“That wasn’t Carney,” I said.
Bree shook her head. “The other two must be in some kind of anteroom off that room. The barn?”
“Or the basement,” I said.
“I’m going out…shit, I never called for backup,” she said.
“Call on the way to the barn. I’m going downstairs. If you hear them, you call me, understand? Go through the kitchen and out that side door.”
Bree nodded, turned, and left, while I went looking for a way downstairs, the ranting of various voices and the crying of Cam Nguyen and the babies on the computer making me more frantic than ever to find them before it was too late.
After two tries revealed only an empty pantry and a small closet, a door in the hallway off the kitchen opened onto a rickety wooden staircase. I listened. Nothing. I flipped on the electric switch. No lights, either.
Digging in my pocket, I came up with a Maglite and held it under the barrel of my pistol as I dropped down the staircase into a basement filled with moldering junk and rusting tools.
They have to be in the barn, I thought, and almost turned to climb out after Bree. Then my flashlight beam picked up footprints in the dust that quickly became a well-trodden path across the basement to an empty set of floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves. Why there? Had Carney emptied the shelves recently? What had been there?
For the second time, I almost turned around.
Then I felt the slight breeze hitting my cheeks. But it wasn’t coming through the open door and down the stairs. It was blowing at me from the direction of the empty shelves. Moving fast now, I crossed to them, shining my light, seeing thick dust, and then fingerprints on the right side.
I reached out and tugged. The shelf barely moved. I set my pistol and flashlight down and grabbed it with both hands. The entire unit came free of the wall and swung toward me, moaning on rusting hinges.
“Alex?” Bree whispered over the radio. “I called Montgomery—”
I snatched up my radio, whispered, “Come back.”
Nothing.
“Bree?”
Nothing.
I hesitated, ducked down into the narrow, low-ceilinged tunnel, and tried again. “Bree?”
But all I got in return that time was static.
Chapter
73
Outside in the mist, Bree clicked on the Transmit button of her radio again but got zero. Her unit had died. She set it down on an old picnic table and hesitated, wondering whether to call Alex on his cell.
But then she heard something and all thoughts of calling her husband disappeared. It had been a brief noise that seemed to come from inside the old barn. Gun up, she angled fast through the high grass toward the near front corner of the sagging structure. Had that noise been the breeze whistling softly through the decrepit building? Or a muffled cry of desperation?
She stopped, listening, and then heard it again, short and almost squeaky, as if she was catching only the highest part of a longer cry. Up close, she could see how the barn had come off the sills and foundation in places. Was it safe?
The cry came a third time, louder, and Bree turned selfless. She was here to save those children from a madman. Nothing less would do.
She rounded the corner toward a set of big sliding doors and tried to push one open. It moved about eight inches before jamming in the mud. But it was enough for her to squeeze through into a dim space that smelled of old hay and spoiled leather.
Pigeons flushed from roosts on the beams above her and fled for that burned hole in the roof. Bree got out her Maglite and shined it around, seeing a loft, and a trail where lightning had spiraled from the roof down a massive wooden support post and scorched the floorboards.
The noise came louder now. Bree recognized words.
“Please!” Cam Nguyen was crying. “Please!”