Town at the Edge of Darkness

by Brett Battles

  Liesel passed the phone to her.

  “Do you know that area?” Ananke asked, looking at Harris in the rearview mirror.

  The cop shook her head. “Driven by on the highway, but never been that far out.”

  “Are there a lot of isolated buildings like that?”

  “A few cabins here and there. For hunting mostly, I think. I don’t know of anything this big.”

  Ananke glanced at Liesel. “Send Shinji the coordinates. See if he can dig up a more detailed image.”

  Liesel took her phone back and shot off the message. A few seconds later, her phone rang. “It’s Shinji.”

  “Put him on speaker,” Ananke said.

  Liesel accepted the call. “Hello, Shinji.”

  “Liesel, thank God. Are you guys all right? Do you know where Ananke is?”

  “I’m right here,” Ananke said.

  An irritated Shinji said, “Um, hello? I seem to remember we talked about you answering your phone.”

  Ananke recalled the vibrations she’d felt when they were watching the van at the barn. “Calm down. Sometimes I am busy.”

  “Busy? Okay. Sure. I understand that. But you sent me directly to voice mail. I thought the same thing happened to you that happened to Ricky and Rosario.”

  “I’m fine. We think we know where Ricky and Rosario are now. Those coordinates Liesel sent, there’s a building just to the north I need you to—”

  “I already know about the building. That’s one of the things I was trying to call you about. It used to be a resort. It was purchased decades ago by Devon Rally’s father.”

  “Devon Rally’s father? Rally’s from this area?”

  “He was born there, but he and his mom moved back east when his parents split. He apparently came back in the summers to visit family.”

  “I’ve never heard of anyone here named Rally other than Devon,” Harris said.

  “Uh, who is that?” Shinji said.

  “Morgan Harris,” Ananke said.

  “The cop? Are you guys under arrest? Or do you have her tied up in the back?”

  “She’s helping us, Shinji. Pretend she’s part of the team.”

  A pause. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  “Shinji!”

  “All right, all right. You’re okay. Well, um, she’s right. I mean, you’re right, Ms. Harris, um, Officer Harris.”

  “Morgan,” Harris said.

  “Morgan. Uh, nice to meet you.”

  “Get on with it,” Ananke said.

  “Sorry. Where was I?” Shinji said. “Oh, right. There is no Rally family in the Bradbury area. Because Rally isn’t Devon Rally’s real name. It’s Robert Seiver.”

  “Seiver?” Harris said.

  “Yeah, that’s a name you probably know, isn’t it? His dad was Michael Seiver, brother to Sharon Seiver. Seiver is her maiden name, of course. She’s been married twice and is the mother of two boys.”

  Glancing in the rearview, Ananke saw both surprise and realization on Harris’s face. “What am I missing?”

  “Her name is Sharon Yates now,” Harris said. “She’s married to my boss. Which means she’s Leo Yates and Dalton Slater’s mother.”

  “Which also means Devon Rally is Leo Yates and Dalton Slater’s cousin,” Ananke said.

  “Bingo,” Shinji confirmed. “And Devon now owns the old resort near those coordinates.”

  Ananke said nothing as the new information sank in. A clearer picture of what was going on here began to surface. “We need plans and whatever other info on the resort you can get.”

  “I found some plans that are, like, fifty years old,” Shinji said. “If there are any more recent, I haven’t come across them.”

  “Send us those, but keep looking.”

  “Will do.”

  As Liesel hung up the phone, Ananke checked Harris via the mirror again. “You all right?”

  Harris was staring at the back of Liesel’s seat. Without shifting her gaze, she said, “I remember him. I was about six, I think. Robert…I mean, Devon would have been fifteen or sixteen. I saw him beat up this kid, a boy a few years younger than him. Chris something, I can’t remember. I don’t know why he beat him up, but I remember a few weeks later finding out Chris and his family had suddenly moved away. I doubt he did anything to deserve what happened to him. Robert was this mean son of a bitch who showed up every summer. I don’t remember seeing him with Yates and Slater, but I bet they were around.” She shook her head. “Devon Rally is goddamned Robert Seiver. That bastard.”

  Ananke and Liesel said nothing, letting Harris work things out in silence.

  After they made the turn onto the dirt road, Liesel texted Dylan, informing him they were close. It took an additional eleven minutes to reach his GPS coordinates.

  Dylan walked out from the pines as they pulled to a stop. Ananke rolled down her window, and he leaned in.

  “The entrance road is right up there,” he said, pointing at a turnoff a few dozen feet away. “It’s blocked by a big gate just a little ways in. There’s a matching, electrified fence to go with it. I followed it down one side, thinking I could find out where it turned, but by the time you texted me, I hadn’t reached it.”

  “Let’s have a look.”

  “If you back down the road a bit, I found a spot you should be able to squeeze the car into.”

  With Dylan’s help, Ananke eased the sedan into the woods. Then they all worked together to create a blind of branches and loose brush to obscure the vehicle’s presence.

  Next, they geared up, taking more specialty items since they weren’t sure what they might come up against. Unlike at Green Hills Estates, Ananke gave Harris a pistol and suppressor.

  Once everyone was ready, Dylan led them into the forest to a point where they could see the gate.

  “You weren’t kidding about big,” Ananke said.

  Even if one of them stood on another’s shoulders, they wouldn’t reach the top. Not that they’d want to, given the strands of razor wire. The gate appeared to have some kind of electronic lock, maybe even an electromagnetic one. They might be able to roll it open if they could kill the power source, but that was undoubtedly on the other side.

  They moved west to get a better look at the fence. It hummed with the current running through it.

  “Did you notice any weak points?” Liesel asked.

  Dylan shook his head. “What you see is what you get.”

  Ananke walked up to the very edge of the tree line, gave the barrier a closer look, and then walked back to the others. “The way I see it, we only have a few options. One, we hike around the perimeter until we find a weak spot.”

  “And if we don’t?” Harris asked.

  “That’s the risk.”

  “What is option two?” Liesel asked.

  “We wait until someone comes out, and we recruit them to let us in.”

  Harris looked dubious. “You really think any of those people will help us?”

  Dylan leaned toward her and whispered loudly enough for everyone to hear, “I believe you’re taking the word recruit too literally.”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh, you mean…”

  “Yes,” Ananke said.

  “What if no one comes out until morning?”

  “Then we’ll need to come up with a fourth option.”

  “Fourth? Did I miss the third?”

  “The third is splitting up and doing both options one and two.”

  “I vote for that,” Liesel said.

  “Three makes sense to me, too,” Dylan agreed.

  “Three,” Harris said.

  “Good,” Ananke said.

  Since Dylan had already scouted part of the fence to the west, Ananke assigned him to continue checking for weak spots in that direction. Liesel set off to the east with the same instructions.

  Ananke led Harris back toward the gate.

  “So, we just sit around and wait?” Harris said.

  “Unless you have a deck of cards. Or
we could discuss what we’re going to do when someone comes out.”

  “Do you have a plan?”

  “Of course I have a plan.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Justin Keller and the rest of the transfer team off-loaded the participants for the midnight trials and ferried them down into the basement, where Mr. Slater would finish the preparatory phase.

  On a cart in the holding room was the body of a man Justin had transferred to the lodge just the day before. The homeless guy. From his gunshot wounds, it looked like he’d either made a pretty good game of it, or the trophy hunters had been bad shots. Likely it was both. In addition to the large shotgun blast center chest, he had wounds in his arm, shoulder, and thigh.

  After Justin and the transfer team brought the last of the new prey down, Slater said, “Just got an update on tonight’s shipment. They’re on time for 2:30 a.m. Grab some supper upstairs, then get back to the ranch, grab a little sleep, and make sure your asses are at Scolareon when the truck arrives.”

  “Yes, sir,” Justin said.

  He and the others went up to the kitchen, where they had a quick meal. They then returned to the van and started the fifty-minute trip to Slater’s farm.

  The road was iffy enough in daylight. Now that night had fully fallen, the drive out was slower than the drive in. Per procedure, when they stopped at the gate, everyone but Justin exited with their rifles and took defensive positions to prevent anything other than the van from passing through.

  When his friends were in position, Justin pushed the remote.

  Four floodlights mounted in trees on either side of the gate blazed on, illuminating an area of nearly a hundred square feet, ensuring nothing could approach the gate without being seen. The lock disengaged and the gate rolled to the side.

  After it opened all the way, Justin and the others had exactly twenty seconds to get the van and themselves to the other side before the gate slammed shut. Justin sped through the gap and stopped, still within the halo of the floods. He heard the bang of the gate shutting a few seconds before the others scrambled back into the van.

  Justin drove to the intersection and turned down the main dirt road that would take them back to the highway.

  “Oh, shit,” Sherwood said as someone ran onto the road, at the far reaches of their headlights.

  “Who the hell is that?” Justin asked as he lifted his foot off the accelerator.

  Whoever it was, he was waving his arms over his head, trying to get their attention.

  Justin let the van creep forward until he’d cut the distance between them in half, and then stopped. The person dropped his arms and jogged toward them.

  Wait. That’s not a man, Justin thought as the figure neared.

  It was a woman with short hair. A familiar woman.

  “Isn’t that that lady cop from town?” Sherwood said.

  It was. Justin didn’t know her name but he’d seen her, mostly at night, on patrol. His hand slid down to the pistol he kept next to the seat.

  The cop smiled as she moved to the driver’s-side window and jumped onto the running board. “Man, am I glad to see you!” she said.

  She motioned for Justin to roll down the window.

  “Be ready,” he whispered to Sherwood without moving his lip.

  Slowly, he lowered the window.

  “I didn’t think I was ever going to see anyone!” the cop said. “I was out on a hike and it got late and I got lost, and somehow came out on this road. Oh, and you both might want to take your hand off your guns.”

  Justin’s brow furrowed. “What?”

  “If you don’t, my colleague will put a bullet in your buddy’s head before either of you can make a move.” She nodded across to the other side of the van.

  Justin and Sherwood turned. An African-American woman smiled at them through the passenger window, in her hand a pistol pointed at Sherwood’s head.

  She tapped the glass with the muzzle. “Let’s get this window down, too, hon.”

  Sherwood raised his hands in the air.

  “Appreciate the surrender,” the woman said. “Still need the window down.”

  “What? Oh, um, sure.” He rolled the window down and put his hands back up.

  “Thanks. How you boys doing tonight?”

  “What do you want?” Justin asked.

  “Okay, if you’d rather cut the small talk, we can get right to it. The first thing I want to know is, are your friends in the back again or is it just you two?”

  “No,” Justin said, way too quickly. “It-it’s just us.”

  She sighed. “Justin. It is Justin, right?”

  His eyes widened, but he said nothing.

  “Justin, I have a bullshit meter that goes off at the slightest lie. So why don’t we try that again. Are your friends in back?”

  He licked his lips and nodded.

  “Thanks. Now, which one of you bozos is in charge?”

  “He is,” Sherwood said, without hesitation.

  “I appreciate the candor.”

  In a flash, the barrel of her gun shot through the window and connected with the side of Sherwood’s head. He slumped toward Justin, unconscious.

  “I have a confession,” the woman said. “We already knew you were in charge. And unfortunately for you, we don’t need your help just yet.”

  Before Justin could figure out what she meant, pain spiked across his skull.

  “What’s taking so long?” Fredericks said under his breath, after the van had been sitting still for several minutes.

  He and Johnson had heard faint voices from up front but those had stopped. Due to the insulated construction of the rear compartment, they couldn’t make out anything that was said.

  “Probably something in the road,” Johnson said.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. A tree, or maybe a dead cow.”

  “A dead cow? Have you seen any cows up this way?”

  Johnson shrugged. “One could have wandered up.”

  Fredericks rolled his eyes. Johnson was a good guy and a dedicated member of the organization, but he was far from the smartest in the group.

  Fredericks knocked on the wall between the back area and the cab, and then placed his hands against it and yelled, “Hey. What’s the holdup?”

  He didn’t really expect one of the guys to shout back, but he thought he’d at least get a knock. There was no response at all.

  He was silent for a moment. “We should check.”

  “Aren’t we supposed to stay here?”

  “Not if there’s a problem.”

  Fredericks grabbed his rifle and headed down the narrow aisle to the rear of the vehicle. After a brief pause, he heard Johnson follow.

  Fredericks pushed open the double doors. All was quiet behind the van, the road dark and empty as far as he could see. All was quiet from around front, too. That was disturbing. He’d thought they would hear Keller and Sherwood moving around.

  He motioned for Johnson to go right, then he moved onto the rear step near the left corner. He glanced back at Johnson. His partner was staring at him, a tremor in his lower lip. Fredericks tried to smile reassuringly, but he felt uneasy, too.

  He turned back to the corner and yelled, “Justin? Aaron? You guys out there?”

  The only response was a breeze sweeping through the trees.

  Fredericks cursed under his breath, looked back at Johnson, and whispered, “On three. One. Two. Three.” He swung around the end of the van.

  “Hello.”

  At the same moment he registered the black woman standing in front of him, he heard a scream from back in Johnson’s direction. The next thing he knew, his rifle had been ripped from his hands and he was on his knees, the woman’s arm wrapped around his neck.

  His vision began to collapse, like an iris closing.

  And soon he saw nothing at all.

  Ananke dragged her target behind the van and laid him on the ground, a moment before Harris appeared wit
h her own unconscious Slater disciple.

  “Any problems?” Ananke asked.

  “Other than him screaming like a baby?”

  Ananke glanced at the guy at the cop’s feet. “You know, technically what you just did is called assault, Officer Harris.”

  Smirking, Harris said, “I kinda liked it. Do you think that’s bad?”

  “You’re asking the wrong person.”

  They loaded all four bodies into the back, and strapped them into the shelves with the attached restraints.

  They climbed into the cab, Ananke in the driver’s seat.

  “We need someplace, not too far from here, where we can have a private conversation with our new friends.”

  Harris thought for a moment. “There’s an old campground a couple miles to the north that’s been closed for a few years. A few people use it now and then, but it’s usually deserted.”

  “Sounds lovely.” Ananke dropped the van into drive.

  Eighteen minutes later, Harris directed Ananke down an old winding road off the highway and into a canyon. Soon they came to a sign that read NEEDHAM CANYON CAMPGROUND, at the bottom of which was another sign proclaiming CAMPGROUND CLOSED NO TRESSPASSING.

  Ananke drove past the mangled mess of a gate that had once been chained across the road, and through the entire campground to make sure it was empty before choosing the spot farthest from the entrance.

  After she parked, she looked over at Harris. “I should probably do this alone. It could get…messy. Better if you have deniability.”

  “I don’t give a shit about deniability. These people took someone I love, and God only knows what they’ve done to her or the others they’ve taken. Would it go easier if I helped you?”

  “Probably.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” Harris opened her door and climbed out.

  When they opened the back of the van, Ananke wasn’t surprised to see the two assholes they hadn’t smacked in the heads had woken up.

  One was glaring at the women as they moved between the shelf beds. He probably thought he looked tough and scary. The other one looked as if he was about to soil his pants—eyes wide and terrified, his whole body shaking.

  “One of you is going to tell us what we need to know,” Ananke said. “So who’s going to volunteer?”