Darger raced up to within about ten feet. Then she got her gun on him. Arms trembling in front of her again.
“Freeze,” she said, her voice sounding wet from the reverb here. She was sucking wind, but so was he.
He’d just gotten his feet under him, but now he looked up at Darger, stared down the barrel of her gun. His hands went up in slow motion.
“Any moves now, and I’ll shoot. I promise you that.”
She inched closer. Cautious.
Blood wept from the point of his chin. Drizzled fat droplets onto the rocky floor of the cavern. He slow-blinked at her a few times, appearing meek. Again reminding her of a dog, though this time a scolded one.
His eyes drifted away from Darger to the wall ahead of him and went a little blank.
When she’d edged within five feet of him, Worm lurched. He went straight at the wall, as if he thought he might launch himself through the rock.
Darger squeezed the trigger a beat late. Missed. The crack of the gunfire rumbled, the report made piercing in the enclosed space. Spiky in her ears.
The bullet ricocheted off the rock and whizzed around, ringing and shuddering.
Darger wheeled to point the gun at him again.
That was when Darger saw the gray metal electrical box mounted on the wall, wired into the strand of bulbs illuminating the tunnel.
Worm hung from the box, latching onto it like a monkey. Body taut. Bent arms quivering. It looked like he was trying to do a pull up. All at once, he yanked down on the lever protruding from the side of it. Hard. It snapped like a broken twig.
Then the lights winked out all around them.
Chapter 70
Darger breathed in the dark. Blinked. Gaped at the black nothingness.
His feet scuffed next to her. Skin scraping against grit and stone. And then he was on her.
She squeezed the trigger, but it was too late.
He’d grabbed her from the side. Tipped her forward. Jammed her arms down toward the ground.
The orange muzzle flash lit both of them up. A momentary burst of brightness bucking and lurching between them. She could see her round fired into the rocky cavern floor, and then the dark swallowed everything again.
She twisted free of his grasp. Shuffled backward off balance. The soles of her shoes rasping over the rock.
She swung the gun back to where he’d been. Moved her finger to the trigger.
Pressure found her hands. Raked the gun away from her. Pried it from her fingers. Tumbling. Clattering to the hard ground.
No.
She lurched after it. Chased the sound. Flailing forward into blackness.
And she kicked it. Felt her toes swoop into the hunk of polymer, fling it scraping away over the rock.
No. No. No.
His arms grappled around her. Squeezing. Constricting around her ribcage like two snakes. His hands fumbled upward, rigid things clutching at her sternum, at her chest, at her collarbone. Seeking her throat.
She got her feet wide, made some space, and threw an uppercut. Fist heaved upward between them.
She felt her knuckles bludgeon his chin. Flipping his head straight back.
And his arms lost some of their strength. His grip on her loosened. Uncinching.
She followed it up with a hook. Legs stepping into it. Hips and shoulders dipping to give the shot leverage, shifting all of her weight forward.
Her fist clubbed the side of his jaw. Wrenched his head away.
He let her go. Stumbled back.
And it felt good. Unloading all of her aggression through her fists.
She stalked forward a couple of paces. Then she remembered the gun and changed course.
She got low. Clambered toward where she’d last heard the weapon on hands and knees. Feeling along the ground. Reaching into the darkness.
So dark. Confusing. She could be going the wrong direction by now. But she trusted her gut.
Her fingertips brushed at cold protrusions and puckered indentations in the stone. Breath wheezing in and out of her lips. Mind whirring, lurching, spitting out panicked snippets over and over.
Where is the fucking gun?
And then his foot found her face. Kicked her in the teeth. Launching her up and backward.
Bright motes of light exploded behind her eyes. Blinding. Turning to pink splotches that floated everywhere.
She floated backward into the blackness. Arms flailing. Disoriented.
When she hit down, it took a second to make sense of things. She’d flipped from her hands and knees into a crab-walk position. Kicked ass over tea kettle. Skull still ringing from it.
She scrabbled to her feet and ran.
Chapter 71
The paramedics loaded Lily onto a stretcher and carried her out of the basement. Once they were upstairs, they transitioned her to a gurney and hooked her up to an IV. One of them wiped some of the dirt from her eyelids and cheeks with an antiseptic wipe, her skin looking paper-white against the rim of crud that remained.
She looked peaceful if a little grim, Loshak thought, as he trudged alongside the procession. And his mind couldn’t help but leap into the past, to the image of his own daughter laid out in the casket, far too young.
The cancer had seeped the life from Shelly. Drained it from her cheeks and chin first, the cherub-like roundness of those last remnants of baby fat growing ever more lean, ever more gaunt. Bony. Skeletal. Then the rest of her went frail, turned her old before her time.
The process worked slowly at first — a subtle thinning. It went faster toward the end.
Until she wasn’t herself anymore. Not really.
She’d been just ashy skin stretched over a skeleton by the end. Emaciated down to all hard angles. Gray and cadaverous even before she passed.
When he sat in the hospital room, all he wanted was to be able to tell her it would be OK, that it would all be OK. And he couldn’t.
In the casket, she’d looked more serene. They’d worked their mortician tricks. Brought back some color. Restored some sense of fleshiness to her face.
And part of Loshak had wondered, even as he looked upon his dead child’s visage, whether they’d shoved cotton into the mouth to plump the cheeks, whether they’d injected something to give the brow and chin and lips some substance.
But another part of him had accepted the image they’d made. Her suffering was over after all. Only the memories remained. Why question the white lie laid out here? Who did the skepticism serve?
The gurney thumped over a grout line in the tile floor, and Loshak snapped back to the moment. His eyelids fluttered, and he refocused on the girl sprawled beside him.
He wished so badly he could ask her about the case, ask her about exactly what Cowboy was up to. And yet, his concern in this moment leaned away from the endless quest for information that comprised his career. He just wanted her to be OK.
Her eyes peeled open. Blinked. Swiveled everywhere.
Loshak’s heart leaped. Pounded at the bony bars of his ribcage. When he tried to speak, to say something to her, his tongue felt glued to the roof of his mouth.
He’d expected some surprise or panic in the moments after she woke up. Expected her to be alarmed at the sudden change of scenery, even if it was for the better. But that peaceful look remained on her face.
Loshak gripped her hand, and her eyes rotated to meet his. She smiled faintly, and a lump shifted in his throat. He wanted to ask her about fifteen different questions at once, but those would come later. For now, he would tell her it was OK.
“We got him,” he said, his voice coming out shaky with emotion. “We got the guy who did this to you. Cowboy is dead.”
She blinked hard. Twice. Sucked a gasp in between her lips.
“What about the other one?” she said, her voice cracking.
Loshak swallowed again, found it more difficult this time.
“The other?”
“His partner.” Lily blinked hard. “Worm.”
And th
e word echoed in Loshak’s mind.
Partner.
Chapter 72
Darger ran. Knifed forward into the darkness. Jaw clenched tight.
She held one arm out in front of her, hand scooping at empty space, doing something of a doggy paddle there. The fingers of her opposite hand traced along the wall of the cavern to keep her from losing her way. Feeling was all she had for navigation now, so she used it.
She tried to stay light on her feet. Flexing heel to toe. Avoiding friction with the rock surface as much as she could. All sound echoed here, strengthened by the repetitions, piling up into something impossibly loud and big in the dark that swooped and careened around on bat wings.
Now his bare feet would be an advantage, she realized. Easier to stay soundless. To sneak up on her. Picking his way over the rocky terrain.
A big breath rushed into her and made her lungs quake. The cold wind roiled in her chest.
Even her breath seemed loud here. Huge and obnoxious. Rasping puffs shuddering around her in the stillness, shivering through the air.
She focused on the wall, on the feel of it against her hand. Chilled rock brushed her skin. Smooth. It reminded her of tracing her fingers along a row of lockers back in school. Barely touching the cool metal while her mind wandered.
She stopped a second. Held her breath. Listened for his footsteps, for his breath, for any sign of him.
Nothing.
Her hand fumbled into her jacket for her phone. Clutched it within her pocket. But she stopped herself short of pulling it free.
She didn’t dare light it up here. Not yet. The glow would be visible up and down the tunnel like a flare, would lead him straight to her. For all she knew, he had her gun now. She couldn’t risk exposing her position until she was sure he wasn’t near.
Anyway, the phone might not work down here, under the dirt, encased in thick rock. Probably wouldn’t, she thought. If she could find some kind of shelter, some enclosed space in the craggy wall that might conceal her, she’d try it.
She stumbled on, feet catching on knobby bits of rock now and again, planes of stone jutting up like shelves. They sent her tumbling forward, and then she’d stab a leg into the ground and catch herself over and over. Moving on. Trying to stay quiet.
Mostly she kept her eyes closed. Felt somehow less bewildered by the dark that way, less intimidated by it. Hands endlessly patting against the wall.
She felt pretty certain that she was moving uphill, away from the lake, away from the house, deeper into the cave. The sloping pathway below seemed to suggest that, moving on an incline. Or so it felt in the dark. Water would funnel downhill. Race for the lowest spot, which must be that lake and those wet troughs along the way there.
In any case, she hoped she was moving away from the lake. If this passage eventually connected to the caves the police were already searching — and she suspected it did — then she was heading for a certain kind of safety. Maybe Loshak or Ambrose lay at the end of this underground path.
If he was headed the other way, back toward the house, hopefully the backup she’d requested would be there already. Waiting for him above that hole in the basement. What had Loshak called it earlier? The cavalry.
She ran. And breathed. And listened to the upbeat murmur of her heart banging away in her chest, squishing and thumping.
Something clicked and echoed down the long stone chamber. A sharp sound. Metallic.
Darger froze. Feet stopping short beneath her. Both hands retracting toward her chest.
She listened.
The clinking sound whooshed and shuddered around her. Bounced off every curve and angle of the rocky walls.
She couldn’t tell which way it was coming from.
She opened her eyes. Looked behind her through squinted eyelashes, as though slitted eyes might help her see something in the total darkness.
Black nothing stared back. The void an open thing before her. A vacancy.
She turned around. Looked that way.
Still nothing. That gaping abyss.
She swallowed. Waited. Kept her breathing as silent as she could, her chest barely moving.
And then she saw it.
A flashlight beam pushed into the dark tunnel before her, lifting up over a rise — a circle of light piercing the gloom.
Darger couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Her mind tried to perform some reassuring calculus to verify that the light was coming from the opposite way of the lake.
It was. Wasn’t it?
The glow swayed back and forth along with the gait of the person carrying the light. Stretching where it crawled over the ground. Elongating.
Then the shaft of light rose up and lurched toward her.
Chapter 73
Another flashlight beam sheared away a cylinder of darkness, rising like a lightsaber alongside the first. It shot through the cave, pulling up a few yards shy of Darger’s feet.
And then voices rang down the cavern, the echoes making them too sibilant to be understood, all esses and lip and mouth noises. She could tell by the timbre that they were male, but that was about it.
A lump formed in Darger’s throat. Bobbed there like a golf ball when she swallowed.
It has to be SWAT. Has to be.
The lurching cadence and sizzle of radio chatter all but confirmed it.
She moved that way. Jogging toward the tubes of light.
“FBI!” she said, her voice sounding dry and thin even as she raised it. She held her hands good and high.
The voices cut out and the flashlights stopped moving. She couldn’t see the officers, couldn’t even really see silhouettes beyond the lights. But she heard the rasping of hands settling onto the grips of assault rifles, the metallic ticks and clacks of the weapons being handled, being raised.
She stepped fully into the light, eyes stinging from the brightness.
“Agent Darger?” a man’s voice said from the dark behind one of the flashlights.
The two SWAT team members stepped closer, coming into view at last. Bulky Kevlar vests. Helmets. Goggles. Behind their face shields, big smiles curved the corners of their mouths upward.
“Holy shit. What are you doing down here?”
The SWAT officer studied her face, seeming to understand that she didn’t recognize him. He pulled his helmet off, that blond movie star haircut spilling out from under the shell. He smiled and tucked the helmet under his arm, standing up straighter.
“Hendrix,” Darger said. She turned to look at his partner. “And DeBarge?”
“Affirmative,” the other said, leaving his helmet on. “So wait. This is the cavern you pursued your, uh, additional suspect down?”
Hendrix clapped his partner on the shoulder.
“Told you this tunnel was hot, didn’t I? Fuckin’ told you there’d be action.”
Darger explained enough about Worm for them to understand, and DeBarge radioed it in. Hendrix gave Darger a bottle of water, and she drank long and deep before handing it back. She felt tingly, overwhelmed to be back in the light, back around human beings, but the cool water seemed to help.
“Backup is waiting at the address you gave ‘em as we speak,” DeBarge said, tucking his radio back into his belt. “Nowhere left for this asshole to run now.”
Darger felt a touch of the tension in her shoulders melt away.
“Well…” Hendrix said. “We’ve got the sucker penned in pretty good, yeah? Surrounded. Seems to me like we ought to work that way. Try to flush him out of his hole like a groundhog, you know?”
He held his helmet in both his hands, ready to put it back on.
“And if he sticks his head out?” DeBarge said.
“Why, that’s when we go and blow it off for him.”
They both chuckled at that.
And then a gunshot cracked somewhere behind them. Crashing. Roaring.
The bullet pelted Hendrix’s forehead. Made a neat hole there above his right eyebrow.
A surge of blood and goop
flung out of the back of his skull, tilting his head forward before he even started to fall.
Chapter 74
Hendrix’s body fell to the cave floor in slow motion. His eyes blank. Vacant. Jaw going slack. Mouth falling open.
His flashlight plummeted alongside him. Slipping from his limp fingers. It clattered to the floor and spun, the light swirling around and around, making oblong shadows shift and dance over the cave walls.
He belly-flopped to the cold stone. Lay there face down. Utterly inert.
That red gorge gaped up from the back of his skull, partially covered by a loose flap of his scalp. It looked like a tattered piece of parchment covered with blond hair.
Everything held still for two breaths as Darger gazed into the black hole of the wound. Her heartbeat seemed to count down to the deadline.
In that quiet moment, she saw that Hendrix’s assault rifle had been pinned under his torso on a diagonal. Tangled awkwardly in his arms. She thought she should shift his bulk and grab it.
But more shots rang out. Bullets whizzing past. Ricocheting off the rocks.
She tore her gaze away from Hendrix’s body and ran for cover, climbing the small rise she’d watched the flashlights spill over. Instinct wanted to put a barrier of rock between her and the gunfire, shuffled her legs that way.
Gunfire screamed and echoed in the enclosed space. The steady pop of the semi-automatic rifle clashed against the erratic reports from the Glock. Stone cracked into shards where the bullets hit, powdery bits pattering and swishing to the ground.
Anguished voices tangled over each other behind her. Already she couldn’t really tell who was who and where either of them were, the sounds getting jumbled, echo tails smearing over everything so she couldn’t make out the words.
She didn’t think. She just ran. Blind panic taking control. Twitching her legs in rapid flurries. Moving her into the dark once more.
The ground dipped beneath her. She skidded down the slope, and the murk pulled her under its veil, shifted her out of view of the lights behind her.
Violet Darger | Book 7 | Dark Passage Page 27
