Melanie cried out, and Robertson hurried toward the pair to break things up, but not before Sam hauled Eric up by the shirt front, reared back and walloped him with a roundhouse right that sent Eric crashing against the cave wall.
All three flashlights had been dropped, and it was in this surreal and spectral light that Charly watched Sam and Larry Robertson yelling at one another, their fingers stabbing the air, their underjaws awash in the faint light.
The men were still shouting when Charly heard something that cut through the commotion like a white-hot blade.
She threw her hands out, bent her head to hear, but the others wouldn’t shut up. She said, “Stop yelling,” and when that didn’t work, she screamed, “Shut your mouths, everybody! Please!”
Sam and Sheriff Robertson immediately broke off quarreling and stared at her. Melanie was wide-eyed and a little afraid. Eric, too, was listening.
The sound came again, and this time Charly’s heart jitterbugged in her chest.
It was Jake. From somewhere deep in the cave, her baby was crying.
Chapter Nine
“That’s him,” Eric said. “That’s Junior.”
Gee, you think? Sam wanted to say but didn’t. You sure it isn’t some other kidnapped baby down here wailing for help?
The cries were coming from the darkness ahead. Charly had started that way, her hands actually cupping her swollen breasts in a gesture of which Sam was sure she was entirely unconscious.
He and Robertson came up alongside Charly, who’d been wandering blindly into the cave. The baby’s cry was a strong one, which he supposed was a good sign. But it was putting Charly through hell, hearing her baby screaming that way.
“Whoa!” Robertson shouted, and Sam halted automatically. Flicking his light down, he discovered he’d been damned lucky. He tottered another moment on the brink of a nasty fall—the drop was sheer and at least twenty feet down—then he regained his balance and put out a hand to make sure Charly was okay. She was, he now saw, but only because Robertson had grabbed hold of her and saved her from breaking her pretty neck too. Sam put a hand on her shoulder, asked her if she was all right.
“Don’t touch her,” Florence said behind him. The man interposed himself, put his back to Sam, and said to Charly, “It’d be nice if you at least acted like you were married.”
His words scarcely seemed to register with Charly, who stared down into the pit.
“How do we…” she began, a tortured frown on her face.
“We don’t,” Robertson said with finality. “We go back and call for help. They’ll have your boy out within…”
But he stopped, his eyes going very wide.
Another voice had sounded from the pit, this one harsh and feral and somehow knowing. Maybe Sam thought that because of how Charly had described the monster that stole her baby.
But Sam didn’t think so. Something about the voice below reminded him of a playground bully who’d once plagued him, the kid an enormous fifth grader, Sam only in second grade. A kid named Mitch. God, what a perfect name for him. Wide-shouldered and sullen-faced, his thick, brown hair cut straight across his forehead almost at the hairline, Mitch had been held back twice by that time, which made him what? Thirteen? Fourteen by then? And Sam would’ve been seven or eight.
Mitch would wait by a funnel-shaped monstrosity with four colorful tubes sticking out of it in different directions. The game was like basketball and Russian roulette combined because you never knew which tube the ball would tumble out of. It became a game of precognition. Mitch loved that weird hoop more than anything, and he’d station himself there until the kids came. And because it was just about the only attraction on that pissant little dustbowl the school passed off as a playground, the kids always came. If the ball came out of the tube where Mitch was stationed, everything was hunky-dory. He’d snatch the ball out of the air, hold it aloft to torture the younglings awhile, then lob it toward the conical opening at the top. He’d usually miss because, even at his advanced age and height, he was as coordinated as a drunken grizzly bear. But whenever the tar-spattered red kickball they used squirted out of another tube, which was three-quarters of the time, he’d wade through the massed children like some crazed Gulliver and thrash the kid brazen enough to snag the rebound.
That was usually Sam.
And Sam would run around with the ball because he was faster, and everyone would laugh like hell at Mitch as he flailed his arms and puffed like an asthmatic, and sometimes Mitch would catch him and give him a good pummeling. Other times, most of the time, Sam would tire the big bastard out, return to the hoop, and make a shot. On these occasions Mitch would eject someone bodily from one of the swings and slouch there until his wind returned.
The sound coming from the pit now reminded Sam very much of Mitch, the oversized dumb bastard who nevertheless understood one thing very well: cruelty.
Listening to the voice—the laughter, it was unmistakably laughter—the old righteous indignation rose up in Sam, made his fists clench and his jaw tighten.
Robertson was gazing at Charly. “Could that be the thing you said took your boy?”
Sam had thought Robertson was like the rest, that he considered Charly an ignorant, hysterical woman for telling them the story she’d told. Now he understood the sheriff’s mind was a good deal more open than most minds would be, and though he’d already liked Larry Robertson, had known him a good part of his life, the sheriff went up several notches in Sam’s estimation.
He said to Robertson, “I don’t suppose you’ve got a spare gun?”
“Hunting rifle’s in the truck, but you’re not going near that.”
“You have anything else?”
Robertson bent down, lifted a pant leg and came up with a big buck knife with a white grip. “The handle’s made from the antlers of a twelve-point buck I got a couple years ago.”
Charly’s breath was coming in shuddering gasps, but she was able to ask Eric, “Can I borrow your flashlight?”
Eric drew back as though she’d just asked him to put out one of his eyes with a Phillips screwdriver. “You don’t need a flashlight,” he said. “We’re going back, remember?”
“What do you need to see?” Robertson asked in a considerably kinder tone.
She scrunched up her face in frustration, shook her head. “Oh, for Christ’s sakes—”
“Here,” Sam said, offering her the Maglite.
She offered him a peculiar, sidelong glance, fleeting but full of a meaning Sam was apparently too dense to grasp, and said, “No, you and Larry keep yours.”
“You’re calling the Feds, right?” Eric said to Robertson.
The sheriff opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, Charly darted a hand toward her husband and snatched the flashlight from him.
“Hey,” Florence said, “what the hell—”
But the thought never completed because Charly leaped forward, her poncho billowing up like a wind-torn umbrella, and disappeared into the pit.
“Wait!” Robertson shouted.
Sam made a clumsy grab for her, but his fingers missed the poncho altogether. He waited, heart in throat, for the crunch of breaking bones.
“Look!” Melanie shouted. Her hands closed over Sam’s right hand and aimed his flashlight at Charly’s body, which was sliding down a place below them they hadn’t spotted, a declivity that led downward in a hurry but wasn’t a straight drop. The flashlight spotlighted Charly just in time to see her twist her body with the spiraling grade before disappearing.
“What’re we gonna do now?” Melanie asked.
Eric glanced at the sheriff. “We go back to the house, right? We know where the baby is—”
Sam noted the indecision on Robertson’s face, said, “That thing might be dangerous, Larry. We don’t want to leave her alone with it.”
Florence’s mouth widened in incredulity. “What thing? Don’t tell me you believe that horseshit about some shirtless troll taking Junior.”
/> “You hear that voice?” Sam asked.
“I don’t know what I heard,” Florence said. “And you sure as hell don’t know either.”
Robertson had gotten down on the ground, was dipping his head over the lip of the hole. “Mrs. Florence!” he called. “Let me see where you’re at!”
“She’s gone,” Sam said.
Robertson peered up at him, redfaced.
“After her boy,” Sam explained. “She means to get him back.”
“She’ll get herself killed,” Robertson said.
“Which is why we’ve got to follow her.”
Melanie withdrew a step. “We’re not going down there?”
Robertson fluttered an impatient hand, said, “I need to think this—”
But Sam jumped before he could finish.
In the moments before his feet left the relative safety of the cave floor, the only thought in Sam’s mind was making sure Charly was all right. But the moment his body started its downward trajectory, half a dozen less noble thoughts vied for supremacy:
Are you fucking nuts?
His feet dipping into the void, Sam forgetting all about the flashlight in his right hand…
Going to die!
…his toes stretching out, yearning for something, any surface to pad his fall…
Thinking with your heart again, this is what you get.
…knuckles rapping some sandpapery surface, the grit removing the flesh as easily as old cellophane…
Could’ve planned this better—would another three or four seconds have cost you that much?
…drawing his feet up, which was the worst thing he could do because the moment the toes of his work boots smacked rock, his kneecaps shot toward his face and cracked his nose so hard the tears practically spurted out of his eyes…
What you deserve
…windmilling his arms…
You look like a cartoon coyote
…tipping backward…
You idiot
…somersaulting sideways…
Here it comes, oh shit
…canting off the slide…
OH SHIT!
…into darkness…
SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT
…and then the impact.
He lay there a moment wondering how far he’d fallen and how busted up he was. His nose was a bellowing bullhorn of pain, his mouth a gritty stew of blood, sand and mucus. Though he could barely breathe, he could already smell the dank odor of this place and an acrid tinge of something else as well, something he didn’t care to think about. Not yet, at least. Whatever he scented was fulsome, sinister…and where the heck was Charly?
Coughing, he forced himself onto his elbows to look around. He couldn’t see anything. Sam groaned, bringing the Maglite close to his body. He tapped it on his leg, joggled it, fingered the glass cover to see if it had shattered. When nothing presented itself as the cause of the malfunction, he clicked the rubber button on a whim and sighed with relief as its small but very bright shaft of light spilled across his lap. He swept the beam around his new surroundings and counted six separate holes wide enough for a man—or in this case, a poncho-wearing goddess—to squeeze through.
Above, Robertson and that prick Florence were hollering for him to say something so they’d know he was okay. Robertson sounded genuinely concerned, but Florence’s heart wasn’t in it. Maybe he hoped both Sam and Charly had broken their necks so he could set up shop with that tasty assistant of his.
Sam whisked the flashlight from hole to hole, but there was no sign of passage in any of them. Not to mention that fool’s chorus above him pleading with him to say something.
“I’m fine,” he growled up to them. “Now shut up a second so I can collect my thoughts.”
Feeling like a hung-over octogenarian, Sam climbed to his feet and immediately bonked his head on an overhang.
“Dang,” he muttered, rubbing the back of his head.
“Your thoughts collected yet?” Robertson called down.
“Just about.”
He straightened again, making sure not to brain himself this time. The largest openings were across the way. Charly might have—
Check the sand! his dad’s voice thundered.
He flashed the Maglite on the foul-smelling sand and spotted them right away—Charly’s shoe prints. They were as large as a man’s, something that made him smile. He’d be sure to kid her about it when he found her.
He followed them a few paces, where they veered crossways to the far left recesses of the cavern. He shined his light at the moist and glittering wall.
“If you can make it down here,” Sam called, “take a hard left. The tunnel will be marked with an X. Look for it in the sand.”
“Wait a second,” Robertson called, but Sam had already bent low to shine the beam down the narrow chute.
Knowing he’d psyche himself out if he delayed any longer, Sam crawled forward and down toward the sound of rushing water.
Red Elk was eyeing Emma, who crouched to the man’s right.
“Anything wrong?” she asked.
“Monique Parent,” Red Elk said.
“Excuse me?”
“Play Time, Dark Secrets, The Key to Sex…”
“Not that again,” Emma said.
“…Midnight Confessions. Cute little blonde. At least she’s usually a blonde.” Red Elk made a little humming sound, his gaze wistful. “Kind that just drives you crazy. She’s never been in a hardcore film, which means there’s something left to the imagination.” Red Elk glanced up at Jesse, nodded. “Most actresses, they’re just acting, and it shows. Now Monique…you know she’s acting, but she’s good at acting turned-on. She’s classy, but she’s ornery too, which makes it more fun. Was in a movie called Desire: An Erotic Fantasyplay, but damned if I can find it. It’s one of the holy grails of soft core. I’d give my left nut for a VHS copy.”
Emma said, “Could we ease up on the porn stuff awhile, Mr. Red Elk?”
“Soft porn, miss.”
“Okay, but we’re kind of in the middle of something here—”
“Reason I mention it is you fooled me earlier.”
Emma arched an eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”
“That bra you wore this morning, it was a miracle of innovation. Either you stuffed it so full of tissue it was fit to burst, or you’ve gotten on to some new kind of brassiere. Those tits of yours looked three sizes too big for your body. I’m usually great at visualizing a woman naked, but you fooled the hell out of me. I mean, Monique Parent and Shannon Whirry? The difference between those two sets of tits is like the difference between a grenade and an atom bomb.”
Emma stared at him with distaste. Jesse knew he should stick up for her, but he had no idea what to say. After Red Elk had decided to blow up his house, Jesse was truthfully a little bit frightened of the man. Also—and he wasn’t at all proud of this—he’d noticed how large Emma’s breasts looked earlier too. He’d attributed it to water retention or some other mystical feminine condition.
“She wears it to get better answers,” Debbie said.
Emma shook her head. “Can we please stop talking about my breasts?”
“If you didn’t want people to notice,” Debbie said, a hint of a grin touching the corners of her lips, “you wouldn’t wear a push-up.”
“You weren’t even here this morning.”
“I didn’t need to be, sugar.”
Colleen shrugged one shoulder. “It’s not that big a deal, you know. No pun intended.”
“I’m curious too,” Greeley said.
Emma’s mouth worked as she looked from face to face. She turned again to Jesse, but the only aid he could muster was an apologetic wince.
Emma heaved a sigh. “Okay, fine. I wore a push-up bra earlier.”
“I knew it,” Red Elk said, slapping a knee. “I knew I wasn’t that far off my game.”
“You suck, you know it?” Colleen said to Emma. “It’s not enough to be gorgeous and buil
t like Miss October, you’ve gotta stack the deck even further.”
Emma scrunched her forehead. “Colleen—”
“Don’t ‘Colleen’ me. I’ve got to work my ass off just to keep a job, and all you’ve gotta do is flash that cleavage and stick out your butt—”
“You’d do the same if you could,” Debbie said.
Colleen seemed on the verge of a rebuttal when they heard a rattling sound from above.
“That’s the front door,” Red Elk said.
Chapter Ten
Eric listened in astonishment as the sounds from below faded. That weasel Bledsoe had actually forsaken them to follow Charly. There was disrespecting a man to his face, and then there was doing what Sam Bledsoe was doing to him: shitting on a plate, thrusting it into a man’s lap, giving him a knife and fork, and laughing at him while he ate it.
If he’d been mad at the guy before, there weren’t words for how he felt now. Not in his darkest dreams had he imagined he’d be humiliated this badly. Not when his first team got taken out behind the woodshed on ESPN to the tune of a hundred and six to fifty-two. Not when he’d been demoted in junior college to a benchwarmer. Not even during that awful morning during his freshman year in high school, when the senior boys gave him a wedgie so severe the seam of his jockey shorts sliced the skin around his bunghole so badly it made him bleed through his white gym shorts.
This was worse than all those times because humiliation was supposed to be a part of a man’s youth, wasn’t it? Wasn’t that why a boy grew up, to end the embarrassment and enjoy being on top for a change? Yet here he was, forty years old and finding himself on the verge of being cuckolded by an unsuccessful construction worker.
His jaw still ached where Bledsoe had decked him. Eric ran his fingers over his chin and touched the split bottom lip, the nose that felt as though someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. Christ, he was lucky they were down here in the dark; if Mel got a good look at his mangled face she might never spread her legs for him.
A slow pulse of lust mingled with his fury. He’d fucking kill that Bledsoe, and he’d laugh doing it. Robertson was saying something to him, but it didn’t matter; all Eric’s attention had migrated south, where his cock was stretching his shorts tight. Sure, he got erections every day, but this…this was something new and exciting. He figured it was that depraved combination of sex and death that killers got off on, those blank, staring murderers he and Charly sometimes watched on that Cold Case Files show. He enjoyed the hell out of that show, every part but the end, when the killer got his comeuppance. He supposed it had to end like that; otherwise there’d be no show. People wouldn’t go in for a series based on unsolved murders that stayed unsolved. But for his money the best part was the beginning, where the victim was described and you saw all those pictures of the person as a child, then as a teenager. Those were the best, the teenager pictures. He’d always experienced a slight sexual thrill when they showed some future murder victim in her cheerleading outfit or leotard. Knowing what was coming made him feel…what? Powerful, he supposed. Omniscient. I know what’s in store for you, Little Lady. You think the world is your oyster, but it’s actually a nasty, ugly place. At least for you.
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