“Agreed,” Mathis said. “We’ll see if we can’t find out who these kids are and where they are living. In the meantime, get suited up. We’ve got over twelve properties that we need searched and secured. Every second counts. By morning, I expect Cain to be in cuffs or a coffin.”
Anna waited until the rest of the attendees had cleared out before approaching Mathis. “I want in.”
The bald sergeant crossed his arms over his broad chest. “I’ve let you get away with more than you can imagine. Where we’re going is unknown and dangerous.”
“What else is new?” Anna retorted. Her tired eyes shone with newfound vigor. “I’ve shed blood for these little girls. I’ve gone to places and seen things I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I have to see this through, Sergeant.”
Mathis looked at her, his face unreadable. “You stay in the back--”
Anna smiled, knowing that she won.
“-- and you let us work. And for the love of Pete, stay out of trouble. I’ve got enough paperwork as is.”
“Moral support it is then,” Anna replied. “But I’m still going to need a gun.”
The locker room in the Van Buren Police Department was small and crowded. Anna slid into her Kevlar vest and tightened the Velcro with a grimace. A thumping pain echoed down her stomach to her toes. When the lady officer beside her turned her back, Anna drew out the bottle of painkillers and downed one. It didn’t do much and made her head feel like a balloon on water. She put her tactical boot up on the bench and pulled at the laces, allowing the boot to eat her foot. The cut on her heel was not as bad as she had thought, but it annoyed her with a steady sting. After rolling up her sleeves, she clipped the borrowed pistol on her belt. It was a black beauty. The weight felt wrong in her hands though. “Don’t you lose it,” Mathis had warned her. “Or you’re buying me two new ones.”
Anna didn’t need him to remind her. She’d counted all she lost on this job, and it drove her bonkers. Her truck, her gun, her ignorance, and her word. The last hurt the worst. She had promised Trisha and Avery Rines, Mia Santos, Grace Kendale, Evan Dedrick, and herself that she’d find Keisha Rines and Lily Kendale. Almost two weeks into the investigation and she was barely hanging on to her life.
The task force separated into three squads, each with their own list of addresses. Choppers lifted into the air like onyx dragonflies and soared through the night sky, their thermal cameras keen on tracing heat signatures around the properties.
Anna loaded into a SWAT van and was seated as far away from the door as possible. She felt benched by her coach even though she knew the role she had to play. Observer and consultant. Whatever. Her blood rose when she thought of the innocent girls, chopped and mutilated, and the sketch of the man named Cain. The new lead gave Anna a high she hadn’t felt since the Dade County Human Trafficking case where she learned the meaning of hard justices. Stepping out of that southern Florida townhouse soaked in blood, tasting its copper tinge in her mouth and knowing it was not her own. Mobs of cameras flashing over her own drenched flesh and the drowsy fourteen-year-old girl she held. She thought she escaped the rush back in the Sunshine state, but Cain had rebirthed it with a vengeance.
The bodies of the men and women armored in Kevlar, kneepads, and elbow protection swayed in unison with every turn. Their shoulders bumped into Anna and she into the wall that divided driver and passenger. Tires rolled and the team waited in silent expectation. Anna was disappointed not to have Rennard by her side, but he had been put into another transport going west.
The van eased to a stop and the team craned their neck to the door. They got the okay.
“Go! Go! Go!” One man shouted as the doors swung open.
The SWAT team dispatched one by one. The van rattled with every hurried step and leap out the back. After they had all gone, Anna scuttled through the van and landed on the grass.
At the end of a winding dirt road, tall sentry trees concealed the cabin home. The place smelled green and sappy. ATV tracks and game trails split out into the towering oaks and pines, vanishing in the splendor of the hazy mountains darkened by night. Red and green radio tower lights blinked in the distance. Crickets chirped and shrubbery rustled. With hunched backs, steady rifles, and a portable battering ram, the SWAT team moved up to the front door. Anna followed behind, keeping a safe distance and an eye out for danger.
The cabin was simple, clean, and inviting. All it needed was a wisp of smoke billowing from the chimney and it would’ve been picturesque. Tonight, the windows cast no light, nor did the lamp hanging by the entrance. Cool wind jiggled the dangling wind chimes.
The team lined up on either side of the door, and without so much as a word, bashed the door open. The place had been furnished with a leather recliner and fluffy couch, a patterned rug, and an elk’s head mounted above the inactive fireplace. It smelled of pine needles and nature. Flashlight orbs danced around the room like fairies as the team crept across the wooden floor.
They searched the kitchen, which was stocked with beer and soda, with little to no food or trash. They crossed into the master bedroom with a large bed, dresser, and shower, and then they searched the guest room containing a single twin bed and side table. The pictures decorating the halls were of various predatory beasts, mountain ranges, and relaxing ponds. The squad traveled upstairs and found another guest bedroom and a closet full of moth balls. A series of generators that powered the place and a stack of firewood were piled by the chimney corner. After twenty minutes of searching, the team returned to the main room and lowered their weapons. Someone flipped the light switch that didn’t work anyway.
“Dead end,” one of the men said.
“It’s a vacation home,” Anna thought out loud. “Someone he’s close to must know about it, or he would’ve used it as a safe house. The guy is hiding somewhere secret, someplace where he’s in control. Like the Jenkins’s house but not.”
A few sentries were called in to watch the cabin and start searching for evidence. The rest of the team returned to the van and headed off to the next location.
Anna bounced her leg as she mentally prepared herself for their second stop. Not finding Cain right off the bat made her nervous. Was he toying with us? she wondered. No, she argued with herself. He couldn’t have known that Strife had the photograph displayed in his videos or that any of the documents survived the fire. But the situation made her uneasy.
The next stop was far seedier and thus more promising. The SWAT team fanned out across the scrapyard as a chopper passed overhead. They navigated through the labyrinth of discarded car and scraps. The SWAT team swept their rifles and shotguns inside every window of the neglected ‘90s automobiles that filled the lot. Rats scurried through rust holes and missing doors and cushions hinted at the occasional part thief. The lights were burnt out, dust coated the security camera lenses, and portions of the chain-link fence had been cut away by scavengers.
Anna kept her eyes peeled. Shadows danced and moved as gun-mounted flashlights scanned the area. Nocturnal critters rustled out of sight. Anna kept alert when she moved around rusty piping and jagged edges that prodded her toward the center of the yard.
The SWAT team appeared out from the metal maze and faced the owner’s trailer, a white rectangle with square windows and metal steps. The squad positioned themselves by the window and door, keeping concussive grenades handy. A gloved hand counted down. Three. Two. One. The door burst open. The team flooded into the room, laser sights dancing. They searched the restroom and side office, by the couch, and under a conspicuous rug for any trap doors. They turned up nothing until they reached the desk.
One of the squad members had already pulled the binder out of the locked drawer and placed it on the metal desktop when they called Anna inside. It had a white cover and an inch-wide ring. Using the tip of her finger, Anna opened it. Photographs filled the plastic sleeves. Images of Keisha Rines.
The eleven-year-old African-American girl had a wide smile and walked beside her par
ents. The next photo followed seconds later with her kneeling down to tie her shoe. Anna recognized the cafe in the background. They were on Main Street. The next few photos followed Keisha down the road. She never looked at the camera. The next three sleeves in the binder followed the little girl in different outfits, going to and from school. She wore dresses some days and casual tees in others. The photographer followed her to her home, snapping photos through the window of the house and of her eating her dinner, unaware of the stalker separated by a few centimeters of glass. She was younger than Anna realized. The pictures must've been before her last concert tour at least a year ago. He’d been planning this for a long time. But why was Lily’s abduction so rushed?
As she flipped through the binder, it became clear that there were no photos of Lily Kendale. All of them showed Keisha leading up to the night of the abduction at King’s Opera House. The last image in the binder had Keisha curled up in a dog cage with her eyes shut. She was skinnier than what her parents had described and was dressed in loosely fitted yellow pajamas. A bandage was wrapped around her pinky stub. The rest of her fingers were still intact. Anna checked the binder again, looking for some other tell or clue, finding nothing else in the stalker’s scrapbook. She rubbed her forehead and dialed Rennard.
“That’s something, at least,” the agent replied after hearing her news. “Most of the listings we’ve explored are abandoned… apart from the hobos. We’ve found a few of those. The guy has lot of land he’s just not using.”
“That’s what I noticed too,” Anna admitted. “Maybe it’s to throw us off his trail.”
“By keeping us on his trail? We have at least a dozen listings. One will get a hit, I’m sure of that.”
Anna looked down at the binder and the pictures of Keisha. They were a progression of sorts, every time he got closer to the subject, until he finally had her. “To build his confidence, the abduction of Keisha Rines was clean, calculated, and safe. He spent at least a year following her before he struck. Likewise, each time we cross off the wrong location, he has more time to prepare and more boldness to do so. The closer we get to him, the closer he gets to us.”
“If that’s the case, why was Lily’s abduction messy and almost improvised?”
“Because…” Anna thought back to the ski-mask wearing stranger staring at her through the Hikers Middle school camera. “Because the success of Keisha’s abduction had made him cocky. He didn’t need to build himself up with perfect prep work; he was already confident in his abilities. Now that we’re on his tail, he’s reverting to his old ways. These decoy properties are his way of regaining control. Mentally, if nothing else.”
“So when we actually find him--”
“He’ll be bold enough to do whatever he needs to survive.”
Anna heard a second voice on Rennard’s phone. “... we found something…” Rennard put the phone back to his mouth. “I gotta go. There’s--BAM! BAM! BAM!”
Gunfire. A bloodcurdling scream. Sudden silence.
“Rennard!” Anna yelled into the phone.
The line died.
Horrorstruck, she turned to the SWAT team in the trailer with her. A few moments later, the leader of the squad got the call. They shared a final look with one another and then rushed outside.
The armored van sped down the road, whiplashing the passengers at every turn. Hearts pumped and tires rolled. Anna kept her hand on her holstered pistol, her eyes wide but looking nowhere.
“Alpha squad team has been hit,” Mathis said to the squad leader. “We’re sending you in.”
The brakes squealed and the van stopped. The back doors flew open and the squad poured onto the wet earth. Above, parted steel clouds revealed a crescent moon. A chopper cut across it and circled the perimeter like a night hawk. Puddles of mud and patches of dying grass occupied the spaces between solitary railcars, sprawling corroded tracks, and condemned red brick buildings with shattered windows and profane graffiti. Stringy weeds grew out of cracked pavement and rain water puddled around the nonfunctional turntable at the yard’s center with an ominous and unmanned control hut. A failing chain link fence boxed the area. No Trespassing signs clung to its rust.
Anna recognized the place. Smithson’s Train Yard, closed in the forties after the Van Buren train business became an attraction. Smithson’s was never more than a few buildings and was far enough away from society that taxpayer dollars were allocated to more pressing issues. “Whoever bought it,” her father had said when Anna was a child, “would be buying all the junk and more.”
It appears Cain could care less about the junk, because everything in the place hadn’t been touched in years, excluding metal stolen by prospecting scavengers. Her father had a case here once, she remembered Richard telling her. A small-time drug runner with an excitable trigger finger fled into this very yard. He put a bullet in his own head when the cops swarmed him, but not before navigating the many nooks and crannies throughout the yard. Nearly four decades later, things had gotten worse. Jagged metal and years of neglect had made it a hazard better left unexplored, but Anna would flip the world upside down if it meant finding her niece. However, orders kept her back at the van, watching the SWAT team cut across the yard and travel toward Alpha’s parked armored van.
One grabbed ahold of the vehicle’s handle and pulled the doors open. The seats were empty, but it didn’t seem like there were traces of blood or a struggle. Stomped grass suggested travel to the far building. The chopper swirled overhead like a bird of prey but if it had picked up any heat signatures, the team of technical cops would’ve slowed their advance.
Using hand signals as the primary form of communication, they neared the ancient brick building. It stood three stories high and had wide glass windows, some of the lower ones shattered by rocks. The team spread out across the perimeter and slipped inside from multiple points of entry. Their flashlight beams bounced inside, hinting at their location.
Anna stirred in her boots. She watched the building anxiously but was sure to keep aware of her surroundings. It seemed like hours had passed, but she knew it was only minutes. She waited for Rennard’s call. It didn’t come. The flashlights disappeared deep within the building and Anna felt alone.
She bounced her weight from foot to foot. The Kevlar became progressively more agitating against her torso. Her heart wouldn’t let up and she chewed her lip nervously as she thought of every horrible scenario. Then they came true.
The loud pops echoed through the train yard, yet the action was hidden in the dark of the building. Muzzle flashes flickered on the second floor. The chopper ignited its spotlight and brightened the side wall. Anna took a few steps forward, her eyes bouncing from window to window, tracing the flashes. Then, after a few seconds, she was once again alone in her worry. The chopper doubled back, moving its spotlight across the yard like a heavenly beam, but only catching grass and cracked mud.
Anna waited for the front door to reopen, for the SWAT team to exit with Keisha and Lily, but the doors betrayed no hint of opening and the building had become as black as the night.
She dialed Mathis. “Do they have him?”
“Bravos pinned. The guy’s a snake, Dedrick. He keeps moving from room to room and claims to be using one of the girls as a shield.”
“Which one?” Anna begged for an answer.
“It’s not clear. Charlie team is on the way. Hold tight. Your involvement will only complicate things.”
Anna chewed her lip and replied slowly. “Understood.”
“Thanks, Dedrick. I know it’s not easy being on the sidelines, but help is inbound.”
When the call ended. Anna looked up at the chopper circling the night sky. When it went for its second revolution, Anna dashed across the yard and didn’t stop running until she reached the back of the second building. Hands resting on her knees, she took a moment to catch her breath. Sorry, Mathis. She waited for the opportunity to reach the side of the building and seized it without a second thought.
/> A thick chain coiled through the foot of the side door like a rusty, fat snake, one of its links broken by a bolt cutter. Alpha team’s work, most likely. With a metallic screech, the door opened and she slipped inside.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to inky blackness. When they did, she moved slyly through the hall. The storehouse’s purpose was to catalogue train parts and the like, but now it was an empty memory apart from the broken ceiling light glass Anna crunched beneath her boots. Musty air clogged Anna’s lungs the farther she pressed into the building. The thick coat of dust covered everything she passed and aggravated her sinuses. She moved by a few small storage closets and stifled a cough.
Swinging doors opened into the main hub of the first floor. It had a huge gate, tracks curving through the concrete, and ample room for storing train cars, though it was largely empty now, barring the support columns that reached to the floor above. Anna peeked inside, spotting no one. Turning back, she moved to the stairwell to the second floor where the muzzle flashes had been spotted.
Anna stepped up the stairs with her gun raised. She reached a long hall lined with offices. They contained tin desks, metal chairs with hardened cushions, and filing cabinets akin to the ones at the sunken Jenkins’s house. The helicopter made another round, casting its bright light through the window. Anna stayed away from the godly ray of light, fearing the sniper posted in heli’s side door would mistake her for an enemy. When the spotlight drifted away, Anna dashed past the window and deeper into the building.
At the end of the hall was a sliver of light slipping through the crevices. It partially illuminated a large room filled with crates and stacks of wooden boxes. Blinding light flooded the room from the far side, causing the smallest objects to cast a long shadow across the cold floor. Anna pressed her back against a six-foot box. Cautiously, she squinted toward the source of the light. A half a dozen floodlights were positioned in the shattered window office at the back of the room. They shone was so bright, it washed out Anna’s vision.
Secrets Boxset: A Riveting Kidnapping Mystery Collection Page 53
