Southern Cross (22 page)

“What
about your father?” I asked. “Did anyone tell George?”

She
paused. Her hands were still trembling. “Wyatt didn’t want to, but somebody let
him know—I always suspected Reverend Barnel was behind it. That maybe he told
Daddy just to hurt him. He and Wyatt fought. Didn’t talk for close to a month,
before Daddy finally gave in. After that, they’d still play cards, have a drink
or two at the end of the day, but I know Daddy didn’t get over it.”

And
neither did Jesup Barnel, apparently.

“One
more thing,” I said before we left. Ashley actually smiled—a sad smile, the one
I’d seen the most during our marriage.

“There
always is, Diggs. What else?”

“Who
else knew? I mean—knew for sure.”

“Barnel,
of course…”

“But
how did Barnel find out?” I pressed. “Sally never would have said anything. And
I can’t imagine Danny or Casey would breathe a word about it.”

“I
never figured that out,” she admitted. “Far as I know, the only people who knew
were Wyatt, Danny, Casey, and me. Sorry. I wish I could be more help.”

“No,”
I said. “This was good—thanks. I should have come to you from the start.”

She
laughed. Angus grinned, watching her like she was the center of the universe.
“Well, I don’t know how likely I would’ve been to talk to you if the world
weren’t ending.”

“Right,”
I agreed. “Good point.”

Juarez
and I stood. “If they’ve already killed Wyatt and Sophie, we should make sure
someone’s watching Casey,” Juarez said—something I’d just been thinking myself.

He
excused himself to get on the horn with the hospital. I rested my hand on
Angus’s downy head.

“He’s
a beautiful boy, Ash,” I said. “Terry’s a lucky man. I always said you’d make a
good mom.”

“You
did,” she agreed. “I never thought I’d say this, but one of these days, you
might even make an all right father.”

“Let’s
not get ahead of ourselves,” I said with a laugh. I shuffled my feet, and with
some effort managed to hold her eye. “I’m sorry about that crack earlier—if I
made it seem like I’m just dismissing what happened to Sophie and Casey. You
and I will never see eye to eye on the issue, but I don’t take it lightly.”

“I
know that. Try as you might to make people think otherwise, there’s not much
you take lightly,” she said. She took a breath and nodded toward the door. “And
that’s enough mending fences today. Now I need you to go out there and figure
out what the hell is happening—and stop it—so this isn’t all the time I get
with my boy here.”

“Yes,
ma’am,” I said. “Lay low today, okay? Keep the doors locked, and try to get
that husband of yours back before curfew tonight. Mae mentioned she might be
coming over with the kids later?”

“They
should be here soon,” Ashley agreed. Juarez returned, looking pained.

“What’s
up?” I asked.

“Casey’s
not in the hospital—someone claiming to be her father checked her out about an
hour ago. And I talked to Blaze: they started looking out past the old property
lines and found something at Barnel’s camp. We need to get over there.”

We
said a hasty goodbye and were soon on our way. I was almost out the front door,
leaving behind this strange house that had once been my home, when I heard
Ashley call after me.

“Take
it easy, all right, Diggs?” I looked back at her, standing in the living room
we once shared. “You’re not my favorite person, but I still like the world a
little bit better with you in it.”

“It’s
mutual, Ash,” I said. “I’ll be careful.”

15:05:00

It
was clear from the start that Agent Blaze and I would never be BFFs. My first
clue was when she insisted we leave Grace and my “mangy sheepdog” at the hotel,
because she had enough to worry about saving the town and keeping my ass out of
trouble without adding a bunch of mutts to the mix. I would have argued that
Einstein was neither mangy nor a sheepdog, but… Well, Blaze scared the living
bejeezus out of me. And I could actually see her point—I’m not completely
irrational all the time, contrary to popular belief. We settled the dogs at the
hotel and I left them with extra biscuits and a stern warning not to raid the
mini bar, then I got in the back of Blaze’s SUV with another of the agents, and
we set out.

By
nine a.m., it felt like I’d been up for a month instead of just a couple of
days. This is what happens when you start taking care of yourself—your
tolerance goes straight to hell. We’d been driving aimlessly for hours,
tracking down Barnel’s followers and putting out fires—literally. We were inthe
midst of doing just that when Buddy Holloway called saying he’d found something
at the Barnel compound. 

My
adrenaline surged. We’d just gotten word that Casey Clinton and a couple of the
other kids in the explosion had disappeared from the hospital. If Barnel’s
people were behind that, we assumed they’d taken their hostages into the woods
somewhere. The energy among the other agents—including Agent Keith, sitting
just a little too close beside me—had been flagging, but the news got everyone
jazzed. Blaze pulled a U-turn in the middle of the road, and we headed off in
the opposite direction to rendezvous with Buddy.

The
Barnel compound was deep in the woods, the only path to get there a virtually
impenetrable dirt road. From there, it was another half mile or so along a
damp, well-traveled trail with National Guardsmen leading the march and Agent
Keith and me bringing up the rear. The woods were cool and wet, new leaves on
the trees and the fresh air sweet enough to taste. We reached a muddy clearing
where half a dozen ramshackle one-room cabins were built close to one another,
a well and a fire pit at the center. A wooden sign hanging above read, “Let
Jesus Lead You Home.”

I turned
at a particularly nasty stench off to our left, and quickly switched direction
once I realized the source: a pigpen, one sow and three piglets dead inside.
Their throats were slit, flies buzzing over the open wounds.

Lovely.

A few
yards farther down another path we found what I assumed was Barnel’s version of
a meeting house—a massive octagonal building with a sign reading “Redemption
Hall” above the stately double doors. A soldier sat on the steps waiting for
us—Private Abbott, I recalled from the briefing earlier. He was a redhead in
camouflage with a buzzcut and an overbite who barely looked old enough to
vote. 

“We’re
set up inside,” Abbott said.

He
gestured for our crew to go on ahead, which we did. I followed Blaze up five
wooden steps, then through the double doors.

The
rest of the compound might seem like the set for some bizarre Appalachian
reality show, but Barnel had pulled out all the stops for Redemption Hall.
Bleachers all the way around passed for stadium seating, with a red-carpeted aisle
leading to a round pulpit in the center with a podium, speakers, and a
baptismal tank.

The
pièce
de résistance
was an archaic-looking dentist’s chair outfitted with straps
to restrain Barnel’s unlucky subjects. Behind that was a large wooden box that
I didn’t want anything to do with; the mesh windows and a padlock were the only
thing that kept more of Barnel’s fanged “babies” from escaping and having their
way with the lot of us. I’d never been a fan of snakes, but Diggs’ encounter
the other night had really sealed that for me.

Juarez,
Diggs, and Buddy Holloway were gathered around the podium with half-a-dozen
soldiers and a couple of agents when we arrived. We joined them and got the
rundown on what they’d found: an occupied cabin about a mile into the woods
that had been spotted by helicopters. Soldiers had already been there and back,
and so far hadn’t come across any surveillance, security, or weird bear pit
booby traps designed to keep people away.

“You
didn’t find anything at all?” Diggs asked skeptically.

“Maybe
Barnel was counting on being well hidden enough not to worry about that kind of
thing,” Juarez said. He didn’t sound convinced.

“I
don’t know what to tell you,” Abbott said. “I can’t give you the why—only what
we’ve found. Or haven’t, as the case may be. And these woods are clean.”

“And
the cabin?” Blaze asked.

“That’s
more of a problem,” Abbott said grimly. “It’s a mile into the brush, due east.
Infrared shows four armed on the ground floor—we’ve had eyes on two. Both
female.” He looked uncomfortable.

“That’s
a problem?” Juarez asked.

“One’s
just a kid—not more than fifteen, maybe sixteen years old. The other one is
maybe seventy.”

“Barnel
has a big extended family,” Diggs said. “I wouldn’t put it past him to use them
out here. Could be his wife in there with the girl.”

Blaze
frowned, but made no comment. “Is there any sign of Barnel?”

“No,
ma’am.”

“Are
there others in the building?”

“That’s
where the problem comes in,” Abbott said. “There’s a fortified cellar with ten
that we’ve seen so far—kids mostly, and an elderly couple guarding them with
rifles. Deputy Holloway helped us find a back way in, so we’ve actually been
able to get inside to see what we’re dealing with.”

“Inside
how?” I asked.

“Tunnels,”
Buddy said. “I took a gamble, figured the reverend would be paranoid enough to
want a second way out.”

“But
no one was guarding that exit? You don’t think that’s a little weird?” Diggs
asked.

“I
won’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but it does seem like if he went to the
trouble of building this place, he would have put a little energy in protecting
himself. We’ll proceed with caution. Happy?” she asked Diggs. 

“Yes.
Thank you,” Diggs agreed.

“Good.
So, what did you find?” she asked Abbott.

The
soldier took out a camera and started scrolling through the pictures, starting
with the people on the ground floor they’d be squaring off against. The first
was of a little old woman with her hair back in a bun, a hard stare in her dark
eyes. It took me a minute before I recognized her as the one who’d started
singing just about the time Barnel was shot in Miller’s Field two nights ago.

Blaze
flipped to the next picture, showing a teenage girl in the by-now-familiar
ankle-length dress, her long blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. She held a
rifle in one hand. She looked vaguely familiar—I assumed also from the tent
meeting. Diggs studied her for a minute.

“I
think that’s Jessie Barnel—one of the grandkids. He’s got a whole posse of
them. Smart girl; she made National Honor Society this year. She’s the last one
I would have expected to be involved.”

I
didn’t ask how, exactly, Diggs knew that. If I stopped to question half the
seemingly irrelevant facts Diggs has floating around in his noggin, we’d never
get anything done. From there we moved onto the cellar, and the real problem we
were up against.

The
basement itself wasn’t noteworthy, just a large room with a dirt floor, stone
walls, and a low ceiling. A bare bulb hung from a wooden beam. There was a
wooden table at the center with a plastic pitcher, a half-eaten plate of
sandwiches, and a deck of UNO cards. Just as Abbott had said, an old couple
stood guard, keeping track of the kids—eight of them.

“That’s
Ray Barnel and his wife, Etta,” Diggs said. “Ray is the reverend’s brother.”

“So
he really is keeping this in the family,” Blaze said.

The
next photo showed a couple of the kids seated at the table. Another photo
showed four or five crowded in together on a double mattress. I stopped at
sight of a little blonde girl with her thumb in her mouth, and a boy of seven
or eight watching over her like it was his mission in life.

My
stomach dropped. “That’s Casey Clinton’s brother and sister,” I said. “What the
hell are they doing in there?”

Blaze
raised her hand to hold me off, suddenly tense. “That’s not my biggest concern
right now.” She looked at Abbott. “What the hell is that?”

I had
to squint to see what she was pointing to: a small bundle of cylindrical tubes,
barely visible beside the wooden stairs leading out. Abbott frowned and flipped
to the next picture—a close-up of the same bundle.

“Dynamite,”
he said. “The whole place is rigged with it. That’s why we didn’t just move in
and take the kids out. I’m guessing they have the detonator up top, but we
weren’t able to find it or determine whether we’re looking at a timer or a
remote trigger. There’s no sign of a blasting cap.”

“Son
of a bitch,” Blaze said, flipping back through the pictures. “Those are
homemade. That’s why they didn’t bother with security: when you have that many
explosives, you don’t need somebody watching the place. We make a single wrong
move and that entire house comes down on those kids.”

“If
we take our time, we can get everyone out,” Juarez said. “We just can’t lose
our heads. I know we’re on a deadline, but if we rush this, no one’s coming out
of this alive.”

“There’s
a problem with that,” Abbott said.

“What?”
Blaze snapped.

“That,”
he said. He indicated the pitcher I’d noticed beside the sandwiches in one of
the photos. Next to it was a vial, so small that it was barely visible. 

“What
are we looking at?” I asked.

“Cyanide,”
Blaze said softly. The word alone sent a chill through me. “They’re gonna
poison them. Before they ever set off any explosives, they’ll just tell the
kids to drink up. Everyone goes to sleep…”

“And
no one wakes up,” Juarez finished grimly.

<><><> 

Once
we knew what we were facing, Blaze got everyone motivated and we headed into
the forest together. The second the woods closed in this time, I felt the same
sense of panic that had all but buried me just after Black Falls. I’d been avoiding the woods for awhile, but obviously there wasn’t much choice now.

Blaze
and Juarez and the rest of the team were up ahead, absorbed in the mission. I
took a breath, but the air went down wrong and my heart sped up while my chest
got tighter. I kept my head down and put one foot in front of the other.
Sometimes, that’s the best you can hope for.

The
soldiers hadn’t been kidding when they’d said Barnel’s cabin was well hidden.
If I’d been on my own, I think I would have tripped over the damned thing
before I saw it: a small wooden cabin with a front porch and boarded windows,
almost completely hidden by the undergrowth. By the time we got there, I was
lightheaded from all that fresh air not getting to my lungs. The others circled
up while I stood on the sidelines, waiting for some direction. I didn’t even
know what the hell I was doing out there; Diggs knew the area and he knew
Barnel, so he could clearly add something to the mix.

Other
than mind-numbing terror, I wasn’t sure what I brought to the table. 

They
set Diggs and me and a couple of agents up out of the way with a video feed of
the cellar, and Blaze ordered us to keep still. I sat on a fallen tree and
didn’t speak. On the little screen in front of us, I could see half-a-dozen of
the kids now gathered around the table playing UNO. Casey’s brother and sister
had joined in. The pitcher stood between them, the vial still full beside it.

The
air smelled damp and clean, the byproduct of a rainy spring. It occurred to me
that the paths were wet enough that you wouldn’t hear someone coming from
behind. I thought of Will Rainier’s hand twisted in my hair, a knife blade
across my cheek and his mouth at my ear.
Every time I catch you, I get a
little more. That’s the game.
So far, breathing wasn’t getting any easier.

“So…
David Bowie? Cake? Prince, for sure,” Diggs said quietly as he sat down beside
me. I jumped, my heart hammering. He leaned in a little, voice low and light,
his hand falling to the small of my back. “Keep breathing, Sol. It’s just
another jungle, ace.”

My
heart slowed. I gave myself a minute before I responded. “Prince what?” I
asked. To my relief, I didn’t sound nearly as shaky as I felt.

“Your
top twenty-four,” he said.

Of
course. “I told you—I’m not playing that game with you.”

“Why
not? I won’t judge.”

I
scoffed. I felt my breathing slowly shift. “Sure you won’t.”

“Don’t
you want to know my top twenty-four?” he whispered, close to my ear.

“I
already know them.” He gave me a look that suggested I was full of shit, which
I chose to ignore. “What? You don’t think I’ve been paying attention all these
years? Twenty bucks says I can name every one of them,” I said. “In order.”