He couldn’t allow her to be hurt, not yet, not when they were so close to the place where he would need her, and so he dropped the knife and stumbled backward. All three of them hit the floor hard. Ridley rolled and Cecil did exactly what Ridley had expected and went after the shotgun. Ridley stepped over Julianne and grabbed the back of Cecil’s head just as he reached the gun. Rather than pulling him back, Ridley drove him forward and slammed Cecil into the wall. The shotgun clattered to the floor just as Cecil’s nose shattered.
Cecil threw a high, powerful elbow that might have found Ridley’s face if Cecil hadn’t slipped on the hardwood floor. This was why Ridley kept his boots on even in his own home. Traction was something you could never take for granted.
Cecil was a tall and muscular man, bigger and stronger than Ridley, but he did not have traction and he did not have momentum. Ridley banged Cecil’s face off the wall one more time and then threw him to the floor. It could have ended there, should have, but Cecil landed near the knife and made the mistake of reaching for it.
Ridley raised his boot and smashed it down on Cecil’s hand and felt the bones break. Cecil cried out and rolled away, clutching his wrist to his belly as Ridley picked up the open knife. He felt in control at that moment, aggressive but focused, the goal clear: incapacitate Cecil and enter the cave.
Two changes occurred. Fast. One: Cecil reached for the shotgun again, even after he should have known better. Two: The knife spoke to Ridley. It was open and in his hand. In its designed position. Ready to do what it was meant to do, but more than that, what it had already done on a night he could not fully remember.
Night, was it night? Maybe day. Darkness. Certainly darkness. Down there, all days become nights and neither matters. And you held the knife like this and you—
Cecil’s fingers scrabbled for the shotgun and missed. Ridley pulled the big man’s head back and saw wide white eyes, and then Cecil’s chin rolled up and back and his throat was exposed. Ridley was ready then, ready to slash the knife down to do what it was intended to do, what Ridley was intended to do, when Julianne howled from beneath the tape over her mouth. The trapped sound was soft but its intensity was not.
He looked back to where she lay on her side on the floor, a helpless spectator, and he saw only terror in her eyes. It was the way Ridley’s sister had looked at their father on many occasions. Whenever Ridley saw that look come into his sister’s face, he had interceded. It hadn’t gone well for him, ever, but he’d always done it.
Julianne took a gasping breath that made the tape over her mouth bubble, and the look in her eyes made Ridley cringe. All she saw was horror, and she blamed Ridley. She was afraid of him, and that was a standard part of his days now and had been for years, but it had never been desired. He had never wanted to cause fear. People feared him, yes, but it wasn’t a product of his intentions. Actions, perhaps, but never intentions.
He slid off Cecil Buckner’s back and swept the shotgun across the floor. Cecil didn’t struggle. His eyes were on the blade that had nearly carved through his throat.
“You can wait here in peace, or they can find your body,” Ridley said. “Now put out your hands.”
Ridley was even faster with the paracord this time, binding Cecil’s hands and then his ankles, then connecting the two with a fast hitch. There was no need to pull Cecil’s feet as close to the back of his head as Ridley did, but the knife was no longer involved, and it seemed that Cecil should be forced to consider that and appreciate it. His life had been saved by the look in a stranger’s eyes. Would he ever know that? Ever understand how close he had come? Ridley doubted it, and so he pulled the cord tighter, pulled until Cecil’s heels came close to the back of his skull, and his spine was pushing its limits. Cecil shrieked in pain and Ridley found the tape and wrapped it quickly over his mouth to silence that aggravating sound. When he was finished, Cecil was bound with his hands and heels pressed together, his body arched backward. The paracord cinched tighter as he struggled. Soon he would realize that. He would remain in that position until someone came to free him. Ridley hoped that it would take some time and that Cecil would use the time to think, but he wasn’t optimistic about that possibility.
He straightened and took the keys — there were three key rings on different pegs and he took them all — and considered the shotgun briefly but decided against it. A gun was not a caving tool, and when he entered Trapdoor, he wanted the cave to know that he was pure of heart.
“We’re close,” he said, and then he used the open knife to guide Julianne back toward the door.
52
Mark was driving too fast over the icy roads when he called Danielle MacAlister, but the Ford held steady in its lane.
“You said your father bought his land for timber rights,” he said.
“Well, hello, Mr. Novak. Nice to hear from you again.”
“You said your father bought his land for timber rights,” he repeated.
“Correct.”
“He never did any cutting.”
“The cave redirected him, obviously.”
“But he owns property in all directions and most of it is open field, no timber at all. There’s a local who rents it for horses. The cave maps that Ridley drew are guides, but they’d have nothing to do with ownership. Those would be standard maps. Parcel maps. Ridley stopped drawing the underground maps at one point. Stopped sharing them with your father, at least.”
“We’ve already discussed this.”
Mark made a turn, felt the tires slide, and corrected for the skid. “I disagree. You told me what you wanted to share. I have new questions. I’m on my way to see you, in fact.”
In truth, he wasn’t even sure of his questions. The property mattered to Ridley. The property mattered to Pershing MacAlister’s family.
“You’re making a mistake,” she said.
“Explain how.”
He could hear her breathing. For a moment he thought she was going to offer something, but all she said was “I’ve taken enough of your questions. You have no legal authority. If you come here, it’s trespassing. I can have you arrested.”
“Tell Cecil to open the gate. It’s what he’s there for. To keep an eye on things, make sure there’s no trouble.”
“Do I have trouble, Mr. Novak?”
“If you didn’t think that you did, you wouldn’t have come up here. You damn sure wouldn’t have stayed.”
“You broke into our property and got lost in the cave. That’s why I’m here.”
“It’s not why you stayed. You stayed to know what Ridley was telling me.”
“You’ve already earned that confession once. I’m not hiding that interest.”
“What are the stipulations of the land trust?” Mark asked. “The property just sits there untouched, forever, is what Cecil told me. Your father felt that strongly about it?”
“About a girl being murdered on his property, a girl who’d been about to join his family? Yes, he felt strongly about it. He didn’t want to let this become a sideshow, an exploitation of tragedy.”
“Your father sounds like a shrewd businessman. But rather than bring a concrete company down here and just fill that entrance in and call it a day, he makes the decision to pay a caretaker to live on the property. For ten years, he does this. He’ll do it for another ten? Twenty?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice was tight.
“How do you not know? It’s your property.”
“It’s in a trust. The environmental stipulations of the trust might preclude that sort of—”
“No legalese, no stipulations. You’re an attorney, you know what it says. What will the situation at Trapdoor be in ten years?”