It was heavier than he expected, too much so to lift directly off, so he reversed what he thought the killer must have done, yanking it up on one edge and rolling it to the side.
“Jesus.” The stench from the pit was overwhelming, and Owen breathed through his mouth to escape it. “Be glad you do not have Smell-O-Vision.” The running narration substituted “translation not available.” That made him laugh aloud, because they’d run into this before and it made Alace crazy to not know the specific word. He activated the audible mic and repeated the word aloud, “Smell-O-Vision.”
At the sound of his voice, something shifted in the pit, pale fingers coming into view as they clutched at the wire covering the opening. Then a tiny, triangle-shaped face appeared. Dirt covered the woman’s skin, and he saw her mouth moving, no sound coming out at first. The distinctive jaw movement and lip shape told him everything he needed. The word “help” repeated again and again.
“Boss lady, you seeing this?” He stood and maneuvered the barrel well away, kicking it onto its side for good measure, rendering it more difficult to return to the previous position entrapping this woman.
“Making the call now.” That would be the not-quite-anonymous call to the authorities they’d discussed. Alace would call using an alias, and give his alias, saying he’d contacted her but been unable to get a call through to emergency services. “Get her out of there.”
“On it.” He offered a small grimace to the woman in the pit. “I’m going to open the pit, but it’s certain to be locked.”
“Yes, I have a confirmed person requiring assistance in Antanga National Forest. Air rescue will be required. My authorization code is tango-alpha-lima-alpha.” TALA was the acronym Alace had mentioned when they were talking about the gear yesterday. He made a note to ask her about it later. “I’ve been in touch with a person on the ground and am calling a scramble response ASAP to these coordinates.”
He blocked out the rest of her call as he walked around the holding pen. When he arrived where he expected to find either a latch or hinges, he explained to the woman in the pen what he was doing. “I’m not leaving. Won’t do that. I’ll be here until we can get you some help. But we’ve got to get you out of there.”
“Be careful, he’s going to be back.” Alace’s words were overlapped by the first broken utterance from the woman.
“Help me.”
“I’ve got this,” he promised both of them. Pulling a gun from the holster strapped to his thigh, he told the woman in the pit, “Go to the other end, protect yourself as best you can.” Her eyes bored into him, brown pools of disbelieving despair that nearly broke his heart. “I’m getting you out, okay? I promise.”
“He’ll hear the gunshot.”
That made Owen hesitate for a breath; then he was shaking his head and repeating his instructions. “Go to the other end. I’m getting you out. Boss lady, unless the killer’s packing, I doubt he’ll return to investigate someone who is clearly well armed. Gut call, and I’m makin’ it.”
“Got you.” He was glad she didn’t argue and liked the fact she trusted he could handle not only the situation, but also any repercussions that came about from it.
“On three.” He locked gazes with the woman trapped in the pit in the ground and nodded. “One, two” —she lifted her hands and cupped them over her ears, head turning at the last second—“three.” The lock split cleanly, with none of the shrapnel he’d feared from a poorly forged device. “Okay. I got this.” The top of the pit levered open like a bin, and the woman scrambled towards him on all fours, too anxious to get out of the confining space to attempt to stand. “Come on out. Come here.”
“Shift left. Let me scan the woods again. Shoulda launched the drone.” He adjusted his body position as Alace had asked, and twisted his torso in a short arc as he released the latch, the woman having made it to the grass beside him. “Okay, you’re clear. Take care of her.”
“No time to deal with the tech.” Owen dropped to his knees next to the woman, who was stretched out flat on the grass.
She looked like she was trying to claw herself away from the pit behind her, muttered phrases interspersed with piercing cries. He managed to isolate a couple of words, and winced as she sobbed, “I’m out. I’m okay. Not dead. I’m out.”
“Shhhh. What’s your name?” The woman flipped to her back, heels digging into the dirt and grass as she attempted to shove away from him. The stark fear on her face tore at his chest, leaving behind a burning hatred for the bastard who had done this to another human. “I’m not going to hurt you. Are you hungry? Thirsty? I’ve got water and food.” He pointed to the backpack he’d dropped at the other end of the pit, not having even registered when he discarded it, so focused had he been on moving the barrel to see what lay underneath. “A friend has already called the authorities. I expect we’ll hear a helicopter within an hour, but I can help you until they get here. What’s your name?” It took him a split second, but he remembered the alias Alace had set up for him before he made an irrecoverable mistake. “I’m Mathew, Mathew Smith. You want some water?”
She nodded, short bursts of silent movement, her introverted muttering gone as if she’d never spoken.
“Water, got it. I’m just going to go over and get my pack.” Her gaze flicked down and back up to his face, and he realized he was still holding the pistol. “I’m not putting this up just yet. The man, the one who did this to you, if he comes back, I want to be able to keep you safe. I’m going to keep you safe, okay? I’m not going to hurt you. Promise.” Owen eased to his feet and took a step away from the woman, seeing how even that small distance gave her more comfort. “I’m just getting my pack.”
It continued like that for the next hour. At one point he’d heard a helicopter, but Alace had quickly confirmed it wasn’t the one dispatched to his location.
He talked the woman into accepting food and water, and the flimsy-feeling space blanket from his pack. Each thing was yanked from his hand as if he would pull back the offering at the last minute. He watched her eating and couldn’t take the way she kept her gaze on him the whole time, glancing away but quickly moving it back to him, ensuring he didn’t do anything alarming.
Keeping his communication with Alace on the subvocal level, he asked for updates. While handling the controls of the tiny drone he’d finally launched at her insistence, she was also tracking the information relayed from the police to the forest service, and finally the nearby fire tower. That would likely be the first person they saw, because the helicopter he expected was farther away but on track to arrive within the next thirty minutes.
He asked, not sure he wanted to know what Alace thought but needing to put it out to the universe, “Do you think she was here somewhere when I was here the other day?”
“No way of knowing until she’ll give you a name.” Keys clacking in the background told him Alace was already trying to solve the mystery. “I’ve got the names and descriptions of the most recent disappearances you and I thought were suspect. Maybe we can start with those?”
Owen studied the woman currently curled into a tight ball, arms wrapped around the blanket covering her legs, taking up as little space in this wide-open field as possible. He lined up her apparent age with the missing women he’d spent so much time studying and fought a grimace when he realized her likely identity.
“Nyla Davison?” The way her head snapped up gave everything away, and he gave her a small smile even as he heard Alace laughing in his ear. “That’s you, right? Nyla?” She nodded slowly. “You went to work but didn’t get there. They found your car parked in a car wash.”
“There was a man and a little girl standing next to a broken-down car.” These first coherent words from her were a revelation, and the first crack in her eerie composure. Tears tracked down her face as she said, “She tried to tell me. I didn’t understand, but she told me the boogie man would get me. ‘Don’t talk to strangers,’ she said. ‘The boogie man will kill you.’ But I di
dn’t listen. I’d stopped, because there was a little girl. I didn’t see the van. Didn’t see what he did to knock me out. I came to inside the van, and the little girl was tied to me.” She sucked in a breath that caught a half a dozen times, gaze fixed on the ground in front of her bare feet. “Locked together. He kept us in the van for days. Then he parked it and was gone for so long I thought we’d die there. Chained to the seats like we were, we couldn’t get away. No, we couldn’t, could we? No. The earth shook. It shook and was loud, and when he opened the door, it was like thunder; then I woke up here. I woke up in the dirt. In the earth, with dirt over my head. Surrounded by dirt. I’m not dead, am I? I was buried.”
“The little girl.” Owen knelt, one knee in the dirt, every muscle strung tight. “Where is she?”
“She’s dead.” Stated so baldly, the woman’s matter-of-fact recitation tore the ground out from under Owen. “He said he left her in the van. She was too young, but she was the daughter of a woman he knew. He said he knew me, too. But he didn’t. I don’t know him.” Her voice had gained in volume and pitch as she talked, eyes widening until the white sclera created brilliant slashes across her face. Owen watched as she lost the bit of composure she’d had, tangled hair flopping forward over her bony knees. “I didn’t know him. I didn’t know what he’d do. I stopped because he had the girl.”
“Nyla, you couldn’t have known what kind of monster he was. You were doing good, being the responsible citizen and trying to make sure your fellow humans were safe. You did good. You couldn’t have known.” More than anything, he ached to wrap her in a hug and convince her she was safe now. There was no way she’d accept the touch as comforting, though, so he shoved down the impulse and kept talking to her instead. “You survived, and that’s pretty amazing.” She settled as he spoke, eyes hidden by the fall of hair, but the tension flowed out of her muscles. “You’re here, and alive, and you can tell the authorities about what he’s done. You couldn’t have known how twisted he was.”
“I didn’t know.” Nyla rocked forward, cheek to the tops of her knees as she stared at the woods. “I’m alive.”
“Get her to tell you about him. See what you can get before the rangers show up. They’re bringing sheriff’s deputies with them, just FYI. I guess the helo they wanted isn’t where it needed to be, so they picked a bigger bird.” Alace sighed. “Which means because they’ve got the room, they’re bringing more bodies.”
He stood and turned his back on the woman, facing the woods as he took several steps away. “Same story we settled on?” He kept his voice low but used the audible version of the mic, not wanting the unsettling sensation he felt when he used the subvocal unit too much. “Did you send the info about the other fields? I want all the women to get home, Alace.”
“They will, Owen.” Her tone was soothing, and he realized he’d fisted his hands, clenching and releasing over and over. She’s reacting to my tension. “Each of the bodies will be accounted for and returned to their loved ones. They’ll bring in ground radar once they understand the scope of what they’re looking at. We’ll get them to open those clearings in Idaho again, somehow. You’ve got this. Okay? You’re just the trail runner who stumbled onto a field, disoriented from dehydration so you’d strayed from the main trail. You found a woman and saved her. You got a text out to a friend who happens to be me, but that’s all you know. I’ve pushed that text back to your phone, so you’re covered if they want to look. You’re making it so every one of his victims will be recovered. And one of them alive. That’s a feat in and of itself. You’re there and saved Nyla. There’s nothing in the woods right now. He’s long gone. Stay close to the woman, keep her calm, and she’ll be okay.”
“You’re using the bioshit, aren’t you? That’s how you knew I was getting freaked?” He choked on a laugh as he finally holstered his gun, feeling somehow not right about laughing in what amounted to a cemetery. A field of dead. “Then you’re using some serious psychobabble on me.”
“It worked, didn’t it? I always say to apply the appropriate tools to the job to get the best possible result.” Alace sounded pleased with herself, and that did pull a chuckle from him, the humor slipping past his defenses.
“Quit preening. Is Eric there? Eric, can you make her quit now, man?”
“He’s downstairs. Do you hear the helo yet? It should be there in minutes.”
“Not yet.” As he said so, the distinctive thudding sounds reached his ears from the distance, and he shook his head. “Ope, I’m wrong. There it is. Are you tracking the bird, too? I wouldn’t put it past you. You’re a woman on a mission now. Gonna build your network and then overlay maps and shit until you’ve got everything organized just how you like it.”
“I might be tracking the bird, yes.” Alace still sounded self-satisfied. He could hear the grin she wore in the tone she used.
“Well, I might be hearing it coming in from the north.” He turned back to where Nyla still sat, face tilted to the side so she could keep him in view without looking directly at him. “You looking to keep the mic active?”
“From the north? That doesn’t make sense. Do you want the mic live while you’re talking to the rangers and other folks?”
“Yeah. It doesn’t hurt for you to hear what goes down. They’ll try to take me in with them, but I’m just a trail runner. I don’t want nor do I need a rescue. Paperwork for the gun is in order and I don’t have anything on me that’s concerning. Rest of the tech will go into the hidden pocket of the bag, so no worries there, either. I just need a refill of water and I’ll trot my happy ass back to the trailhead and my car. Then home.” He tried not to wince at the thought.
No such luck when Alace had all his involuntary information at her disposal.
“What’s wrong with your home? I thought you’d settled into the house in New Jersey, Owen. Are you still having problems staying in one place?” She was referring to a period a few months ago when he’d been between missions and had moved housing arrangements seven times in nine weeks.
“No. It’s nothing like that.” Each house had turned into a nightmare, walls closing in on him with every car door slam in an adjacent driveway. He’d stalked window to window for hours, keeping an eye on any vulnerable approach angles. The kicker had been when he lost his shit over a door-to-door salvation salesman who’d come knocking. That was when he shifted from the city with conveniently close stores and accessible entertainment, and rented a sprawling ranch along the edge of a forest just outside town. “These days my visitors are of the furry and four-footed kind, and the worst that happens is the squirrels running across the roof.”
“Then what was that reaction to the idea of going home?”
“You’re like a dog with a bone, Alace. Now’s not the time to be digging deep.” He looked over at the edge of the woods. “Anything on thermal?” The sound of the helicopter was louder now, and Nyla had already hunched her shoulders up around her ears. “They’ll be here in minutes. I’ve got stuff to tuck away.”
“Negative. Either he didn’t see or hear you and has gone along his jolly way, or the sound of the gunshot scared him off entirely. Is it something you’re worried about dealing with on your way back to the car?”
Owen stood and faced the aircraft, arms over his head as he waved widely. “No. I don’t expect to run into him. And just sayin’, we’re both of the opinion that figure was male, right? Which means I was correct when I made my original assumptions.” He waved again, turning to keep an eye on the bird as the helo circled their location, finally settling towards the ground a distance away. Even from there, the winds from the whirling blades were still enough to kick up a blinding blizzard of dust and foliage particles, and Owen tucked his face into the crook of his elbow, waiting for the engines to wind down.
“Alace, there’s just one guy in this bird.” It was a smaller craft, with barely enough room for a copilot seat in front and a narrow bench in the cargo area. “Unless they’re lying like cordwood on the floor of t
he back section, he’s all alone. I thought you said they were bringing in a bunch of folks.”
“They are. They commandeered an S&R bird, holds like twelve.” He could scarcely hear Alace over the noise of the helicopter, and he frowned deeper as he realized the pilot had opened an access port set into the larger side window, but the aircraft didn’t seem to be settling in to stay.
Nyla shrieked, hunching forwards with her arms wrapped around her torso. Red bloomed in between her fingers, and he was on the move before the implications fully registered. Diving for the ground, Owen landed on his side, elbows tucked tight to his body, before rolling to his stomach and sighting down the barrel of the gun, not even aware of having pulled it from the holster. A puff of dust less than a foot from his face confirmed the intuitive reaction as the right one.
“What’s going on?” Alace was screaming in his ear, but he didn’t have time to talk to her. He didn’t have time for anything as the man’s hand appeared through the sliding window, a black pistol seemingly grafted to his fingers. The barrel turned towards Owen, and he rolled to evade the shot he was certain was coming. He didn’t have time to sight or aim but took a shot on the move, his gun swinging from right to left as he pulled the trigger three times. One hit the window just over the man’s hand, and the shrapnel from the implosion of the canopy made the man’s gun useless. It’s hard to pull triggers without fingers. His second shot impacted the canopy inches to the side of the first one, and a huge crack split up through the windscreen. His movement had slowed, the arc of the gun’s trajectory perfectly lined up so his third shot entered through that crack and pierced the man’s throat, a spray of blood and tissue covering the inside of the cabin.
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