looking for anything that might help her, that she might be able to use to defend herself.

  The sound from the ductwork had ceased, which meant the Comrade was coming here. Wherever here was.

  She felt around until her hands met something astonishing. Something she could barely believe.

  A light switch.

  She huffed a few breaths laced with prayers and then flipped the switch to on.

  She blinked in the explosion of light. Tears came to her eyes, from the brightness but more from the relief. She had not seen light in days. She had seen only darkness, and more chasing her.

  These lights—fluorescent tubes that buzzed with a green-tinged hue—were as beautiful as the heavens.

  She was in an office.

  No windows. But there was a large piece of artwork on one wall—a depiction of the Los Lunas mountains themselves, cast in light from a golden sunset, looking far more idyllic than the outside ever really managed, in Clara’s opinion.

  There was a desk and office chair, and the wall to the right
of this was lined floor to ceiling with cabinets and shelves. A round table with two chairs occupied the other corner of the room.

  And then there was the door.

  She raced to it, cracked it open, peered outside. The light from overhead cast a wedge of visibility into the hall. There was nothing to see there.

  It took everything she had not to rush out there, to try to flee. She needed something first. Needed many things, but one thing in particular.

  A weapon.

  She pushed the door closed and engaged the lock in its handle. Not much. Flimsy. She pulled the desk across the floor and against the door, just in case.

  She searched.

  There wasn’t much left behind when the government cleared this place, from what she could tell. Mostly just the detritus of bureaucracy—reams of notepads, mountains of paperclips and other office supplies. Given that this facility was from the 1990s, she might be looking at a billion dollars worth of paperclips, in terms of government spending. But it was all worthless trash, at the moment.

  No weapons.

  What she did find, in the cabinet along one wall, was an old fashioned paper cutter—the sort with a large, bladed swing arm.

  She worked at it, applied pressure, wriggled it back and forth until the blade snapped from its hinge. She huffed from the effort, but gripped her prize in her hand.

  The Comrade had his blade.

  And now Clara had hers.

  She hefted it a few times. Felt the edge. Not seriously sharp, but enough to do some damage. It felt like something she could handle. The Comrade wouldn’t be expecting it, anyway. It would do. It would have to do.

  But there was one other piece of treasure she found in her rifling—something that gave her even more hope than a weapon in hand.

  A flashlight.

  Small—just a pen light, a tiny key chain that wasn’t meant for much more than illuminating a darkened keyhole or peering into a desk drawer. This one had the logo of a hotel on it—obviously swag from some conference. But the batteries were still good, and it still provided a nice little cone of light. It would also do.

  Armed and illuminated, Clara moved back to the desk in front of the door. She had done her work quickly, frantically, but there still may have been enough time for the Comrade to have found his way to her.