War Bringer (25 page)

“Yes. For your own safety. I’m working on finding the culprits. I will make sure Stacey receives justice. Please, don’t get involved. Stay alert and aware.” He handed her one of Lobo’s cards. “If there’s something you think of, something you happen to see, give Christian Villalobo a call, then stay out of it.”

“FBI?” she asked, after reading the card. “You’re with the FBI?”

“We’re only advisors to the FBI. Christian will be able to help you.” Another friend came over to hug the girl, so Kelan and Max left without further conversation.

At the SUV, Max drove and Kelan took shotgun. “Heroin OD. You buy that?”

Kelan shook his head. “No.” Despite what had happened, Fiona would be devastated to learn Stacey had died the way she did. He wished that was news he didn’t have to tell her.

“Your girl’s not taking phone calls from her friends?”

Kelan sighed. “It’s only been a day. She needs some time to work through everything.”

Max nodded. “If there’s something Hope or I can do, you’ll ask, right?”

“I will. Thank you.”

* * *

The drive south and east to the garage took a little more than an hour. A large perimeter had been set around the property and was heavily guarded. One of Lobo’s team members let them onto the site. He said Lobo was down in the ballroom, where a temporary command post had been set up.

The guys took the stairs to the ballroom floor. FBI agents were documenting the paintings, antiques, and sculptures in the central hall.

“Fuck. Me. This looks like a museum,” Max said.

Kelan nodded. “It’s an underground palace.”

Loco Lobo was talking to a couple of his agents. When he saw them, he came over and shook hands. “Owen send you guys down to help?”

“Sort of,” Kelan said.

“No,” Max snapped.

Kelan gave him a frown. “My girlfriend—” he started, but Lobo interrupted him.

“She deserves a medal.”

“She does. She said there were a couple of young women held here against their will. They were from the Friendship Community.”

“Shit. The Friends are involved in this too?”

“Seems King doesn’t let go of any resource he might put to use later,” Kelan said. “I need to know if you’ve found those girls. And if you haven’t, we have to.”

“Let’s see.” Lobo opened a file on his phone and flipped to a manifest listing the civilian workers who were removed from the site. “Have a look. It’s a short list.”

Kelan scanned the list. He didn’t see the names Fiona had given him. “They’re not there.” He frowned. “This is a huge place, possibly encompassing miles of tunnels. To service guests, cook, clean, and maintain it, they’d need a helluva lot more staff than this.”

“Mind if we go looking for them?” Max asked.

“Help yourself.”

They started to leave, but stopped. “Lobo—have your people documented the secret tunnels?” Kelan asked.

His brows lifted. “Secret tunnels?”

“Yeah. My girlfriend accessed a tunnel from inside her closet. She followed it to the farmhouse. I was removed from the site via that same tunnel, but they tranqed me before I could see much.”

“Shit. How big is this place? I’m coming with you.”

Kelan led the way down to the room where Fiona had been held. Max looked around at the opulence and decadence of the suite. He started to grin, but one look at Kelan made him swallow whatever he was going to say.

They went into the closet. Kelan found the electrical outlet that Fiona had told him about. He pressed it into the wall. The whole front of the jewelry cabinet opened.

“Whoa.” Max was shocked. He shined his light down the long tunnel. “Where does this go?”

“No idea. Fiona said she took mostly right turns when she ended up at the entrance to the farmhouse.”

Lobo radioed in for some additional agents to follow them.
 

Kelan found a light switch, which he flipped on. Compared to the opulence of the main hall, this looked like a complete afterthought. Exposed wiring was anchored to the top of the tunnel, powering a dim light every ten feet or so.

Two hours later, they returned to the same place they had started. Agents were moving about the space, documenting its layout, which looked to be a wheel and spoke arrangement. How much of the architecture was left over from the original footprint of the silo, and how much had been constructed over the last forty-some years, was as yet unknown.
 

They found evidence of human occupation—bits of clothing here and there. A shoe. A basket. Some dishes. But they had not found anyone.

“Maybe whoever was kept here against their will took advantage of our being here and got out,” Lobo suggested.

“Maybe. It’s possible. But if they knew the way out and had a support system outside to help them get away, why not take advantage of it before this, when they wanted to leave? Why stay here if they didn’t have to?” Kelan shook his head. “I think they’re still here. Maybe there’s another level.”

“Look, let’s separate and see if we can find any access entry points to other floors,” Max said. “They had them all over at the WKB’s silo complex.”

Kelan took the search quadrant assigned to him. So many of the hallways and tunnels intersected each other. He went down one of the spokes that they hadn’t passed through yet. There was a steel sewer cap in the floor.
 

Maybe that was one of the chutes Max had mentioned. He knelt and lifted the heavy disc aside. Shining his flashlight down into the dark depths, he couldn’t see much beyond the ladder fused to the wall and that the ground at the bottom looked dry. He put his flashlight in his pocket and slipped into the chute.

Twenty steps down, Kelan dropped that last few feet to the bottom of the shaft. Light shone down from the floor above, but everything in there was absolute darkness. He stayed kneeling on the ground, listening to the sounds around him. There was a dull, rhythmic roar. The engine of a distant ventilation system. He couldn’t hear people, but that didn’t surprise him.
 

He closed his eyes and spent a moment absorbing the darkness and the silence. Off in the distance, he could hear…the muted sound of dogs barking, a sound that grew, as they seemed to be moving nearer. He held still. His eyes were getting acclimated to the dark and the shadows it hid. He could see the arched opening that led out of the shaft.
 

The dogs were close. Kelan shut his eyes and calmed his energy, aligning it with theirs. They grew quiet as they approached, moving more slowly. He drew a long breath, then another, staying in a place of silence, using his stillness as a vehicle to reach his ancestors. He called upon them to guide him, to help him harm only his enemies and protect all others.
 

When he opened his eyes, the dogs were sitting in a half-circle ten feet from him…and people were gathering outside the archway. A lot of them. He rose to his feet and moved toward them. He was taller than most of them, but that was true in normal populations as well.

Lanterns had been lit, dispersing some of the darkness. The people wore simple clothes made from organic fibers, dyed in dozens of colors—not unlike those from the Friendship Community. Some were decorated with intricate needlework. Several children were in the front of the group, having been the first to follow the dogs. Women came forward and snatched them up, dragging them away to the back of the group, leaving the men in the front to face him.
 

None of them had weapons. They were soft and vulnerable. What if it hadn’t been him to enter their world, but one of King’s men?
 

“You’re the War Bringer,” one of the men said. “The true one.”

“I’m Kelan.” He preferred to keep things real, but nothing in this strange situation fit that term. Whether the moniker he’d chosen as a protective symbol before he went into the Army was meant for him alone or was the icon of a greater purpose was yet to be determined. “Who are you?” he asked as he moved forward.
 

The crowd parted, clearing a path to an old man whose white beard reached his heart. This man stood unmoving in front of Kelan. “We’re workers here.”

“Are you here against your will?”

The man looked around. There had to be almost two dozen people. “Not at first. But once here, we weren’t allowed to leave.”

“There have to be a dozen exits out of here.”

“And all of them were guarded by King’s men.”

“I don’t know where King is, but the FBI is all over this place. If you want to leave, I can take you out.”

“Can we take our dogs?”

“Of course.”

“Will you wait while we gather our things?”

“I’ll wait. I’m looking for two girls—Ellen and Bryn. Do you know them?”

One girl moved to the front of the group—the girl from Fiona’s closet. “They didn’t kill you.”

Kelan grinned. “No. Nor you, I see.”

Ellen gestured to the other girl to come forward. “We’ve been hiding down here ever since the initiation was interrupted.”

“Fiona sent me for you. I’ll take you home once the FBI has finished interviewing you.”

“Will they keep us from going home?” Ellen asked.

“No. Is everyone here from the Friends?”

Ellen shook her head. “Not everyone, but we’ve been talking about bringing them all back with us.”

Kelan nodded. “Get your things and let’s get out of here.”

A few minutes later, he was helping people bring their animals up the ladder. Once everyone was out, he did a quick walk-through of the tidy but ramshackle place where they lived to confirm that everyone was out.
 

When he climbed out of the shaft, Max and Lobo were there leading another group of about the same number. Lobo looked stunned. Kelan grinned.
 

“I can’t believe this was here and we didn’t know,” Lobo said as they started back for the command post.

Kelan looked at the crowd following them. “And you haven’t checked the other silos yet. Who knows what they hide.”

“I’m going to set up temporary shelter for them in the ballroom. We’ll start taking their statements tonight.”

“They want to return to the Friendship Community.”

“They’ll need smallpox inoculations first.”

 
Kelan nodded. “I’ll send Doctor Beck Williams down with Greer and Remi to take care of that tomorrow.”

“Kelan—I’m staying here tonight,” Max said. “I want to ask them if they’ve seen Lion and his boys here. I think I better do that individually or else they won’t want to talk about him.”

Kelan nodded. “I can stay and help.”

“No. Get home to your woman. She needs you more than I do right now. I’ll head back with Greer tomorrow.”
 

Chapter
 
Twenty-Three

Fiona became restless in her room. She wandered out to the stables to see if Mandy was still there, and found her working with one of her newly donated horses. There were bags of sand on the saddle. Mandy led the horse around the corral where she worked with her clients.
 

“Hey there!” Mandy called, bringing the horse around to the mounting ramp. “You’re just in time. Feel like helping me for a bit?”

“Sure. What do you need?”

“We’re doing great with the sandbag weights, but I think he’s ready to be tested at the next level. I need you to ride him while I lead him. Make sure you move around in some ways he might not expect. Not all of my clients have full motor control; we need to simulate that experience so that he doesn’t spook when it happens.”

“I’m in. Tell me what to do.”

Mandy removed the sandbags, then Fiona got in the saddle.

“So as I walk him around, how about you sway side to side?”

Fiona did that, careful of the horse’s reaction. She wanted to get him used to the motion, not scare him.

“What brought you out here?” Mandy asked.

Fee lifted her shoulders. “I wanted to talk.” She looked at Mandy. “I need some advice.” There wasn’t much about what had happened that she was ready to say aloud—except for what Kelan had told her about his claiming ceremony.

“Shoot.”

“Kelan asked me to come up with vows that I will make to him as part of the claiming ritual. He commits to four, and I do the same—we exchange them during the ceremony.”

“I like that.”

“I don’t know what ones to make.”

“I suppose they would be different for each couple.”

“What vows would you make to Rocco?”

They moved a couple times around the corral before Mandy answered. “I can think of two off the top of my head. One is that I would be endlessly patient as he works through his illness. He had PTSD long before he had me.”

“I like that.”

“The other also has to do with his illness. He still battles paranoia. It causes him to not trust. My vow would be that I would always be truthful with him. Sometimes he doesn’t believe me when I say I love him. But if he knows I will never lie to him, then he knows I’m telling the truth.”

That broke Fiona’s heart. What a battle Mandy was fighting. She never complained, at least not that Fiona ever noticed.

“What are the things that you can promise from your heart to Kelan? Things that only have to do with the two of you? He’s an good man, Fee. What are the things you can do to honor him? How will you make his days wonderful? Because I’m sure he will do those same things for you.”

Fiona felt a wave of sorrow. “What if…what if the best thing I can do for him is to let him go?”

Mandy frowned. “You don’t love him?”

“Oh, I do. So much so that I’m terrified to think of life without him.” She wiped a tear that slipped down her cheek. “But I’m King’s daughter. What kind of life will that be for him? He will always be on guard for an attack from the thing that is my dad.”

“Fiona—Kelan’s a warrior. I think he’s up to what you’re both facing.”

“But why should that be his life?”

“Have you had this talk with him?”

Fiona shook her head and blinked more tears away. “I can’t.”

Mandy’s eyes watered, too. She looked away from Fee, then stopped the horse they were training. The wind tangled about them. “Why is everything always so hard?”