Page 91 of Tough Justice

Deck ended the call. “Brett, I need you to go to Tori’s house.” He recited the address. “See if her car is there. It’s a red Subaru. Search the place. I don’t care if you have to break in. Let me know what you find.”

“You got it.” Brett went back to his SUV and peeled out of the lot.

To Evan, he said, “Go to Wil Barnett’s house and do the same.” He pulled up Barnett’s address from Sammie’s lookup. “If he’s there, don’t do anything. Just call me.”

“Will do. Where are you going?”

“FCI Sheridan.”

“You gonna tell Rivera?” Evan asked over his shoulder as he headed back to his SUV.

“Not yet.” Not until he had something concrete. Deck loaded Thor into the kennel and took off for the prison.

All the signs pointed to Barnett, but he had no real proof. Not even the totality of the circumstances was enough to make an arrest, let alone convict the man.

His guts twisted into a ball of knots. If Tori had really discovered something that could bring Barnett down…

Deck hit the highway and slammed his foot on the accelerator.

Chapter Thirty

Tori had been awake for several minutes but kept her eyes closed, pretending to still be asleep.

The air was even mustier than before. Every breath she took tasted like dirt. Wherever she was, it was cold and damp. Chills took hold, and she shivered.

Voices came to her, muffled and indistinct. Last night—or was it still tonight? She’d completely lost all perception of time. For all she knew, she’d been here for days. Then again, she couldn’t recall needing to use the facilities. At some point, she’d have to take care of her basic needs.

She cracked open one eye then the other. Her vision was finally clear, but what she saw sent fear winding its way into that part of her brain that housed her panic button. Rock surrounded her. Not walls, more like a carved-out semi circle with a rock ceiling. The room she was in really was a cave.

Easing to her other side, she took in the rest of her surroundings. The only way in and out of the cave was a gate that looked sturdy and heavy enough to be in a bank vault.

She swallowed the scream racing up her throat then pushed to an upright position, intending to see if the gate truly was locked, but the room began to spin. Her head felt as if it were a buoy, bobbing helplessly in the ocean. She lay back down for a few minutes to let the effects of the drug wear off more. When she was ready, she gave it another go and sat up, slower this time.

Her mouth was dry, and when she ran her tongue over her teeth, they felt like cardboard. The musty scent was exactly like the air in Kartchner Caverns, a five hundred fifty–foot deep limestone cave she’d once visited in Southern Arizona.

Oh shit. The implications of her analogy smacked her in the face. She’d been kidnapped and imprisoned somewhere deep underground. By whom, she still didn’t know for certain.

No one knew where she was. She’d been leaving a message for Deck, but she’d been standing by her car outside the ER at the time. There was no way he could find her. Even she didn’t know where she was.

Carefully, she pushed from the cot and stood. This time, the walls didn’t move quite as much. She took a step toward the gate, nearly stumbling over a rock and reaching out for the only other piece of furniture—an old metal desk chair. After regaining her balance, she went to the gate and wrapped her hands around the bars.

Outside the gate and about ten feet to the right was an opening, possibly another room or another tunnel. Lighting was dim, coming only from two sets of fluorescent light fixtures hanging by chains in the rock ceiling. To the left of the gate was a three-foot-wide opening in the floor. An old wooden ladder stuck out from the top. Dead ahead was the room they’d passed when she’d been carried down here.

Four men wearing protective masks and gloves worked behind the thick plastic sheeting. Pressing her face closer, she tried getting a better look at what they were doing.

On one of the tables was a burner, set over which was a large frying pan. Beakers and glass measuring cups lined a shelf. The other table contained a stack of clear plastic briquettes filled with gray material. Gray death. No wonder the men wore PPE and the lab was protected by sheeting. If it were aerosolized, anyone inhaling it could easily take in a lethal dose.

Footsteps came to her ears, as if someone were coming down a set of stairs. A man she didn’t recognize stopped outside the plastic curtain. He wore overalls, and she wondered if this was the infamous T-Lo. She’d only seen his mugshot from a distance. Another man, also wearing overalls and a mask, came from the lab. He whipped off the mask but kept his back to her.

The one she suspected was T-Lo shot her a disapproving glare. “You shouldn’t have brought her here,” he growled.

“Not your call to make,” the man with his back to Tori said. “Just get to work.”

At hearing the achingly familiar voice, nausea rolled through her.

Wil.

The other man strapped on a protective mask hanging on a hook in the wall. After grabbing a set of gloves from his pocket, he pushed through a cut in the plastic and went into the lab.