"I thought it was over." Something crossed her face that might have been amusement. "A sixteen-year-old girl had just handed your brothers a map to the exact spot I'd been putting bodies. But they looked at a drawing from a cult kid and threw it in a drawer. After that, I knew. The police had been given everything they needed and they chose to look the other way." She tilted her head. "Just like they did with Carter Lyle."
Noah swayed. The room tilted and didn't come back level. He put a hand against the wall and felt the cold of the concrete seep through the steel of the cuffs.
“Lydia, where is Fiona Spence?"
Lydia looked at him. The revolver hung at her side, almost relaxed. "The new dumpsite. After you found the bog, I had to adjust."
"And Kara?”
“You’ll never know.”
The bunker walls leaned inward. The bare bulb above him became a smear of light.
Noah's legs buckled. He caught himself against the wall and slid down to his knees. The concrete was cold through his pants.
"That's the morphine kicking in," Lydia said. She watched him the way a nurse watches a patient, with detached clinical interest. "Drowsiness first. Then slowed breathing. Apnea sets in within thirty minutes. Coma at one to two hours. Cardiac arrest from hypoxia in three to six." She paused. "Unless you get Naloxone to reverse it. But that won't be happening."
Noah tried to speak. The words were there but the path between his brain and his mouth was stretching, thinning, the signal degrading like a radio losing its frequency. The bunker walls pressed closer. The bare bulb pulsed and dimmed and pulsed again, though he knew it wasn't the bulb.
"I really wish you hadn’t come back," she said.
He collapsed to his knees and the world blurred.
41
The rain was coming sideways when Callie turned onto Mountain Lane. The wipers couldn't keep up and the headlights cut through the downpour in narrow cones that lit up the trees and the mud and nothing else. The police cruiser bounced through ruts that had become streams, the gravel long gone under water, the road more river than road.
She saw the Bronco first. Parked in front of the farmhouse, rain hammering its roof, the windows dark. She pulled in behind it and killed the engine. Drew her weapon. Stepped out into the rain.
It hit her like a wall. Cold and heavy, soaking through her jacket in seconds, running down her face and into her collar. She moved to the Bronco and looked through the driver's side window. Noah's phone sat in the cup holder, plugged into the charging cable. The screen was lit with missed calls. Seven of them. All from her.
Callie turned toward the farmhouse. The porch light was on and the front door was closed. She moved up the steps with her weapon raised and her back against the wall beside the door. Shelistened. The radio was playing inside, faint, barely audible over the rain.
She tried the handle. It was unlocked. She pushed the door open and stepped inside.
"Noah?"
The hallway was warm and dry and smelled like coffee. Coats on hooks. Boots in a row. The framed photo of Lydia and Earl on the wall. She moved through to the kitchen, weapon up, checking corners, the training taking over while the rest of her fought to stay calm.
The kitchen was empty. The French press sat on the counter, half full. Two mugs on the table. One tipped over. Coffee was dripping off the table. Her eyes scanned. That’s when she saw Noah's duty belt on the floor. His holstered weapon still in it.
Callie's chest tightened.
She picked up the duty belt and slung it over her shoulder. Then she moved through the rest of the ground floor. The living room. Empty. Bathroom. Empty. She reached a door at the end of the hallway. Closed. She turned the handle and pushed it open with her weapon leading.
It was a bedroom. Small. A single bed pushed against the wall. And on the bed, lying on her side with her wrists bound with zip ties and a strip of medical tape across her mouth, was Seraphine Maddox.
Her eyes were closed. Her breathing was shallow but steady. Drugged.
Callie holstered her weapon and crouched beside the bed. She pulled the tape from Seraphine's mouth as carefully as she could. Seraphine's lips parted but no sound came out. Her eyelids fluttered but didn't open.
"Seraphine. Can you hear me?"
Nothing. A breath. Another breath. Alive but far away.
Callie cut the zip ties with the knife from her belt and lifted Seraphine off the bed. She was light. Too light. Callie carried her through the hallway and out the front door. The rain hit them both; Seraphine didn't flinch. She got her to the cruiser and laid her across the back seat. Then she reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the Narcan kit. Two doses. She administered one to Seraphine, the nasal spray, and watched for a response. Seraphine's breathing steadied but she didn't wake.
Callie pulled the radio and called dispatch. "This is Deputy Thorne, Adirondack County. I need units and EMS to the Holt property, south end of Mountain Lane." She reeled off the exact address. "I have a drugged victim, possible second victim on the property. Suspect is Lydia Holt. Consider her armed and dangerous."
