A Cold Dark Place (38 page)

"You all right? You really ought to go home, Officer."

"I'm fine. I'm not going anywhere"

"Suit yourself," the nurse said. "His vitals are good.
Should be waking up any time now. Might as well get some
coffee. Machine's down the hall"

Even machine coffee sounded good. Emily studied Chris's
face for a clue about his consciousness. But he was still. A
minute away wouldn't matter. When she returned, she nearly
dropped the Styrofoam cup full of what she now considered
the world's worst coffee.

"Emily. Are you here?" Chris said, his tired eyes lighting
up just a little when she came into view.

She hurried to his bedside and patted his hand. "Where
else would I be?"

"Did you find Jenna?"

For the first time, tears came, rolling down her cheeks.
But there was no whimpering, no sobs, just the release of a
nightmare. She knew his question was out of genuine concern, but it felt wrong to pounce on her missing daughter's
case the second the man woke from surgery.

"No, Chris. No. You had me so worried." She bent over
him, "You feel better?"

"I'd feel a lot better if I could get out of here to help you
find your little girl and hunt down that asshole."

His voice was a near wheeze. He was a big man, but he
looked so small and helpless it nearly broke Emily's heart.
Had this been her fault, too? Had she led him to disaster
once more? The bullet missed Christopher's heart, but had
to be surgically removed from his lungs. He'd be breathing
like a leaky tire for quite some time, but he'd recover. That
was the one bit of good news that came that day.

"I'm going back to Copper Beach," she said.

"To find her?"

"Yeah," she said. She touched his hand. "I have to do
something."

Christopher looked up at her and nodded. "Emily, I've an
idea where to look."

Emily's eyes widened and she felt herself sink closer to
him, to capture what he said. She almost assumed that he'd been hopped up on morphine, but the look in his eyes was
clear. He did have an idea.

"Where?"

"Remember the red clay dust Walker tracked around the
cabin?"

She did. "Yes. You mentioned it before you blacked out"

"There's a formation not far from Copper Beach. Red clay
isn't all that rare near there, but there is a place that might be
the kind of hideaway a piece of garbage like Walker might
like. I remember going there a few years ago with the kids."

Emily recalled the events of the evening of the shooting.
She remembered how the red clay had clung to the soles of
Walker's shoes. It had been wet, then dried and flaked off.

"Where?"

"There's an old World War II bunker near Copper Beach.
Maybe ten miles away."

Emily's heart started to race. A bunker? Underground?
She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, his beard's growth
pricking her lips.

"I need a place to start looking," she said.

As she turned to leave, she thought she heard Christopher
say something more. The words were a complete surprise,
though not unwelcome.

"What, Christopher? What did you say?"

"I love you, Emily."

And just as she hoped his suggestion of where to look for
Jenna, she hoped that his last words were also rooted in reality-not the steady drip of the drugs that kept him comfortable and half asleep.

"I love you, too," she said. She went back to him, bent
down, and kissed him on the lips tenderly. "You already
know that, don't you?"

He managed a smile. "Yeah, I do."

Emily parked in front of a weathered chain and stepped
outside, her flashlight's narrow beam barely a match for the
heavy shroud of weather, an approaching storm. But, of
course, none of that bothered her. Nothing could stop what
had fueled her hunt since it all began-her daughter. Where
was Jenna? Before the last bars on her cell phone died, she'd
talked to Olga Morris-Cerrino about what had happened and
where she was going. Olga told her that she'd heard through
her pal at Seattle PD that local cops had requested infrared
flybys to search for Jenna.

"My daughter is alive," she said. "We don't need to look
for a goddamned hot spot"

No one could steal her hope. Though some tried. The
worst had been her ex-husband. His last remarks could not
have been crueler. His words were like wedding rice in the
face, spiny and sharp, unexpected. How she had ever loved
him was lost forever as his vitriolic words came back to her.

"This comes down on you, Emily. You've really messed up
this time. With our own daughter!"

Only Olga had seemed adamant that Jenna would be found.
"To think otherwise, is to lose her," she told Emily when she
saw her outside Christopher's hospital room.

"I know." Emily's voice was soft and her emotions fragile.

"You need to get a grip," Olga said. "You're stronger than
this and your daughter depends on you" She looked around
the hallway; several other cops with coffee hovered nearby.
"Do you want to count on them?"

Emily shook her head. "Absolutely not"

Olga went on, her voice no longer hushed. "All of his vies
were taken in close proximity to where he'd lived. He's good
looking and lazy. That's the standard combination of any
straight guy with a hot body and pretty face" She tried to get
Emily to smile, but she couldn't. Instead, she hatched a plan.
"I'll work some things around here. The cops are all over
this, but they're no match for you"

Emily knew Olga was right.

"There's an old World War II bunker not far from the cabin.
Chris thinks I should go there. I sure can't just wait here"

Emily felt her way along the iron chain, so heavy and
rusted. Probably a relic from a shipwreck, the chain was meant
to keep interlopers and vandals from the bunker. She was
nearly out of breath, though she had barely exerted herself.
So hard to breathe in this wind.

The weather could not have been worse, and for once, the
radio weather report could not have been more accurate:
"Gale force winds on the coast; small craft advisories in all
Washington coastal waters.... .

She pulled her coat tighter and followed the length of the
chain, searching for a bolt or a latch of some kind, but found
none. I don't want to have to walk up there, she thought, eyeing the impossibly steep and rain-washed road to top of the
bluff and the bunker. She kicked at the chain, but it stayed
anchored by the four-foot creosote pilings that had been
jammed into the sandy soil. She'd have no choice but to
completely brave the elements and walk. She went back to
the car, turned off the engine, dimmed the headlights, and
grabbed a heavy Maglite from the glove box.

A second later, the flashlight's beam poking though the
darkness, Emily was over the chain and in search of her
daughter. She had gone directly from Christopher's hospital
room to this desolate spot. If Jenna was in there, she didn't
want her to wait one minute longer than she had to for her
mom. She had to get her out of there as soon as she could.

Before it's too late. Before she dies. Before my life is over.

The bunker had been built on a promontory above the Pacific in World War II. It was one of several positioned around
Washington state in the event that the Japanese had somehow launched a secret offensive to invade the West Coast.
After it had been abandoned for decades, the locals had tried
to make it a tourist destination but as the concrete interior
that had once housed a pair of sixteen-foot cannons began to
crumble, the state shut down the site and posted a series of
WARNING and DANGER signs.

As Emily trudged her way up the darkened bluff, she
could see that the heavy chain had not been a complete deterrent-several beer cans and even some paper plates indicated that the bunker might have been a party spot; charred
logs indicated a campsite. Tire tracks from motorcycles and
all-terrain vehicles had slashed the sandy soil with ruts that
now collected water. A dozen little streams ran down the hillside, the wind roared, and she pulled her jacket closer.
The cold air sliced every inch of her exposed skin.

Jenna, she thought, where are you? She didn't call out.
The noise of the storm made any kind of utterance completely impractical. And if that had not been the case, Emily
would have kept her mouth shut as a precaution. She worried
if Jenna's captor was within the sound of her voice. If he was,
there was no need to tip him off. Surprise and her Glock
warm from her constant touch-were among the things she
had going for her. But neither were her greatest source of
strength and power; finding Jenna stood above all.

My daughter's out there and I'm not leaving until I find
her and bring her home.

Something screamed. Startled, Emily looked up and into
the night sky, a boiling brew of clouds. Just a seabird. She
was almost there. The bunker was twenty yards away, behind
a hedge of sea grasses and spruce trees so tortured by the elements they looked like alarmed figures fleeing the waves of
the Pacific. The trek to the top of the bluff had taken no more
than ten minutes, but with each step she felt as if the sinking
sand would steal her feet. Here. I'm here. But where are
you? Where is the bunker?

Emily steadied herself on the grassy and sandy layer that
covered the concrete slab roof of the secluded bunker. She
looked around with her light, finally tracing the edges of the
roofline beneath her feet. Waving the flashlight's beam toward the ocean, she could distinguish the crisp edge of the
bunker's camouflaged covering. Bracing herself against the
elements, she moved slowly toward its face.

Emily could hear the surf of the Pacific two hundred feet
below, pounding the embankment with a relentless fury.
Gooseflesh consumed her body. Since she could barely see,
she climbed down a ledge backward, facing toward the edge of the cliff. She expected it was no more than ten yards away.
There was no other way down, at least none she could see
with a flashlight that only produced a strong beam when she
rocked it back and forth, shifting the weakening batteries.

She bent down, her back to the ocean, and slid. Her hands
were frozen and wet, but she barely used them for grasping;
they'd become more like hooks than hands. She dropped ten
feet, feeling the relief that came when her feet rested on the
packed red clay and sand of the earth.

The red clay.

She was close. Close to finding Jenna. Her heart pounded
with such a hurried force, she worried that she might have a
heart attack. She'd die right there. No one would find her. No
one would find her daughter. Her lips were blue, and vapors
curled from her mouth as she frantically searched for a way
in. All the while, a fierce wind pummeled her.

The bunker had three openings, not really windows, but
more the size of very small doors. Each had been fashioned
with bars by the state's Fish and Game Department to allow
access for bats, but to deter visitors of the human kind. A
sign proclaimed the bunker as a protected habitat for Townsend's Big-eared Bats. On closer inspection, she noticed that
one of the bars could easily be removed. It was clear by the
color and condition of the bar darker and smoother than
the others-that it had been handled. It had been moved. She
tucked the flashlight under her armpit, its beam scattering in
the wrong direction. She pulled and twisted and the middle
bar came loose. She dropped it and it fell with a thud into the
sand.

This is the way in, she thought, hoisting herself up to the
opening and fishing her feet through it. She swiped her light
at the floor to make sure the drop wasn't so severe as to cause
an injury. She slid herself into the opening, and slumped to the wet concrete floor. She dropped to her knees. She was inside.

Once more, her light moved across the floor.

Blood? Oh God, no! she thought as she caught the sight
of red spatter that had marked the middle opening. Oh no,
please. The words nearly slipped from her lips as her freezing fingertips felt the red color. It was hard. Even under the
layer of wetness from the rain, Emily Kenyon could feel that
it was a dried pigment. Not blood. Paintball, she thought,
momentarily relieved.

She pointed the beam into the depths of the bunker. It
looked empty, dark, hollow The space was surprisingly largemaybe as much as two thousand square feet. She trained her
light all around. There were sodden boxes full of garbage. It
smelled of bat guano. A rat or maybe even a raccoon lurked
on the other side of the darkness.

"Jenna?" Her voice echoed in the darkness. "Are you here?

"Help me! Get me out of here," called a faint voice-her
daughter's voice.

Emily felt a jab at her heart. Toward the back of the
bunker, the wall farthest from the ocean, there was a steel
door. The voice was coming from there.

"Honey, I'm here"

The wind howled outside, the storm was moving at break
neck speed from the gloomy waters of the Pacific. She wondered if she'd heard anything at all. The wind was messing
with her. A whistle, then a shriek. There had been no answer
to her call.

She tried again, inching toward the door. "Jenna?"

"Mom? Mom?"

It was her! "Yes, it's Mom!" Her gun now drawn, Emily
reached for the door and lifted the lever handle.

"Help me," said the weak voice as Emily swung open the
door to a small room. File boxes filled with county records
were packed in rows that had once likely been neat. Right
now they were a shambles. More paintball spatter. The smell
of moldy paper permeated the air.

"Help me," came a voice once more. It was male this
time. Young. A teenager.

Nick? Or was it Dylan, toying with her once more?

Emily aimed her light at the direction of the voice and
scanned the room. A leg. A torso. A face. It was Nick Martin.
He was on the floor, his legs bound by cording. His skin was
ashen, and his eyes glittered like wet stones. His gaze sliced
through the air. He looked so different from his photograph,
even more so, Emily thought, from when she'd seen him last.
With his mother. His dark hair, so carefully highlighted by
Peg, was gone. Even his youth failed him right then; his handsomeness was no longer evident. He was caged. Angry and
weak at the same time.