It started with large raindrops that seemed to be the size of dimes as they splattered onto the ground.
A few splashed against her arms, her head, her back.
Slow at first.
But growing in intensity.
She made it to the shed.
The overhanging roof would allow them a little protection, but whoever was in the Estoria would easily be able to see them if they waited out here.
Drop. And drop.
And drop.
Faster now.
Kyle tugged at the door, but it refused to open.
However, the nails securing the hasp that held it shut were loose and rusted.
He threw his weight into it, but it still wasn’t enough. “If we could get that latch off, maybe I could—”
Mia snapped out her knife and handed it to him. “Try Lucy.”
“You named your knife ‘Lucy’?”
“Daniel named his basketball ‘Alfie.’”
“That is true.”
He inserted the blade in between the wood and the clasp and tried to pry it off.
Tane clambers over the fence and then helps Alysha climb down to join him.
Because of my shoulder, it’s tougher for me to scale it, but I manage.
All around us, the wind is gusting through the trees. Almost as one, the branches bend before the storm as if they’re bowing to allow it to pass.
The Estoria sits between us and an outcropping a hundred yards away.
As the raindrops began pinging rapid-fire against the metal roof of the shed, it became harder for Nicole to distinguish between the individual drops.
All at once, with a harsh, grating sound, the latch popped off.
“Got it,” Kyle exclaimed.
He swung the creaky door open and the three of them ducked inside.
The heavens open up.
“Come on.” I have one of Alysha’s hands and I’m pressing her to go faster. “You can do it!”
But she keeps losing her footing on the slick mud.
“We need to get out of this storm,” I yell to Tane.
“There.” He points through the rain. “That shed.”
Petra was getting nowhere with the window.
The latch mechanism was jammed too tightly, but if she could get the screws out, she might be able to jimmy the window open.
The wire was stiff and thick enough, but the end wasn’t beveled at quite the right angle to fit in the screw head.
As she scanned the room, her gaze fell on the rough, gritty steel base of the radiator.
She rushed over and began scraping the wire’s tip against it, using it as a file.
Sheriff Byers heard back from the Knoxville Police Department.
There was no one at Sergei Gorshkov’s house.
However, when they searched the premises, they found evidence that someone had been kept confined in the basement.
They also discovered email correspondence with Henrik Poehlman, a former police officer who was wanted for questioning in the disappearance of a man suspected of eight homicides in Wisconsin.
And a map to the Estoria Inn, an old hotel in the Smoky Mountains, sat on the desk.
“Do you think we should send local law enforcement up to take a look?” the chief asked him.
Sheriff Byers considered the situation.
The kidnapped victim.
According to Daniel, her life was in danger.
It was closing in on nine o’clock.
They had to take action.
“What’s the response time?” he asked.
“That place is remote. We might be talking forty, forty-five minutes.”
“Dispatch some officers. Call me as soon as you know anything.”
Henrik tugged a baseball cap down over his eyes to keep the rain out of them.
The strong wind turned the raindrops into darts that sheared past him, nearly parallel to the ground.
However, despite the diminished visibility, he briefly caught sight of movement near the maintenance building not far from the perimeter fence.
Drawing his gun, he went to check it out.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
We get to the shed’s door and I’m about to throw it open when Alysha grips my arm. “Wait.”
“What is it?”
“There’s someone here.”
“How do you know?”
“I smell perfume.”
I don’t smell anything except the wet, forest-soaked scent of summer rain.
Tane moves into position on one side of the door. I take the other.
“You ready?” I ask.
He nods.
“Go.”
He kicks the door open.
The inside of the shed is ruled by shadows.
Then they shift.
Alysha was right. Someone’s in here.
“Hello?”
A menacing figure steps forward, holding a chainsaw high above its head. I instinctively throw my arm up to protect myself, but I then hear a familiar voice.
“Daniel?”
What?
“Kyle?” I can’t see his face, but I know that—
“Put it down!” Tane orders him. “Now, or I’ll—”
“It’s okay,” I assure him. “It’s—”
“Dan!” Nicole rushes out of the darkness and throws her arms around me. She has a can of pepper spray in one hand and I’m glad she didn’t fire it off at us before identifying who was at the door. “Are you okay?” she asks me urgently.
“Yeah. What are you doing here?”
“Long story.”
“Kyle, what’s with the chainsaw?”
“We heard noises and we . . . Yeah, I didn’t really think that one through.”
“What’s going on?” Alysha asks and I realize she’s still standing in the rain.
Kyle puts the chainsaw down, clicks on a headlamp, and we all crowd into the shed, tugging the door shut against the stubborn wind.
As quickly as I can, I introduce everyone.
“We need to get out of here,” Mia says.
“No, we need to find Petra and Malcolm.”
“Petra? Who’s Petra?”
“A woman who was kidnapped.”
I check the time on Malcolm’s phone.
Eighteen minutes until the deadline.
“Alright. If what Tane learned earlier is true, Petra’s in that hotel. We don’t have much—”
Behind me, the door bangs open.
I whip around.
Poehlman, the man I recognized this morning when we were in that underground facility, is standing backlit by the storm, holding a gun.
He aims it uncertainly at the group, then seems to recognize me, and directs it at my head. “Nobody move.”
But somebody does.
Alysha cries out, “Help me, mister!” She steps forward, feeling in front of her. “They’re trying to—” She trips and falls headlong to the ground, barely throwing out her arms in time to break her fall.
While Poehlman’s attention is on her, Tane goes for the gun.
Kyle leaps up to help him and the three of them crash into the side of the shed.
But Poehlman is a beast and he easily throws Kyle off to the side.
In the scuffle, however, Tane is able to get the handgun and as Poehlman tries to grab it back, Mia slams a tire iron brutally against the side of his leg, bringing him to his knees.
Tane tosses the gun to me, tackles Poehlman, and pins him with some sort of wrestling move.
It all goes down fast.
“Nice work.” I can hardly believe he threw a handgun at me. I’m just thankful I was able to catch it—and that it didn’t go off in the process. “Are you okay, Alysha?”
“When you’re blind you learn how to break your fall.”
“Did you know he had a gun?”
“Did not know that.”
“Mia, where’d you get a tire iron?”
“I brought it with me from the c
ar in case of bear attacks.”
“Bear attacks? Okay, well . . .” I turn to Kyle. “You alright?”
“Yeah.”
“Get his radio.”
Poehlman is struggling fiercely to pull free, but Tane isn’t about to let him go.
Kyle grabs his radio.
I glance around the shed. “Is there anything in here to tie him up with?”
“I saw some rope in the back,” Nicole says.
I hand her the pilot’s flashlight and she goes to find it.
We need answers, but I’m not about to point a loaded gun at Poehlman. While my back is turned to him, I remove the clip and empty the chambered round.
Then, I kneel beside him. “It’s Poehlman, right?”
He spits at me.
“Where are Petra and Malcolm? Are they here?”
“You kids have no idea what you’re doing. You’re never gonna make it off this mountain alive.”
Nicole reappears with the rope. Mia flips out her butterfly knife to cut it, and while Tane holds the guy down, she and Kyle start to tie his wrists tightly together behind his back.
He’s putting up a fight, so I point the empty gun at him. “Easy.”
He calms down, probably thinking it’s still loaded.
“Nicole, keep watch.” I point to the door. “Make sure no one else is coming.”
I take Poehlman’s Taser, and then check to see if he has a key to the hotel, but all I find is a set of car keys.
“Where are your keys to the building?” I ask him.
He just scoffs. “It’s vascular biometrics. You need my palm on the reader, and that’s not gonna happen. You’d have to drag me all the way over there. You really think you’d be able to pull that off?”
“We could cut off his hand,” Mia suggests generously. “We do have a chainsaw.”
“Wouldn’t work,” Poehlman tells us. I’m not sure how serious he thought she was being. “It needs to be attached to my arm. Blood needs to be flowing.”
Yeah, with the size of this guy, getting him to the building would not be easy.
So.
Plan B.
While Kyle and Mia finish tying him up, I try to sort out what to do.
Petra tried the wire in the screw head.
It wasn’t a perfect fit, not by any means, but it was good enough for her to turn it and start loosening the screw.
“We have a book that tells about the hotel.” Nicole hands it to me. “That might help. The place is supposed to be haunted.”
“Yeah, Dr. Carrigan mentioned that.”
“Dr. Carrigan?”
“The hypnotist.” I page through the book, past black and white photos of a family from Cades Cove, which must be pretty close by. Finally, I come to a detailed floor plan of the Estoria. “I’ll tell you the whole story later.”
I memorize the maze of hallways. “Okay, if this place is anything like Waxford’s facility in Wisconsin, they have prisoners here. Some who might be seriously dangerous.”
Tane, Mia, and Kyle step back from Poehlman.
He’s secure.
I ask him how many people are in there and how many guards are on duty.
“I’m not telling you anything.”
Since I figure Mia will be the one to enjoy using it the most, I hand her the Taser. “Stun him.”
“Seriously?”
“Go for it.”
She does.
Poehlman cries out in pain, but then just curses at us.
“Again.”
She gives it to him again.
Still, he tells us nothing.
Alright, this isn’t working and we don’t have time to waste.
“Nikki, where’s the car?”
“Two miles down the road.”
“Was there cell reception down there?”
“Not at the gate, no. Not until you get further down the mountain.”
I turn to Kyle. “How long will it take you to get there? I mean running flat-out, top speed.”
“In rain like this? I don’t know . . .”
“It’s downhill,” I remind him.
“Yeah, but it’s a dirt road. It’ll be muddy, slippery. I’d say maybe twelve minutes.”
“Make it ten.”
“That’s pushing it.”
“Then push it. Get to the car, drive down to where you can use your phone and call the cops. By the time they get here, the deadline will be past, but we’re going to need help to stop Waxford—and I don’t know how many guards are in there. Keep the headlamp. Use it to—”
“Wait!” Nicole exclaims. “That minivan. It’s coming back up the road.”
I join her at the door.
Down the overlook, a minivan is visible through the rain as it winds its way toward the hotel.
It’s hard to be certain whether or not it’s the same one the kidnappers drove, but it is the same color and right now, that’s enough for me.
I’m guessing it’ll get to the parking area within the next couple minutes.
Tane comes to my side.
“If we hurry,” I tell him, thinking aloud, “we should be able to make it to the building. When the driver gets out, we jump him. He’ll be near the door. We can use his hand on the reader.”
“Then we go inside, find Petra and Malcolm, and get the hell out of here.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s not any better than the plan this morning when we were trying to get away from that guy near the elevators,” Alysha says.
She might be right.
But I can’t come up with anything better and time is not on our side.
“Tane, you’re with me. Kyle, wait for my signal, then run like mad to the car.”
“What about us?” Nicole asks.
I give her Poehlman’s car keys. “While we’re in the hotel, see which one of the cars these open. We’ll use it to drive out of here. Mia, you’ve got Poehlman. He moves, he calls for help, hit him with the stun gun again.”
“I can do that.”
But Nicole shakes her head. “Splitting up isn’t a good idea.”
“Never a good idea,” Alysha agrees.
“Right now we have to. This is our best—”
Tane grabs my arm. “That van is coming. We need to go.”
I hand Poehlman’s radio to Alysha. “Monitor things. If it sounds like anyone is coming out here, I want you all to take off. Leave. Hide. Don’t let them find you.”
Then Tane and I sprint out through the rain toward the hotel and Kyle gets into position nearby to rocket down the hill.
Adrian still hadn’t heard from Henrik since sending him out to see who was setting off the motion detectors.
In the hallway now, he tried radioing him.
No answer.
A moment later, though, Sergei’s voice came through: “I’m almost there. I’ve got the plate numbers. And you’re gonna love this—there’s a sticker on the back of the car for a fishing permit for Waunakee Lake back in Wisconsin. Isn’t that up where you used to do your research?”
“Yes. It is.”
Adrian sorted through the implications.
Daniel Byers lived in that area and was at the center in Atlanta earlier today. Was it possible? Could it be his car?
If it is, you could test the Telpatine. That would work out perfectly.
“Alright, as soon as you arrive, get in here. We’ll run them. Then I want you to help Henrik search the woods.”
As he ended the transmission, Adrian turned and saw General Gibbons standing in the doorway to his office, glaring at him.
“Adrian, you’re going to tell me exactly what’s going on here and you’re going to do it now.”
Tane and I hide behind one of the cars as the minivan’s driver maneuvers into a spot beside the building.
Parks.
Opens the door.
A man steps out and raises one arm to shield his face from the rain.
As he hurries toward the door, we’re right
behind him, using the sound of the storm to cover the sound of our footsteps.
Once he’s beside the building, Tane taps him on the shoulder, startling him.
He spins, a look of surprise on his face.
It’s the same guy who was shooting at us when we escaped into the elevator in Atlanta.
Tane starts punching him and doesn’t stop.
Five, six, seven times, I’m not sure. It’s hard to tell.
But it does the trick.
The man goes down.
Knocked out cold.
Tane is proving to be a handy guy to have around.
Kyle’s watching us from near the shed and I motion for him to go.
Immediately, he takes off down the road.
Tane and I drag the unconscious driver to the door and place his hand on the reader beside it.
It only takes a moment to verify his identity.
The lock clicks and the door opens.
“What should we do with him?” Tane asks me. “We can’t just leave him here. He’s gonna wake up.”
I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.
Tane retrieves the minivan keys from the man’s pocket, and that gets me thinking.
There’s no trunk in his minivan.
But all the other cars do have one.
Nicole’s got Poehlman’s keys.
“We’ll lock him in a trunk.” I slide a rock in place to keep the door ajar. “Go back. Get the keys from Nicole. I’ll watch this guy while you do.”
From the shed’s doorway, Nicole watched as Tane left the Estoria and started running across the parking area back toward the shed.
What’s he doing? Why’s he coming back?
“So,” Alysha said to her, “are you the one Daniel was telling me about?”
“What? What do you mean?”
“The way you greeted him when we got here. I’m guessing you’re the girlfriend.”
“The girlfriend? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Yeah,” Mia spoke up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He just mentioned it, I mean, that he had a girlfriend. That’s all. You should feel lucky. He’s quite a guy. Cute too.”
Tane was halfway to them.
“How do you know he’s cute?”
“He let me feel his face.”
“He let you what?”
“It’s how I get to know people.”