“What is this?” she asked.
Instead of answering, he turned the dial of a combination lock. With a click and a pull, he opened the door. Inside was a U-Haul-sized earthen room stabilized with the same rough-hewn wood he’d used for his front deck. It was filled with feed bags, farm tools, and well-maintained equipment of various kinds.
A storage shed, she thought with relief.
Cara hung back in the doorway as the man moved multiple sacks of grain. He used a broom to sweep the dirt floor underneath until a heavy metal trap door appeared.
“What do you keep down there?” she asked.
He bent down and pulled it open. “For the moment, you.”
A ladder disappeared into darkness.
Fuck. Fuck. Holy fuck. “I r-really appreciate your of-offer.” Her voice had never trembled so badly. “B-but I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
Somewhere behind them, a bell jangled.
“What is that?” she asked.
“My warning system. It means someone’s on my property.”
Was he just saying that so he could get her to climb down in the hole without pointing his gun at her head?
“Is that how you discovered me?” she asked, stalling for time. “Did I set off one of your alarms?”
“I spotted you trying to hide behind a tree and watched you slink through the grass like a starving fox coming for myhenhouse. That was before Joanie, Lucretia, and Ruth began bleating away about you being in their barn.”
The bell jangled again.
“Lady, we can keep talking, but you’ve got about three minutes to make yourself invisible. Otherwise, I’m going to point my gun at you again and hand you over. Honestly, that would make my life a whole lot less complicated.”
She felt paralyzed by her two choices. Go to prison or... the man was twice her size and looked capable of things too horrible to consider.
“When you get to the bottom, turn away from the ladder, take three steps, and feel around on your right side at shoulder height,” he said.
Cara chose to take a tentative step into the dugout.
“What am I looking for?”
“The flashlight,” he answered.
When he didn’t push her in, she peered hesitantly down the open hatch before forcing a foot onto the ladder.
“Don’t turn on the generator and don’t make a sound,” the man instructed.
As her legs and then her torso became enveloped by darkness, Cara thought of something she’d read in a book about hostages humanizing themselves. Making friends with their captors.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Fisk,” he said, as her head went underground.
He didn’t ask hers before he sealed her in, the trap door closing with a resonant thud.
In gamer-speak, boxed in.
NINETEEN
JORDAN
