by J. J. Stone
James’s arm wrapped around her shoulders and pushed her out of the dining area while he stomped on Eli’s gun and kicked it away. Ada tumbled into the kitchen just as her legs surrendered to her shot nerves and sent her solidly onto her hands and knees, her gun clattering against the floor.
“Move and you get a matching hole in the other one,” James shouted down at the whimpering mess that was Eli. He turned his attention to Ada. “Ada, get up.”
His voice barely reached her eardrums through the roaring in her head. She blinked rapidly for a few seconds then gradually stood up. Her head still felt pinched, but she could breathe again. She braced herself against the kitchen island, placed her gun down on it and half-raised her head to James.
“Are you OK?” he asked her, confused panic in his voice and face.
Ada shook her head then raised her hand before he could freak out. “I’m fine.”
Eli let out an ear-piercing howl as he lay in the fetal position around his destroyed knee. James cocked his gun down at Eli and the howls died down to a low groan. “Go back by the door,” James said to her.
Directly below her feet, something thudded against the underside of the floor. Ada jumped and glanced down as if expecting something to come tearing up to grab her. “Did you hear that?” she gasped.
“Someone,” James lobbed a kick into Eli’s middle, drawing a croaking wheeze out of the injured man, “won’t shut up.” He raised his shoulders at Ada. “What am I supposed to be hearing?”
“Something just bumped into the floor,” Ada said. It was then that she spotted a door with multiple locks directly to her left. She looked back at James, who had followed her gaze.
“Do not go down there,” he said, “Eli and Travis might not have been the only two people here.”
“It could be the missing boys.”
James sighed through his nose and pressed his lips to a line. “Did Dahmer keep his victims alive?”
Ada knew the answer but didn’t want to believe that all of those boys were dead. “All of the cult members so far have deviated from the original serial killers. They might still be alive.”
The understanding that had matured between them was beginning to have its benefits. James clearly didn’t want her to go, but she could see in his eyes that he already knew what she was going to do. He shook his head and looked back down at Eli. “Have your gun ready,” he told her.
Ada nodded and flew to the door. Adrenaline quickly pumped the residual shock of Eli’s revelation from her body. She grabbed the keys nailed next to the door and deftly undid the locks. She swung the door open and gasped at the biting cold and rancid odor that instantly assaulted her senses. There was a flashlight wedged into a hole in the wall directly opposite the door. She took a cautious first step into the basement stairway and grabbed the flashlight. As it clicked on and illuminated the stairwell, Ada stepped back to the kitchen island to retrieve her gun then headed back to the stairs and began her descent.
The rancid smell of the basement curdled her stomach as she reached the end of the stairs. She recognized the metallic waft of blood instantly, and human excrement seemed to be providing an undertone. There was something else hanging in the air, something strangely sweet. She could have sworn it was fruit.
Ada waved the flashlight beam around scanning her surroundings before entering the utter blackness of the basement. She had not stepped foot in a basement since she’d had a complete mental break during a grade-school sleepover. Uncle Mike had blamed her full-body tremors on a stomach bug. In truth, that had been the first time she’d been in a basement since her mother’s death and all she could remember feeling was the sickening sense that she was stuck in a giant coffin.
Even now, her gut tightened and her eyes darted futilely around the dark, but a growing wellspring of inner strength that had been evolving in her soul since the Seattle case fed her a solid push she needed to start moving. She gripped the flashlight and carefully pressed it against the side of the hand gun then raised both in front of her and moved further into the basement.
“Hello?” she called softly, her voice traveling nowhere in the cottony thickness of the dank basement air. Her snow boot crunched down on something and the flashlight beam whipped to the floor. Sparkling glass shards littered the floor ahead of and around her. Globs of various fruits were strewn throughout the sea of glass. I knew I smelled fruit, she thought proudly.
Further inspection showed that a shelf had fallen and dumped its jarred contents all over the floor. As she squatted beside the shelf, it was then that she noticed the scuffed footprints in the dirt floor. Her heart throbbed but her body remained steady. She traced the footprints’ path with the flashlight and nearly cried out when it eventually came to rest on a naked, wide-eyed boy of no more than ten. He was compacted into the tiniest bundle of skin and bones, just watching her from against the basement wall. In front of him were sizable chunks of glass, solid enough to produce plenty of sound when thrown against wood. She had found the source of the thud.
Ada slowly stood, keeping the light on the boy. “It’s OK,” she said to him as she took one cautious step at a time toward him. “I heard you.”
The boy didn’t move, but his eyes followed her as she came near. He gaped at her and then his horribly gaunt face shifted as he fought to open his cracked and bleeding lips. “Home?” his paper-thin voice asked her.
Tears sprang to Ada’s eyes as she recognized Garrett Daniels, the last boy taken. She crouched down before him and nodded. “Home.”
——
When Dade entered the cabin, Brenda and eight officers flanking him, it took him a moment to register what was waiting for him. James was propped back against a wall, holding a gun on a sobbing brute lying on the floor with a shattered knee. Ada was sitting on the fireplace hearth, cradling the blanket-swathed emaciated body of a young boy. Something was burning in the kitchen, and a stagnant stench of human waste and rot coated every inch of air.
Dade met James’s eyes from across the cabin, and Dade couldn’t believe how weary he looked. Dade pointed his gun at the man lying on the floor and nodded at James to lower his weapon. He watched his superior collapse his left arm down to his side and pitch forward off the wall, sinking down to his knees just as Brenda reached him. She moved to hold him upright by his shoulders but he motioned her back before she could touch him. She held her hands up but remained crouched beside him.
“That kid isn’t going to make it if he doesn’t get to a hospital,” James said wearily as he pushed himself onto his backside and sat there for a moment, wheezing.
Brenda gave him a once-over. “You’re going right with him.”
James glowered at her. “The kid.”
Brenda rolled her eyes and stood. She motioned to one of the officers waiting at the door. “Get an ETA from the EMTs,” she said as she left the kitchen and walked over to Ada and the boy.
“The other boys?” Dade asked as he stepped toward James.
James pressed his lips into a grim line and shook his head. “He’s the only one,” he said, side glancing to Ada and the boy.
Dade lowered into a squat in front of James. “How bad are you?”
James had closed his eyes and his head was weaving enough to be worrisome. “Shoulder, arm, ribs.”
“How about your head?” Dade asked. He inspected the dirty and disintegrating bandages encasing the circumference of James’s head.
“Probably have some bruising.”
“At least.” Dade slipped his hand over his mouth to hide the uncalled for grin that was sprouting. This was possibly the worst he had seen his boss.
James opened his eyes and glanced up at Dade, instantly detecting the mirth in his eyes. “I know. I look ridiculous.”
Dade bit his lip but his words came out anyway. “A couple more days and you could have playe
d Santa at the Christmas party this year.”
James let out a hearty laugh that quickly cut off in a hissing wince as his ribs contracted. Without invitation, Dade grabbed James under the left arm and heaved him up off the floor. He draped James’s arm over his shoulders and started the two of them toward the door and recently arrived medics. As they shuffled through the living room, James caught sight of Ada and motioned at her with his chin. “They need to look at her, too. The airbag hit her pretty hard.”
“Airbag?” Dade shook his head as they reached the doorway. The EMTs spotted them and crunched through the snow to retrieve James. “I’m gonna have to hear this story from the beginning.”
James slid his arm off Dade’s shoulders and let the EMTs assist him out of the cabin.
CHAPTER 17
Ada heard commotion in the hallway and slid off her hospital bed. She wrapped her robe around herself and padded silently in socked feet to her room’s doorway. Down the hallway a few rooms, a man and a woman were pressed against the outside of the window of Garrett’s room. Garrett, who Ada had held all the way from the cabin to the hospital, had a long recovery ahead. They had rushed him into the emergency room, but the doctors were very blunt about Garrett’s odds. The 10-year-old boy had lost a significant amount of weight and would probably lose some extremities to frostbite. Ada’s heart had shattered into even tinier pieces when the medical team had forced her to leave him for an examination of her own.
Chief Benke stepped quietly up behind the couple at the window and placed a comforting hand on a shoulder of each. “Your son is in the best possible hands.”
Ada winced. She couldn’t imagine being stuck behind a window, seeing the fragile shell of your son and not being able to do a thing. The incessant sting of impending tears bit at her eyes, and she turned back into her room. She flung herself onto the bed and curled up while pulling the coarse hospital sheets over her body. The nurses had just visited her, so she could maybe squeeze a couple of hours sleep in before they came knocking again.
As her body stilled, her mind raced. Before the nurses had whisked her away, Ada had begged Brenda to find her some kind of phone or laptop that she could use to communicate with work. She was supposed to be on a flight home in an hour; obviously, that wasn’t going to happen. She had dried up her good graces with Dean Bridges. If she didn’t come up with a plausible excuse for her extended absence, her teaching career would be done.
Maybe I’ll be out of here in time to catch a later flight, she thought. After all, the doctors were only waiting on her blood sugar to stabilize and her MRI scan results. Other than that, she was basically being forced to take a nap. Her body was suffering from severe exhaustion. Even though she was bone-weary, she felt like a fool. She had ardently protested being admitted, but the doctor had insisted. Something about bureau procedures.
Realizing sleep was not going to come, Ada rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. She suddenly felt very alone. Neither Brenda nor Dade had been back to see her yet, no doubt keeping constant watch over their first living suspect in the entire investigation. The nurses were Ada’s only connection to anything outside her room, and they weren’t much for talking. The second time they had poked and measured her, Ada had asked about James. All she got was a shrug from one nurse and the other one grunted something about scans and surgery. Then they’d padded out of the room, promising to return in a few hours.
“I can’t do this,” Ada said as she sat up and swung her legs off the bed. She took a few gulps of water from the giant mug one of the nurses had chucked down on her table and made her promise to keep downing. So far, she had refilled it once.
She tiptoed to her doorway and scanned left and right before stepping out. The hallway was a ghost town. She scurried the long way to the elevator, bypassing the nurses station. They’d just tell her to get back in bed. If she had to stare at that dimpled gray ceiling one more minute …
The elevator had just arrived as she approached. She ducked inside and selected the floor above hers. She had managed to extract that little nugget of information from a nurse. Her stomach bubbled as the elevator doors shut and the metal box drifted up. She felt like such a rebel, sneaking around the hospital in her robe and thick socks.
The doors slid open and she tried as nonchalantly as possible to enter the slightly more active traffic of this level of the hospital. She got a few pointed stares from the nurses but no one seemed interested in intercepting her. She trekked down a hallway and scanned the placards outside each door. Almost halfway down, she finally found ‘Deacon’ and quickly pushed the door open.
The room was incredibly dim. For a second she wondered if James was knocked out on something. The nurse had said something about surgery. She stood there by the door, second-guessing her hasty escape up to his room.
“Thank God you’re not a nurse,” James said, breaking the silence with a newly husky voice.
Ada broke out in a full-wattage grin, so grateful to hear a familiar voice. She walked up to his bed and pulled the single rigid chair in the room closer to his side. “Have you verbally assaulted one yet?”
“I thought I was about to.” He carefully rolled onto his side and gave her a once-over. “What is it about hospitals that make people look worse than they are?”
Ada rolled her eyes as she pulled her knees up to her chest in her chair perch. “I told them I didn’t need to be here. But they said it’s some FBI thing.”
“Yeah, the bureau doesn’t want you suing them.” James let out a laugh that sounded more like a pre-cough wheeze.
She felt her face tighten with concern. “You look like you’re going to be here a while.”
James shook his head. “I’ll be out of here tomorrow. They just need me to prove that I don’t need their painkillers.”
Ada frowned and cocked her head at him. “James. You look like hell.” It was the truth. His facial bruises had progressed to the deep purple-black stage, and the cuts on the left side of his face were a screaming shade of red, thanks to the recent sutures and cleansing they had been subjected to. His right shoulder looked like it had football padding on under his hospital gown. She did notice that the sling was gone, though. “So your arm’s OK?”
James raised it slightly. “Once they completely set my shoulder, the pain got a lot better. It’s not broken, just beat up. My shoulder completely dislocated when you pushed into it during the crash.”
“That’s what you get for protecting me.”
“I’ll let you get whiplash next time,” James said, rolling his eyes. “I’m just glad nothing ended up being broken. I won’t have nearly the amount of downtime as they were initially telling me I would.”
“So, no surgery?”
James gave her a strange look. “Who told you I was having surgery?”
“I bugged my nurses for an update on you, and that’s what one of them finally told me.”
James grinned and pushed up into a more seated posture. “Nope, no surgery. They were able to set my shoulder without it.” He raised a brow at her, a playful glint in his eye. “You weren’t worried about me, were you, Brandt?”
Ada didn’t take his bait. “I just wanted to find out if you were in one piece. I needed to talk to someone before I lost my sanity.”
The playfulness slipped away, and Ada almost regretted not playing along.
“I hate hospitals. They make you feel sick, even if you really are OK.” He nodded at the empty bed to the left of his. “I could try to get you moved up here.”
She chuckled at this. “Make it a slumber party? Get the nurses to make some popcorn, find a movie?”
“I just don’t want you all alone,” he said, the rasp in his voice melting down to something softer.
“Oh,” was all Ada could say. She was sure he hadn’t meant to give her this impression, but she felt … flirte
d with. That should have put her in a mental tailspin, yet it didn’t feel intrusive at all. And that scared her more than anything she’d dealt with over the past few days. “I’m probably getting discharged in a couple of hours, so it’s not a big deal.”
“Oh.” James nodded stiffly. “Are you flying out right after?”
“That’s the plan,” Ada said. “If I’m not in my classroom tomorrow morning, I’m going to be at the unemployment office as soon as I get home.”
“You can’t tell them you were delayed?”
“I can’t seem to get a phone or a computer from anyone. And because my boss is so anal, the only way I can talk with him about my time off is through email.” She shook her head and entwined her fingers into her freshly-washed hair, twisting the strands absentmindedly. “I asked Brenda if she could find me something, but I’m sure she’s too busy with Eli.”
At the mention of the case, James’s FBI mask fell down, dispelling the mellow version of himself he had been showing her. “Dade better have him on suicide watch. There’s no excuse for us to lose a suspect now.”
Ada thought for a moment. “We might actually be able to get ahead of this. Won’t we?”
“That’s the plan. I’m sure Eli’s gone through extensive interrogation training, though. It goes with the cult mentality.”
“Did you hear what Eli said to me?” Ada couldn’t believe she was willing to revisit that conversation.
James rolled back onto his side and sagged his head down into his flimsy pillow. “No. What did happen back there?”
Ada wrapped her arms tighter around her folded legs. “Remember Eli said that his boss wanted me?”
