Darkening Dawn (The Lockman Chronicles Book 5) (18 page)

Jessie dipped her shoulders and let her backpack slide off and thump to the ground. With her hands down to feel out the ground and make sure there were no rocks under her, she slowly sat down on the moist bank. She pulled her legs in and wrapped her arms around her knees.

The sound of the river soothed her. She almost fell asleep sitting there listening to it.

No point in fighting it.

She eased down onto her side, pulled her backpack over, and rested her head on the pack as a hard, lumpy pillow. The wet dirt shared its cold with Jessie’s body. She pulled her hands into the sleeves of her sweatshirt and crossed her arms against her chest. She almost wished for the humidity back. But she would get plenty of that tomorrow probably.

She had another lovely hike to look forward to in the morning.

As she tried to drift off to sleep, a hard lump caught in her throat. Tears welled in her eyes and ran down the side of her cheek.

How had she ended up here? The Chosen One, curled up on a riverbank at night, alone and exposed to whatever nature had in store for her. She second-guessed her decision to leave the Agency. Sure, she would have felt just as alone in that place, the people surrounding her as sympathetic as the trees in these woods. But at least she’d have a dry fucking bed.

At some point, despite every discomfort, Jessie fell asleep.

She dreamt of her dad. He had something to tell her, something she had to understand. Her very life depended on it. But she couldn’t make out what he was saying. It sounded like he was talking under water. She did understand the desperation in his eyes, though.

She understood that whatever he had to say involved larger stakes than just her own safety.

This shit was serious.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

T
HEY GRUMBLED.
T
HEY BITCHED.
T
HEY
second- and third-guessed him. But when Earl led his crew into the fourth vacant store from the right in the strip mall and took them across the dusty concrete floor into a back room and over to a closet with its folding door dangling by a single hinge and yanked that door clear of the doorway and shone his flashlight onto what looked like a metal hatch to a submarine with one of those wheels on top you had to spin to open—right about then, they all shut up.

“See that?” Earl asked, shining his light on the hatch while standing to one side.

Art, the only one who hadn’t griped because he knew Earl could be counted on, stepped forward and peered into the closet. “Where’s it go?”

Earl smiled and waggled his eyebrows at his crew. They all stared at him, as slack-jawed as a bunch of rednecks drunk on their own moonshine. Sort of like Earl’s family back before he lost them all when Momma…

You don’t think about that no more. Not now. Not until you set things right.

“It goes to our new home,” Earl said, still smiling even though he almost thought about what happened with Momma back when he hadn’t yet had half the hair on his balls he would when puberty had finished with him. “And the things we need to bring on the Dawn.”

Art put his arm around Earl’s shoulders. “Go ahead. Show us the way.”

Earl nodded. He moved into the closet, crouched beside the hatch—there was only a foot or so between the hatch and the closet wall, so he teetered on the balls of his feet—and spun the wheel.

For all the time the hatch and its wheel must have sat, the wheel turned real easy until it clunked to a stop. Earl tried to lift the hatch door from where he crouched, but the bitch was heavy and his position too awkward to get any leverage.

He looked out at Tony. “You wanna give me a hand?”

Tony stepped forward without a hitch. The Negro finally acting like he knew his place. Probably wouldn’t last long, though.

The big son of a bitch squatted, grabbed a handle on the side of the hatch and swung it open without any help from Earl.

A stale, musty smell wafted up from the hole that reminded Earl of his grandpa’s cellar where he kept his pickles he jarred every summer. Dill pickles, spicy pickles with peppers, sweet pickles. Grandpap could do them all.

But Earl never went down there to get any as a kid, because that smell scared him for some reason. He thought it smelled like old bones. He sometimes thought he could glimpse a skeleton in the shadowed corner whenever he stood at the door while Grandpap went down to fetch a jar.

Earl wouldn’t learn till a decade later that Grandpap had killed a few men who had crossed him. So maybe Earl hadn’t imagined seeing that skeleton.

The smell from the open hatch didn’t scare Earl now. It triggered a giddy anticipation. He was a rich kid at Christmas whose parents bought him all the toys Earl’s parents could never afford. That smell meant that the things down below hadn’t been spoiled by anyone after the master had left it behind. What lay below waited for Earl and Earl alone.

And the crew, of course. Even Whisper. At least until Whisper’s purpose was served and Earl could put an end to him, taking his time in the doing, maybe letting Kit watch if she wanted. She deserved the chance, considering.

Earl shined his flashlight down the hole. A metal ladder stretched down about thirty feet to a tiled floor. The tiles had cracks in spots, but other than a light layer of dust, looked clean, cared for, suggesting this wasn’t some abandoned rathole. Just like the master had promised, this place would suit them fine. Earl knew it would without having to see any more.

While he stared down the hatch, Earl could hear Kit talking in the shop’s front room. She and Elka had hung back out there like Earl had told them to. Kit was yapping some nonsense about how her momma used to take her to the mall and buy her pretty things. Earl knew better. Her momma never bought a thing. She filched it.

When would that girl learn her momma wasn’t the saint she thought she was? One way would be to send her back, have her live with the whore for a couple weeks. Probably wouldn’t even take that long. Kit would beg to come back after a couple days.

He shoved all that aside. He had bigger things to focus on.

Damn but he wanted to climb right down that ladder to see what awaited them. He kept himself back, though. He had a feeling, some odd sense that he shouldn’t go down first. Couldn’t explain why. But in recent days he’d learned not to ignore such feelings.

Earl straightened and came out of the closet. Enough light came in through a small square window at the top of the room’s back wall so he could see his crew’s faces. He shined his flashlight at them anyway, each in turn, looking for something, a sign.

He didn’t bother with Whisper. His fate came later.

Not Art neither.

He panned the light from Roddy to Laz and then around to Tony still standing by the closet. He looked them in the eye. Then he looked them up and down. He noticed Laz’s right hand trembling. Probably all those drugs from his past playing Dixie on his nerves.

Was that the sign?

He aimed the light back at Roddy. Kid had a green ball cap on backwards, canted on his head like it had slid down on him, but Earl knew he wore it that way on purpose. That annoyed Earl. Such a small thing, but he felt like it signified a kind of disrespect. You want to wear a hat, fine. Least you could do was set it right on your damn head.

Roddy’s eyes glistened in the flashlight’s beam. He didn’t squint when Earl shone it in his face. In fact, he opened his eyes wider as if trying to take the light into himself, eat it through his pupils.

Boy always seemed strange to Earl, now that he thought about it. Not Whisper strange. But strange nonetheless. Earl supposed he’d passed it off as quirks of youth. He saw more clearly now that it harkened to something more…

Off.

Best word Earl could think to describe it.

And Earl needed his team to be
on
.

He licked his lips as if he needed to slick them up enough to let his words to come easier. “Roddy, son?”

Didn’t seem possible, but Roddy’s eyes grew wider still. “Yeah?” He sounded as excited as Earl had felt while looking down the hatch.

Earl knew the kid was dedicated to the cause. He wore his loyalty like a Boy Scout badge, proud and clear. Still…

Off.

“I want you,” Earl said, “to be the first one down.”

Roddy’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed big. “Yeah?”

“Yessir.” Earl lowered his flashlight to his side and stepped up to the boy, grasped one of his shoulders. “I want you to realize how important you are to this crew. Just cuz you’re the youngest, don’t mean you shouldn’t share in some of the glory.”

Roddy started breathing quick through his nose. His eyebrows crawled halfway up his forehead. He even started to shake a little. “I…I don’t know what to say.”

Tony groaned. “Are you fucking serious? I opened the damn hatch for—”

Earl whirled on Tony and stabbed him in the face with the beam from his flashlight. “Hush. You learn your place, boy.”

Tony’s eyes darkened and narrowed. His black skin glistened like the flank of a horse after a good gallop. “What’d you say?”

Normally, Earl could keep his opinion of Tony’s kind to himself. But he’d let a little of his true self slip. Time for some damage control before the native went wild. “All I’m saying is, you need to respect my decisions. I brought you this far. You gotta trust me.”

“Didn’t sound like that was all you was saying.”

“Don’t read into things that ain’t there, okay?” He patted Roddy’s shoulder. “Now let’s give this young man a chance to be a part of history.”

The Negro crossed his arms like he meant to block the way, but he stepped aside, gaze blazing at Earl all the while.

Earl ignored the evil eye. Tony wanted to cause any real trouble, Art would step in. Tony had more bulk than Art, but Earl had seen Art take down men at least as big, if not bigger. Back in the early days—four years ago, though it felt like Earl had known him his whole life—when it was just the two of them, a couple of fucked up guys looking for a reason to live.

Their master, Mr. Dolan, had given them that reason.

Now they had come so far.

Earl put his arm around Roddy and guided him forward. When they came to the closet’s entrance, Earl stepped back. “Go on, son. Make me proud.”

Roddy looked over his shoulder at Earl like a little puppy waiting for his master’s approval. His tongue slid along his smiling lips. “Thank you so much for this.”

“Nah. Should be me thanking you.”

The boy’s smile grew as wide as a jack-o’-lantern’s. His eyes danced. He looked almost stoned. But that wasn’t it at all, was it?

Off.

That was the heart of it.

Off.

But that was okay. Roddy had his place in this. He really would make a mark on history today. Just not in the way he thought.

“Okay,” Roddy said. “Here I go.” He sounded like was talking in his sleep in the middle of a wet dream.

Earl smiled and nodded his encouragement.

Roddy backed up to the open hatch and crouched down on his hands and knees. He reached back with a foot, found a foothold on a rung of the ladder, and walked back on his hands to lower his other foot down.

“Someone want to give me a light?” he asked.

Earl stepped forward and obliged, shining the light down the shaft and illuminating the floor below once more.

Didn’t look like anything dangerous waited there.

Maybe he was being paranoid. Maybe he was giving up the chance to be the first to step foot in their new home and marvel at what awaited them.

Roddy carefully climbed down the ladder. His heavy breathing echoed upward.

Art sidled up next to Earl and leaned close. “What’s going on?”

Roddy was halfway down now. Earl could see the top of that damned crooked green ball cap, the bill sticking out off the back of Roddy’s head.

He contemplated Art’s question, decided to give him the best truth he knew. “Think we’re making a sacrifice to allow us the privilege of entering.”

“Sacrifice?” Even at a whisper, Art’s voice rumbled like a tractor trailer bumping over gravel.

Roddy was two-thirds down the ladder.

“Mr. Dolan ain’t gonna let just anybody in.”

“You think it’s booby trapped?”

Earl didn’t have to answer. He just waited for Roddy to reach the floor and put one foot down on the tiles.

The golden flash blinded Earl. He dropped the flashlight. Heard it clatter and knock its way down the hole. He staggered backward covering his eyes with his forearm, cussing at the pain shooting from his eyeballs straight through to the back of his skull.

Art said something in another language. Spanish maybe—the man had never talked about where he was from. But Earl didn’t need a translator to tell him what it meant. Art grinded out the words the same way he would any string of curses.

The rest of the crew shouted out too. Earl couldn’t tell if the light had affected them as badly as him and Art. Couldn’t imagine it had, considering the two of them had been staring straight down at it when it burst. From the grunts and gasps it sounded like it still got them pretty good.

The pain only lasted a handful of seconds. Earl lowered his arm and blinked away the ghost of the light left behind across his vision.

Art rubbed his eyes with his hands, then blinked as well. A tear sliced down his pockmarked face. He wiped it away with a knuckle and squinted at Earl. “What the fuck?”

What the fuck was right. But Earl knew. It was why he wanted Roddy to go down first.

He bent to peer down the hole. Saw nothing but the dark.

“Someone hand me their flashlight.”

Tony pulled a mini Mag-Lite out of a pocket on his cargo pants. He was squinting too, a big ugly grimace pinching his face. He handed over the Mag-Lite. “What in hell’s going on?”

Earl ignored the question. He thumbed on the flashlight and aimed it down the hole.

No sign of Roddy.

Just a two-foot wide mound of ash on the tiled floor.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

E
LKA HAD TO ADMIT, THIS
underground network of tunnels and rooms was pretty impressive. It felt like something straight out of a James Bond movie—the villain’s lair. Only she wasn’t the villain. She was the hero, out to avenge the death of her family.