The highways were snow-covered and slippery, especially the unplowed road that squeezed between two mountains into the valley that was Black River’s home. Since the mine hadn’t been working in decades, the lane hadn’t been properly maintained since then. Overgrown branches scratched at the Range Rover as it bulldozed through the deep powder.
What a place, John thought. He had become skilled at dreaming up settings like this for his Mac Mulvey novels. Now it seemed that a similar imagination was pulling the strings of Meg’s ordeal. The idea repulsed him, as if he might be partly responsible for what was happening to his daughter.
He gazed through the windshield at the triple row of tire tracks in the snow ahead of them. The kidnappers? It had to be. But what kind of vehicle left such a pattern?
His wife peered over his shoulder. “A motorcycle with a sidecar?” she mused aloud.
“Or three motorcycles side by side,” suggested Sehorn.
“Impossible,” said John. “The tracks are perfectly parallel. Nobody could ride like that.”
Rounding the next corner brought the solution to the mystery. There, parked in a small clearing, was the three-wheel ATV. The Falconers looked around, taking in the sight of the loading hopper and entry building jutting out from the rock face.
This was it — the rendezvous location. Whatever Meg’s fate, it would happen right here.
“See?” the blogger announced. “I told you we’d make it.”
John didn’t want to be rude, but Sehorn’s cheeriness was nothing short of crazy. This was an incredibly dangerous situation, not just for Meg, but also for the three of them. For all they knew, they had walked into a trap, and the kidnappers were about to come out shooting. Why was he treating it like a Sunday drive?
His wife opened the rear door and began to slide the suitcase of money along the leather. “Somebody give me a hand with this — ”
Before she could finish the sentence, the heavy piece of luggage toppled off the seat and out of the car. It struck the running board and snapped open.
Louise Falconer emitted a cry of shock. “John — ”
John leaped from the car and froze at the sight that greeted his eyes. The bag sat in a drift beside the SUV, its lid sprung wide. The contents spilled out into the snow — twelve copies of the Sunday New York Times.
This was the ransom Sehorn had raised over the Internet — that they were about to exchange for their daughter’s life.
Not money. Newspapers.
Meg’s parents looked to the driver’s seat of the Range Rover, but it was empty.
A sharp click broke the silence.
The Falconers wheeled. There stood their greatest ally, their only ally, the Blog Hog. In his left hand was his thermos of pea soup. In his right, he held a pistol, pointed straight at them.
Although Meg had been told several times that her parents were on their way, the sight of them ducking through the half-open door was overwhelming. “I can’t believe you’re really here!” Heedless of the gun that Tiger held on her and Spidey, she ran toward them, arms outstretched. She was just a few feet away from them when the third member of their party entered — a slight, odd-looking man with a very self-satisfied expression on his face. Then she saw his pistol and realized that Mom and Dad were prisoners, too.
The family hug was awkward and nervous.
“What’s going on? Who is that guy?” Meg asked, bewildered.
“We thought he was our friend,” her mother replied bitterly.
“You Falconers are really something else,” Rufus Sehorn clucked in mock amazement. “After everything that’s happened, you still think you have friends.”
“Who are you?” snapped Spidey. “Where’s my money?”
The Blog Hog beamed at Tiger. “Congratulations on your choice of partner. He’s every bit the ignorant brute you said he was.”
“I told you,” she said to Spidey. “This was never about money.”
“It was always about money!” he bellowed. “There’s nothing else for it to be about! Back in Baltimore, we had two million dollars in our hands — till the brother blew it for us!”
“Well, it would have been nice,” Sehorn admitted. “We certainly wouldn’t have given it back. But we were never planning to hand over the girl. Not for a hundred million.”
“If you don’t want money, what do you want?” John Falconer demanded.
The Blog Hog shrugged. “I would have thought that a couple of college professors might have figured it out by now. Then again, you weren’t very hard to fool the first time around.”
It all came suddenly clear to Meg. This wasn’t a new enemy. It was an old one, dating back to the beginning of the Falconer family’s troubles. “HORUS!” she exclaimed in awe. “You’re with HORUS Global Group, aren’t you?”
Mom and Dad had been framed for helping a terrorist organization. Could that organization have come back to haunt them?
“Very good, Margaret,” Tiger approved. “The twelve-year-old is smarter than the parents.”
“That’s not possible!” Mom protested. “There is no HORUS anymore! They’re all either dead or in jail.”
“That’s exactly what we want the world to think,” Sehorn explained pleasantly. “But there are two big fat reminders that HORUS ever existed — the infamous Doctors Falconer. When you’re dead, we’ll just fade into the fog of old conspiracy theories.”
The truth set off a fresh explosion of horror inside Meg. They kidnapped me so they could murder Mom and Dad!
Spidey was enraged. “Then what did you need me for? You could have taken out these two on your own — no kidnapping, no nothing!”
“They’re too famous for that,” Tiger told him. “Their murders would be a front-page story, and HORUS would come under suspicion. It has to look like something different — like a ransom exchange gone bad. The girl, her parents, and one of the kidnappers shot dead in the confusion. No one would even think of HORUS.”
Sehorn took a swig from the steaming thermos in his left hand. “Now, wouldn’t you have had some of my pea soup,” he said to the Falconers, “if you’d known it was going to be your last meal?”
Meg clutched fervently at her parents. Even in the joy of their release from prison, she had always suspected that her family was doomed to tragedy. The one tiny consolation was that Aiden wasn’t here to share in their terrible fate.
As they clung together in this worst of all possible moments, Meg detected a flurry of motion through the cracked and dirty window. The dark fur was sharp against the white of the snow.
The bear cub! It must have followed the ATV!
The animal was nosing its way toward the building, sniffing at the air.
Junior smells the soup!
A desperate plan formed in her mind. If she could lure the cub into the room, it might create enough of a ruckus for her and her parents to escape in the confusion. It was a wild gamble that would probably get them all shot. But at least they would go down fighting.
Without warning, she launched herself at Sehorn and slapped the thermos out of his hand. It hit the floor, sloshing green liquid all over. Startled, the Blog Hog swung his weapon around and took aim at her. He was just about to pull the trigger when a terrified scream was torn from Spidey’s throat.
“Be-e-e-ar!!”
The cub was in their midst, bounding around in a clumsy effort to reach the spilled soup. Broad shoulders and flanks bumped into furniture in the tight space, knocking over chairs and tables. The edge of an old wooden desk smacked Tiger in the knee, and she staggered back in pain.
That was enough for Spidey. Left unguarded for the moment, he bolted out of the office and began an awkward high-stepping sprint through the deep snow.
Tiger scrambled to follow. “Don’t let him get away!”
She was nearly flattened by a hundred and fifty pounds of flying fur. Hungry as it was, the cub could not resist the instinct to chase a fleeing form. It barreled into the darkening night, jarring th
e door from its hinges. Seeing himself pursued by the animal he feared, Spidey let out a howl that was hardly distinguishable from the cry of the cub.
In the chaos, John Falconer picked up his daughter and threw her out of harm’s way. She hit the floor running, blasting through the locker room area. At the far wall, a low, wide doorway beckoned. And beyond that, blackness.
The mine!
The dark seemed to swallow her. She felt the cold in her bones — not subzero cold, but a dense, dank chill, hanging on air that had not moved in decades. A glance over her shoulder revealed two shapes rushing after her.
“Mom? Dad?”
“Go!” her father barked.
She obeyed, pounding deeper into the passage. She was relieved that she and her parents had broken free. But now they were trapped within the rock face, menaced by two armed criminals who were intent on killing them.
How are we ever going to get out of here?
Rufus Sehorn hurdled an overturned table and joined Tiger in a mad dash to the locker room. They got there just as John and Louise Falconer fled into the entrance to the mine. Tiger raised her pistol, but the blogger took hold of her wrist.
“We can’t leave them alive!” she exclaimed.
He pulled a small flashlight from his front pocket. “I’ll go after them. You stand guard here.”
“What for?”
“There must be dozens of tunnels back there. They could lose me. But there’s only one way out.”
Tiger watched him disappear into the black hole of the mine. Everything they’d worked for — the entire future of HORUS — depended on the elimination of the Falconers.
It had to go exactly right.
* * *
The light was already fading as the Ski-Doo’s treads tore into the unplowed road that led to the Black River mine. Hanging on at the rear, Aiden leaned out as far as he dared, peering past Mickey and Harris into the bright cone projected by the headlight.
It’s already past five; the meeting could be over …
Aiden didn’t want to think about what that might mean.
Suddenly, he was bellowing, “Stop! Go back!”
Harris jerked hard on the handlebars, and the snowmobile swung into a tight quarter-turn. They skidded thirty feet before the skis dug in, and the craft lurched to a halt.
“What is it?” the agent demanded.
“Look!” Aiden pointed, his eyes wide with horror.
It was barely visible in the shadowy dusk. The white of the snow, and then a different color — darker —
Red.
“Blood!” Mickey croaked.
As they approached the crimson stain, Aiden felt the stomach-numbing weightlessness of free fall.
Don’t let it be Meg.... Don’t let it be Meg....
A stocky, bearded man lay at the center of the discoloration.
Aiden turned away. It was not a pleasant sight. Spidey’s clothing was torn and blood-spattered. Too much blood …
“It’s Joe,” Mickey said in a strangled voice. “I mean — that might not be his real name — ”
Harris bent low over the victim. “He’s still breathing — barely.”
“Is he shot?” Aiden asked.
The FBI man shook his head. “Some kind of animal attack, I’d say. Bear or mountain lion.” The snow was too powdery to hold distinct footprints, but the tracks seemed to be large. “Bear, probably. Let’s keep our eyes open. That thing can’t be too far away.”
Aiden was amazed. With all the grave dangers attached to a ransom exchange, a bear attack was the furthest thing from his mind.
“What are we going to do?” asked Mickey. “He needs a doctor.”
Harris pressed handfuls of fresh snow onto Spidey’s many wounds. “The cold helps slow the bleeding,” he explained. The gash on the kidnapper’s shoulder continued to ooze, so the agent wrapped it with his scarf. “Best we can do. We’ve got innocents to worry about.”
They cleared a small opening in the snow and propped Spidey against a tree.
“Shouldn’t we tie him up?” asked Aiden.
“If he comes to, he won’t be running any marathons,” Harris decided.
The three got back on the snowmobile and continued down the road, driving slowly, cautiously. Surely, the mine had to be close; otherwise, Spidey could not have reached this spot on foot. Aiden stared into the halogen glare with wide-eyed intensity. The possibility that Meg — and maybe Mom and Dad, too — might be just around the next corner was an electric current, pulsing through him.
They had only been moving for a few minutes when Rufus Sehorn’s Range Rover appeared in the headlight beam. Harris shut down the Ski-Doo, and the three of them pushed it into the cover of some brush.
“Keep behind me,” the agent instructed Aiden and Mickey. “And don’t make a sound.”
They stayed close to the hillside as they approached the SUV, Harris in the lead. All at once, he flattened himself against the rock face.
He beckoned to Mickey and whispered, “Is that the other kidnapper?” He guided the young man’s gaze slowly around the curve of the stone.
Tiger stood just outside the doorway to the mine building. Mickey recognized her profile instantly — and also the shape of the pistol in her hand.
He retreated to face Harris. “That’s her — Marcelle.”
“What can you tell me about her?” Harris probed. “Do you think she’d harm a hostage if I make a move?”
“It’s too risky!” Aiden hissed.
Mickey looked anxious. “I don’t think there’s anything she wouldn’t do.”
Harris hesitated. It was a tough call — even for a seasoned agent. “We can’t just wait here forever.”
“There’s another way,” said Mickey. He ran out from the safety of the hillside, waving his arms and bellowing, “Marcelle!!”
Tiger was immediately alert, gun at the ready. “Who’s there? How do you know my name?”
Mickey raised his hands but did not stop until he was directly in front of her. “It’s me — Sean!”
Tiger stared at him as if she were seeing a ghost. “How did you get here?”
“By snowmobile!” he told her. “I’m back — I’m here to help!”
Aiden watched, stunned. “Is he selling us out?”
“I don’t think so,” murmured Harris, transfixed.
“Then what’s he doing?”
“Don’t move!” the agent ordered Aiden. He scrambled up the hillside, his boots slipping in the snow.
Mickey’s arrival had caught Tiger off guard. “How did you know where to find me? You were back at the cabin when we picked this place!”
“The laptop!” Mickey told her. “I read the e-mail!”
Tiger’s voice was shaky. “The e-mail never came from that laptop!” She was used to being in control. This unexpected arrival flustered her.
“We traced it — ” Mickey tried to explain.
“Who’s we?” she demanded. “The police?”
“No — I went on the Internet. I found — ”
“You couldn’t find sand at a beach! You went to the cops!”
“No — ”
Aiden watched in a mixture of fascination and dread. He kept one eye on Harris, who was nearing the top of the rock face. Would he reach Tiger in time?
“Where are they?” she stormed. “Did you bring them here?”
Mickey was beyond speech now, hypnotized by the barrel of Tiger’s gun.
“Answer me!” She cocked back the hammer.
Acting purely on impulse, Aiden bounded into the clearing. “Hey!”
Tiger wheeled, bringing the pistol to bear on him.
From the top of the rise, a tall figure dropped twelve feet, landing with a clatter on the roof of the structure behind Tiger. The noise drew her attention from Aiden. She spun around just as Harris jumped.
He descended on her from above, slamming his clasped hands on the base of her neck. Agent and kidnapper collapsed to the snow.
/> * * *
Meg fled through the mine, stumbling over fallen rocks and old railroad tracks. The darkness surrounding her was near total. She could see nothing but dim points of light, spiraling in the black.
Fireflies?
Something like damp, papery rubber slapped at her cheek. She windmilled her arms in front of her, and that was when she felt them. Bats — their rodent eyes glowing all around her.
Wheezing, she fought to control her revulsion. They can’t hurt you. Worry about the things that can.
Two armed criminals were after her and her parents. Tiger and — who was that other guy?
He wants you dead. That’s all you need to know.
She reached out to feel her way through the passage and jumped back. The wall came to an angle as the tunnel split in two.
There’s more than one tunnel!
The possibility had not occurred to her before that moment.
What if I get lost? Or if Mom and Dad do?
Where were her parents? They had been not too far behind her. But she could no longer hear their footfalls.
“Mom?” she called in a low voice. “Dad?”
The response was a flash of orange light, the crack of a pistol, and the deadly whine of a bullet slicing through the mine.
At the sound of gunfire, Aiden and Mickey raced to the scene of the collision in front of the doorway.
“Agent Harris!” Aiden cried.
“I’m okay.” With a groan, the tall man lifted himself off Tiger. The female kidnapper lay motionless in the snow, knocked out cold. From a ski suit pocket, Harris produced a set of handcuffs and shackled her to the rusted grill of a broken window.
“But who was shooting?” asked Mickey.
Three pairs of eyes peered through the office area to the locker room and the darkness beyond.
“Meg!” gasped Aiden, sprinting inside.
“Come back!” Harris ordered to no avail. He collared Mickey, who was attempting to follow Aiden. “Go to the Range Rover. See if you can get the high beams on. We’ve got to find a way to light up that mine.”
* * *
Aiden galloped across the locker room and sprawled headlong through the entrance to the tunnel.