by Rachel Caine
Kezia lights it up with her flashlight in a blue-white glare. "Kyle and Lee Graham! Come on out right now! This is Officer Claremont!" She has a commanding voice, like a teacher calling out students for bad behavior, and I think it would have worked on me at that age.
There's a flutter of movement at a curtained window, and then the door cracks and a boy yells, "Where's my dad?"
Kezia steps forward and motions the two of us to stay back. "Lee? Lee, you know me. Your dad's okay. He's on the way to the hospital. You come on out now. Look, I'm putting my gun away, okay? You come on out."
The younger Graham boy slips out. He's wearing a coat too big for him, and he looks pale and scared. "I didn't want to," he says in a rush. "I didn't! I don't want to get in trouble!"
"You won't, honey, you won't. You come on here." Kezia motions him forward, and once he's to her, she gestures to Sam, who comes forward, takes the boy by the elbow, and half drags him to where I stand. Lee opens his mouth to protest. I put a hand on his shoulder and crouch down to look him in the eye.
"Are my kids in there?" I ask him.
He finally nods. "It wasn't my fault," he tells me. "I told Kyle we shouldn't have. But--"
"But you can't say no to your dad," I say, and I see the relief spread over his face. The trauma. And even though he stood between me and my own children, I want to hug him. I don't, but I feel how lost he is. "I understand. It'll be okay. You just stay right here. Sit down and don't move."
Kezia's moved a little closer. "Kyle! Kyle, you need to come out. Can you hear me? Kyle?"
I turn to Lee, who's hunched in on himself now, not looking at the cabin or anybody. "Lee. Is your brother armed?"
"He has a rifle," he says. "Don't hurt him! He's just doing what Dad told him!"
I think that it's more than that. Lance Graham had trusted Kyle to sneak up on me in the dark. I wonder if Kyle has helped his father with anything else. He's big for his age, and handsome. He could have been a real asset in distracting a young woman before an abduction. I picture him going up to that girl in the parking lot of the bakery. Leading her off to his dad's SUV.
It makes me feel a spasm of disgust so strong it's like nausea.
I tell Kezia that Kyle has a rifle, and she nods grimly. She's already eased her gun out of its holster. "Get Sam to go around back. I don't want Kyle having another way out of this. You stay here with the boy."
Sam's already on it, I see. He moves around the cabin, between it and the rock face; I hope there aren't sleeping snakes back there, or worse. He doesn't come back, so I assume there is a door. I assume he's covering it.
I tell Kezia, "I'm going in."
"No, you're not!" she says. She reaches out, but I'm already gone, walking straight for the door. I can see the curtain move. Kyle's watching me. I wonder academically if a rifle bullet will go through this vest; it might, at this range. Depends on the caliber and the grain.
I have my Sig out of my pocket, and I hold it down, finger off the trigger, as I try the door. It opens. Kyle hasn't thought to lock it after his brother left.
Inside, it's very dark except for a single, guttering candle that sits on a rough table at the back of the room. The bitter, uncertain light flickers over Kyle, sitting on a bunk near the window. He has his rifle aimed straight at me.
There's no one else in the cabin. No one. This is straight up a trap.
I turn and yell, dodging out the door, and Kyle's shot misses me by fractions. I am moving toward Kezia, and behind her, I see Lee has moved from where I left him at the tree line. He's now standing in a perfectly learned shooting stance. He has a handgun that he's pulled from his pocket because I didn't search him, he was just a boy, and he's pointing it at Kezia's back.
"Lee!" I scream, bringing my gun up. "Don't do it!"
He's startled, and his shot goes wide. Just barely wide. It shatters the window of the cabin, and Kezia turns low and fast. She advances on him with a stunning volley of shouts to drop the gun drop the gun and he does, convulsively throwing it away, and I spin back toward the cabin because Kyle is still in there, armed, and where are my children, God, please . . .
Kyle throws open the door and aims the rifle straight at my face. I have time to react, to shoot, but I don't. I can't. He's a child. He's a stunted, twisted child, but I can't.
Sam tackles him from behind and drives him facedown into the mud. The rifle slides away, and Kyle fights, screaming, to get to it. Kezia has snapped handcuffs around his brother Lee's wrists, and she sits the boy down hard and takes out another pair. She lets out a shrill whistle, and Sam looks up. She pitches, and he plucks them out of the air and restrains him. He hauls the boy up and makes him kneel with his face against the cabin's wall.
I can't breathe for the terror pounding through me. Not from the near-miss. Not from Kyle and Lee.
My kids have to be here. They have to be here.
I run back into the cabin. It's tiny, barely big enough for a cot, a small table, a thick fleece rug, the open back door . . .
I kick the rug away and uncover a trapdoor.
I take the candle from the table and pull the handle on the trapdoor, and the cold, moist air that glides out makes the flame shiver uneasily. I wish for Kezia's powerful little flashlight, but only for a second. There's a wooden ladder leading down.
I go.
My arm doesn't like the strain, but I hardly notice the pain now. I still feel sick and dizzy, but it's not important, nothing is important but what I will find here, under the earth.
What I find is hell.
I step into the past.
There, ahead of me as I turn from the ladder, is a metal stand with a winch attachment. The thick cable hanging from it ends in a loop.
A noose.
It's the same as the one in Melvin's garage. But it isn't just that. I recognize the tool shelves to the right, filled with parts, drills, vises. I recognize the red tool drawers that form a line across the top of a workbench.
As I turn back toward the ladder, I recognize the pegboard that's been set up behind it, heavy with saws, knives, screwdrivers, hammers. There's a tray to the side with medical equipment. Another that has a hunter's tools to flay the skin.
And my gaze falls on the last, perfect addition: the rug. It's the same style of rug that Melvin kept right below his victims, an incongruous little middle-class detail in a torture chamber.
Graham has re-created Melvin's killing floor down to the last, obsessive detail.
The smell of this place makes me reel and put my shoulders against the ladder, because I know this smell. It had rolled out of my Wichita garage, spoiled meat and old blood and the metallic stench of terror, and it is here, in this place. Exactly the same.
I can't help it. I scream. I scream the names of my children as my heart breaks and my mind snaps and all I want to do is die.
Graham never meant for them to live. He only meant for me to see this.
I'm still holding the Sig, and for a terrible, beautiful moment of clarity, I think how perfect it is that I'm going to die here, in the same way that Gina Royal withered away and perished. Looking at the same horrors. Feeling the same sense of complete loss.
And then I hear my son say, "Mom?"
It's a whisper, but it is as loud as a shout, and I drop the gun, drop it like it's on fire, and I scramble on all fours across the floor, the rug, around the hulking horror of that winch, and behind it, behind it, I see the barred grate set into the false wall. It's padlocked. I stumble back to the tools and rip a crowbar out of the pegboard with such force I send things flying and clattering, and I run back to the door. I jam the forked end under the hasp and yank. Wood splinters. Gives. The hasp tears free.
I use the crowbar to lever the door, and inside I see Connor, I see Lanny. They are alive, alive, and all the strength leaves me in that moment and I crash to my knees as they rush toward me and throw themselves on me as if they want to disappear inside me.
Oh God, it's so beautiful. The re
lief hurts, but it's the hurt of a wound being cauterized, all the bleeding stopped.
I am still rocking my children back and forth on the floor of this hell when Kezia and Sam find me. Both are breathless, braced for the worst. I see Sam's face and I think, My God, because he has just walked through a shrine to the place where his sister suffered and died, and I can only imagine how hard this has been, to take these steps past that winch and reach us.
But we're alive.
We're all alive.
15
The blood in my house, I find, was from Kyle. And it was Lanny's doing.
"I heard them fighting," she tells me, once we're outside again in the clean night air. Kyle and Lee Graham are both tightly handcuffed, and Kezia has fastened them to a hook set into the cabin's wall. I can't imagine what it's for. I don't want to. "I grabbed the knife and I came in and I cut him. Kyle, I mean. I would have got him, too, if his damn dad hadn't been with him. I got us to the panic room just like you taught us, but he knew the code. I'm sorry, Mom. I let you down--"
"No, I did." Connor's voice is a bare whisper, almost pulled away by the wind. "The code was in my phone. I should have said so. You could have changed it."
It all fits together now. Connor's phone, taken from him by Graham's kids. I remember my son's hesitance the night Graham brought the phone back, how Connor had almost told me something important. He hadn't wanted to make me mad, because I'd told him over and over again not to write the codes down.
I can't let him believe this is his fault. Ever.
"No, baby," I tell him. I kiss his forehead. "It doesn't matter. I'm so proud of you both. You stayed alive. Right now, that's what matters, okay? We're alive."
Kezia's got foil blankets in her survival kit, and I wrap the kids up to preserve their body heat. They're bruised. They took a beating in the fight. I ask if there's anything they want to tell me about what happened at the cabin. Lanny says nothing happened. Connor says nothing at all.
I wonder if my daughter is lying to me.
We sit in the clearing. Backup finally arrives in a swarm of NPD uniforms, and I see Javier Esparza's there, too. He nods to me, and I nod back. I doubted him. I never should have.
Detective Prester himself has made the climb; he's still got a suit that's never going to survive this mud, but he's thrown on a heavy pea jacket. He comes immediately to us, and I see something new in his face.
Respect.
"I owe you one hell of an apology, Ms. Proctor," he says. "They okay?"
"Time will tell," I say. "I think so." I don't know, but I have to believe they will be. It's going to be hard. They'll have questions. I can't imagine what Lancel Graham told them about their father. I think that, more than any other trauma, is what keeps my son mute.
Prester nods and sighs. He doesn't look like he wants to go down into that basement, but I imagine he's seen worse. "Kezia says you have Graham's phone. I'll need that for evidence, and anything else you took."
"I left most of that stuff in his truck," I say. "The gun's mine." I've retrieved it from the floor of the basement; I don't need more complications. "Here." I dig the phone out of my pocket.
The screen is on. I pushed the button accidentally. It's just the lock screen, and without Graham's thumbprint or code I can't unlock it, but what freezes me is the text message that's appeared on the screen.
It's from Absalom, and it says, He wants an update.
I show it to Prester. He doesn't seem surprised. "Who's Absalom?"
I tell him about my hacker benefactor. My ally, who's been selling me out the entire time. I don't know how to find Absalom, and I tell him that, too. I hold out the phone and say, "My turn. Who do you think Absalom is talking about?"
Prester takes an evidence bag from his pocket, and I slip it in. He seals it before he answers. "I think you can guess."
I don't want to say his name, either. It's almost like saying the name of the devil. I'm afraid he will appear.
Prester's expression has turned darker now, and I don't like the way he keeps watching me, tentative and thoughtful. Like he's trying to decide if I'm strong enough to stand what he's got in mind.
So I say, "You have something to tell me." I'm not afraid of anything anymore. My children are with me. Safe. Lancel Graham isn't going anywhere. It's possible his sons can be saved, unless his particular psychopathy is inherited.
Prester gestures me off to the side. I don't want to let go of Lanny and Connor, but I do take a few steps away and position myself to watch them. I know this is something he doesn't want them to hear.
But I'm still not afraid.
"There was a well-coordinated breakout from El Dorado. Seventeen prisoners. Nine of them are already in custody. But--"
He doesn't even have to say it. I know, with the sick inevitability of fate, what he's going to tell me. "But Melvin Royal is loose," I say.
He looks away. I don't know what I'm feeling, or what he's seeing in me. But I do know one thing.
I'm not afraid of Mel anymore.
I'm going to kill him. One way or the other, it ends the way it began so long ago: with the two of us.
The Royals.
SOUNDTRACK
I choose music for each book I write, to help guide me through the intense process, and Stillhouse Lake presented an interesting exercise in finding just the right groove to help propel Gwen through this tense story.
I hope you enjoy the musical experience as much as I did, and please remember: piracy hurts musicians, and music aggregation services don't provide a living. Buying the song or album direct is still the best way to show your love, and to help artists create new work.
"I Don't Care Anymore," Hellyeah
"Ballad of a Prodigal Son," Lincoln Durham
"Battleflag," Lo Fidelity Allstars
"How You Like Me Now (Raffertie Remix)," The Heavy
"Black Honey," Thrice
"Bourbon Street," Jeff Tuohy
"Cellophane," Sara Jackson-Holman
"Drive," Joe Bonamassa
"Fake It," Bastille
"Heathens," twenty one pilots
"Jekyll and Hyde," Five Finger Death Punch
"Lovers End," The Birthday Massacre
"Meth Lab Zoso Sticker," 7Horse
"Bad Reputation," Joan Jett
"Peace," Apocalyptica
"Send Them Off!," Bastille
"Tainted Love," Marilyn Manson
"Take It All," Pop Evil
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As usual, this book wouldn't have been written without the support of my husband, R. Cat Conrad; my wonderful assistant and sanity reader, Sarah Weiss-Simpson; and my long-suffering, awesome editors, Tiffany Martin and Liz Pearsons.
Special shout-out to my friend Kelley and the rest of the Time Turners for constant encouragement and support.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo (c) 2014 Robert Hart
Rachel Caine is the #1 internationally bestselling author of more than fifty novels, including the New York Times bestselling Morganville Vampires and The Great Library young adult series. She's written suspense, mystery, paranormal suspense, urban fantasy, science fiction, and paranormal young adult fiction. Caine and her husband, award-winning artist, comic historian, and actor R. Cat Conrad, live in Fort Worth, Texas.
