River pulled over and stopped the patrol vehicle. “Frankie and I are going to get out and have a look around while we wait for the others. You stay here in the car.”
She nodded. She watched as River led his K-9 around the area while Maren and Eli pulled up and got out of their respective vehicles.
Lydia continued to sit in the car while the three officers worked the area with their K-9s. River’s phone rang from where he’d left it on the console.
“Hi, Eva. It’s Lydia. River’s not in the car.”
“Let him know that Emmett said we do have probable cause to go on the land with the cell phone call having been made from there. Where the call was made from is triangulated off of towers, so it’s not exact, but I’m sending a map to his phone. It’s only a short distance up the hill from the boundary between the public land and Gregory’s property.”
“If this bunker is deep underground, so far down that the dogs would lose the scent, wouldn’t Sheryl have had to be above ground for the signal from her cell phone to work?”
“Maybe. I know mountains will often block a cell phone signal,” said Eva.
Search and rescue might have called off the search by the next morning when Sheryl made the call. River had said something about the search going through the night.
Lydia grabbed the phone and pushed the door open, running over to River with the news. While the other handlers took off with their dogs, Lydia walked back and forth across a swath of land that had a lot of brush. In one spot, her footsteps sounded different. She whirled around and jumped up and down. The ground beneath her had a hollow sound.
River and Frankie walked over to her.
“I think this must be where the bunker is. Listen.” She jumped up and down again.
“It could be,” he said. He turned one way and then the other. “There has to have been a mechanism to open the place up for them to have disappeared so fast—”
His words were cut off by the sound of gunshots. They both dropped to the ground as did Eli and Maren. The shots were coming from downhill, where their vehicles were parked. No way could they get back to them.
More shots were fired. Lydia and River, with Frankie taking up the lead, crouched and headed for a bush that would provide a degree of cover. “We need to get out of range,” said River.
The other two handlers were headed up the hill with their dogs as well. Maren and Eli moved from a cluster of trees to some brush. When Lydia glanced over her shoulder, she saw a man close to the patrol vehicles. Her breath caught. What if he disabled the vehicles? They would be on foot.
“I’m calling for police backup.” River seemed to know what she was thinking.
It would take the Ridge police at least twenty minutes to get out here. Did they have that kind of time?
A shot zinged over her head. Lydia dropped to her stomach, trying to still her breathing and slow her racing heart as she lay on the hard ground. River crawled over to her.
“The others are signaling that they will hold him off if he tries to get up this mountain. He’s at a disadvantage because he’s downhill from us. Frankie and I need to get you to where it’s safe.”
They moved up the hill. The clubhouse and the skeet shooting range came into view. There were no cars parked in the dirt lot.
River stared down the hill. “I wonder…”
Behind them, more shots were fired. She prayed for the safety of the other officers. “You wonder what?”
“That fireplace in that clubhouse. It looked like it had never been used.”
River and Frankie were already headed toward the clubhouse.
She ran to keep up with them.
When they got to the clubhouse, River yanked on the door. Locked. He stared at it for a long moment. “Simple lock.” He pulled a credit card from his wallet and slid it between the lock and the door frame. It opened.
Their feet echoed on the wood floor in the empty space. River dropped to his knees in front of the fireplace. Out of breath from running, Lydia leaned over, resting her hands on her knees.
“Let’s see what we have here,” he said.
* * *
Frankie pressed close to his side as River reached into the fireplace. The back wall was not solid, just two pieces of metal that came together in the middle.
