He shone the beam down one of the tunnels. There were in fact more doors built into the rock walls. It was a prison of some sort. They could hear a weak male voice pleading to them in Spanish, but George couldn’t make out what he was saying.
He called out, “Where are you?”
The voice grew more earnest, and in the beam of the flashlight George could see fingers reaching out from a slat in one of the doors.
Miriam rushed down the corridor to the door. “Here, George.” She pulled on the iron latch, but it wouldn’t budge. “Help me open it.”
George followed her and inspected the handle. “They’re all locked,” he said. “We have to try to find the key.”
Miriam peered in through the opening. “We’ll get you out…. Don’t be afraid. We’ll find the key.”
Then George heard a voice from one of the other doors. A woman’s voice, speaking English. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
George panned the light toward the new voice and saw a hand reaching out through the bars.
“Who are you?” the woman said again.
Miriam turned and clutched the woman’s fingers. “Oh, my… don’t worry. We’re going to get help.”
“How did you get down here?”
George leaned in. “We were snooping around the lodge and found this tunnel in the basement. It’s hidden. We’re… we’re just guests there.”
“Guests? You know Thomas Vale?”
“Yes, he invited us here,” Miriam said.
“Then listen to me. You’re in danger too. You need to get out and call the FBI. You can’t trust him. You can’t trust any of them. None of the people in this town.”
“Who are you? Why did they lock you up down here?”
“I’m a police officer—from Los Angeles,” the woman said, her voice cracking with emotion. “My name is Elina Gutierrez. I was investigating a kidnapping. I followed the van here and they captured me.” Her tone became insistent. “You need to contact the FBI. They’re engaged in some kind of human trafficking here. There’s something horrible going on.”
George’s head spun as he searched the corridor. These had to be the people they’d brought in the van and the woman he’d seen the day before. “We can’t get these doors open. We have to go back and find the keys.”
“Please help us,” Elina pleaded. “You have to get help right away. Don’t trust them. Don’t trust any of them.”
Miriam was squeezing Elina’s fingers through the bars. “We’ll get you out of here. Don’t worry. We’ll get you out.”
Elina began weeping. “I was praying that someone would find us. I was praying He would send someone to save us.”
Miriam leaned close and said softly, through her own tears, “He heard you. God heard you.”
George suddenly felt as if the darkness were closing in on him. As if something were pursuing them. He grabbed Miriam’s arm. “We need to go—now.”
He led her back up the tunnel as Elina’s voice came from behind him.
“Listen to me,” she said. “Be careful. There’s something in the caves. They said there’s something terrible down there.”
George steered Miriam away. “Don’t worry. We’ll contact the FBI as soon as we can.”
They hurried back the way they had come. Through the wooden door and up the stairs. George was puffing hard as they climbed the stairs, but now Miriam pulled him onward, her new youthful stamina driving her.
“What is this place?” she was saying between breaths. “Why would they have these people locked up?”
“I don’t know,” George wheezed. “I saw her… yesterday…. Carson took her away like a… prisoner.”
“What?” Miriam turned on the stairs and glared at him. “You saw her? You knew about this place and you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t know about this place,” George said. “And I didn’t know… who she was. I just… didn’t want to upset you until I found out what was… going on.”
Miriam started back up the stairs. “We have to call the state patrol or something.”
“I tried, but the only landline is in Vale’s office, and you need a pass code to dial out.” George pulled Miriam’s arm and she turned around. “Look, if Vale thinks we’re going to cause trouble, he’ll have us both killed.”
“How could you get mixed up with these people?”
“I was desperate!” George hissed in a hushed tone. “I would’ve done anything to save you. You have no idea what it was like living with you like that. All our money, and I couldn’t even…” He could feel his emotions swelling up and choked off his words. In fifty years of marriage, he’d never cried in front of Miriam; he wasn’t about to start now.
She hugged him. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I don’t blame you. But we have to get out of here. We can’t stay here any longer.”
“We can’t leave.”
“George.” Miriam looked him in the eyes. “I don’t care what happens to me. I am not going to let you become Vale’s slave for me. I won’t let you live in that kind of fear.”
“I can figure out a way to get rid of him. I’m not afraid of him.”
“And I’m not afraid of death.”
They continued on to the top of the stairs. George pulled open the hidden door to the storage room. They both clambered through into the room and stopped in their tracks.
Thomas Vale stood in the open doorway. Frank Carson and Henry Mulch stood behind him in the basement corridor, arms folded.
Vale sighed and shook his head, a look of disappointment on his face. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that you were just out for a morning stroll.”
Part IV
THE SOUL EATER
You don’t have a soul. You are a soul…. You have a body.
Chapter 31
Twelve hours later
It was going on eight o’clock in the evening and Jack was huddled in the back of the rust-colored pickup as it wound its way up a gravel road through looming pines to the top of a craggy bluff.
His clothes were torn and muddy from his ordeal in the caves. The gash in his leg was bandaged and his hands were cuffed behind his back. And the sheriff they had called Carson—who Jack now knew was no real sheriff at all—sat beside him with a gun in his hand pointed at Jack’s chest. Malcolm Browne, the guy who had first picked Jack up on the highway, was driving. And the doctor named Henderson, who had bandaged Jack’s leg, was sitting beside Browne in the cab.
They continued up the wooded hillside until the road leveled off and the trees parted to reveal the enormous log-beam mansion perched near the top of the bluff. It was quite impressive—a place that normally he’d like to spend a week in. Though considering his current circumstances, Jack could only feel a sense of great peril waiting for him inside.
Carson yanked him out of the truck and ushered him up the gravel drive through the main entrance. He escorted Jack across the foyer into an expansive central hall.
A man stood with his back to a wide bank of windows. He was lean and quite pale with a thick mass of black hair and very light-green—nearly yellow—eyes that gave his appearance a disturbing, vampirish feel.
He strode across the room somewhat casually, as if to give Jack a closer look. “Welcome to Beckon. My name is Thomas Vale. They tell me your name is Kendrick. Is that right? Jack Kendrick?”
Jack looked around at the others. “Do I know you?”
“No,” Vale said simply. “They also say you’ve been inside the caves.”