Three Women Disappear

by James Patterson

  “‘My uncle had this put in,’ he said. ‘In case the wrong people came visiting.’

  “I stepped forward and took a look. There was a shiny metal ladder leading down into the dark. Anthony told me to think of it as a shortcut, then said, ‘After you.’ I damn near had a full-blown panic attack.

  “‘Are you crazy?’ I said before I could stop myself. ‘I’m not climbing down into that black spider pit.’

  “He told me to relax. ‘My uncle thinks of everything,’ he said. He reached his hand down under the rungs and flipped a switch. The hole lit up like a runway. ‘See?’ he said. ‘Uncle Vince even flees in style.’

  “He told me the trail ended at the county road. Vincent had a car hidden in the brush—a BMW, which for him was slumming it.

  “‘So shall we?’ he asked.

  “We climbed down. The tunnel was made of poured concrete. It had track lighting, and I swear to God the thing was climate-controlled. Not a spider in sight.

  “If we hadn’t stopped to have a little fun, we’d have made it back to the house in ten minutes flat. I didn’t understand how that was possible given the epic hike we’d taken aboveground, but there you have it—the Costellos are magical, in their way.

  “The tunnel lets you out in the basement. From there you cross the rec room and take the stairs to the kitchen.”

  We were coming up on the airport. I gave Anna a sideways glance.

  “Lets me out?” I said. “I cross the rec room?”

  She flashed a big smile.

  “I’ll draw you a map on the plane,” she said.

  Chapter 41

  Anna Costello

  SO THERE I was, walking up a patented mile-long Costello driveway toward a place I never thought I’d see again, those spine-chilling live oak trees looming on either side. Apart from what moonlight made it through the branches, the place was pitch-dark. I’d have traded places with Sarah in a heartbeat.

  I had a gym bag strapped to one shoulder, and inside it was the roughly one million dollars I’d raised for Sarah and Serena. I’d thought about holding back a few hundred thousand, but million has a ring to it. The kind of ring that would get Defoe salivating. As Anthony put it, “That’s one greedy son of a bitch.” And if anyone knew greedy sons of bitches, it was my dearly departed. Besides, if things went according to plan, Defoe wouldn’t get to keep the cash. And if things didn’t go according to plan, it wouldn’t be of any use to Sarah or Serena.

  I was glad I’d talked Sarah out of calling the cops. In my book, death—even a slow death—beats the hell out of life in prison, and there wasn’t any way to send in the cavalry without putting ourselves on the most-wanted list. At the very least, Sean’s old running buddies would want to know why Vincent saw fit to kidnap an unskilled worker and an aging nurse. The notion that we’d framed Sean would start to look more and more credible, the holes in our story—like the fact that we hadn’t exactly given ourselves airtight alibis—more and more glaring.

  I was glad we hadn’t called the cops, but that didn’t mean my knees weren’t knocking as I turned a corner into the clearing that surrounded the house. It was just as I remembered: a log castle in the land of the alligator. Even back then, I should have known that I was headed for trouble.

  I took out my phone and checked the time. Seven p.m.—an hour before we were supposed to turn up outside Lindsey’s house. There were lights on in the house, a single sedan parked out front. I figured Defoe had sent an underling to play escort. No way he’d have gone himself on the off chance we had called the cops, and Broch was too valuable to risk over a car ride.

  The sedan was the same car I’d run from in that alley. That meant Defoe was inside and had Broch with him. It was always possible they’d brought backup, but Costello’s men generally work in pairs—just like the police.

  Here goes nothing, I thought as I started across the clearing.

  I watched for an eye at the window, a crack in the shades, but there wasn’t any movement that I could see. Why bother keeping watch? This location was supposed to be secret. No point in dragging it out. I walked right up onto the porch and rang the bell, like a trick-or-treater or a Jehovah’s Witness, then stepped back so that whoever answered would have a full view from the side window.

  It was Defoe—first peeking from behind the curtain, then stepping through the open doorway with a handgun pointed at my dome.

  “How…?”

  “The grandfather clock,” I said. “That was sloppy on your part.”

  “I suppose it was. But now here you are! As I said before, always so brave.”

  “A fistful of Xanax helps.”

  I held up the gym bag.

  “I come bearing gifts,” I said.

  “How thoughtful. Of course, I’ll need to give you a quick search before I allow you inside.”

  I put the bag down, assumed the position. He squinted into the clearing, then holstered his gun in his pants and gave me a very thorough search.

  “Enjoying yourself?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” he said. “Later, I plan to have loads of fun.”

  “I’m sure you will: there’s a million dollars in that bag. And more where that came from.”

  The second part was a lie, but I thought it might stop Defoe from shooting me in the head and taking the money. He picked the bag up by the straps, held it out in front of him.

  “Feels about right,” he said, handing it back to me. “We’ll make sure once we’re inside. Meanwhile, where is your cook? Don’t tell me she declined our invitation.”

  “She ran,” I said. “You scared her senseless. She’s probably checking into a hotel in Oaxaca right about now.”

  “How unfortunate.”

  “I was hoping a bag full of cash might make it a little more fortunate.”

  “Let’s see where the evening takes us.”

  I followed him inside, down a long entrance hallway, and into the dining room. Broch was there, leaning against the wall between twin portraits of Vincent and his long-dead father. Lindsey and Serena were there, sitting on opposite sides of the table. They each had one hand zip-tied to their chair and the other free. There were empty TV dinner containers sitting on place mats in front of them. I’d just missed feeding time.

  The grandfather clock was there, too, ticking away as loud as ever. I gave it a mental wink: Thanks for the tip, pal.

  “You guys all right?” I asked.

  Serena nodded.

  “Tell me Sarah’s all right,” Lindsey blurted out.

  “She’s fine,” I said.

  At least they looked healthy—for now. Defoe was probably waiting for a full house before he broke out the iron maiden.

  “On the table,” he said, meaning the bag.

  I hoisted it up, set it down. You don’t think of money as being heavy, but a million dollars has mass. I needed both hands.

  “Now open it,” he said.

  Speaking of having mass, Broch abandoned his tough-guy lean and came lumbering over. He smelled like garlic and cheap tobacco. I glanced at Serena, then Lindsey. They looked numb, curious, and terrified all at once.

  “Prepare to be a whole lot richer, gentlemen,” I said. “Of course, how you split it is up to you. If you’re not the sharing types, there’s always pistols at dawn.”

  “Quit stalling,” Broch said.

  For a troglodyte, he was damn perceptive: I was stalling. According to Grandpa Time, it was almost seven twenty. My lone reinforcement should be arriving any minute. If we weren’t in sync, the evening would end very badly.

  “Patience,” I said, stretching out over the table and tugging the zipper back. “You’ll have the rest of your lives to spend this.”

  I spread the flaps apart, gave them a gander at their new fortune. Broch nearly spit out his gold caps. Defoe played it cool, but I caught a slight tremor in his lower lip.

  “Now empty it,” he said.

  I started removing the bundles one at a time, stacking them in ca
reful columns.

  The clock’s ticking seemed to grow louder and louder, as if the sound was coming from inside my head.

  Any day now, Sarah, I thought.

  The bag was just about empty. That hideous clock I’d hoped never to hear again struck the half hour. It was getting late early.

  Chapter 42

  Sarah Roberts-Walsh

  FINDING THE trail in the dark was easier than I’d imagined, but Anna hadn’t been kidding: this was the kind of dense and tangled forest that horror flicks are made of. My flashlight only lit up so much. Point it at the ground and I wound up getting hit in the face with a low-hanging branch; point it at the trees and I wound up tripping over a rock or a root or God knows what.

  And then there was the soundtrack: there must have been a thousand brands of insect chirping and clicking and screeching. I tried not to think about all the creatures I couldn’t hear. Were snakes nocturnal? Wild boars? Florida panthers? I wished I’d paid closer attention when Aunt Lindsey dragged me on her nature walks.

  The rifle I was carrying didn’t give me much comfort. It wasn’t Doris’s shotgun, but it had a similar heft and feel. Anna had tried to talk me into buying a handgun. We stood there debating the merits right in front of the pawnbroker.

  It was true that a pistol would have been more practical, but I’d never fired one before. Stick with what you know, I thought. Especially when you had a rock star teacher.

  I wished Doris was here with me now. She was exactly the kind of person you wanted in your trench at the darkest hour. Loyal, fearless, willing to fight.

  I wondered what she thought of me after my sudden and violent departure. Probably she thought I was weak. In my place, she’d have gone down swinging. Or firing. Me, I’d rolled on my back and played possum. At least in her eyes. Of course, I couldn’t tell Doris the full story—for her sake more than mine.

  I was starting to wonder if this log existed—if maybe Anna hadn’t sent me on a wild-goose chase while she carried out some plan of her own—when I turned a corner and walked smack into it. If it had been a real log, I’d have bruised my knee something fierce, but because it was synthetic and lightweight all it did was startle me.

  I pushed it aside, shone my flashlight on the blue tarp, and let out a scream I hoped afterward would blend with the insects’ general din. There, in the center of the tarp, curled up and groggy, was the largest, fattest water moccasin I’d ever seen outside of a reptile house. Black and tan scales. Squat, wedge-like head. Easily three feet long. I jumped back, unslung the rifle from my shoulder, and took aim, dropping the flashlight in the process so that the snake disappeared in the dark and there was no longer anything to aim at.

  “Goddamnit!” I yelled.

  The fall didn’t do the flashlight any good—it was flickering on and off now, acting like a strobe light. I knelt down, angled it at the tarp. The snake hadn’t budged. Then it dawned on me: he wasn’t just groggy; he was deceased. I moved a little closer, stomped my foot to be sure. Still no movement.

  I slung the rifle back over my shoulder, inched forward, grabbed a corner of the tarp, and dragged it away until the submarine escape hatch Anna had described was clear. Hope you don’t have any friends, I told the snake-corpse, folding the plastic over his body just in case he decided to play undead.

  The door was heavier than I would have thought, or else it was stuck because no one had opened it in a long while—maybe since Anthony and Anna took their little tour. I groped around until I found the switch. It was right where Anna had said it would be. The problem was…it didn’t work. I flipped it up and down a dozen times. Nothing. Not even a flicker.

  A half hour into our rescue attempt and I had a dead snake, a half-broken flashlight, and a pitch-black tunnel to navigate. But there was no turning back now. It didn’t matter how scared or discouraged I was—three lives depended on me following through with a plan I never should have agreed to in the first place.

  So I sucked it up and started down, gun on my shoulder, flashlight between my teeth.

  I felt like a cook playing action figure. Courage had never been my thing. I was the girl who crawled out to the edge of the diving board and then lay flat on her belly, clinging for dear life. I was the sixth grader who got bullied by third graders. Later, I became the woman who married a cop because she thought she needed protecting. I promised myself that if I got out of this alive, I’d play it safe until they buried me. No skydiving on my fiftieth birthday. No running naked into the ocean when the next winter solstice rolled around. I wouldn’t even buy lottery tickets anymore.

  Meanwhile, the misadventures just kept coming. After a slow and careful descent, I missed the last rung of the ladder and came down hard on my left ankle. Definitely twisted, possibly sprained. I hobbled forward a few steps, reached out to brace myself against the cold concrete wall. I hoped Anna’s memory was solid: I hoped it really was just a ten-minute walk on a healthy pair of legs.

  The malfunctioning flashlight made it seem as though there were shadows where there shouldn’t be. Every few yards I’d jump back, land on my bad ankle, and stifle a scream. I tried turning the light off, feeling my way along the wall, but then I was struck with a fit of panic—a sensation that it was the wall touching me instead of me touching the wall, as if the ghosts of men the Costellos had killed and hid away in these concrete slabs were reaching out now to take revenge on anyone who passed by.

  My breathing started to take on the rhythm of the flashlight—long gasps broken up by choppy wheezing. I was sweating all over. I felt light-headed.

  I kept pushing away a thought that didn’t help: if the lights in the tunnel weren’t working, then neither were the vents. Maybe I wasn’t panicking: maybe there really wasn’t any air to breathe. And maybe I wasn’t hallucinating: maybe the tunnel really was narrowing, the walls closing in.

  Just as I’d done on the diving board all those years ago, I got on my hands and knees and crawled forward. Anybody watching would have thought I was chasing after the flashlight’s spastic bursts, the way some cats will chase the beam of a penlight.

  And then, when I thought I couldn’t take any more, when I thought I really would pass out, I nearly smacked my head on a metal sliding door. I poked at it with my finger to be sure it was real. Yep, this was no mirage: I’d reached the end. I got to my feet, thinking, Now’s the time to be afraid. Now is when the real danger begins.

  But I wasn’t scared. If anything, I felt a strange surge of confidence, as if I’d burned up all my fear in that tunnel and was ready to conquer whatever waited for me on the other side.

  Chapter 43

  Serena Flores

  THE MONEY just kept coming. One bundle after another until the columns nearly reached the chandelier. More cash than I’d ever seen at one time. The kind of cash that does things to men—especially men who spend their lives looking for easy ways to get rich. Men who take and give nothing back. Men like Defoe and Broch, who’d snatched us off the street and tied us up and pointed guns at our heads.

  I watched Anna, watched her hand moving in and out of that bag. She seemed steady, strong, unafraid. This was a new Anna Costello, different from the woman who skulked around that ridiculous castle, hiding from her marriage in plain sight. I didn’t know what she was planning, but I knew there had to be a plan. And I didn’t believe for a second that Sarah had run off. That she was scared, yes—but Sarah was the type to stare down her fears.

  The stacks of bills kept climbing. Defoe was trying hard to look unimpressed, but Broch was another story. His mouth hung open as though he’d forgotten how to breathe, and he shifted his weight back and forth from one foot to the other. He looked like an inflated toddler who had to pee. Even Lindsey seemed mesmerized. There was more money on that table than a nurse could hope to make in a lifetime. Maybe two lifetimes.

  “Almost there,” Anna said. “Bet you boys are dreaming of a cabana in Barbados right about now.”

  Her voice rose as she spoke, as if s
he was calling to someone in another room, the way she used to call for me to bring her things—a glass of water, a bottle of aspirin, a pair of slippers she’d left downstairs. Broch was too busy salivating to notice the rise in volume. Defoe stuck by his blank expression.

  “Last one, coming up,” Anna said, her voice louder still.

  But when she pulled her hand back out of the bag, it wasn’t holding money; it was holding a silver handgun—the kind that’s small enough to fit in the palm of a hand. In a single, smooth motion, she pivoted and pointed it at Defoe’s head. But before she could say anything, I felt the barrel of Broch’s cannonlike revolver pressing against the back of my skull.

  And then the shot came. Not from Anna’s gun or Broch’s gun, but from somewhere close by. An explosion so loud it toppled the stacks of bills and had my ears ringing and buzzing as though I was trapped underwater. And then Sarah appeared in the doorway, looking out at us from behind the long barrel of a rifle.

  I could sense Broch’s head turning. I reached up, grabbed his wrist, yanked it forward, and bit until I tasted blood. He howled, stumbled backward. I looked down and saw his revolver lying at my feet. Forgetting I had one hand tied to the chair, I reached for it and went tumbling over, landing flat on my back with the chair beneath me.

  But I had the gun now. I trained it on Broch. I had no doubt I’d shoot him if he took a single step forward. After what we’d done to Anthony, it would have been easy enough to pull that trigger. Broch must have seen it in me because he backed away with his hands held high.

  Over the droning in my ears, I heard Lindsey scream “Anna!” I glanced sideways at my former boss, saw that Defoe had taken her gun and slipped behind her. He had the snub-nosed barrel against the small of her back and stood with his chin nearly resting on her shoulder, as if he was playing peekaboo.