At last they reached another door, framed in light, at the far side of the cellar. Ears pressed against the door, Shayla and Mazie listened, but they could hear nothing on the other side. Shayla pulled on the handle, opened the door a hairbreadth, and peered out.
“Empty,” she whispered.
They tiptoed in. This area of the basement had been remodeled. It had electric lights and tiled floors and was filled with exercise equipment, treadmills, and weight machines. How nice: these murderous thugs believed in keeping their bodies in shape. A quick scan of the room revealed a door on the opposite side of the room.
The door opened to a short passageway, at the end of which were stairs going up.
Mazie’s heart leaped at the smell of fresh, rain-swept air. Just a few more steps and they’d be free. Once outside, they could melt away into the grounds. She set down Muffin, who immediately scampered up the steps, then she and Shayla dashed after him, forgetting to be cautious, because it was not possible to have come so far, to have worked so hard, and to not have earned their freedom.
A man suddenly loomed at the top of the stairs. Backlit, with caved-in cheeks and deep eye sockets, he looked like a walking skeleton. Mazie and Shayla froze, stunned and speechless.
It was Reaper. He grinned, looking even more skull-like than usual.
“Hey, ladies, where do ya think you’re going?”
Chapter Thirty-Five
The hours hurtled past. One moment it was two o’clock; the next it was five in the evening. Ben started out with high hopes. It seemed so simple—just find a likely-looking property, then Terra-Cog it. But after hours passed with no leads, he began to lose hope, wondering why he’d allowed himself to believe in Lester’s voodoo cybernetics. His eyes burned, his body ached from sitting so long, and he cursed himself for not having followed his original impulse to drive out into Skulls territory and start kicking down doors.
Magenta stuck a steaming cup of coffee into his hands. Ben had so much caffeine in his system that his nerves were jangling and his stomach was sour. “Eat,” Magenta ordered, handing Ben a ham-and-cheese sandwich. “You have to keep up your strength.”
Someone hammered at the shop door.
“Go away,” Magenta yelled. “I’m closed.”
The pounding continued. Magenta slammed down the plate of sandwiches and stomped to the door. Ben heard voices at the front of the store, and a moment later Eddie Arguello and Rico Del Toro swaggered in, all ripped denim, adolescent machismo, and Hombre cologne fumes.
“What’s up at Mazie’s place?” Rico asked. “Cops all over the place. She get busted for dope?”
He quailed under four pairs of glaring eyes.
Juju filled the boys in on what had happened. She introduced the boys to Lester, who explained how they were using property listings and drone images to find the Skulls’ possible hiding places. Although they seemed skeptical of Lester at first, the boys listened carefully as he explained how they were working, and both of them grasped the idea with the mental agility that only tech-savvy teenagers were capable of.
“Know what would speed up your search?” Rico asked, staring intently at Eddie’s screen. “Cross-hatching it with the federal criminal database.”
“Well, yes,” Lester said. “But that database is off-limits to the general public.”
Rico made a pfft sound. He gently eased Juju out of her chair, sat down at the computer, and began tapping keys.
Ten minutes later they were in business. The junior-grade felons were right, Ben discovered; now all they had to do was type someone’s name into the criminal records database and they would know immediately whether the person had ever been busted for so much as a parking ticket. Alarms were probably going off at cyber cop stations all over the nation right now, Ben thought, but he didn’t care—just as long as they didn’t nab him before he’d found Mazie.
A storm blew up and it began to rain, a steady rain that brought an early dusk. Barely aware of the weather, the team worked on. Finally, as it was going on toward seven o’clock, Rico said excitedly, “I got something. Property number 2087. Coordinates 443 by 13.”
The others barely raised their bleary eyes. They’d had false leads all afternoon.
“It’s this big old building way the hell out in the boonies,” Rico said. “Motorcycles coming in, real time.”
Juju drifted over to look at it. “It looks like a hospital or something. Is this Coulee County?”
“Yeah, the far northwest edge,” Rico said.
Lester had the site on his screen now, too, and he was zooming in on the structure. It was shadowed and difficult to see, but at that moment a mass of clouds parted and moonlight lit the scene. “There’s some kind of red blob on the wall,” he said. “Can anyone make it out?”
They all had the building on their screens now. Clouds again. Then moonlight.
“It’s a shirt,” Magenta said suddenly. “Is that red or brown?”
Ben felt a shiver run through his body as he caught the image. It was a red T-shirt, definitely red, he thought, and it was dangling limply below a dark, open window. Mazie had a red T-shirt. “Can we get a zoom?” he asked.
Rico shook his head. “It’s at max.”
“The property is listed as being the Coulee County Mental Health Institute,” Eddie said, reading from the property listing. “Formerly called a lunatic asylum. A ninety-acre package sold to someone named Henry Hemminger two years ago.”
“Henry Hemminger!” Juju yelled. “He came up before, remember? Misdemeanor drug possession, and—guys, we just hit the daily double—his spouse is a Luella Yatt Hemminger!”
The image reappeared. Rico called up another coordinate, and now they appeared to be skimming over the roofs of the buildings, looking down. A motorcycle appeared on the road bordering the property. Gates opened, then swung shut again. The motorcycle continued down a driveway, then was lost to the drone camera’s view.
Other motorcycles approached and entered the property through the gate, never more than two choppers at a time. If this was the Skulls, Ben thought, they were trying to avoid calling attention to themselves. It was frustrating, standing here three hundred miles away, when what he wanted to do was reach down like the hand of God, pinch the chopper guys between his fingers, and shake the truth out of them.
“What are we waiting for?” Ben said. “Let’s go.”
“Slow down, hotshot,” Magenta cautioned. “This could be the Holy Rosary Scooter Club’s weekly bingo night for all we know. We don’t have any proof that the girls are in there.”
Ben didn’t care. It was the best thing they had, and he was going for it.
“Tell me how to find this place,” he said.
“Look,” Juju said. “Bottom left corner.”
They all squinted at the screen. Something very small emerged from beneath a bush. A rabbit? It was barely more than a dot on the screen. Then the animal darted across the lawn, into a pool of light from a window. It appeared to be a very small dog.
“That’s Muffin!” Juju whooped, standing up so fast, she knocked over her chair.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The trial was held in a large room in the building’s south wing. At one time, Mazie thought, this might have been an assembly room where patients could gather to watch plays or listen to concerts, but now it apparently served as the Skulls’ meeting room. It was dark and smoky, and the cigarette fug made her eyes burn. There was a row of windows on one side of the room, barred on the inside and boarded over on the outside. A raised platform like a small stage stood at the front of the room, framed in tattered, dingy curtains. The gang members leaned against the walls or lounged on folding chairs set up in the center of the room, drinking and smoking, their faces shadowy in the gloom. The only lighting came from a dozen dangling lightbulbs jerry-rigged to extension cords.
There were thirty or forty gang members here, Mazie estimated, almost all wearing vests crammed with badges, patches, and various kinds of ins
ignia, as though this were a gathering of Boy Scouts keen to receive their new merit badges. Congratulations, Billy—you finally passed your meth-making requirement!
Reaper and a gang member named Sled Dog manhandled Mazie and Shayla up the room’s central aisle, then flung them down at the foot of the platform. Amazingly, neither of them had been bound—maybe because the Skulls considered them too puny to cause trouble.
“On your knees,” growled Sled Dog.
Mazie looked up. A man had just walked out onto the platform, its six-inch elevation making him appear even taller than he was. He was massive—around three hundred pounds, she guessed, with bull-like shoulders and chest. He stood ramrod straight, although she guessed he was in his eighties or nineties. He had piercing, heavy-lidded, dark eyes beneath thunderous black brows. His silver-white hair streamed down his back in a greasy, unkempt tangle and his bushy beard came to the middle of his chest. He wore an ankle-length coat that buttoned to the neck and leather boots polished to a sheen. Stick a staff in his hand and you’d have an Old Testament prophet, Mazie thought—one of the tiresome ones always ranting about the sinfulness of women.
This could only be Reuben “Papa” Yatt.
He made her shudder.
If there were such a thing as pure, distilled evil, he was it. He had a cunning, brutal face, with deep lines grooved between his nose and small, hard mouth. This man had murdered dozens of people, including his own grandson, and, if rumors could be believed, he had poisoned his own brother. He demanded absolute obedience to his commands and seemed to inspire awe in the assembled crowd. For all of their rebel image, bikers seemed to crave a military chain of command. Two heavyset men who looked a lot like Papa Yatt—presumably his sons—stood in back of him with folded arms.
The patriarch raised his arms and the room instantly quieted. An air of excitement rippled through the assembled gang members.
“Let’s get started,” Papa boomed. “We got business to conduct. Sergeant at arms, are all the members of the brotherhood here?”
“Brimstone’s missing,” a man in the crowd called.
“Probably passed out in the john,” someone suggested, and there was a ripple of laughter.
Papa Yatt scowled. “Before we start, we got a mystery to solve. My orders were to keep the women locked up until I got here, and yet they were discovered wandering around, about to escape. Who was in charge of the prisoners?”
“I was, sir.” Sonny hurried forward from the back of the room. He’d lost his swagger. Without his bandanna, a large bald spot on the back of his head was visible. “I locked ’em up, just like you said; put ’em up in the tower, sir—there’s no way they could have got—”
“They were found on the basement stairs, about to make a dash for it. Now how could that have happened, boy?”
“Someone must have let ’em out. Brimstone, maybe.” Sonny was exuding fear sweat in waves. “Yeah, I think I heard him going up the elevator.”
“Then you should have stopped him, shouldn’t you?” The cold eyes, so dark they seemed to lack pupils, settled on Sonny. “What’s the matter—were you scared of him?”
“I—no. I—”
“Go find him. Brim’s getting too big for his britches. Time he was taught a lesson.”
Sonny hurried out, looking relieved to still be alive. Now the old man’s full attention shifted to Shayla and Mazie. He had raptor eyes, Mazie thought, cruel and pitiless, and she was suddenly flooded with fear. This man could say one word and have her and Shayla torn apart.
She hadn’t understood why a man of his age could wield so much power, but now as his icy gaze swept over her, she thought that it was the kind of power that came from absolute corruption. If you had no troublesome scruples to hold you back, if you loved no one and respected nothing, if you were willing to commit any act no matter how cruel, then you could rule through fear.
Mazie’s breathing became labored. Neon streaks jangled across her pupils, her hands felt as though insects were crawling on them, and her heart was behaving like a badly tuned engine—speeding up and then seeming to stop altogether.
This was it. This was the point where she gave up all hope and accepted that escape was no longer possible. Tears brimmed in her eyes. It wasn’t the fear of pain that bothered her so much—it was the lost opportunities. The way she’d thrown away her time with Ben because of her jealousy and insecurity. She should have fought for him. She should have let him know that he’d always been the Sexiest Man Alive to her.
She should have had the courage to tell him she loved him.
When had been the last time she’d kissed him? It seemed very important at this moment to remember, to hold on to that before a bullet blasted everything away for eternity. All the kisses they had ever shared swarmed in her memory. The first one—sweet and hot—in Ben’s apartment when she was still a fugitive. The numb-lipped kisses in the snow this past winter, the day they’d built the snow fort and kissing had quickly escalated to full-throttle sex and her backside still had an icy spot that hadn’t quite recovered. The passionate kisses this summer in her childhood tree house when they’d visited her brother’s farm. That sizzling lips-only kiss in the first-aid room after Ben had bandaged her knee. Thinking of all the kisses that had been and all the kisses that would never be, her throat knotted up painfully with sobs that wanted to erupt.
Ben’s face swam up in front of her, his intense brown eyes with the long, dark lashes, his wide mouth, the upper lip slightly fuller than the bottom, his jaw, always dark with beard five minutes after shaving and—
Ben was rolling his eyes. He was flinging her own words back at her, and Mazie could almost hear his deep, rumbling baritone. There’s always a way to escape—you just have to look for it.
Easy for you to say, Ben Labeck!
But okay—she would try.
Summoning up every last ounce of strength, Mazie fisted the tears out of her eyes, swallowed down the lump in her throat, thrust out her jaw. The buzz-saw bands retreated to the edges of her vision and she forced herself to take deep breaths until her pounding heart slowed to a steadier rhythm. Beside her, she became aware of Shayla, pale and trembling, close to collapsing. Mazie reached out and grasped Shayla’s corpse-cold hand.
“Which one is which?” Yatt growled, eyeballing both women.
Reaper stepped forward. “Her.” He prodded the kneeling Shayla in the side with his booted foot. It was so contemptuous, so disrespectful, that Mazie felt a sudden flash of fury—hard, muscular anger that worked to obliterate her self-pity.
“Then who the hell is the other?” Papa Yatt asked.
Reaper shrugged. “I dunno. Some dumb bitch. We didn’t know which was which, so we grabbed ’em both—”
“Shut up,” yelled one of the gang members from the back of the room. “Everybody shaddup. Listen.”
They all stared at him, shocked at the way he’d dared disrupt the proceedings. Then they all heard it. A loud whup whup whup whup—the noise an unbalanced washing machine makes during the spin cycle. The sound of a helicopter, flying low overhead.
“Sweet sufferin’ Christ!” bellowed Papa Yatt, a panicked look in his eyes. “They’re out looking for them women.”
Mazie and Shayla stared at each other, hearts swelling with hope. Could it really be?
Papa Yatt pointed an accusing finger at Reaper. “The cops followed you. You screwed up again—like when you shot up that bar.”
Reaper shook his head, looking defiant. “No way were we tailed. No one even knows those women are gone. We would have seen it on the news.”
“Pop, chill, okay?” said one of the sons, laying a calming hand on the patriarch’s shoulder. “If the cops even know the bitches are missing, they’re probably just doing random searches all over the county. They don’t even know we own this place.”
“Could have been a military chopper,” another Skull ventured. “Some fly-jockey from Fort McCoy going off course.”
“This has got a b
ad smell to it,” Papa Yatt growled. “We’re going to take care of this business fast and then everyone’s getting out. Go tell Dalton to get the truck ready.”
He turned his attention back to Mazie, his cold-blooded gaze skimming over her. “What’s your name?” he barked.
“Mazie,” she said. Anger made her voice come out louder than she’d intended. Anger was good, but it could make you do rash things. The trick was to master it.
“Mazie what? Hold on a second!” Papa Yatt snapped his fingers. “I recognize you now—that lady murderer.”
Well, that was a bit rich, Mazie thought, coming from a guy who’d whacked his own grandson.
“Yeah,” Papa Yatt went on. “You’re that Maguire woman, the one that offed her husband. Got off on some technicality.”
“Yeah—the technicality was: I didn’t do it,” Mazie shot at him.
“Lies. All women are liars. Forked tongues ever since Eve offered Adam the apple. Women got no right going around shooting their lawful spouses. The corrupt court system may have let you off, woman, but you will find that Papa Yatt is not as gullible. This court will see to it that justice is finally served unto you.”
He turned his attention to Shayla. “You saw how I served justice unto your cheating boyfriend, didn’t you, girl? You saw what he got for daring to steal from me. And you dared inform on me to the law, Shayla Connelly—you broke the Skulls’ lawful covenant. For this offense, the punishment is death. I call on my tribe members to pronounce sentence. All those in favor of her death—”
“Death, death, death!” The Skulls beat on their chests, stomped their feet, howled. “Kill the bitch!”
Papa Yatt turned back to Shayla, eyes sparkling with malice. “The tribe has spoken. Shayla Connelly, you are hereby sentenced to—”
Mazie lurched to her feet. “Hey, Reuben, can women join your gang?”
Laughter shook the room. Papa Yatt cackled. “What—you wanna join? You gotta have the right equipment between your legs to ride with the Skulls, girlie. Only place for women in this organization is on their backs. A woman gives her old man lip, she gets traded off, same way as he’d swap for a helmet or a pit bull. A woman ain’t nothing more than a piece of property with a big, fat, yapping mouth.”
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