Bikinis in Paradise (Tj Jensen Pardise Lake Mysteries) (23 page)

“How can I help?” Tj asked. “Is there a way I can sneak
into Vengeance and help you get out? Maybe I can unblock the window from the outside.” Tj hated to think of the poor girl locked in her room with no means of escape.

“I’m okay
, but I’m worried about Kiara. My dad can be mean when he’s been drinking, and I could tell that his argument with Aaron got him all worked up. Before it got quiet there was a lot of pacing and cussing. I’ve been trying to figure out where he might have taken her, and I think I might know. I realize it’s a lot to ask, but I was hoping you’d take a drive out and look.”

“Absol
utely. Just tell me where to go,” Tj agreed.

“There
’s a cellar about a quarter of a mile behind the main compound. It’s almost completely underground except for a very small window that sticks up about a foot above the surface of the ground. There are a lot of shrubs growing around it, so it’s really hard to see unless you know it’s there. The door is at the end of a narrow path that’s dug into the earth so that the entrance is actually below the ground. The room is probably locked, but I figure if you can look in the window and see Kiara, then maybe you can get help to get her out.”

“Is the cellar being used for some purpose?” Tj wondered if others from the settlement might know of Kiara’s presence if that was where they’d stashed her.

“No,” Annabeth said. “It was built a long time ago by some guy who thought we were going to get bombed and wanted a place to take his family. They used to store supplies down there, but it’s been completely abandoned since I can remember. I used to play there as a child.”

Tj thought it was incredibly sad that Annabeth no longer thought of herself as a child.

“I think most people have forgotten it even exists,” Annabeth continued. “I know Papa remembers it, though, ’cause he caught me playing there a few years ago. He told me it was dangerous and made me promise to stay away, but I couldn’t seem to help myself and went back whenever I could.”

Tj tried to picture where the c
ellar might be located. “Is it directly behind the compound?”

“It’s sort of north
west. It’ll be hard to find, but I really think it’s going to be easier to rescue Kiara when it’s dark. Come morning, someone from the settlement is sure to see you.”

“Okay
. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

Tj drove slowly through town. It was the middle of the night and there wasn’t a single car on the road. The moon helped illuminate the landscape, which was going to come in handy once she reached the dirt road Annabeth had instructed her to turn onto. The emptiness of Serenity made her feel like she was the last survivor in one of those disaster movies in which only the buildings survive. The street was totally quiet and dark except for the security lights that shone from several of the storefronts. As she turned off Main Street onto the highway leading north, she wished she’d been able to bring Echo, but Annabeth had warned her that she’d need to climb a fence in order to reach her destination. She’d have preferred to have him along for protection but had decided to leave him safely at home, where he wouldn’t get hurt.

She hadn’t wanted to worry her grandfather and figured she’d be home long before he woke up
, so she’d sneaked out of the house as quietly as she could. She realized after she was already on the road that she should have left a note in case he got up in the middle of the night and noticed she wasn’t there. With the crowning of Ms. Tropical Tan that afternoon, there was a good likelihood he’d be up earlier than usual.

The narrow two
-lane highway leading north out of the basin was deserted, as the town had been. Tj kept her eyes focused on the landmarks she passed as she neared the turnoff to the compound. Annabeth had instructed her to look for a poorly maintained dirt road about a hundred yards before the settlement. She was to turn off her headlights so as not to draw attention to herself and then drive slowly until she came to a chain-link fence. Annabeth had suggested she park in the trees so her vehicle wouldn’t be seen and then continue on foot.

Tj slowed as she hunted for the turn
off. If she’d been traveling any faster, she would have missed it completely. The dirt road Annabeth had referred to was really two wheel tracks overgrown with weeds. Tj turned off her headlights and inched along the trail as Annabeth had instructed. Although it was late, Annabeth had warned her that if anyone from Vengeance saw headlights, they’d almost definitely come looking for the source.

Rubbing her eyes in an effort to focus
, Tj found herself wishing she’d had an earlier night. The truth of the matter was that she’d only been sleeping for about an hour when Annabeth had called and she was beyond tired. She thought of turning on the radio for company but realized that the sound might carry, alerting anyone who might be watching that she’d wandered onto private property. The signs she passed warned that unauthorized visitors would be shot on sight. Tj hoped that was a scare tactic and not a reality, even though she planned to be long gone before anyone noticed her.

Deciding to think about something other than a shotgun
pointed at her face, she tried to re-create the evening she’d had in her mind. She’d had a wonderful time with Hunter, Kyle, and Jenna. After the bikini contest, they’d drunk wine and eaten festival food as Tj, Jenna, and Hunter spent hours next to the fire pit on the deck of the Grill, telling Kyle tales from their childhood. It had been fun to take a walk along memory lane with Hunter and Jenna. They’d been such an important part of her life for so long that at times, Tj realized, she tended to take them for granted.

Kyle fit in so perfectly with the group that Tj
often forgot that he was relatively new to town and didn’t know the history behind many of the stories they shared. After tonight, Tj grinned, there were very few secrets left untold. Tj couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed so hard or had such a good time. She and Hunter had gone through rough times, but over the course of the evening, she’d had a chance to remember the good times as well.

The SUV hit a bump
, causing Tj to refocus on the road. At the pace she needed to travel to keep the vehicle centered on the narrow road, she figured she could make better time walking. She found a good place to stash the SUV and took off down the dark trail on foot. It was a warm evening as mountain nights went, but still the air was nippy, and she wished she’d thought to wear a heavier sweatshirt. As she ambled down the rutted trail, an owl hooted in the distance. The sound of a lone owl had always seemed a lonely call to Tj. She listened as other nocturnal predators scurried in the dense foliage on either side of the trail. There was a slight breeze, causing the branches of the densely populated trees to creak and groan and giving the late-night adventure a spooky feeling that would be perfect if it were Halloween.

Before long
, she came to the fence Annabeth had warned her about. It was tall, at least twelve feet. She didn’t think she’d have a problem scaling it, but if she did manage to rescue Kiara and she was injured or in some way incapacitated, she had no idea how she’d get them both over the fence on the return trip.

Deciding she’d cross that bridge if and when she got to
it, she began her climb up and over the top. Luckily, she’d worn long pants, long sleeves, and sturdy shoes. She wished she’d thought to bring gloves when she saw the barbed wire wrapped around the top. By the time she made it to the other side, her hands were bleeding, but she carried on according to the directions she’d received.

Tj
almost jumped out of her skin when a pack of coyotes crossed her trail and began to yip and holler as they noticed her. She searched for a large stick she could use to fend them off if need be. There were a lot of coyotes in the area and most wouldn’t attack an adult, but a whole pack on a dark night with a single human interrupting their nightly forage for food provided an uncertain situation at best. Tj stood still as the animals paused to watch her. There were six in all, most likely a family that hunted together. Their bright eyes looked eerie in the darkness, but the likelihood of them attacking if Tj didn’t pose a threat was slim. She held her breath as they circled her, yipping and hollering all the while. She was small by human standards but still large enough to pose more of a problem to coyotes looking for a meal than would be worth the effort to attack . . . she hoped.

After several minutes
, the animals regrouped and continued on their way. Tj located a large stick in case they returned and then continued on hers. Annabeth had said that she should be able to make out the edges of the cellar once she’d been walking for ten or fifteen minutes. She hadn’t thought to actually time herself, but she figured that if she deleted the time she’d waited for the nocturnal prowlers, she must be nearing the bottom edge of the time range. Annabeth had mentioned that there would be a large tree with multiple trunks that wound their way around each other, as if they were embracing. Once she saw the tree, she was to continue another hundred yards to the left. And when she’d traveled the length of a football field, give or take, she would see a grove of aspens with thick underbrush. She was to continue on a narrow footpath that wound along the perimeter of the grove until she came to an area where large boulders blocked her passage. If she looked to her right, she should be able to see the top of the structure. It was dark brown and, as such, well camouflaged, but Annabeth had assured her that if she looked closely, she’d see the small windows that provided daylight to the underground room.

Tj walked carefully along the path strewn with debris. She noticed that there were several sets of footprints
that looked like they’d been left recently. Definitely, she decided, since the last rain. The underbrush was dense, making it hard to make out a specific area where the cellar might be located. She recited Annabeth’s instructions in her mind and then paused to scan the area. A twig snapped in the distance, causing Tj to hold her breath as she listened. It was probably just a forest animal out for a stroll, but the eerie setting of her late-night mission made her heart race with each and every noise.

She’d pretty much decided to check out a particular clump of shrubs
when she heard something behind her. She turned to look, but before she could focus her eyes, everything went black.

The first thing Tj realized as she struggled toward consciousness was that her whole body hurt. Her head throbbed worse than it ever had before, including the morning after her twenty-first birthday, when she’d gotten drunker than she’d ever been before or ever would be again. She felt as if one or more of the ribs on her right side might be broken, and she was certain that the numbness in her legs was the result of some horrible injury. She was lying on something hard and cold. So very, very cold. She struggled to open her eyes, but her eyelids felt heavy. She was trying to move one leg to see if she could when she heard a voice.

“Are you awake?
”

The voice seemed
to be coming from far away. Beyond the fog that prevented her from continuing into the realm of consciousness. The harder she tried to move toward the sound of the voice, the heavier her legs felt. Tj had had dreams like this; dreams in which she knew she had to escape, but her legs wouldn’t cooperate. She knew she had to be dreaming, but this time it felt different. This time it felt real.

“Please don’t die
.” The voice beckoned her from beyond the fog. “I know it’s hard, but you need to wake up.”

The voice sounded desperate. Tj tried to identify it
, but the pounding in her head drowned out everything else. She knew that the easiest choice was to give in to the darkness. In the darkness, there was no pain. In the darkness, she’d find peace.

“I’
m so scared. Please wake up,” the distant voice pleaded.

Tj made a decision and headed toward the voice. Each step caused her head to vibrate with a pounding that wouldn’t stop. Her legs felt like lead
, but still she struggled forward. When it seemed she could go no farther, she stepped into the light at the end of the trail.

“Thank God you’re alive.”

Tj slowly opened her eyes. Kiara sat next to her, sobbing, as she wiped her hair from her face. Tj struggled to focus in the dimly lit room. Her head hurt so badly that she had to use every ounce of willpower she possessed not to slip back into the fog.

“Where are we?”
she asked.

“
An old bomb shelter.”

Of course
, the shelter. Everything was beginning to come back to her now. She’d come into the woods to look for the cellar. Someone must have followed her. Tj tried to sit up, but the pain in her head was too intense. She closed her eyes and laid back down on the hard surface beneath her. “How long have I been here?”

“
Several hours, I think. Maybe more. I don’t have a way to tell time, so it’s hard to know.”

“Annabeth?”
Tj asked.

“I don’t know. They only brought you.
They didn’t say anything about Annabeth.”

Tj opened her eyes. She tried again to sit up. It hurt a little less this time. “Who brought me? You said
they
brought me. Who is they?”