Erin Solomon Mysteries, Books 1 - 5

by Jen Blood

  As they walked along a rough path, Jenny pointed out obstructions for Kat to step over or walk around. Kat could hear people behind them—she assumed Cameron, though he didn’t speak.

  After they’d walked long enough for her lungs to burn, her tongue swollen and bone dry in her mouth, Jenny came to an abrupt halt.

  “He wants them alive,” Kat heard Lee whisper, somewhere to her left. “That means they need water. And you can’t keep a hood on them this whole time—not in this heat. They’ll suffocate.”

  “I don’t want to spend the next sixteen hours staring at them,” Jenny bit out. Kat thought again of how uncomfortable the girl had been in the plane, looking her father in the eye.

  “I’ll handle watching them, then,” Lee said. “You should get some rest, anyway. He wouldn’t be happy knowing you’ve been up this long.”

  Kat had no idea who ‘he’ was. She had never known all the players in this game—she’d never wanted to. She learned enough to ensure her and Erin’s survival, and then she let it go. Now, though, she found herself going back over all those names: Isaac and Jonah; Jim Jones himself; Cameron and his wife, Susan; a man named Mandrake, whom she had never met; Adam… Other factions had been revealed in the past year, but Kat had never known about any of that. Adam had assured her years ago that the killing was over after Jonestown. Stupidly, she had believed him.

  There was a brief silence before Jenny spoke again, reluctance plain in the tone. “Yeah—okay, fine. But if you need anything…”

  “I’ll call,” Lee assured her.

  Kat heard footsteps retreating. A moment later, a hand tugged at the hood over her head. It was dark outside, but that darkness was nothing compared with the pure black she’d been immersed in. Lee eyed her dispassionately. She realized quickly that this hadn’t been a show of mercy on his part. He really was just keeping them alive under orders from above.

  Well, that didn’t matter. She would take what she could get, and make the most of it.

  Cameron stood a few feet apart from her, the hood still over his head. Lee pulled the tape from Kat’s mouth roughly, unconcerned at her cry of pain. The duct tape had been on long enough to bind with her skin—one pull and the sensitive flesh at her cheeks and jaw tore like paper. Tears sprang to her eyes. She pushed them far, far down.

  Cameron received the same treatment, though he made no sound when the tape was removed. They were both given water, then led to a stucco block of a building at the end of the trail. Lee kept a gun on them both as he gestured them up a single, high step and inside.

  It was black inside, the darkness broken only by moonlight streaming in through a single narrow window high off the ground.

  “We’ll come for you tomorrow,” Lee said when they were both inside. “If you scream, no one will hear you—and I’ll be forced to come in and put the tape back on.”

  Her cheek still wept blood from the first round. Kat shook her head. “You won’t need to. I won’t scream.”

  Lee looked pleased, a flicker of sadistic pleasure in his eyes at the power he obviously wielded over them both. Kat fought to keep any sign of anger from her eyes, knowing that kind of thing only fueled men like this.

  When they were alone in the room, seated on a hard concrete floor facing the only entrance, she turned to look at Cameron. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness now, reading the light and shadow in a way she couldn’t ever remember doing before. Not that what she saw inspired much hope: one barred, narrow window high up; concrete floor with a hand woven rug at its center; single exit, no doubt guarded. She noticed, however, that Cameron seemed strangely at peace.

  “You look pretty goddamn cheery for a man beaten half to death.”

  “That’s because we’re leaving.”

  “Because in addition to being a heartless brainwashed assassin, you’re also Harry Houdini?”

  “Not at all.” He smiled at her. “Just be patient.”

  It wasn’t her strong suit, but she gave it a shot, watching as Cameron squirmed himself back against the wall and then used it to leverage himself to a standing position. Then, he moved with his back to the wall, patting down the stucco with his bound hands as he went. Kat watched in silence, convinced he’d finally lost his mind. After sixty years, J had finally pushed him too far.

  Halfway across the room, he stopped. He smiled at her, using his bound hands to work something set into the wall. A piece of stucco clattered to the floor, echoing in the closed space. He paused a second, both of them holding their breath.

  No one came.

  Another thirty seconds was all it took for Cameron to free himself and return to her side, a knife gleaming in his hand. It took another minute for him to cut through the rope that bound her wrists. Gratefully, Kat stretched her arms in front of her, shaking her wrists out to restore circulation.

  “You mind telling me what the hell is going on?”

  “In time. Right now, go to the door and see if you can hear them.”

  She did as directed, pressing her ear to the wood. Outside, Lee was arguing with another of their captors—a male voice, so clearly not Jenny. She gave Cameron the report and he nodded, his face once more a mask of focus and impenetrable calm.

  He flipped up the rug at the center of the room. In all the years she had known him, Kat had never seen the man smile wider.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I told you: we’re leaving.”

  A small trapdoor was concealed beneath the rug. Cameron pulled it up with a deafening creak that, Kat was sure, had been heard all the way across the jungle.

  “What is this?” she hissed at him.

  “I’ll explain soon. Just stay quiet—we’ll be traveling directly beneath them for a couple of minutes before we’re done.”

  The darkness in the room was nothing compared to the black tunnel below. Kat watched as Cameron climbed down a wooden ladder and, moments later, was swallowed in the depths.

  She followed without a word or a backward glance.

  The tunnel was damp and dark and Kat could hear things crawling along the walls, skittering at their feet. Her body ached. The skin around her mouth was still raw. Cameron retrieved a pistol and a lantern hanging on the cave wall once they reached the bottom of the ladder, but Kat wasn’t sure being able to see the creepy crawlies around them was an improvement.

  “Where do we go now?” she whispered. “We need to reach Erin and let her know what happened.”

  “I’m not sure we’ll be able to. We can try, but finding a way to communicate with them out here will be difficult.”

  “How do you know about this place, anyway?” she asked. “What is it?”

  “Drug runners used to stay here. Mandrake knew about it, somehow or other. Susan and I used to bring Jenny here.”

  “So Jenny knew about the escape route?”

  A flash of life, maybe even hope, crossed Cameron’s face. “She did,” he said. “Her putting us there was no accident.”

  “She let us go,” Kat said, not believing it for a second. “Why the hell would she let us go? Why the hell would she let me go?”

  “She knew I wouldn’t go without you,” he said simply. “I told you she wouldn’t be able to go through with it. Susan did what she could to make her hard, but you can’t erase everything.”

  “No,” Kat said. She studied the man before her, this strange mix of integrity and brutality. “I guess you can’t.”

  They continued in silence. The tunnel wasn’t elaborate, and got smaller the deeper they got. Before long, they were both forced to their hands and knees to continue, Kat following behind Cameron in an inch or more of water the whole way. He stopped at one point, signaling her to do the same. She could hear voices nearby—above them, she thought, though the acoustics in the closed space made them hard to pinpoint. Something skittered across her hand, then crawled up her arm. Kat willed herself to stay silent until the voices faded. As soon as they were gone, she brushed at her arms and clothing,
then raked her hands through her hair in search of mite-sized monsters.

  “Are there scorpions down here?” she whispered to Cameron.

  “Probably. Just don’t think about it.”

  “Right. What an idiot—why didn’t I think of that?”

  “The great Doctor Everett isn’t really afraid of bugs, is she?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “The great Doctor Everett is afraid of anything that can kill her with a touch of its tail. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.”

  “We’ll be out soon, Katherine.”

  Not soon enough, she thought.

  Still, Kat managed to keep it together until the end, when that inch of water they’d been crawling through became at least a foot deep as the tunnel opened up. The moon shone through a hole at the top of the cave, a pale white slice of light illuminating a world brimming with life.

  “What is this?” she asked Cameron. He stood, the water to his knees now, and helped Kat to her feet.

  “A cenote. There’s a way out just ahead.”

  Just ahead, across an expanse of murky blue-green water. Above them, she heard the flap and flutter of bats either returning from, or leaving for, their nightly hunt.

  “How do we get over there?” she asked, already dreading the answer.

  “Swim, of course. It’s not far—and it’s perfectly safe. People swim down here all the time.”

  “I know that. But they don’t do it in the middle of the night.”

  “Maybe not. But the same things are in the water now as would be here at two in the afternoon. You’ll be all right.”

  “What do we do when we get to the other side?” she asked. That was the harder question, she realized. They had no way to contact Erin. No map. No clothes, other than the ones on their backs.

  “I’ve got everything under control. Take off your shoes,” Cameron said. “And whatever else you want to keep dry.”

  “Why? Are you planning on levitating them across?”

  He shined the light in her eyes, an impatient grimace on his thin lips. “You’re impossible, you know. Just do it.”

  Since she would rather keep every damn stitch of clothing she had as dry as possible, she stripped to nothing without batting an eyelash. She’d half expected Cameron to get flustered, maybe blush and turn away—honestly, shocking him was half the reason she’d done it in the first place. Instead, she noted with some interest the even way that he watched her; the way his eyes roamed her body, the faintest flicker of heat in them when their gazes met. He stripped to boxer briefs, his own body sinewy and lean, the muscles defined in his legs and arms. His chest was broader than she had expected.

  He caught her staring and smiled, holding her gaze for another moment before he nodded toward the water. “We should go. We don’t have much time before Lee figures out what happened.”

  “What happens to Jenny then?”

  A shadow crossed his face. “Nothing good, but she can take care of herself. She’ll have to. I’ll go back for her as soon as I can. Now... Stop stalling and get in there already. Please.”

  Holding her breath, Kat eased into the water. It was warm and it was wet, but those were really the best things she could say about it. Something below the surface brushed against her foot. She pushed herself to get across quickly.

  You’re the most fearless woman I’ve ever met, she remembered Adam telling her once, years before. She hadn’t told him then how wrong he was; that she was only fearless because that’s what he needed. She was strong because he was terrified most of the time—of the past and the future, the dark and the light, the ghosts that haunted him and the people he swore would torture him, kill him, if he was ever found.

  Kat had always been strong, but she became indestructible, hard as steel, when she was with Adam. She’d never had the luxury of weakness, where he was concerned.

  “We’re almost there,” Cameron said. He floated on his back, their clothes held above him in one hand.

  Kat dove under without a word, eyes open, and stared down the darkness. She brushed past eyeless white fish and other cave dwellers, ignored the memories that haunted her, and finally reached the other side. Once there, she pulled herself onto a rock slick with bat guano. She took the bundle from Cameron when he reached her and watched as he climbed out himself, his body dripping.

  “And now,” she prompted as soon as he was back on dryish land. “You said you had a plan?”

  “I do. You’ll want to get dressed first, though.”

  The air was cooler now, a humid breeze blowing in from the opening above. Bats continued to fly in and out in droves, occasionally diving low enough to make her consider jumping back in the water. Cameron was right: clothes were a good idea.

  When they were both fully dressed again, Kat’s clothes damp but certainly more comfortable than standing there stark naked, she indicated the cave exit above with a wave of her hand.

  “All right, now what? We have no vehicle, no way to communicate, no money...”

  “True,” he agreed. “But we’re free. And unhurt.” He stepped forward, taking her by surprise. His hand rose to touch the raw skin around her mouth with infinite care. “Relatively, anyway. I’m sorry about that—Jenny’s angry. Hurt. Susan spent a lot of time convincing her that you and Erin were to blame when I walked away from the marriage.” The color rose in his cheeks. “Which was absurd, of course.”

  “Of course,” she agreed, ignoring the sudden, inexplicable up-tick in her own heartbeat. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. I’m fine. I just want to find Erin, let her know that I’m all right, and get us all the hell out of here.”

  “Jenny won’t let anything go until she has the information Erin is holding. That’s going to make disappearing considerably more difficult. I wish I’d known about that before I left her at Raven’s Ledge.”

  “Do you have any idea what it might be?” she asked. “This information she says she has?”

  He hesitated. “There was someone at Smithfield College, down in Kentucky—Professor Munjoy. He’d started work investigating Jim Jones a few years ago. That ultimately led him to a number of other... concerns, related to the Project.”

  “And so the information on that card was what he pieced together?”

  Cameron shook his head, a flicker of remorse touching his eyes before it vanished. “No. Munjoy was never meant to see the information on that card. He had a source who had been supplying him with details about the Project. He stole the card from that source.”

  “That source being...?” Kat prompted.

  Cameron wet his lips, his jaw hardening. “Me,” he said shortly. “I was the source. I’d been feeding Munjoy information, trying to plant a seed that could ultimately expose the Project in a way that law enforcement and mainstream media could not, since both are too easily manipulated by those in power.”

  “So, they killed Munjoy,” Kat finished for him. “Using Reverend Barnel and his church to do it. Did J know you were the one supplying him with information?”

  “Not until Erin got involved. At least, I don’t believe they knew. But now...”

  “Now, they know,” Kat said. “And now Jenny’s supposed to get that information from Erin, no matter what it takes.”

  “Which is why we need to get to Erin and Diggs, before that happens.”

  Kat nodded, setting her jaw with grim determination. Ignoring fatigue and the pervasive ache of tired, admittedly aging bones, she squared her shoulders and eyed the exit.

  “All right,” she said with a humorless smile. “Let’s go find my kid, before your kid tears her eyes out.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven - Solomon

  Sleeping beside Diggs that night in Mexico, I dreamed of Allie Tate and Payson Isle again. This time, though, she didn’t come to me in flashes. Instead, she appeared as clearly as anything I’d ever seen, her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, her thick glasses reflecting the sun. She held out her hand.

  “Isaac says you can see now. He wants
you to come to the woods, too.”

  I stayed rooted to the spot, frozen. Terrified.

  “You said you want to see,” Allie said.

  She pulled me down the path, limping, occasionally looking back at me with a kind of childish glee. The night got darker. I couldn’t hear anything—the world silent in a way I’d never experienced before. And then, rising from the ground, I heard it: a low, animal moan. Isaac’s raised voice. These are the secrets we can never tell, I heard my father say.

  Suddenly, I wasn’t holding Allie’s hand anymore—I was holding my dad’s.

  We walked farther into the woods. When we reached the clearing, Allie was on the ground. Her glasses were broken, her leg bent backward beneath her.

  Isaac stood over her, his eyes blood red: Vengeance personified. I screamed when he knelt beside her, forcing her down. His hands pinned her shoulders, his body over hers. My father pushed me toward them. I fought him, trying to get away, screaming for Allie. I could hear her crying. Could hear Isaac’s breath, low and rasping. I could feel his eyes on me.

  “He won’t hurt you, Erin,” my father said. “You can trust him. I wouldn’t stay if you weren’t safe. You can trust us.”

  But when I looked at my father, his eyes were as red as Isaac’s. His hands were covered with blood.

  “These are the secrets we can never tell, baby.”

  I fought as my father got closer, trying to wake up—trying to pull myself out of those woods.

  “Erin—you’re safe, it’s okay. Come back to me. It was just a dream.”

  I woke to Diggs’ voice, soft in my ear. I scrambled up and away from him, my heart thudding in my ears, pain piercing my side at the sudden movement. When he touched me, I flinched.

  “No one will hurt you here,” he said softly, as though soothing some feral beast. “It was just a dream, Sol.”

  “Easy for you to say,” I mumbled when I finally found my voice. My hands were shaking when I ran them through my hair. Fear ran through me like shards of glass coursing through my veins. We sat there quietly for a few minutes. Diggs made no move to touch me again.