When Darkness Builds (The Caldera Series)

by M. C. Sutton

  Sam wrinkled his forehead. “He who?”

  “I’d suggest asking your girlfriend here,” said Mac. “But I don’t think she’s going to get the chance to answer your question.”

  And neither would Mac.

  The bullet entered the back of his skull in a great, fiery, roaring pop. He fell to the floor like a collapsing building, taking Dr. Grant down with him.

  Sam stared into the darkness, unable to breathe. “You actually killed him.”

  “He’s not the first,” Grant said quietly, reemerging from the hiding place he’d slipped into across the hall before they’d even heard Mac’s footsteps.

  “I still don’t get how you knew he was coming.”

  “I just did,” said Grant, dropping to his knees beside his wife. “Now help me.”

  Together, they rolled Mac’s body off her.

  Grant cradled her in his arms and listened to see if she was still breathing.

  “She’s cold as ice,” said Sam, taking her hand. “What did he do to her?”

  Grant closed his eyes for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “But she’s alive?”

  “Yes.” He ran a hand across his face and stood. “But she won’t be for much longer. Not unless we get this thing open,” he said, stepping toward the pop machine. He pulled a crowbar from a duffel bag at his feet.

  Sam looked down at Mac’s body. “Do we still need to do this? Mac’s dead now. He can’t trip the bomb if he’s dead.”

  “Have you, at any point in the last twelve hours, seen a detonator in his hand?”

  “Well, no, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one. Maybe we should check his body—”

  Grant grabbed him by the arm. “No! We’re running out of time.”

  Sam hadn’t yet seen the man quite this unnerved. Grant was breathing hard, his hand shaking, as if he was under an unseen pressure so great he was about to explode at any moment.

  “How do you know that?” Sam asked quietly.

  Grant looked down at his wife, who lay silent on the floor behind them. “I just know, okay? Now stop asking stupid questions and help me get this thing open.”

  They positioned themselves to pry the thing open, Sam with the crowbar jammed beneath the lock, Grant pulling as Sam pushed. Between the two of them it took less than a minute to get the pop machine open.

  Sam stared in shock at the glow of chemical-filled canisters and wash of monochrome wires. He swallowed hard. A timer was nestled at the right side of the machine. They had less than four minutes left.

  Running out of time was an understatement.

  “Hackett?” Grant said quietly.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you know how to disarm this thing?”

  Sam stepped up to the bomb. He studied the layout of the components, his eyes repeatedly darting to the ticking timer. He pushed wires out of the way, attempting to distinguish what each one did, trying desperately to remember all the different schematics Mac had gone over with him.

  “Oh, no.”

  “What?” said Grant.

  Sam stepped back and wiped his brow with a trembling hand. “Mac knew he would have problems getting ahold of strong enough explosives to get the bang he wanted. The feds have that stuff all so tightly regulated now.”

  “Less bang is good, right?”

  “It would be…” said Sam.

  He looked at the timer. Three minutes nineteen seconds.

  “… if this were the only bomb.”

  Grant’s jaw dropped.

  “Some of the wires are sequencers,” Sam explained. “There are over a dozen of them, which means Mac must have bombs spread throughout the entire hotel—maybe farther. My god, he must have been setting all this up for months. With that amount of explosives, positioned just right, he could level half of downtown Dallas.”

  Grant ran a shaking hand through his hair.

  “I can’t stop this bomb from going off,” said Sam. “There isn’t enough time to disarm it, even if I could remember how. But I can lessen the impact. I can cut the sequencers. I know how to do that much, at least.” He looked down at Dr. Grant. “That should give you guys just enough time to get far enough away.”

  Grant’s eyes met his.

  Sam pulled his diary from his back pocket. “There’s a note in here for my wife,” he said, barely able to choke out the words. “Give it to Dr. Grant. She’ll know what to do with it. And tell her—” He hesitated, holding out the diary. “Tell her that I know it’s all going to be okay.”

  Grant took the diary from Sam’s hand. “I’m so sorry,” he said quietly. “I tried. I’m just not…” He trailed off, shaking his head at the floor.

  “Jon,” said Sam, putting a hand on his shoulder. An odd calm washed over him. “I don’t know what Mac was talking about out there, but I’d have to be stupid not to see that something way bigger than me is going on here. I don’t have any idea who or what you are, but what I do know is a lot of good people have sacrificed themselves to keep you two safe, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to be the reason they fail. Now, I’m sorry for the part I’ve played in all this. Truly, I am. But it’s still my mess. And, ultimately, it’s my responsibility.” He looked at Dr. Grant and nodded. “And she’s yours.”

  Grant took a deep breath. “Thank you, Sam Hackett,” he said, offering his hand.

  Sam shook it. “You’re very welcome, Captain Grant.”

  “I may not be able to stop it myself,” said Grant, lowering his voice. He squeezed Sam’s hand, an odd gleam in his eyes. “But maybe I can help.”

  Sam suddenly remembered every schematic and bit of information Mac had ever shown him on bomb-making.

  Grant smiled. “Good luck.”

  Sam nodded.

  And with that, Jonathan Grant scooped up his wife and disappeared into the darkness of the hallway. The Grants, whoever they were, were gone.

  Sam was alone.

  He took a deep breath and pulled a pair of wire cutters from Grant’s duffel bag. Glancing at the timer every few seconds, he carefully snipped each of the sequencing wires in order, one by one. He had only made it to the fifth one when he heard a voice behind him.

  “Well, now, isn’t this inspiring.”

  Sam looked over his shoulder. Standing at the entrance to the alcove, his face illuminated in the glow of the chemical compounds, was Stephen Bennett.

  “Minister?” said Sam.

  “Hello, Mr. Hackett.”

  Sam looked at the timer. There was less than a minute left. “Sir,” he said, “you’ve got to get out of here. This thing is going to go off any second. You’ve got to get as far away as possible!”

  But Bennett just stood there, grinning, as if Sam had just warned him that he was about to miss a sale at Macy’s. He eyed the timer. “Oh, now, that won’t do, I think,” he said. He pressed a few numbers on the keypad beneath the timer. The timer paused. “There we go. Give us a chance to chat.”

  Sam’s jaw dropped. “You mean it was you? You’re the one Mac was talking about? You’re the one who told him all that stuff about the Grants? You’re the ‘he’?”

  “Not quite,” said Bennett. “That he that you are so irreverently referring to—I am not worthy enough to even latch his shoe, as the saying goes.” He narrowed his eyes. “But I will be soon.”

  Sam’s thoughts turned to the gun holstered at his side.

  Bennett grinned. “Don’t give yourself, as you call it, ‘false hope,’ Mr. Hackett.”

  Sam sucked in a sharp breath.

  “Oh, you’d be surprised at the things I’ve seen. The things I know. Far more than that idiot Mac. And I just so happen to know that you won’t be going anywhere. In fact,” he said, putting a hand on Sam’s shoulder, “I don’t believe you’ll be doing anything at all for the next forty-five seconds.” He glanced at the wires Sam had cut and frowned. “We can’t have you causing any more damage than you’ve already done.”

  Sam wanted
to run. He wanted to scream. He wanted to do anything other than stand there frozen with Bennett’s slimy hand on his shoulder. But for some reason, he couldn’t move. For some reason, he could no longer even think.

  “There now, that’s better,” said Bennett, cocking his head. “You people really are quite small, aren’t you? You think yours is the only world? Yours is the only universe. But you’re wrong.” He stepped in closer and lowered his voice. “So very, very wrong.”

  Bennett punched something into the keypad, and the timer resumed its countdown. He closed the door of the pop machine and dusted his hands as if he’d just taken out the trash. “Now you be a good little Native and stay right here,” he said, then strolled away.

  Sam couldn’t move. He could only stare motionless at the pop machine, his vision blurring, until all he could see was a wash of red and white. He tried hard to focus his mind on it, to climb out of the fog and understand what he was seeing, what was going on. His mind was screaming at him to do something. To see something. But what was it that he needed to do? What was it he needed to see?

  Summoning all his strength, he managed to reach out a hand.

  But it was too late.

  The red and white shattered into a million tiny pieces and came blasting toward him in a great ball of orange flame.

  The last thing he saw was a tinge of brown against the blurred outline of his hand.

  Nothing more.

  CHAPTER 35

  Are you frightened?

  No.

  You should be.

  Emma opened her eyes slowly. Jon held her in his arms, bounding down a darkened stairwell. She wanted to ask him to stop jiggling her, for fear she would throw up all over the front of his shirt. But she could feel his anxiety, his heart pounding wildly in his chest, and knew they were running out of time.

  At the bottom of the stairwell, Jon dropped her to her feet as he cracked the door open and peered out. “Damn it,” he said, resting his head against the door. “Mac’s guys are everywhere.”

  Emma felt more disoriented than she had all night.

  Jon squared his shoulders and drew his gun. “Well, if we’re going to do this, we better go,” he said, taking her by the wrist.

  Emma pulled away. “Wait, Jon.” She looked up the stairs. “Something’s wrong.”

  “You’re damn right there’s something wrong. We’re in a twenty-four-story building with a bomb that’s about to go off. That’s what’s wrong! We’ve got to go!” He reached for her hand again. “Right now!”

  Emma stepped out of his reach. “No. It’s something else.” Her eyes followed the stairs up into the darkness. She glanced at Jon—

  “Emma!” His eyes widened. “Don’t you dare!”

  —and ran up the stairs.

  “Emma, wait!”

  She’d made it as far as the next landing when the building blew up around them.

  All Emma remained aware of before blacking out was a deafening ringing in her ears and the feeling of being crushed, as if she were trapped inside a car in a compactor. When she finally opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was the glint of her wedding ring on her own limp and bloody hand. She had no idea whether moments or hours had passed while she lay there unconscious, buried beneath a cold claustrophobia of mangled steel and concrete.

  “Emma!”

  She thought she heard Jon—thought she heard someone—call for her in the distance.

  “Em-maaaaa!”

  “Jon,” she managed in no more than a whimper. She tried to take a deep breath, but was met by a painful inability to inflate her lungs.

  He’s not going to find you, you know, said a voice in her head. No matter how much he searches, no matter how much he tries, you’re already lost to him. You always have been. And the sooner you realize that, the sooner you give in, the better off they’ll all be.

  No! I don’t believe you! Emma screamed to herself. He will find me! Jon always finds me!

  “Emma?”

  This time the voice came from just above her head.

  It was Jon.

  An incredible warmth washed over her as he slipped an arm through a crack above her and took her hand.

  “Emmy, honey, it’s going to be okay,” he said, then shouted, “Richard! Quinn!”

  Emma tried to move, but she couldn’t manage so much as an inch beneath the rubble. She thought she heard scuffling and shifting of the debris above her, but couldn’t tell for sure. It was getting harder and harder to focus on anything but the gurgling in her own chest.

  It was also getting harder to breathe.

  “Baby girl?” Her father’s voice came this time. “It’s okay, sweetheart. We’re here. You’re going to be all right.”

  “Dad,” she gasped.

  “Come on, boys,” said her dad, his voice growing more distant. “Let’s get her out of there.”

  Jon let go of her hand, and Emma suddenly felt more lost and alone than she ever remembered feeling in her life. As if she were descending into the darkness of a great and endless well, never to be seen or heard from again. No! she wanted to scream. Please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave.

  And then Emma saw images she had never seen before. She saw Torren, and the Great War, and cities burning, and people dying, and the fall of mankind. She saw the beginning and she saw the end and she saw more disturbing scenes than she would ever remember—or ever want to.

  And she heard Jon’s voice, from what seemed to be an eternity away.

  “Do you hear that?” he said.

  The pile of debris where Emma imagined her father stood stopped moving. “It sounds like water.”

  “Emma!” Jon called down.

  She choked and gasped desperately for air, but she couldn’t answer. Her chest rose a little less each time she tried to breathe as her body began to give in to exhaustion.

  “I think she’s drowning,” said Jon, his voice thick with panic. “Quinn, go find someone! Go tell them to shut off the water!”

  Before Emma lost consciousness, before she surrendered to the suffocating darkness, all she remained aware of was the realization that it wasn’t water slowly filling her lungs. It wasn’t water that Jon and her father could hear trickling through the cracks and crevices around her body.

  It was blood.

  When she woke up again, she was lying instead in a hospital room. Jon hovered over her, his eyes red, his face dirty and tear-stained. The news played on a television in the corner.

  And a team of orderlies had her pinned to the bed.

  “Nooooooo!” Emma shrieked inconsolably. “Let me go!” She gasped and she choked and she cried. She fought desperately, with an unnatural, adrenaline-fueled strength, against hands and arms and even legs attempting to restrain her. She ripped the heart monitoring pads off her chest and the oxygen mask off her face and tried—unsuccessfully, thanks to the layers of bandage wrapped around it—to rip the IV out of her arm.

  “Emma, you’re okay!” Jon shouted at her, an arm against her chest. “Calm down! Everything is okay!”

  But Emma knew better. Everything wasn’t okay. It wasn’t okay at all.

  “Ahhhhh haaa haaa haaa!” she screeched, raspy and cracking. Hot tears poured down her face and pooled in dark, dirty streaks on the bedspread. “NO! NO! NO!” she cried, realizing by the hoarseness in her throat that she must have been screaming for several minutes before coming to, though she had no idea why. She kicked and she wriggled and she cried and she pushed away hands that tried to hold the oxygen mask over her face, even though she was vaguely aware she was hyperventilating and probably needed it.

  “Emma, please! STOP!” Jon said in a near panic, as if he was about to have a breakdown himself. “Just stop!”

  Emma stopped fighting. She looked him over.

  There wasn’t a scratch on him.

  “You’re okay,” he said quietly. “It’s over.”

  And then Emma, whimpering and wheezing and exhausted, sank back into the pillows.


  Someone handed Jon the oxygen mask, and she didn’t fight him when he put it over her face. She just stared blankly up at the television in the corner, sucking in shallow breaths, her eyes heavy and her body spent.

  “The death toll continues to rise,” a reporter said, “as search-and-rescue efforts are extended to include the area surrounding the hotel, which, as you can see behind me, has been completely leveled. The current count—one hundred and thirteen—is expected to increase as rescue efforts continue through the night.”

  Jon grabbed the remote and muted the newscast. “How are you feeling?” he asked. “Better?”

  Emma continued to look at the television, at the scene of the explosion that she and Jon had somehow, miraculously, survived.

  Finally she turned to Jon.

  “You know,” she answered slowly, between shallow breaths, “when I was sick, people would ask me that constantly. I never really knew what to tell them.”

  “So what did you tell them?”

  “That I was still alive,” she said quietly.

  Emma sucked in deep breaths of the oxygen. She suddenly wanted nothing more in the entire world than to just go home. Recognizing she was in an intensive care unit, though, she feared that might not be possible. “Was it bad?” she asked.

  “Yeah, baby. It was bad,” he said quietly.

  “How long are we going to be stuck here?”

  Jon shook his head and smiled. “They’re turning you loose tomorrow.”

  “What?”

  “I said it was pretty bad,” he said, removing the mask and handing it across the bed. “But you had a pretty good doctor.”

  She followed his gaze. Standing next to the bed was Sarah.