The Buried, page 23
“There was another cave-in,” Elijah said. “You can’t go down there.”
“There was a blast before the cave-in,” Deacon said. “I think someone has been helping the tunnels cave in, intentionally blocking them.”
“Helping,” Elijah murmured. Then he remembered the dynamite David had bragged about using, that it was the only way to excavate anything on the rocky island. The contractor had even brought some here when he renovated the hall, just in case he needed it. “Damn it. Someone must be using David’s dynamite.” But who? He glanced around. “Where the hell is Bruce?”
Bode had sent the text to the head of security as well as Elijah and Deacon.
“Where the hell is Bode?” Edie asked.
She’d been with him when he’d received the text, and he hadn’t been able to talk her out of coming along to investigate what Bode had found and heard. Someone calling for help. He suspected Bode needed it now.
Edie must have, too, because she said, “We need to find him and Mae.” She extended her leg toward the ladder again.
Elijah grabbed her arm, stopping her. He couldn’t lose her. Too? No. Bode could not be gone. He couldn’t be.
“You’re going down there,” Edie said. She had no doubt he would; she knew him well, knew how much he loved and felt as if he’d failed his younger brother.
“I’m the sheriff,” Deacon said. “I’m the only one going down there.”
“No,” Elijah said. “I let you go along to rescue Holly and Olivia.”
Deacon grinned. “Okay, you let me.”
“Boys, put your dicks away,” Edie said. “I don’t care whose is bigger. I just want to find Bode and Mae.” She shook off Elijah’s hand and started down the ladder.
“Damn it!” Elijah said in utter exasperation and fear.
“She really must not care,” Deacon said, “or she wouldn’t have picked you.”
She had picked him, for some damn reason. And Elijah didn’t want to lose her or his brother. He hurried down after her.
Deacon must have realized he wasn’t going to win an argument to keep either of them from going because he didn’t try to stop him. He just followed closely behind him, his gun drawn.
Edie’s flashlight barely penetrated the dust swirling around the tunnel. “This way,” she murmured.
Now Deacon moved around her. With his gun and his own flashlight, he led the way. The farther they went, the thicker the dust got. The sheriff coughed.
And Edie did, too.
“You need to go back,” Elijah told her, his voice gruff with the dust choking him. His eyes watered, washing the dust from them.
“Are you going back?” she asked.
“No. Not until I find my brother.”
“What the fuck!” Deacon cursed and stopped so abruptly that Edie slammed into his back.
She was short enough that Elijah could see over her, and over Deacon’s shoulder as well, to what the sheriff was shining his flashlight on.
The bodies . . .
Edie shoved her way between Deacon and the wall of the tunnel to look, and a curse slipped through her lips. Then she whispered almost reverently, “We found the missing.”
* * *
The blast had knocked Bode on his ass. He’d dropped Heather and his phone. And he’d hit his head on the heavy steel cell door. Stars danced in front of his eyes for a moment, the only light in the dark. Then another light came on, illuminating Mae’s beautiful, dirt-streaked face.
And his breath shuddered out with relief. “You’re alive.”
She nodded. “You?”
He nodded, and the stars danced again. He grimaced in pain. Then he remembered. “Heather?”
Something moved, knocking aside dust and . . .
Bones.
Heather shuddered as she pushed some of them off her. She looked a bit like a skeleton herself. Gaunt, hollow-eyed. Barely hanging on. They had to get her the hell out of there.
“What is this?” Mae asked. “Where’d these bodies come from?”
“The family burial plot and mausoleum must be above the room we passed, the one with the boxes of dynamite in it.”
Mae shone the light from her phone, around the bones. “There are babies here, and skulls just a bit bigger. . . .”
And Bode knew. “I don’t have that many ancestors. These must be the girls and inmates and babies Edie has been looking for. The ones she couldn’t find any records of . . .”
Mae’s light shone back that way, toward the room. Thick chunks of concrete blocked it. “Those must be pieces of the mausoleum. We’re not going to get back through that way.”
“That other tunnel, where we were shot at, there were spaces between the rocks,” Bode recalled.
“Big enough for bullets, not people,” Mae said.
He glanced at Heather, whose eyes were rolling back in her head; she was struggling to breathe in the dust. “We have to get out of here.” Soon. Or Heather might not make it. He pushed aside the debris that had fallen onto him and Heather and picked her up. His shoulder ached, the muscles straining with the effort to carry her. He ignored the pain and led the way in the opposite direction from all that death.
“The explosion might have made all the tunnels more unstable,” Mae said in a whisper.
But Heather could hear her. “They’ll come back. They’ll make sure we’re dead. We’ve got to get out of here.”
Before they were buried like the others. Then he thought of the text he’d sent. To Elijah and Bruce and Deacon.
Had they been in the tunnel when the dynamite had been set off? Were they trapped too? They would have been closer to the explosion, so they might not have survived at all.
His heart clenched in his chest with the horror of that, of more people dying. And he’d been the one who sent that text, who’d brought them down into the tunnels. He tilted his head, listening. And he thought he heard voices. Very muffled voices . . .
Maybe they were okay. Like him and Mae and Heather.
The young woman clutched his shoulder. “We have to hurry. Before they come back, before they set off more explosions.”
Mae muttered a curse. “She’s right.” Her light glanced off the entrance to a tunnel on the opposite end of the cells. She drew in a breath, coughed, and started down it, Bode close behind her. She had only gone a few yards when she stopped. “The rocks . . .”
Bode looked over her head. There were rocks blocking the way, but there were even more spaces between them than there were before, when the shots were fired at them from there. Spent shells lay next to the rocks. “I think the explosion knocked more of them loose.” He settled Heather on the ground a little way back, out of danger if the rocks collapsed while he kicked and pushed at them.
His wounded shoulder ached. Maybe from connecting so hard with the old steel door or from carrying Heather. But now he could barely use that arm. He worked more with his legs, kicking the rocks through. Some tumbled and fell, striking him. He grunted, and Mae cursed.
“Bode, it’s too dangerous.”
“We have to get out,” he said. And he glanced back at Heather, who lay unmoving on the ground. She was so weak.
He kicked again, sending more rocks tumbling down, leaving an opening at the top. It was small. Too small for him.
Mae shone her light through it. “I can see through the tunnel, to that room. The one underneath the sauna.”
“You have to get her up there. Get her medical help,” he said.
“What about you?” she asked.
“I’ll keep working at it,” he promised. “I’ll get through, too. Just get help.” And make sure his brother and the others were okay. But he couldn’t express that fear right now, not with his heart and his head pounding so hard.
Mae stared at him for a moment, so many emotions swirling through her eyes. Then she leaned forward and kissed him, softly, gently. And a tear trailed down her face.
“You go through first,” he said. “So you can help her over on the other side.”
Mae glanced back at Heather and nodded. They hadn’t found her too late, like Erika, but they could still lose her if they didn’t get her help soon. With her training, Mae had to know that. “Put my legs through first,” she told him.
He picked her up, biting his lower lip at the wrenching pain in his shoulder. He’d torn something again, torn loose the muscle the bullet had already injured. But he lifted and helped her through the opening.
Her legs passed through, but she grunted and sucked in a breath to squeeze the rest of her body between the roof of the cave and the rocks. Then she disappeared through the hole.
He heard rocks tumble on the other side and a curse. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, yeah . . .”
There was another faint rumble, and the ground vibrated. Either someone had set off another explosion or the earlier one had made the tunnels more unstable.
“Hurry!” Mae yelled to him.
He lifted Heather, who weakly murmured something against his cheek as he pushed her legs through the opening. Trying to be gentle, he eased her as far as he could between the rocks, trying to protect her face, her fragile body. She felt as if she was all bones.
What the hell kind of monster had done this to her? He realized now that he hadn’t had a chance to ask her. The ground rumbled again, and there was another blast of dust from the other side, from where they’d come, from where all those bodies had dropped onto them, burying them under the buried.
“Run!” he yelled. “Get out!”
* * *
The blast of dust through the opening Bode had made hit Mae in the face as panic hit her heart. Bode was going to be trapped . . . until she could get help. She wasn’t as strong as him. She couldn’t move those rocks. She couldn’t even lift Heather, slight as she was, like he had. She’d never rag on him again for working out, for getting fit. She was going to work out a lot more if she got the chance.
She had to holster her weapon so she could wrap both arms around Heather and half drag the girl the rest of the way out of the tunnel toward the room where just a day before, Mae had awoken delirious and confused and alone while Bode was in one of the tunnels.
That room wasn’t empty now. And it wasn’t dark. A couple of lanterns dangled from hooks in the wall, casting a glow around the space. A woman stood against the ladder to the sauna, as if blocking the way.
Mae had to blink twice, clearing the dust from her eyes to make sure she wasn’t imagining things. That she wasn’t delirious again.
“What are you doing down here?” she asked the old, odd woman.
Morgana crossed her arms over her brightly patterned dress and curved her painted lips into a wide smile. “Checking to see if anyone could make it out of the tunnels this way. Checking to see if anyone survived.”
Heather tensed against Mae. “It’s her.”
“What?”
“Monster . . .” the young woman muttered. “It’s her . . .”
“What’s her?” Mae asked. She was just a crazy old woman. Or was she? There was something very different about the woman now. Her vision was clear and direct, and her voice was strong. Had the crazy-old-lady act been just that, an act, so that no one would suspect what she really was? A psychopath?
Morgana laughed. “Are you telling all my secrets, Miss Heather? Didn’t I explain to you what happens to bad girls around this place? Didn’t you learn from your sister’s mistake?”
Heather sucked in a breath, and it seemed to steady her a bit, her feet settled more securely on the ground. Mae was able to pull one hand away from her and reach inside her jacket. She did it surreptitiously because the older woman was holding her hands behind her back, like she had something in them and didn’t want Mae to see.
A gun?
A stick of dynamite? She was so damn crazy, Mae wouldn’t put anything past her. Obviously she was capable of anything . . . even being a cold-blooded killer.
“Adelaide was not a mistake,” Heather whispered. “She wasn’t . . .”
“Your sister was a tramp, just like all the little teenage girls their parents sent here. She got what she had coming, especially when she messed with me.”
“Weren’t you one of those girls?” Mae asked. Wasn’t that what Edie and Elijah thought? She hoped the question would distract the woman while she disengaged the safety on her gun before starting to ease it from the holster.
Morgana laughed again, as if she knew exactly what Mae was doing and wasn’t at all concerned. She definitely had something either up her sleeve or behind her back. The woman was crazy like a fox.
“I wasn’t committed here,” Morgana said. “I worked here. Just like Dr. Chase.”
Chase. Mae couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him. In the kitchen with the chef.
She glanced around the room again, making sure Morgana was the only one who had snuck down into it. There were so many boxes and crates, but she didn’t see anyone hiding behind them. So she pulled her weapon and pointed it at the old woman. “Get the hell out of our way or I will shoot you,” Mae warned her.
Morgana laughed. “That would be a mistake, Sergeant Montgomery. One that would cost a sweet little baby her life.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My partner is at Jamie’s cottage with the baby and that teenage girl.” She clicked her tongue against her lipstick-stained teeth. “That little Genevieve is another bad girl, leading on that poor, landscaping kid like she did. She deserves what she’s getting right now. But the baby . . .” She sighed. “It would be a shame for her to get her throat slit just like her great-grandfather’s was.”
Mae’s heart lurched with fear, and from somewhere behind her, in that tunnel where she’d left Bode, she heard a sound. An expression of pain.
“And my partner is much more vicious than I am,” Morgana said. “If I don’t send a text message in just a few minutes, that baby will be dead. Just like all the other Bainesworths.” She sighed. “Well, all of them but one . . .”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Through the ever-widening space between the rocks, Bode could clearly see and hear Morgana. She must have thought the explosion had killed him and Elijah. And his heart ached at that thought. At that loss . . .
And yet . . .
On the other side from Morgana, he swore he could hear voices. Or maybe he was just losing it with the overwhelming grief and fear gripping him. Had someone killed Genevieve? Was Adelaide about to die as well?
Or was the whole story Morgana was telling just another one of her damn delusions? No. She wasn’t delusional. She was dangerous. He had to get through that fucking wall.
Ignoring the pain in his shoulder, he started pulling more rocks from the top, from the opening he’d made for Heather and Mae. Just a few more and he should be able to make it through. He had to, so he could make sure Mae kept the old woman alive long enough for her to send that damn text.
Just in case.
Just in case his worst nightmare was playing out right now.
And he was about to lose his daughter again, but this time forever.
* * *
Heather was starting to sag against Mae again, making it hard for her to stand up straight herself. She had to get medical help for the young woman. And maybe for Genevieve and Adelaide . . .
If Morgana was telling the truth. “You couldn’t pull all this off yourself?” Mae scoffed. “You needed help?”
Morgana chuckled, as if she wasn’t fooled at all. “I’m not as young as I once was.”
“When you worked here,” Mae said. “As what?”
“Nurse. I helped the old midwife with the births. Helped Dr. Bainesworth with some of his treatments. And I helped myself to those babies.” Her lips curved into another wicked smile. “My husband was a lawyer, so he was able to find much better homes for them than those bad girls would have given them.”
Mae snorted. “Yeah, right, like that was out of the goodness of your heart. Admit it. You were in it for the money.”
“People who pay for their children have the means to take care of them,” Morgana said. “Unlike those teenage girls whose parents didn’t even care what happened to them. I did those babies a favor.”
“The ones that survived . . .” Mae gave an exaggerated shiver and managed to settle Heather down onto a crate next to her. It was old and creaked even beneath her slight weight. “When the mausoleum collapsed into the tunnel in the explosion, we saw the skeletons of babies.”
Morgana shrugged. “Some of the babies came early because of the treatments.” She sighed. “That was regrettable.”
“Looked like some of the mothers didn’t make it either,” Mae said. “Or did you kill them when they didn’t want to give up their babies?”
“I didn’t need their permission,” Morgana said. “Not when I could easily forge their signatures. I am a master at copying handwriting. Maybe a few of the girls wouldn’t stop running their mouths, so they had to be shut up. If word had gotten back to Bainesworth, he might have stopped it.”
“He wasn’t part of it?”
She laughed. “He was so intent on his treatments, thinking he was God and all that, that he didn’t care about the babies.”
“My father . . .” Heather murmured weakly.
“That’s what your sister was trying to find out. She knew which lawyer had handled the adoptions. My husband. Your father’s stupid adoptive parents ran their mouths too much.”
“Is that why you came here?” Mae asked the old woman. “To stop Erika’s investigation?”
Morgana sighed again. “That was part of it,” she said. “But the thing is, I really can hear their screams. Even after all those years. And I missed it.”
Mae didn’t fake a shiver this time. The woman was so damn evil. A monster, like Heather said. So she probably wasn’t bluffing about Adelaide and Genevieve. “When do you need to send that text?” Mae asked with concern.
Morgana chuckled. “You believe me now.”
“I don’t know what to believe,” Mae admitted. But she had a feeling Morgana was telling the truth about everything. “Who is your partner?” she asked. “Theo? Dr. Chase? Bruce?”
