Part 31 (1/2)

Danny raised a finger to his lips and urged Charlie to be quiet. Confused, the seventeen-year-old got up and joined us in the hallway. He fell into place at my heels, and we moved on to Taylor's door.

The door was open, but Taylor wasn't there.

There were candles burning on her nightstand, illuminating the room in a steady yellow glow. Her bed was made. She had a flowered bedspread-white and pink and blue-and the sheets were pulled tight, marred only by an indentation on the near edge, where someone had been sitting. I was surprised to see my camera in the middle of the bed, weighing down a crinkled piece of paper.

I pushed my way past Danny and retrieved the camera. It looked okay. It was smeared with dirt but still intact, still undamaged. Mac must have grabbed it from my room.

”Taylor?” Danny whispered, his voice taut and urgent. He spun and peered into the room's corners, as if maybe we'd just missed her standing there. When she didn't materialize, he stepped back into the hallway and called down toward the remaining bedrooms: ”Taylor? Are you here?”

”What is it?” Charlie asked, perplexed, growing increasingly agitated. ”What's going on? And why are you bleeding?”

Danny reached up and absently smeared blood across his forehead. He ignored Charlie's questions. Instead, he came into the room behind me and peered over my shoulder.

I turned on the camera and set it to display the most recent image. The screen lit, and my stomach dropped. My bruised head once again began to swim with vertigo.

”He's got her,” Danny said, his voice hushed, terrified. ”He took her away.”

The picture showed Taylor bound at the wrists and gagged with duct tape. There was pure terror in her eyes. I was surprised to see that look on her face. I didn't know she was capable of such stark, unambiguous emotion; it was something she had never let me see. Would she have covered up her face, I wondered, if her hands had been free? Is this what she's always trying to hide? Fear? Terror?

She looked vulnerable. She looked ... human. Peering out at Mac, behind the camera, watching that crazed, mud-spattered lunatic. A hostage.

His hostage.

”What did he do with her?” Danny asked.

I looked up. Charlie was standing in the doorway, watching us with terrified eyes. He still didn't know what was going on, but he understood, at least, the nature of our fear: our frantic search, Taylor's absence. As I looked, Floyd appeared in the hallway behind him. The skater was mouthing a gaping yawn, still partially lost in drugged and carefree sleep.

I slung the camera around my neck and grabbed for the sheet of paper in the middle of the bed. ”At least we know where they went,” I said, holding up the note.

It was a familiar note. The paper was worn and crinkled, crisscrossed with at least a half dozen folds. One of the corners had been ripped away, and it looked as if the bottom third had been dipped in water and then allowed to dry. The whole thing was spattered with teardrops of mud.

But the words were still legible: ”There's something I need to do, some place I need to be. I know you don't understand. I'm sorry, Amanda.”

”Underground,” I said. My voice was weak. As I continued, the words got caught in my throat, coming out rough, devoid of emotion. ”The tunnels ...

”He took her to the tunnels.”

As soon as I told him about the tunnel in the park, Danny tore out of the bedroom like a sprinter at the sound of a starting gun. His face was set in anger, and he let out a growl as he paused briefly just outside the bedroom door. ”I'll meet you there,” he said, ”with as many men as I can gather. And guns. Lots of guns.”

Then he clumped down the stairs and out the front door.

I could imagine him hitting the street and running like a man possessed toward the courthouse and his barracked soldiers, doing absolutely everything he could to keep Taylor safe.

That's the type of person he was. Loyal. Dedicated.

My head was pounding and I felt dizzy, still drunk but getting sober now. Possibly concussed. As I turned back from the door, my vision swam and the back of my throat filled with prevomit saliva. I reached down and grabbed the corner of Taylor's bed, trying to keep myself steady. When my stomach finally settled, I bolted down two more Vicodins, hoping to push back the pain and nausea, wanting nothing more than numb, unconnected distance between me and my injured, chemically unbalanced head.

But the anger remained. And the fear.

Mac had waltzed right in and taken her. Easy as could be. Danny and me, sloppy drunk on the sofa. Floyd and Charlie, asleep and oblivious. And Taylor ... all alone, she hadn't stood a chance.

”Get flashlights,” I said. Floyd and Charlie were sitting on the edge of the bed. They had the camera balanced between them, propped up on Floyd's knee and tilted back in Charlie's hand. At the sound of my voice, they both looked up from Taylor's picture. There was fear in their eyes. They looked like children. Lost, frightened children.

”And get weapons,” I said. ”Anything you've got. We're going to get Taylor back, and Mac isn't going to stand in our way. At least not for long.”

Danny and his soldiers weren't at the tunnel by the time we got there. I wasn't surprised. They had farther to walk, and I hadn't exactly taken my time getting us out the door and on our way-walking and running through the dark streets, but mostly running. Floyd, Charlie, and I were all panting for breath by the time we reached the dark opening.

We didn't have the breath to talk, and for that I was grateful. This situation was wrong, all sorts of f.u.c.ked-up, and I didn't need Charlie or Floyd to tell me that.

It was dark, predawn. The sky overhead was clotted with clouds-the stars hidden, the moon long since crashed beneath the horizon. The rain had stopped, but the gra.s.s and trees were still dripping wet, and it was freakishly quiet. There were no animals rustling in the leaves and not a whisper of wind. If there were wolves here, stalking us through the night, they were being very quiet.

I had a baseball bat clenched in my hand, scavenged from the house's garage. Floyd had a kitchen knife. Charlie had a longhandled shovel.

I also had my camera. I hadn't even thought about it, just automatically dropping it around my neck after we finished looking at Mac's horrible photograph. It was a comfort, having it there. The camera had always been a comfort for me, a wall to hide behind, a distance to place between myself and the subject of my eye. I was seeing that now for the first time. The camera was my way of escaping from the world.

I gave Danny a couple of minutes. The tension grew with each pa.s.sing second as my imagination ran wild: Mac, dragging Taylor through the tunnels, hurting her; wolves and spiders, stalking through the dark; buried limbs and faces; the gigantic hand of G.o.d, entombed somewhere beneath the city, dead and drained of blood. When it got to be too much, I gathered up all my strength and headed toward the dark opening in the gra.s.sy hill.

”Wait, wait!” Floyd called, the first syllable loud before his voice dropped into a scared whisper. ”Shouldn't we wait for Danny? And the soldiers?” Then, after a brief pause, ”Shouldn't we wait for guns?”

”You can wait if you want,” I said, trying to sound stronger, more confident than I actually felt. ”But I can't do it. I can't wait ... not while he's got her in there, not while she's in danger.”

I headed toward the tunnel, making a show of not looking back. Maybe this feigned nonchalance came across as confidence, but really, I just didn't want Charlie and Floyd to see my pleading, desperate eyes. I wanted to be strong ... but I wasn't. I was scared. And that fear-a fear of paralysis, a fear of loss-was what got me moving.

After a moment, I heard Floyd let out a string of expletives. Then he and Charlie followed me into the tunnel's gaping maw.

Photograph. Undated. Danny:

The room is small and dark. Concrete walls, underground. Dirty and wet, every surface glistening with moisture. There's a road flare burning on the far side of the room. A violet-red bloom-weak, but strong enough to illuminate the enclosed s.p.a.ce in an eerie crimson glow.

There's a body on the floor-a male body, fairly young-lying supine in the middle of the room. It is illuminated in the light of a half dozen flashlight beams.

The body is that of a soldier dressed in fatigues. Probably dead. Lying on his back with his head craned toward the wall behind him. He's clawed open his s.h.i.+rt, but his arms are thrown to the side, one hand inches away from a fallen flashlight.

There is pain on his face, a frozen mask of terror and open-eyed agony.

From the taut flesh in the middle of his chest, an arm sprouts, reaching up and bent at the elbow. The soldier is impaled all the way up to the arm's bicep. There are small rivulets of blood stretching the length of the arm-from taut, pointing fingers, past the elbow, all the way down to the soldier's chest, where the thin streams pool and spill off into his s.h.i.+rt.