We crammed into the elevator, shoulder to shoulder, our weapons pressed between us. I hoped our days of needing to be armed at all times had come to an end with the death of Hollan, but I understood the need to be cautious. Isaac still had a bloodied head and arms from the helicopter crash, and I didn’t miss the way Kingsley winced every time he moved. It hurt me to see them in pain, but before we could take care of their injuries, we needed to make sure everyone was safe.
The doors opened, and I blinked in surprise.
Night had fallen since we’d been underground. I hadn’t given any thought to what time it might have been, but it seemed the day had passed.
It was pitch black now. Only the circle of a full moon hanging low in the sky and the winking of stars gave us any light. The men around me tensed, muscles hardening, breath catching in lungs. Hollan might be dead, but there was still the chance some of his men might be around to continue his fight. But all remained quiet, so we edged out of the elevator, the men remaining close, creating a protective shield around me. I’d given my gun to Aunt Sarah, and I looked for her now, trying to pick her out in the dark. The hatch to the stairs didn’t open up here, but would have been farther away, closer to the tree line. I’d told her to hide, so I assumed that was what she was doing until she knew we were safe.
I wanted to call to her, but for the moment I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to alert anyone to our presence unnecessarily, and I knew the guys were still scoping the area, making sure Hollan’s men were either dead or gone. Calling out to my aunt would be like putting a flashing beacon above our heads.
We edged forward, starting to spread out. Clay’s hand wrapped around my waist and he pulled me toward him.
“Stay with me,” he said, his voice low.
I nodded. Unprotected, with no weapon of my own, I felt unexpectedly helpless. A few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have given a second thought about not being armed, but now it felt as though I was walking around naked.
A cough came from my right, and then the sound of someone being shushed. The others heard it, too, each of us freezing and turning in that direction. But no shots were fired. Nothing to make us think we were being attacked.
“Sarah?” I hissed into the night.
“Darcy?” a small voice came back.
I looked to the others, asking them if it was safe without saying a word. Isaac nodded, and I allowed myself to breathe.
The hulk of the remains of the helicopter lay like a dinosaur, collapsed and dying. I pictured Jonathan’s body still lying inside. He’d been a decent man, and he hadn’t deserved to die like that. We’d have to make sure any family was notified and that he was given a good burial.
The shape of my aunt rushed out from between the trees. Hurrying along behind her, like ducklings chasing a mother duck, were the boys, the older ones leading the way, the smaller kids sticking close to the sides of the bigger boys. I wondered what would happen to them now. I wasn’t the only one whose life was about to completely change, and it would hit them far harder than it would me.
“Are you okay?” Sarah asked as she reached me. Though the light was dim, I could see her checking me over, looking for any injuries.
I nodded. “I’m fine. I promise. What about you and the boys? Everyone safe?”
“Yes, thank God.”
We pulled each other into a tight hug, and I forced myself to let go, knowing we couldn’t waste any more time.
“Is he ...” she started to ask.
“He’s dead, Aunt Sarah. The man who killed Dad is dead.”
Her lips pressed together, containing her emotion. She gave a sharp nod. “Good.”
“There’s something we still have to do,” I told her. “We have to go and get some of the other boys. They’re all alone. They need us. Can you take one of the vans and drive this group back to our house? I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
She nodded. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Yes, I’ll be fine. Hollan’s dead. This is almost over. We just need to make sure the other boys are safe.”
She lowered her voice. “Where’s Devlin?”
My shoulders stiffened. “He’s alive. We left him still handcuffed down there.”
“What? Why?” Shock registered on her face.
“He’d colluded with Hollan all those years ago, so Hollan could get him the coordinates for all the locations. He thought he had a right to know, but in doing so let them get into Hollan’s hands. If it hadn’t been for Dad taking the memory stick and putting the code on it, both of them would have known the coordinates years ago.”
“So Devlin knew Hollan was the one who killed your father? And he did nothing?”
“He wanted to get the memory stick back, but he knew it was no use without the code. I guess he was worried Hollan was going to expose him or thought they’d get hold of the code one day, which I guess is where I came in.”
She brought her fingers to her lips. “Jesus.”
I shook my head, turmoil churning up inside me. “I gave it right to him.”
She touched my arm, trying to offer me some comfort. “You had no way of knowing, Darcy. You were doing what you thought was right at the time.”
I sucked in a deep breath, trying to control my emotions.
“We gotta go, Darc,” Alex called to me.
I glanced over to where the guys were waiting and nodded. “Yeah, I’m coming.”
“We’ll talk more later, okay, when all this is done? I’ll meet you back at the house.”
“I want to go with Isaac and Clay,” one of the boys cried.
“We’ll be with you soon, buddy,” Clay said. “Be good for Sarah, okay? It’ll be a couple of hours, and then we’ll all be back together again.”
My aunt gave me a final hug then gestured for the boys to follow her down the hill, toward where the vehicles were parked. We’d be going that way, too, needing to get ourselves on the road and toward the place we believed the boys were being held. I had to believe we were right about the location. Being wrong didn’t bear thinking about.
We wanted to move faster, but were cautious of Kingsley and possibly broken ribs. But knowing time was running out pushed us on. Alex helped Kingsley, supporting him with a shoulder under his armpit, Kingsley’s arm around his neck. We needed to watch our footing, too. In the dark, the numerous pieces of rusted machinery from when this place was a working forestry still lay around, and it would be easy to go over on an ankle. We didn’t need any more injuries right now.
We reached the vans. I had the horrible thought that Hollan might have sabotaged them before entering the base, preventing any possible escapees. The idea made me nauseated. What would we do then? We were a couple of hours away, and there was no way we’d reach the boys in time. It wasn’t as though we could just call an Uber out here. But then I realized Hollan’s vehicles must be around here someplace. His men had had to arrive in something. They must have been parked somewhere beneath the canopy of the trees, hidden from our approaching view when we’d been in the helicopter.
But, despite my fears, Isaac located the keys beneath the visor of one of the vehicles, and within minutes we’d all piled in and the engine was running.
I only hoped we’d get there in time.
Chapter Nineteen
Isaac drove as fast as he dared, his fingers tight around the steering wheel, his knuckles white. I wanted to put my hand on his arm or shoulder, try to offer him some kind of comfort, but I didn’t want to remove his attention from the road.
We swapped the paper map for the more high-tech Sat-Nav on Isaac’s laptop. He’d handed it to me as soon as we’d climbed in, and I now sat with it balanced on my lap, staring at the screen and willing the miles away. I wished there had been a way of getting the feed of the boys linked to this computer so we could at least have seen them. Leaving them, even though it was only on a video feed, felt like a strange kind of abandonment.
Now that we were no longer expecting to be attacked at a
ny moment, Alex took the time to check Kingsley over properly. Kingsley was able to lie across the back seat, though he still needed to have his legs bent and his neck propped up against the opposite side—like a grown man trying to sleep in a toddler bed.
“I don’t think they’re broken,” Alex said after checking him over. “You might have some fractures, but that’s impossible for me to tell without an X-ray. I’ll strap them up, and that should give you some relief.”
“Thanks,” Kingsley growled, wincing with pain.
“I’ve got some painkillers, too. They’ll help take the edge off.”
“Nothing too strong,” Kingsley said. “I need my head clear.”
Clay leaned back in his seat. “You think we can’t pull this off without your brains, Kingsley?”
“That’s exactly what I think.”
Clay snorted, and I tried to smile. I wanted to relax, but the faces of those poor boys kept appearing in my head. I hated to think of how terrified they must be—to be kidnapped and then held in such conditions. I remembered George’s description of them and placed their names to the faces in my mind—the youngest, Tad, at only six, and Scott and Xander at eleven, and Chris, who was the oldest boy at twelve years old.
I hoped George was all right with Andrea and the boys from the second base. At some point, I hoped we’d all be able to be reunited and figure out what came next, but that would be a whole different meeting if we didn’t make it to the boys in time.
My stomach curdled with anger toward a dead man. How could anyone do that? I’d always known he was a bastard, but using children to try to secure his getaway was the lowest of the low.
The van ate away the miles. We left the smaller roads and ended up on the freeway. I prayed there wouldn’t be any accidents or traffic. The late hour meant the roads were quiet, and Isaac pushed the van as fast as he could. Two hours had passed since Hollan had told us the boys only had a matter of hours, and I feared we would be too late.
“There!” Lorcan pointed to an exit.
Isaac took it, swerving the vehicle hard enough that we all had to lean to the side to prevent ourselves being thrown.
“How far now?” Clay asked.
“Thirty minutes, at the most.”
Anxiety coiled at my gut, and I leaned forward, my fingers hooking over the seat in front, gripping it tight. What if we were too late? What if we were in the wrong place? The thought of finding those boys’ bodies and knowing we could have done something about it made me feel sick. I wasn’t sure how any of us would live with ourselves, but in particular I was worried about Isaac. He was the one who’d pulled the trigger and ended Hollan’s life, when he could have let him go. It was true, Hollan may not have even freed the boys, and might have once more walked free with no repercussions, but we’d never know for sure.
The road we were on narrowed. Ahead of us, the shapes of buildings rose into the night sky. Big, ugly, concrete structures.
“We’re close to the river,” Alex said, leaning forward in his seat.
“That’s a good sign, right?” I said hopefully.
“Let’s hope so.”
Isaac slowed the van to a crawl as we approached the water treatment plant. A high, chain link fence ran around the concrete buildings, with signs to stay out attached at regular intervals. Floodlights lit the grounds. I guessed this place ran twenty-four hours a day.
Isaac pulled the van to a halt, and we jumped out. We’d brought a hacksaw from the base, hoping to use it to cut through the combination lock, and Clay grabbed it from the back. A rancid stench filled the air, and we all covered our noses with hands or the tops of our shirts. The rush of a river on the other side filtered through to our ears.
“We’ve got to get in there.”
The place was big—far bigger than I’d been expecting. How the hell were we supposed to find four small boys in a place this size?
At first I’d thought the place looked deserted, but then there was movement from the other side of the chain link fence. Each of us froze, and I saw the men reach for their weapons. I still felt bereft without my gun. I should have picked up a replacement, but I’d been too caught up in wanting to reach the boys quickly. Anyway, I hoped we wouldn’t need it. Now that Hollan was taken care of, we were safe. It was only the boys who weren’t.
A security guard came running over. He looked to be in his fifties, with a receding hairline and hollow cheeks. “Hey, what do you think you’re doing? This is private property.”
Isaac flashed him the badge, the same ID he’d shown to Andrea. There was no way the guard understood what it meant, but it looked official, and that was enough to grab his attention. “I need you to open up.”
The guard frowned. “Why? What’s happening?”
“We have reason to believe you have children on your premises who are in danger. If you don’t let us in, you’re going to have their blood on your hands.”
Panic flitted across the guard’s face. “Kids? I ain’t seen no kids around here.”
“Just do as I say.”
The guard took a bunch of keys off his belt and got to work unlocking the padlock which hooked a chain from the gate to the fence. It rattled, the metal clinging together as the chain fell open, and the gate swung wide.
Isaac stepped through, leading the way, and the rest of us followed. The guard stared at us with wide, shocked eyes, clearly with no idea of what was going on and why all these people had turned up in the middle of the night.
“What’s your name?” Isaac asked him.
“Tony Ferrera,” he replied, his eyes darting between us.
“Listen to me, Tony” Isaac said. He always had a way of getting people to pay attention to him, to take him seriously. “We have reason to believe there are four children on the property and they’re in extreme danger. Their lives are at risk. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
“I ain’t seen no children!” he repeated.
Isaac ignored him. “A man named Lyle Hollan brought them here earlier—or it’s possible he had someone else do it. Either way, it doesn’t matter. We’ve seen live footage of the boys, and they’re here, but they’re chained up somewhere that’s going to fill with water shortly, if it hasn’t already. It’s made of concrete, and has curved walls. Can you think of anywhere here that fits that description?”
Confusion flooded the man’s face. “Err ... I don’t know ...”
“Think, please!” I begged him. “Children’s lives are in danger!”
He scrubbed his hand across the top of his head and looked around as though the answer might appear in midair. “Well, water’s moving around this place all the time, but the main pipes are always full, so no one would be able to be inside them. The overflow pipe is mostly empty, though. They get flushed out once a day, about this time.”
We glanced at each other.
“Curved walls and concrete could easily be the bottom of a pipe. That must be it,” Isaac said. “Show us where it is.”
The guard nodded then turned and took off at a run. We followed him, each of us jogging, though I glanced back toward Kingsley and could see he was in pain. He didn’t complain, though, and I had to stop myself from reaching out and squeezing him.
The stench of the place grew stronger. The running made me want to breathe hard, but I limited myself to shallow breaths.
“We have to go inside to access it,” said the guard. “It’s this way.” He’d stopped at the front of a square building, nowhere near as big as the main part of the plant. A heavy metal door barred the way, but he reached to grab his keys and unlocked it.
“What’s that noise?” I asked.
The sound of water rushing deep beneath our feet.
“The pipes are being cleared out already,” he said.
Oh, God, no. Were we too late?
The building housed equipment and a hole in the ground which had a ladder descending into it.
Isaac glanced at the equipment. “Is it possible to
shut off the water?”
Tony shook his head. “No, it’s too late now. It’s already started.”
“Shit.”
“We have to get down there,” I cried.
We didn’t wait any longer. Isaac, Lorcan, and Clay went first, and I followed, climbing down, hand over foot, trying to move fast enough. I dropped down, and the shock of ice cold water hit me. It was already up to my thighs. How much give had the boys had on the ends of those chains? I tried to remember. If they were tied too tightly, they might be submerged already.
Behind me, Kingsley, Alex, and the security guard dropped into the water. The guard had a flashlight and used it to illuminate the way. We had flashlights on our phones as well, and soon the huge pipe was lit with several swathes of light. I didn’t know how long the phones would last with all this water around.
I looked around, desperately trying to spot some sign of the boys. We were in a large, concrete cylinder, about eight feet high, but I saw no sign of the children.
“Chris!” I yelled, my voice hollow in the tight space, bouncing back at me from the top of the water. “Tad? Scott? Xander?”
I listened hard, my ears straining. But there was nothing.
My heart sank, and angry, frustrated tears bit at the backs of my eyes.
Then a faint cry came back to us. “Help!”
“Oh, God.”
Tony gasped. “Jesus Christ, there really is someone down here.”
I wanted to comment that we weren’t exactly doing this for fun, but figured now wasn’t the time for smart-assed remarks.
We all hurried. The force of the water behind pushed us forward. Ice cold, nipping at my skin, threatening to steal my breath and take the feeling away from my limbs. Feeling as though my feet were going to be swept out from under me, I reached out blindly. My fingers caught a forearm, and I glanced over to make out Clay’s profile in the gloom.
Those kids were in the dark with the water rushing at them.
“We’re coming!” I called out. “Just hang on.”
Another cry of fear met our ears, followed by the sound of soft crying, barely distinguishable over the rush of water.
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